Fasinating painting

The power of this painting is Amazing. As you run your cursor over each person, their name and a brief description will be revealed on the side of your screen. This is the most timely and powerful piece of art done so far in this digital age. Thanks to Jon McNaughton.

It has over 40 patriotic heroes speaking to us from the dust as Jesus Christ holds the US Constitution. See if you can identify each of the patriots. There is a link to the detailed description of the 57 symbols and an interview with Jon. Click on the links above the picture for more information on the picture.
http://mcnaughtonart.com/artwork/view_zoom?artpiece_id=353

New medical Technology – Plasma that kills bacteria

A recent article in ‘New Journal of Physics’ tells how a low temperature plasma injected in a wound can kill bacteria on contact. It also talks about how they can use this to disinfect skin instantly using this process. There is a lot more on the web site including plenty of technical ifo if you read the whole article.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091126083409.htm

New chemicals to protect from iceing.

I want some of this stuff for my use.
A coating developed at the University of Pittsburgh repels freezing rain and could be applied easily to roads, planes and power lines, researchers said.
The nano particle coating developed in the Swanson School of Engineering belongs to a class of water repellants known as superhydrophobic coatings, doctoral student Liangliang Cao said in a release Thursday.
The coating was inspired by water-resistant Lotus leaves, which have microscopic ridges that reduce the surface area to which water can adhere, Cao said.
Cao’s team created resins from nano particles of silica and applied it to frozen aluminum plates to simulate freezing rain. Resins with silica particles less than 50 nanometers in size completely prevented icing, Cao said.
Water touched the air pockets between the particles and fell away without freezing. Cao produced similar results when he used the coating on a commercial satellite dish, the university said.
Copyright 2009 by United Press International

Presentations and Slide Shows done the easy way

If you want or need a presentation or slide show but,

1. You don’t own any presentation software,
2. You are not at the office or home where you have the software,
3. You need to share this slide show with a lot of people or you want it available for anyone,
4. You believe making presentations are hard and you don’t like Power Point,

then I have a web site for you to visit.

At spresent you can create and edit high-quality Flash presentations online.
You can send presentations via e-mail or publish on your web site or blog and that is just the beginning.
Right now the site says it is in beta 3 but most everything works well and I didn’t have any problems creating a basic slide show that included graphs, pictures, lists, audio, and video.

There are quite a few demos posted on youtube and at there site to help you get started.
The following is a example of a presentation created at spresent.com.
spresent demo

Radio Control Pirate Ship

Radio control gadgets have always been on my cool stuff list. A RC pirate ship is something I never expected to see in a catalog or even expected any one to build. This one based on the description, sounds like it should provide hours of fun for all.

Directly from the sellers web site:
“Authentically detailed ship cruises using a powerful motor and twin propellers. Water-resistant transmitter controls forward and reverse speeds, and left and right turns. Ship even has a cannon with light and sound effects that are triggered from the transmitter.”

Plus the cost is reasonable at $79.98. It is on my list of items to purchase when the mortgage is paid. <grin>

Pirate ship

Cool new site reviews coming

While traveling around the Inet reading blogs, searching, etc, I have found some very cool new “Web 2.0″ sites that will be reviewed in the very near future.

Netvibes vs Pageflakes vs Yourminis – Round 2

Back in February I commented about all three of these sites vying for you home page honors.

Now that I have worked with each for a while, I would like to give you an update on who won round 2, but first some new features from each.

Netvibes – Netvibes has to its credit hundreds of modules, thousands of feeds, hundreds of podcasts, thousands of tabs, and events. This gives Netvibes the edge on total number of items that can be configured or added to your page.

The key here is to be able to search through all this vast data to find what you want. This is very difficult as their search engine will only find each word and not combinations. Results returned aren’t necessarily relevant. Why don’t they use Google or Yahoo’s search engine? They need to fix this NOW. Are you listening Netvibes?

I would also like to see the ability to make my own color theme. The colors that are available through their “settings” are very pastel and too bright for my liking. Since just about everything is customizable, why not the themes?

Ok, so I have pointed out some good stuff and some stuff that needs to be fixed. It still is a good host to have as your home page. With all that is available plan to spend lots of time getting it configured like you want.

Pageflakes – Pageflakes has everything Netvibes has, but uses different terms to represent the same items. Podcasts, tabs, flakes (Netvibes modules), are all available with Pageflakes. The selection is much smaller in each category therefore you are more limited in what is already pre-made. You do have the capability to build whatever you want similar to Netvibes. If you want anything specialized you will have to do some building on your own.

Pageflakes has the same problem as Netvibes in that you can not customize the themes. Where is my CSS editor?

The visual quality is much better than Netvibes. The interfaces is clean and resembles MS Windows. I find it easier to use since it has scroll bars and Netvibes does not.

Yourminis – Yourminis is built with Flash so its interfaces fits the Flash mold and not the AJAX metaphor like Netvibes and Pageflakes. This also limits you to the prebuilt widgets and items that comes with Yourminis. There are plenty to choose from so you won’t be disappointed if this is your selection for a home page.

To be fair I have not spent as much time with Yourminis as I have with Pageflakes and Netvibes. So a revisit will be in order after I give it more time and try all that is offered.

SUMMARY – Right now, at least for round 2, I will give the nod to Pageflakes. All 3 are done quite well and the decision will take some time if you really evaluate what each has to offer.

Stay tuned for round 3 in a few weeks.

Waisting time with Toondoo.com

I just spent the last few hours relaxing and reading the great user created cartoons at toondoo.com. This site lets you create very simple or complex comic strip type cartoons and publish them online.

The interface is based on Flash and using the comic creator is very easy. In just a few minutes you can have your own comic strip created and published. Just make a selection from the list of a characters, pictures, or backgrounds, and add your text and you have your comic strip.

I created a few comics for your enjoyment. Just search for Seniorgeek and take a look.

http://www.toondoo.com/View.toon?param=3863

The new My.Yahoo vs Netvibes vs Yourminis vs Pageflakes

Now there is a new player in my search for the best home page/news page. My Yahoo has been updated with new visual, customization, interface, and it looks very “web 2.0″.

I don’t really see why all the new AJAX pages are called Web 2.0. It is just the evolution of the technology used to produce web pages, nothing more. I could go into this more but that is not the subject of this post.

I like the changes Yahoo have done to bring my.yahoo.com pages up to the current AJAX style that Netvibes and the rest of the players are now doing.

Now on to the new stuff at my.yahoo.com
1. I do like the theme colors. Right now I am using the Sand color with the Steel structure. These are OK but I would like to be able to pick any color from the color chart like Netvibes and Yourminis allows.
2. MyYahoo now allows up to 4 columns to pick from but still does not allow total control of page likes its arch rivals.
3. The new menu of Yahoo services is nice but still not as complete as the others in this contest of home pages.
A lot of the things I had on my old my.yahoo pages are not there, but in there place is a note saying they are being modified and updated. I realize that Yahoo says this new version is still in beta so we will not pass judgment until all is finished.

So now you have my initial observation of the my.yahoo.

Netvibes vs Yourminis vs Pageflakes

I have a Netvibes account which I have been using for a while (see previous post) and now I just signed up for Yourminis and Pageflakes. All three of these sites want to be your home page or your personal digital newspaper. I am going to work with all three of them for a few weeks to try to find out the pros and cons of each service.

The key here is which service will survive the shakeout. How much money, talent, management, and programmers are behind each service? There is room for maybe all three. Right now Yahoo, Google, Excite, MSN, AOL, are all surviving so all three of these may survive.

Next is to see how much press at the major sites each one of these services will receive. The aforementioned above won’t mention these as they will take users away from there sites, with the exception of Yahoo and Google.

Stay tuned for a complete report in the future.