Alphachimp Tool Box

NPR: High-Tech Pen Makes Note-Taking Easier

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Durand) — Fri, 30 May 2008 15:19:00 +0000

I have just tested the LiveScribe SmartPen and might be in love.

This pen is a digital audio recorder and camera built into a large ballpoint pen. It timestamps every note I take using the special spiral-bound notebook with almost inperceptible dot-matrixed paper.

After I finish taking notes, i click the pen on the part of the image or text and the audio recorder plays back whatever was being recorded at that time.

Now, if they can just come out with a 4' x 8' whiteboard version with multiple colors and a portable Aeron chair with lumbar support, I'd be set!

clipped from www.npr.org

Morning Edition, April 21, 2008 · A California company has invented a new pen. It features a camera mounted on the nib and a microphone that records audio, along with a docking cradle that allows uploads to a computer. But some note-takers still prefer quiet, old-fashioned pens and paper.

Ecto: desktop blogging client

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Durand) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:16:00 +0000

via Kevin Kelly Cool Tools

clipped from infinite-sushi.com

ecto is a feature-rich desktop blogging client for MacOSX, supporting a wide range of weblog systems, such as Blogger, Blojsom, Drupal, MovableType, Nucleus, SquareSpace, TypePad, WordPress, and more. ecto is the successor of the wildly popular Kung-Log, which has been in use by thousands of Mac users and which earned a 4.5 mice rating in the MacWorld July 2003 issue as well as high ratings at VersionTracker.com and MacUpdate.com.

With ecto you can write and manage entries for your weblog(s). The advantage over using your weblog's control panel is that you can compose entries offline and use the extra features ecto offers, such as spellcheck, creating links, attachments, and much more. ecto is designed to make blogging much more easier and yet give the users as much power as possible to manage their weblogs.

NVU: Open Source WYSIWYG Web Editor

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Durand) — Fri, 25 May 2007 13:11:00 +0000

Finally! A complete Web Authoring System for Linux desktop users as well as Microsoft Windows and Macintosh users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Nvu (which stands for "new view") makes managing a web site a snap. Now anyone can create web pages and manage a website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.

Nvu (pronounced N-view, for a "new view") is an Open Source project started by Linspire, Inc. Linspire is committed exclusively to bringing Desktop Linux to the masses, and realized that an easy-to-use web authoring system was needed for Linux to continue its expansion to the Desktop. Linspire contributes significant capital, expertise, servers, bandwidth, marketing, and other resources to guarantee the continuation and success of the Nvu project.

Linspire is pleased to have been able to contract with Daniel Glazman from Disruptive Innovations to be the lead developer and maintainer for the Nvu project. Daniel has been the chief architect for Mozilla Composer and brings at tremendous amount of experience and expertise to the Nvu project. Other developers are also encouraged to get involved in this project.

Nvu was started from the Mozilla Composer code base. The Mozilla Internet suite is in the process of being broken up into individual pieces (browser, email, etc.). Nvu will pick up where Composer left off, adding additional features, functionality and ease of use.

Nvu is open source and covered under the MPL/LGPL/GPL tri-license.

For more information, visit our FAQ page

Swivel

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Durand) — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 15:42:00 +0000

Touted as "Tasty Data Goodies", Swivel is a new startup that lets users upload, compare, and contrast data--from iPod sales to wine consumption--to make sense of the world. A Web 2.0 story in charts.

Like YouTube for data.
Swivel allows you to access public data sets and render them to suit your needs: color, size, animation, etc. As the data set is updated, so you your graph. The data sets and charts are uploaded by registered users. After the first two months, there were over 3500 users, with the top contributors submitting hundreds of data sets and graphs.

Swivel is a fun, data exploration Web site for curious people.

fun: kaleidoscopic diversity of graphs and tables. rich palette of colors. photos. descriptions. ratings. commentary. user customization. constant community interaction. feeding off one another's ideas. crucible for debate. allow for biased and subjective spin: lies, damned lies and Swivel.
data exploration: user-provided data across a broad range of topics. suggestions for related data, popular data, new data, highly-rated data. quick and easy comparisons. favorite items. breadcrumb trails. preview graphs that encourage clicking. instant results. show me stuff, i'll know what i want when i see it. take the facts for a spin.
web site: as easy to use as a toaster. branching web of clickable links for intuitive data cruising. social networking among swivel users. complementary content and integrated functionality from other Web sites like Flickr, Wikipedia and Digg (coming soon). organic, living system. not a complicated configurator like enterprise software, instead: tasty data goodies.
curious people: folks who are naturally inquisitive and love to hypothesize, investigate, and learn

Please also check out About and the Tour.

Explore

Explore data and graphs.

Compare

Compare any type of data with any other. See how well they correlate.

Share interesting graphs to your blog. Pick colors that match your Web site.

Upload

Upload data, describe it, pick colors and images for it.

ZeusDraw

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Durand) — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 23:33:00 +0000

Need a vector-based drawing tool, but don't want to shell out the big bucks for the Adobe Creative Suite? Too tired of pestering your designer buddy for a bootlegged copy of Illustrator?

Try ZeusDraw, a new drawing program from Chromatic Bytes with a fluid, graceful interface. It has a different, more intuitive approach to paths (Bezier curves) and great brushes.

ZeusDraw shows you what you are doing, as you do it. When you move or rotate an object, you see the object move or rotate, not its bounding box. When you draw with a brush, you see a close approximation to the final brush stroke as you draw, not a dotted line that is filled in later.

Features:

Both vector brushes and textured, pixel-based brushes that remain objects that can be selected, edited (path and attributes), moved, scaled and rotated.
Easy to use path tools. Points are entered in order and can be edited at any time while the path is being created. When editing, all points are immediately editable - there is no confusing secondary selection tool.
Gradients can be edited live, in-place on the objects they fill.
Many more features.

ZeusDraw requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later. Introductory price of $90 good
until Jan 1, 2007.

You may download the program from here.

HelloDeo: Got a WebCam? Say hello with video!

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Durand) — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 15:31:00 +0000

HelloDeo is a browser-based app that serves as video recorder, player and blogger poster. Simply hook up your video camera, record via the hellodeo.com, copy the code generated and post on your blog or website.

[Submitted by Nellie Durand]

Learn more about this start-up, Odeo:

Odeo is a small company based in South Park, San Francisco, California.

They were founded in December, 2004 by Noah Glass and Evan Williams. Noah had been helping individuals publish audio to the web for over two years with his company, ListenLab, which provided a service called AudBlog (now part of Odeo). Evan was most recently with Google, where he ran their personal publishing service, Blogger, which he co-founded in 1999 and sold to Google in early 2003.

As of Oct. 17, 2006, Odeo has 2,179,793 mp3s from all over the web, which have been played from Odeo 7,103,224 times. You can download or play them straight from here for free. You can also put them on your web site. Like 195,238 other people, you can create an account, so you can subscribe to things and save the stuff you like.

As a company, they believe strongly in the democratization of media. They think that giving more people powerful tools for the creation and distribution of media will result in more knowledge, ideas, art, truth, and amusement available to all. This, we see, is one of the most important roles (if not the most important) that the Internet is playing in society today.

FreedomVoice Toll Free Numbers

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Durand) — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 16:35:00 +0000

We finally have our own 911 number!

Well, more accurately, we have a toll free number through FreedomVoice. This on-line service provider can not only hook you up with your own vanity number, but hold music (rock, jazz or muzak), call forwarding, multiple mailboxes and even professional voiceover talent for your outgoing messages.

Want to experience how it works? Call us toll free: 1-866-99CHIMP

Yokel: Really smart yellow pages

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Durand) — Mon, 22 May 2006 10:24:00 +0000

From Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools:

Yokel makes finding local "things" less time-consuming and more cost-efficient (especially with the gas prices these days). Similar to GoogleMaps and YahooLocal but with more relevant results. And the Yokel search engine helps comparison shop online for things you want to buy offline at local stores. All you need to do is type in what you are looking for and the city or zip code you want to buy it in and Yokel provides the results. It seemed really helpful for items you wouldn't want to ship or more abstract items like a motorcycle trailer.

Bring out the GIMP!

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Durand) — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 02:38:00 +0000

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

Doug Kaye, senior executive producer of the ConversationsNetwork, was looking for a low cost imaging solution:

I'm getting tired of switching from my Mac to a PC every time I want to edit an image. (I switched my life from Windows to OS X last year, but still have many of my best tools on the PC.)

Other than Photoshop (expensive), what image-editing software do you recommend for the Mac? I need to do the usual CN stuff: crop, resize, adjust color and gamma, etc. But nothing super sophisticated.

Producer Cori Schlegel sent Doug searching for the GIMP!

Snapz Pro X

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Durand) — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 13:17:00 +0000

I asked the founder of PixelCorps, Alex Lindsay, what his organization uses to create their very personal and useful software tutorials.

Snapz Pro X 2 allows you to effortlessly record anything on your screen, saving it as a QuickTime® movie or screenshot that can be emailed, put up on the web, or passed around however you please.

Snapz Pro X 2.0 costs $69. Upgrades from Snapz Pro X 1.0 w/ movie capture are $20.

Why take a static screenshot when Snapz Pro X 2 makes creating a movie just as easy? Snapz Pro X 2 does that, and so much more -- what a difference a version makes! Download a free demo version from our web site today or check out the demo movies we've created and see for yourself.

Yahoo Widgets

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Durand) — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 21:37:00 +0000

Besides hair sprouting where it shouldn't, if you are a truly a werewolf, how do you know if a full moon is coming?

Or even what day it is? Or who needs what from you by when? Or when Mariah Carey's new groundbreaking single is coming out?

What do you use to manage the dataflows in your busy little life?

If you haven't discovered them already, try Yahoo Widgets.

I asked supersmart interface designer, Jason Simmons of GradientLabs how he manages time. Second only to the Post-It Notes (TM) papering his desk, are the virtual dashboard gauges peppering his monitor.

Yahoo is buying up all the smart little companies out there and integrating them into it's main offering. But Yahoo Widgets are user-created and communally shared.

For Mac and PC, Yahoo offers a tidy install folder of life management widgets that allow you scan and execute simple tasks--see the realtime weather report in Zurich; control your iTunes player; browse your Outlook or iCal calendars; check off to-do list items--all through nice, bug-size controller/displayers on your desktop.

The major upside? Not having to open additional applications or execute a Google/Yahoo search in your browser. Plus, you can construct your own customized dashboard with more dials, monitors, blinkers, scrollbars and goofy geegaws than a Fox News satellite truck!

DropSend

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Durand) — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 16:02:00 +0000

Having trouble emailing large files? This great service for sending large files (upwards of 1GB) and on-line storgare. Essential for graphic types with large Photoshop files, EPS, PDFs, etc.

[Thanks to George Lampman]

DropSend helps you do two things ...

1. Send Files of up to 1GB

No software to install
DropSend enables you to send files of up to 1GB

2. Store Files Online
Your hard drive, online. Use it for...

Backing up your files
Moving files from office to home, and back again

Visit: http://www.dropsend.com/

Open Source Mac

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Durand) — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 01:58:00 +0000

With too many free tools, games and hacks to mention, this link lists the best in opensource apps for OSX.

[Thanks to Andrea Pokrzywinski]

Example:

Centerstage: Full-screen interface for playing audio, video, and photos. Connect it to your TV.

Freemind: An innovative application for note taking and outlining. Takes time to get used to, but some people swear by it.

Cashbox: Simple, easy to use application for managing personal finances.

Mercury: MSN chat client with audio and video conferencing.

Shiira: Fast, nice web browser.

SunriseBrowser: Good webkit-based browser created with special tools for web designers.

Electric Sheep: Immersive, trippy screensaver.

Tomato Torrent: Download torrents. Nice and simple.

See full list at http://opensourcemac.org/

Project Management Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Durand) — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 02:34:00 +0000

Basecamp is a unique project management tool. Unique because you'll actually enjoy using it.

I have searched for years for a high-quality, flexible project management system. I found it in Basecamp. Basecamp is scaleable to handle a handful of projects for a sole proprietor on a tight budget, or countless initiatives for a large, distributed network. It requires no downloads or software beyond the web browser. It has swiftly become THE key tool in managing our project pipeline, with milestones, to-do lists, team members and essential files. I have set up three of my own clients with the software and they all love it because they finally have a cheap, efficient knowledge management tool that does not follow a "per seat fee." Non-profit organizations seem to benefit most from this software because usually they don't have much tech support, while Basecamp offers them a seamless way to connect a project.

To get started, go to www.basecamphq.com.

Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Durand) — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 11:11:00 +0000

Writer, futurist, inventor, traveling and all around cybercool guy, Kevin Kelly profiles the coolest tools submitted by his loyal fan base. Everything from the best tide prediction software for your PDA to biodiesel conversation kits for your Hummer to pogo sticks and other cool but useless mechanical devices.

In Kevin Kelly's own words:

Cool tools really work. A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true. I am chiefly interested in stuff that is extraordinary, better than similar products, little-known, and reliably useful for an individual or small group. I depend on friends and readers to suggest things they actually use. There are plenty of places to read about stuff that should be cool, or that looks new and cool, and that might be useful. These recommendations here, on the other hand, are based on people who have used this item and many similar and have come to see its superiority. Items can be old items, or cheap things that you still dote on after years of use. Great new gear, if well tested by you, are also wonderful. I post things I like and I ignore the rest. Visit Cool Tools>>

Blogucation

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Durand) — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 03:59:00 +0000

Education and Blogging links from Andrea Pokrzywinksi.

Monkey Day is July 21

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Durand) — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 12:52:00 +0000

Hey it's Monkey Day! So feast on bananas and have a great time monkeying around. Reach out to your friends/ family/ sweetheart/ loved ones with funny and naughty ecards from 123 Greetings to wish them a great day !

Send Free Online Greeting Cards to your friends & loved ones. ALL cards are absolutely FREE !!!

Extended learning through IT Conversations

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Durand) — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 02:18:00 +0000

This is the center of the tech storytelling community. Doug Kaye's collection of open source audio narratives has a simple motto: "New ideas through your headphones."

Upload Photos with Flickr

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Durand) — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 01:55:00 +0000

The best tool on the web for cheap (i.e. F*R*E*E*!) posting of pictures for websites and blogs. We use this to upload hundreds of megabytes of photos from the events we attend each week. Saves us tons of space on our servers. See photos from The New Map Game with Tom Barnett and Alidade Inc. Visit www.flickr.com

Listen to founder Stewart Butterfield speaking at eTech.

From IT Conversations:

Starting with the thirty second overview of Flickr, Stewart describes the Flickr mission, which simply put is two fold: one, help people share their photos with their friends and family with easy and flexible methods, and two, innovate new ways of organizing photos. Stewart continues with brief descriptions of the applications that the Flickr team and the development community have implemented extending Flickr in interesting and innovative ways. These demonstrations include the following applications: FlickFox, Linux uploader, Organizr, Movable Type Flickr plug-in, WordPress Flickr plug-in, Flickr Postcard, and Flickr Worldmap.