Google Maps zoom: here's the device and vehicle behind it

Google Maps zoom: here's the device and vehicle behind it: "What a scary/cool little 11-sided camera that is on the 'Street Level View-Mobile.'"

The Google Street View vehicle revealed

The Google Street View vehicle revealed - Engadget: "By now, we're pretty sure you've heard about Google's new Street View feature, right? If you're like us, you've been wondering about the vehicles they're using to create those voyeuristic, 360-degree, street-level images in Manhattan's concrete canyons and beyond"

Man Described As a Top Spammer Arrested

A 27-year-old man described as one of the world's most prolific spammers was arrested Wednesday, and federal authorities said computer users across the Web could notice a decrease in the amount of junk e-mail.

One can only hope.

Link:
http://...man-described-as-a-top-spammer-arrested

Google keeps growing

The Big Google List

(Just added was Google Gears)

Google adds street level view to its Google Maps

One day Street View will be available in all locations instead of only 5 locations (Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, New York City and San Francisco Bay Area)

Sample:
http://maps.google.com/maps?...

Microsoft secret is called "Surface"

This is gonna be my next coffee table!

Surface is a keyboard less, well, surface that you can interact with with your hands or any object around you. Everything you do is with your hands in a more natural way and in a way may provide a better user experience.

Simply put, its amazing, it will be expensive, and its a long way out.

Link:
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

Google tests animated, simplistic homepage

Check out the new Animated Google Homepage. Its in Korean, but mouse over the colored dots and you'll see it.

Top Secret Microsoft Product To Launch At Midnight

Trick Or Treat?: Top Secret Microsoft Product To Launch At Midnight: "I'm told that tonight, at 12:01am EST (okay, so tomorrow), the division of Microsoft that launched the Xbox and the Zune will unveil something very special . What it is, we do not know for sure, but it's 'something totally new coming out of the Entertainment and Devices division, and it's going to change the way people interact with technology.'"

Use Google Image Search to locate faces

Do a normal search in Google Image Search and when the results are displayed add a &imgtype=face to the end of the URL in the address bar.

Get Windows Vista for free with a 30-day trial

Microsoft has made available a 30 day trial of Windows Vista through its Virtual PC Product. You can download a pre-configured Virtual Hard Drive and then, with Virtual PC, you get to play around with Windows Vista for 30 days.

Doesn't hurt to see what its all about.

Windows Vista:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...

Virtual PC:
http://www.microsoft.com/.../virtualpc/default.mspx

BigDump: Staggered MySQL Dump Importer

Staggered import of large and very large MySQL Dumps (like phpMyAdmin 2.x Dumps) even through the web-servers with hard runtime limit and those in safe mode. The script executes only a small part of the huge dump and restarts itself. The next session starts where the last was stopped.

OMG, this has saved me so much time and hassle. I have a local MySQL database that is around 50Meg and getting online to Pad Database has always been tricky. PhpMyAdmin just can't handle files of that size through their importer. In comes BigDump to the rescue and made this process literally a 10min process and that included the time to get the BigDump file setup and pushed to the server.

BigDump:
http://www.ozerov.de/bigdump.php

Veign on Yahoo Local Live

Veign is now on Yahoo Local Live. Who cares, right? Correct, but posting here will get the page into Google's index faster.

Help Google take its garbage out

There is still a lot of junk within Google and the one that bugs me the most are the company's that prey on the novice users by ripping them off with software sales. How it works is they purchase sponsored ads on Google (and the other large search engines) and then sell software that is available from the developers for free.

Now you can help submit these sites to Google so they can pull them from the ads and from the index.

Report Spam:
http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

Report a Sponsored Ad:
https://www.google.com/adsense/.../answer.py?answer=18386

Google does listen to these reports:
http://news.com.com/2100-7349_3-6180022.html

Time to help out Google...

Software scammers prey on the novice with free software

There is a company running a scam where they use the Sponsored Ads in the search engines to get unsuspecting people to purchase a membership to download software such as Adaware, Irfanview, Real Player, Macafee and other software. If you check out the website Irfanviewpack.com you will find out they are selling you a subscription for $11.98 to be able to download what is a free application from the developers website.


After further investigation I found, in my opinion, that company Convergence Solutions out of the Philippines using the IP address of 63.243.188.84 is responsible for this.

To see how the scam works just search Google for Irfanview and notice the first site, a sponsored ad, is the alleged software scammers. They rely on people who don't know that Irfanview is not associated with the website and they are basically just taking money for what you can get for free from the developers website. I would suspect the developer of Irfanview, or the other software, is not aware or condoning this.

I have further found out that they operate the following domains which are probably, in my opinion, used for others scams (either active or coming in the future).

• acrobatbundle.com
• acrobatpack.com
• adawarebundle.com
• adawarepack.com
• adobe-pack.com
• adobepack.com
• antivirus-pack.com
• any-court-record.net
• avast-pack.com
• avastbundle.com
• avastpack.com
• criminal-records-now.us
• detectiveservices.info
• genealogytoday.info
• ibaffiliates.interactivebrands.com
• irfanviewbundle.com
• irfanviewpack.com
• mcafeebundle.com
• mcafee-pack.com
• mcafeepack.com
• netdetectiveservices.info
• pandabundle.com
• panda-bundle.com
• pandasecuritysoftware.com
• pandasecuritysoftware.net
• realplayerpack.com
• realplayerbundle.com
• web-tv-interactive.com
• webtvinteractive.com

Watch out for any of the above domains and help spread the word of this company. Companies like this give the internet a bad name and need to be stopped.

Read the followup:
http://.../software-scammers-have-done-this-before.html

Digg It and get the word out

Better Google Analytics through URL tagging

Google Analytics is probably one of the best free web statistics applications around. This is one of those things that every webmaster (man I hate that word) should have installed in a website. With Google Analytics you get an in depth view of the traffic coming to your site and, with goal conversions, you can track whether they reached the page you wish they would. Powerful, easy to install and a great interface (as of the second release) makes this my favorite places to visit and poke around.

Not only can you track the traffic as they move around your site but you can track how they get to your website. This is especially important if you want to setup and run an email campaign or you're running ads on another website. No need to write code or do anything fancy, all you need to do is use URL Tagging.

URL Tagging is what it sounds like, a method of tagging a URL to provide better stats through Google Analytics. You can have a group created for an email newsletter or a banner ad running on another website. Google has made it so easy to create tags, through their online URL Builder tool, that you can start tagging all your newsletters separately to see how each one performs. This is just the tip of iceberg of the power of Google Analytics.

Go forth and start tagging!

What is tagging:
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/...

Online URL Builder:
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/...

Whats .7 inches thick and weighs just 2.25 pounds?

The new Intel Notebook of course.

Best Buy Sued Over Dual Web Sites

Electronics retailer Best Buy is facing a lawsuit over deceiving customers into paying higher prices once in store by having two Web sites, one accessed by employees and another available on the Internet.

Bound to have happened. Read up to see where it all started.

Best buy gets caught:
http://.../followup-best-buy-confirmed-to-use.html

The lawsuit happens:
http://.../Best_Buy_Sued_Over_Dual_Web_Sites/

Dell Coupon code time again

10% off most Enterprise Systems: VFK5QKQJ2C5FT8

$300 Off or More of Specific Dell Desktops and Notebooks: 9KTCZ8LJJ62G4W

First come, first serve.

Things missed while I was away

Google Bonding With ISPs: "On Friday of last week, Google announced that they would now begin offering their Google Apps for Your Domain to ISPs, making the popular web apps available to, potentially, thousands of ISP subscribers as ISP-branded services."

Google Announces Purge Of Ad-heavy Web Sites: "Google is trying to clean up its search results by cracking down on dubious Web sites that contain little content but lots of ads."

Wal-Mart to begin selling Dell PCs: "Dell plans to begin selling desktop PCs in Wal-Mart Stores in the next few weeks, the first move in a major departure from its decades-long sales strategy."

Google Lauches Hot Trends: A almost real-time view of what people are searching for. Minus the porn and Britney Spears results.

Seems Google has been busy.

Gmail Doubles Maximum Attachment Size to 20 MB

Gmail upgraded the maximum attachment size from 10 MB to 20 MB. Gmail was quite forgiving and you could send more than 10 MB in some cases, but now it's possible to send at least 20 MB in one message.

Bigger and better, the Gmail machine rolls on...

Link:
http://.../gmail-doubles-maximum-attachment-size.html

Michigan man arrested for using cafe's free WiFi from his car

A Michigan man is being prosecuted for using a cafe's free WiFi... from his car. Sam Peterson was arrested under a Michigan law barring access to anyone else's network without authorization

Link:
http://...arrested-for-using-cafes-free-wifi-from-his-car.html

Sell your website or domain now

Here's a couple of very useful websites if you're looking to sell your website or just the domain name.

Sedo:
http://www.sedo.com/main.php3?language=us

Names Pros:
http://www.namepros.com/

Google adds Neighborhood Search Capability

Google LatLong: Neighborhood Search Capability : Recently Google Maps introduced the ability to perform searches by neighborhoods. Neighborhoods tend to be somewhat informally defined but well recognized in certain cities. Neighborhood search is now available in fifty US cities, with more to follow.

Very cool. I use Google Earth for this sort of thing. When going away I fire up Google Earth and get the hotel I'm staying at on the screen and then turn on the Dining, Parks and Recreation, and Roads layers. See whats around and how the roads are situated. I'm pretty good at directions if I have an aerial view of the area in my head.

Surfulator saves webpage content as you browse

With Surfulater you can permanently save anything you find on the web, in other applications and on your hard drive, and organize it in ways you haven't dreamt of yet. For starters you can categorize, cross reference and do full text searches. Plus annotate and edit whatever you have saved to make it all the more valuable. And of course you can find anything in a flash.

I much rather have a good bookmark manager, whether local on my system or online, to handle information I come across. I'm even getting away from bookmarks as I find myself much faster searching in Google and relying on Google results for the most relevant website. Maybe that's what's needed: A Google Search organizer. Is it better to bookmark a single site or bookmark a Google search string that returns many results?

Link:
http://www.surfulater.com/

Google Begins Move to Universal Search

Google Press Center: Press Release: "oday announced its critical first steps toward a universal search model that will offer users a more integrated and comprehensive way to search for and view information online. The company also introduced an updated homepage design and several new navigation features that make it faster and easier for users to find the information they are looking for."

Better late than never on this.

Blogger adds Autosave feature

Blogger Help : How Blogger Autosaves Your Posts: "When you create a new post, Blogger will start automatically saving it for you once a minute, without interrupting your typing."

Continually moving forward with features that makes Blogger a little better with each new feature released.

Link:
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42442

Microsoft Popfly is an online enhanced webpage creator

Popfly is the fun, easy way to build and share mashups, gadgets, Web pages, and applications.

Its basically an online tool to create webpages. Since I really have no interest in it I will leave it up to you to check it out. Feel free to post comments if you play around with it.

Popfly:
http://www.popfly.ms

MSN Live image search better than all others

Does MSN actually have a search feature that rivals that of Google? Well it would appear so as many people are talking about how good the MSN Live image search actually is.

Gave it a try for the first time and I must the results are impressive and the ease of use, coupled with some AJAX features, makes it quite a nice search.

Image Live Search:
http://search.live.com/images/results.aspx?q=veign

Top 10 most expensive domain names

• poker.com 27 million
• sex.com: 14 million
• porn.com: 9.5 million
• business.com: 7.5 million
• beer.com: 7 million
• diamond.com: 6 million
• casino.com: 5.5 million
• asseenontv.com: 5 million
• korea.com: 5 million
• wine.com: 3.3 million
• vodka.com: 3 million

So, if anyone wants to buy Veign.com, for lets say 2 million, contact me as I thinks its bargain.

Digital Effects for MSN Messenger

Digital Effects for MSN Messenger: "Digital Effects, a plug-in for MSN Messenger video chatting, produces special effects for video communication. While the plug-in loads, users can select 3-D costumes or other digital effects in a pop-up window, and those effects will be applied to a selected photograph. Users also can blur the background of photos to help protect privacy."

Link:
http://research.microsoft.com/research/...

Save money while you're in a store

With Frucall you can call an 800# and find out how much a product is if you bought it online. Just call the number, enter the Universal Product Code (UPC) and the best prices from major online merchants are given to you.

How this helps is two fold: 1) You can decide not to purchase and buy it online or 2) Use the price as a bargining tool. A lot of stores have a price-match policy and will match prices to an online merchant. Just last week I went to purchase contacts and the base price for Lens Crafters was $30 a box. I went online and found them at lens.com for $20 a box. Brought in a copy of the online page and Lens Crafters matched the price and also included a $30 rebate. Price matching and using online merchants is a great way to save a lot of money and all you have to do is ask if they support it.

Link:
http://www.frucall.com/

16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools

16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools: "From navigating the Web in entirely new ways to seeing where in the world twitters are coming from, data visualization tools are changing the way we view content. We found the following 16 apps both visually stunning and delightfully useful."

Link:
http://.../16-awesome-data-visualization-tools/

SCIway - Veign is the website of the day

SCIway - South Carolina Information Highway has chosen Veign as the "Website of the Day". SCIway is one of the best sources for information on South Carolina around and I'm proud to be selected as the website of the day.

Cool.

Link:
http://www.sciway.net/

E - TextEditor

E is a new text editor for Windows, with powerful editing features and quite a few unique abilities. It makes manipulating text fast and easy, and lets you focus on your writing by automating all the manual work. You can extend it in any language, and by supporting TextMate bundles, it allows you to tap into a huge and active community.

Many people talking about E.

Link:
http://www.e-texteditor.com/index.html

Is your computer running slow for no reason?

There were a few people who asked me to help them with their systems running slow even though they are positive it contains no malware of any kind. Thanx to the folks at DonationCoder there seems to be a logical explanation and a sorta fix.

Link:
http://.../how_do_i_fix_this_high_cpu_usage...

Microsoft says no more Outlook Express on WinXP

Windows Live Mail will replace Outlook Express on Windows XP and Windows Mail on Vista in "the coming weeks," said Microsoft. The program, which will handle POP, IMAP and Windows Live Hotmail accounts, was characterized as a faster, more robust version of Windows Live Mail desktop beta, which has been in testing for Windows XP. The beta will be retired."

I sure hope this is not a forced upgrade through Windows Update. That would be a very bad move on MS's part. Outlook Express is still used by many as a pretty good, and free, newsgroup reader.

Link:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/131662-1/article.html

Windows Live Folders beta - more info

Windows Live Folders beta - more info: "Windows Live Folders it not a difficult to use service, folder creation is straightforward, as it the uploading of files. Microsoft is aiming Windows Live Folders towards a large as market as possible, so the basic procedures need to be simple to promote adoption amongst the less tech-savy. The use of ajax to create new folders is nice, though the rest of the site could do with a little too. As we've seen with Windows Live Hotmail though, too much of a good thing can be bad."

Link:
http://.../windows-live-folders-beta-review.aspx

Calculate the distance between two zip codes

A fun little online application that calculates the distance between two zip codes. The distance is calculated and general information about each zip code, a map for each zip code and approximate driving time is displayed.

Why?

Like most stuff I do its practice. This one was practicing with Zip Codes and calculating zip codes that may fall within a certain radius of others. The best way for me to practice is to make something and usually after its made I create a website out of it in case others find some use.

Link:
http://distancecheck.com/

Webby 2007 winners

Webby Nominees: "With nearly 70 categories, Website entries make up the majority of Webby Awards Winners, Nominees and Honorees. Some are beautiful to look at and interact with. Others are a testament to usability and functionality. And a handful excel across the board. To be selected among the best is an incredible achievement worthy of praise -- and perhaps a little bragging."

Link:
http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/...

A few new tools from Veign

• PageRank / Backlink Check: Get Google Pagerank, backlinks from Google / Yahoo / MSN, and much more on one or more URL's
• Ultra Fast Whois: One of the fastest whois lookups around.
• Reflection: See what you look like to the websites that you visit
• Make Password: By far the fastest and easiest way to create random passwords.

One day I need to write a comprehensive post of all the online tools and applications I have.

MSN Live Search provides LinkFromDomain operator

MSN (Live Search) provides a special operator that allows one to search all links coming out of a domain. Using the LinkFromDomain you can see all outbound links that MSN is aware of.

Link:
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=LinkFromDomain...

Bug in MSN Search?

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=link%3A+google.com

Does it bring up a blank browser window for you? Not good that a major player in the search engine war has such a bug.

UPDATED: MS turned the feature off

Remove your phone number from Google's Phonebook

Use the PhoneBook name removal tool from Google of course.

Google PageRank and Backlinks Checker

I wasn't sure I was going to post about this but what the heck, I post about everything else. Another tool from Veign that can give you a compact report of Google Pagerank and backlinks from various search engines in a single report. The reason I wasn't going to post about it is because its more of a tool for my needs and not sure if anyone else would even care to know about it. For now its limited to a mazimum of 10 URLs but may expand if my needs exceed 10 or I hear enough comments that request more.

Link:
http://www.veign.com/tools/pagerank/

Brand new Google Analytics

I have yet to be converted to the new Google Analytics but from what I've seen it looks great and was so needed.

What news:

• Customizable Dashboards
• Emailing of reports
• Much improved landing page
  
• Major rework of the UI

All in all, I can't wait to see the new interface.

Link:
http://services.google.com/analytics/tour/index_en-US.html

2007 Web Analytics Shootout - Interim Report

Every web analytics tool measures clickthroughs and page views a little differently. They're all using slightly different yardsticks and getting slightly different results. The disparity is driving us to distraction.

Full report will be delivered sometime in July of 2007

Link:
http://.../analytics-report-may-2007.shtml

Now you can design a web2.0 website with layer styles

Ultimate Web 2.0 Layer Styles is a very well put together collection of Photoshop Layer Styles that make creating some of the web2.0 looks simple and easy. If you're impressed with this make sure to check out his Ultimate Web 2.0 Gradients v3.0.

So here is a set of 131 Photoshop Layer Styles I created in .ASL ( Photoshop Layer Style ) format.

Link:
http://.../ultimate-web-20-layer-styles/

JotForm v2.0 is a huge improvement

Remember JotForm? Well, JotForm has released another major version and things are looking up, way up.

Whats new in JotForm 2.0:

• Payment Integration: Use JotForm to sell digital goods, sell products, collect payments for your online service, collect subscription payments or receive micropayments for your content. JotForm integrates with PayPal, Google Checkout, WorldPay, 2CheckOut, ClickBank and OneBip payment gateways, so you can collect payments from your users.
• Starter Forms: Save time and choose from many starter forms when you create a new form.
• Styles: Make great looking forms by applying CSS styles.
• Form Validations: You can now check if a form field is a proper E-mail, Alphanumeric, Numeric, Alphabetic.
• Spam Protection: Each form now has seamless spam checks. JotForm can check if the form is submitted by a real browser. We also now support CAPTCHA verification on the forms.
• Share Submissions: You can now make your form submissions public and even integrate it into your web site easily. You can share your submission in your site using a Web Grid, DHTML Calendar, Microsoft Excel or RSS.
• SSL Forms: Protect your form submissions with 256 bit High-Grade SSL encryption.
• PDF Forms: JotForm can turn your form into a PDF file. You can now use JotForm to create your paper forms.
• Power Tools: JotForm introduces new form fields to make your forms cooler. Such as StarRating, FormCollapse, AutoComplete, BirthDatePicker, HTML and Image includes.
• Source Code Options: It is now easier to include your forms in your site.

Plus so much more. Check this out...

Link:
http://www.jotform.com/

Book: Web APIs with PHP

I got a chance to read through and review the Web APIs with PHP book from Wrox Press and was quite impressed with the structure and presentation of the information. Its just the way I like, direct and straight to the point with easy to follow examples. Just show me the code and tell me what its supposed to do and I'm a happy camper.

My main is reason for getting the book was to do some work with the API from Flickr and Google. I have some clients that wanted to pull in Flickr images into their website so the bandwidth on galleries was on Flickr's server and not theirs.

Finally a book thats fun to play around with...

Site I developed using the Flickr API:
http://thatsmyhorse.com/

Link:
http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Web-APIs-PHP-Google...

I just can't see it

BetaNews | Indian Engineers Aiming for $10 Laptop: "Engineers in India are looking into ways to create a laptop that would cost a mere $10. The effort came in response to the increasing price of the so-called '$100 laptop."

I just can't see a $10 laptop. Material alone, minus all labor, overhead and turning materials into stuff, would cost more than $10.

Link:
http://.../Indian_Engineers_Aiming_for_10_Laptop/

Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset

Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset: "30 day evaluation of the Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset. This product provides powerful, intuitive tools that help administrators recover PCs that have become unusable, and easily identify root causes of system issues."

Link:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...

AJAX Framework review

AJAX frameworks can make software development easier. The hard part is selecting the right framework for the job at hand.

Whats been reviewed:

• Dojo 0.3.1 (dojotoolkit.org).
• Prototype and Scriptaculous 1.4 (www.prototypejs.org and script.aculo.us).
• Direct Web Reporting 1.0 (getahead.org/dwr).
• Yahoo! User Interface Library 0.11.1 (developer.yahoo.com/yui).
• Google Web Toolkit 1.0 (code.google.com/webtoolkit).

Link:
http://www.ddj.com/...

Yahoo! hits the mark for SEO with its robots-nocontent attribute

Web pages often include headers, footers, navigational sections, repeated boilerplate text, copyright notices, ad sections, or dynamic content that is useful to users — but not to search engines. Webmasters can apply the "robots-nocontent" attribute to indicate to search engines any content that is extraneous to the main unique content of the page. Yahoo! Search observes the class="robots-nocontent" present on XHTML elements, such as div, span, and all others.

This is a great idea from Yahoo! as it means that web designers (and SEO companies) can better identify to the crawlers what are the actual content of the page and not just supporting content (like navigation menus). I think this could have a huge impact on the results displayed in Yahoo!, especially for those who implement the new attribute. Veign has, have you?

Link:
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp/slurp-14.html

Blog post from Yahoo!:
http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000444.html

WinXP users: European Union Expansion Font Update

Updated versions of Times New Roman, Arial, Trebuchet and Verdana fonts that include six additional Romanian and Bulgarian characters not available in the Windows XP versions of these fonts.

Link:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...

PHP script to manage online surveys

The Unit Command Climate Assessment and Survey System (UCCASS) (pronounced yoo-kas) is a PHP based survey script that allows you to create online surveys. Originally designed for organizations to administer Command Climate Assessments (annual surveys), the program can be used to create any type of online survey or questionnaire.

Link:
http://www.bigredspark.com/survey.html

Clear the Internet Explorer Typed Address History

Did you know that in Internet Explorer the URL you type into the address bar are stored in the registry. Even if you clean your history these URL's will remain active in the IE address bar history.

How to clean:

1. Start menu -> Run -> Regedit
2. Navigate to the key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\TypedURLs]
3. With the key highlighted in the left view pane you can see the typed in URLs in the right view pane
4. Delete values as required or remove the entire key (IE will recreate the key when needed)
   

I know there are tools that will automatically clean this history for you but I don't want a whole application for something I clean only every few months or so. What I did was create a registry hack that will delete the typed in URL key in the registry (it will be recreated by IE when you need it). Download it and double-click it the .reg file and your history will be cleaned.

Link to reg hack:
http://www.veign.com/registry-hacks.php

ObjectDock is a bit too UI overkill for me

ObjectDock is a program that enables users to organize their shortcuts, programs and running tasks into an attractive and fun animated Dock. By allowing users to have more control over how they organize their desktop, users can take control of their desktop icons and shortcuts to have them be available when where and how they need them. This, all with the unique style and top-rate performance that ObjectDock is known to deliver!

I will start by saying that I am very impressed with what StarDock has been able to accomplish with skinning and adding these UI enhancements to Windows but its all a bit too much for me. Check out ObjectDock as its free and leave a comment on your thoughts.

ObjectDock (free):
http://www.stardock.com/products/objectdock/