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Archive for the ‘Fun’ Category

Twitter Unveils Premium Accounts

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

Twitter announced yesterday premium account subscriptions. It is not confirmed on the Twitter blog or Twitter website about these services. This will mark a close to Twitter’s bleeding books and maybe give the company some much needed real income.
There will be four flavors of, in honor of birds of course, of account levels: Sparrow, Dove, Owl, Eagle.

Sparrow- $5/month, 145 character limit
Dove- $15/month, 160 character limit
Owl- $50/month, 250 character limit
Eagle- $250/month, 500 character limit

Rumors are also circulating that super accounts, in line with the American Express Black, called Black will also be available.

but it may just all be a joke

Tags: twitter
Posted in Control Panels, Fun | No Comments »

Friday Fun- News and Events

Friday, March 13th, 2009

Happy Birthday Linux – 15 years! Happy happy joy joy. The lovable penguin turns 15 today (actually the penguin was created two years after the kernal introduction). Linux also gave birth to some of the most popular flavors of open source : Ubuntu and Red Hat. And the lovable managed to battle the biggest company in the software industry, sometimes been called bad names, Microsoft. Here’s to you, Linux, sticking it to all those big bullies out there.

Apple unveiled a new iPod Shuffle this week. It is smaller, sleeker, smaller, buttonless, speaks to you, and comes with headphones. Wait, did you say the Shuffle has no buttons? Yes sir, it just has the hold button that serves as a hold/off/on. I have a feeling people are going to mistake these miniature mp3 music players for sticks of gum. I still do not who Apple is trying to market with their Shuffle; kids, toddlers, small pets? They already have a special sports one so no point in reinventing the wheel. Oh, and there is only one color to this ipod: silver.

Facebook revamps its homepage. Luckily it is only the front page that got a makeover. For me, it won’t do. It’s more confusing, more crowded, and more visually stupid looking. I love FB and have been using it for a few years now, but come’on, is this what the team thought as better? Whatever happened to usability and web design? Besides the fact that loading times are terrible and links don’t always work, Facebook has failed on the user interface. I hope next time they have a bigger test group telling them what makes sense.

Posted in Fun | No Comments »

The Pirate Bay Trial

Friday, March 6th, 2009

pbay

The trial is over and the world is now awaiting the judgement. The outcome will not only have impact on the legislation in Sweden. No, this is a global issue and it will pretty much set the tone for file-sharing all over the world. It has been quite the battlefield in the court room and being the good Samaritan that I am I will clarify the arguments of both parties.

The Prosecutor & Plaintiff

It’s not the technique that is the issue; it is the fact that there are Torrent files available on The Pirate Bay. Consequently, the site is guilty of distributing copyright protected material. Also sites linking to illegal material can be found guilty in the Supreme Court.

The accused have knowledge that copyright protected material is distributed through their site and they have done nothing to prevent it. The accused can be sentenced even if their site is a form of search engine. This according to previous sentences.

An agreement among the accused to form the company Random Media shows that all four should be held responsible. Three of the four have signed a contract and the fourth is mentioned in it – all according to the prosecutor.

The Accused

The Pirate Bay is nothing but a search engine. It is not possible to convict the supplier of the infrastructure for what the users are doing.

The prosecutor has not been able to show where and when the violation was committed, hence they can’t be convicted for being accomplices. It is not even clear that the violation was committed on The Pirate Bay.

Three of the accused maintain that they can’t be held personally responsible for the site. Only one of the four accused admits that he is operating the site, also adding that the purpose never has been to spread any copyright protected material. Nowhere on the site are visitors encouraged to file-share copyrighted works.

Posted in Fun, Industry insights, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Pirate Bay Quotes

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

Ohhhh!!! The shenanigans are over in what could be an epic trial of the year, of the century, of the internet age.

Officially putting Sweden on the map, the TPB trial will establish precedent whether their website and services facilitated illegal music file distribution or their service cannot be held liable for what people do with it. Because The Pirate Bay never hosted any music, the defense claims they have not violated any copyright laws. The prosecution is convinced, along with the movie and music industries, TPB is the next living kin of satan. Hyperboles and exaggerations ran amuck at the trial.

Pirate Bay Trial Famous and sometimes, Stupid Quotes:

“Songwriters and publishers all over the world are dependent on having their rights protected by law. The Pirate Bay is disregarding those rights and abusing the creativity of the people who own them.” – Ger Hatton, ICMF

“You are welcome to send some flowers to my wife.” – Roger Wallis, professor at KTH (Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan) in Stockholm
(his wife received over $4000 dollars worth of flowers in a day)

“It is common sense, if they couldn’t get it for free they would buy it and when we ask them, they confirm that.” – John Kennedy, CEO of IFPI

“Big companies from foreign nations trying to affect the outcome in a Swedish Court of Justice with straightforward bribes. Now the copyright lobby is showing its true face” – Rickard Falkvinge, Swedish Pirate Party

“It’s a trial regarding four individuals that have conducted a big commercial business making money out of others file-sharing … copyright protected works.” – Monique Wadsted, Prosecutor

If found guilty:
Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström could face two years in prison and a $12.7 million fine.

Well, the verdict will come out April 17th, till then we hope for more mudslinging.

Posted in Competitions, Fun, Industry insights, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Star Trek XI The Movie in Cinemas December 2009

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

As I was opening Safari to take a screenshot I saw it. Something I, for years, been hoping would happen. Star Trek XI is coming to a cinema near all of us and from the trailer to judge it will be the top sci-fi flick of the year and perhaps even the century.

To all die hard Star Trek out there who have lived long and prospered, who have wished to be beemed up by Scotty. The time is here – Star Trek the Movie is here. Just about 10 months to go and to make there period of time not seem like a life time, I have taken the liberty of putting together a whole post of juicy info.

The Official trailer, part 1 & 2

Unembeddable movie trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cAipU2fBqA

Cast

Used to seeing the old Spock, Scotty and Kirk run around the USS Enterprise, the new cast have a tough job a head. Here they are:

Chris Pine – Kirk
Zachary Quinto – Spock
Eric Bana – Nero
Simon Pegg – Scotty
Winona Ryder – Amanda Grayson
Karl Urban – Dr. Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy
John Cho – Lt. Hikaru Sulu
Zoe Saldana – Lt. Nyota Uhura
Bruce Greenwood – Christopher Pike
Ben Cross – Sarek
Anton Yelchin – Pavel Chekov
Leonard Nimoy – Old Spock
Greg Ellis – Chief Engineer Olsen
Chris Hemsworth – George Kirk

For full listing of cast member, visit IMDB.com

Tags: 2009, move, start trek, XI
Posted in Fun, Industry insights | No Comments »

Friday Madness – Google goes Hooters

Friday, February 27th, 2009

Have you ever wanted to change to homepage to Google.com? And you just didn’t know how? Well the folks who created Firebug must be the smartest people around. Sammy decided it was time to revamp the google page. We rather like it now; the guys especially love the Hooters addition.

(click to enlarge)

Posted in Fun, Industry insights, Platforms, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Magazeen – My Favorite Free Wordpress Theme of All Time

Friday, February 27th, 2009

I am not exaggerating. Of all the free themes I’ve been crawling lately, Magazeen is the absolute sh*t. Front end and back end are well crafted to ensure a secure user experience. The web design is off the hook including jQuery and trend-setting design elements. The fact that this theme is free blows my mind. WeFunction Design Agency could easily have charged $70 for this theme and still have a large number of downloads.In an earlier post I recommended 4 hi-quality free Wordpress themes but in all honestly none of them can measure with Magazeen.

Big up’s to Smashing Magazine for releasing this theme to the public for free. Whether you are just starting out as a wp blogger or have numerous sites on the CMS, Magazeen simply needs to cover at least one of them. See below for screenshot and theme download.

A clean design with large headers and soft typography are few of the things that make Magazeen my absolute favorite free Wordpress theme of all time. The horizontal jQuery slider on top and Feature News-widget to the right are also pure brilliance. This theme is also easily tweaked in the admin.

Take some time and live demo this theme and you’ll find hidden surprises. WeFunction has spared no expenses in creating this theme and have made sure it holds perfection in every last detail.

Download this theme here

Tags: Wordpress
Posted in Fun, Wordpress | 6 Comments »

Spotify – So Hot Right Now

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

spotify_logo

Spotify haven’t been around for all that long but they’ve managed to create quite the stir concerning themselves. What you do with Spotify is simply to install the program and then you’ll have access to millions of songs – for free (with short ads) or for a small monthly fee (no ads). Waiting for the songs to download or buffer won’t be necessary as they will be able to be played instantly. The program is still at a BETA level as well as only available in Europe but this seems to change any day now. And it’s all very legal of course.

Everyone from tech geeks to music lovers all over the world has praised Spotify for their great little product. It’s with this in mind that I’m sorry to say that someone has hacked the program making it possible to save and download the music you’re listening to via Spotify. Hopefully people will see the benefit of not having to store a massive amount of files on their computers and keep on using this great service the legal way. It’s also quite sad to see a solution that everyone – the artists, the record companies and we as listeners/users – can benefit from become hacked and destroyed.

On a happier note can we end with saying that it seems as if you soon will be able to use Spotify via your iPhone, making it even less necessary to download music illegally. Just hope, hope that all US residents will be able to use Spotify soon as well.

Posted in Fun | 6 Comments »

4 Hi-Quality Free Wordpress Themes

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

Ever since WordPress stepped up and claimed the place as #1 CMS and website-building software, a gigantic market has been created around it. And since Wordpress always has been all about an open market, thousands of web agencies, development teams and web design freelancers have dedicated their full time on creating Wordpress extensions. Wordpress theme design for example is today an independent industry with thousands of competitors and even more themes. And based on the personal experience of spending hours online searching for the right theme for my website(s), I have decided to listen to the Samaritan within me and publish an extensive list of, in my humble opinion, most innovative and design inspirational FREE Wordpress Themes.

Viewport Theme by Paul Bennett

Though strictly recommended by the author for the advanced user,Viewport theme was recently credited in one of Smashing Magazines listings, effectively categorizing it as an innovative yet simple FREE Wordpress theme. With a monstrous javascripted image slide, this theme definitely leaves a great impression and sense of unique web design.

Download (.zip)

ZinePress by WELLMEDICATED

For the same reason blogging has become so popular, Wordpress News/Magazine themes have in recent years turned out to be hot picks amongst Wordpress powered websites. People have an erge to communicate but also, now stronger than ever, have an erge to wash off the stamp as bloggers and dress their sites in more dynamic and feed-worthy designs. ZinePress is perhaps not the typical news/magazine wordpress theme, why I chose to include it. ZinePress reflects a mix of traditional blog and new magazine designs.

Download

ColorPaper by DreamTemplate

A more colorful and sparkly wordpress theme, ColorPaper is a free wordpress theme with exceedingly unique web design. A personal look, for the personal blog, with attractive web design. ColorPaper has its own gravity, making it impossible for any visitor to pull away.

Download (.zip)

Humidor by Evan Eckard

Minimal web design elements for maximal content space. The bueaty of Hhumidor lies in the details. With a common simple, wordpress blog look, you’ll find web design exellence in fonts, banner andf footer. Its simplicity make Humidor and worth mentioning free wordpress theme. Simple as that.