Make Your Own Secret Knock Detecting Door Lock [DIY]

 

 

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Make Your Own Secret Knock Detecting Door Lock [DIY]

via Gizmodo by Sean Fallon on 11/3/09

Hideouts can't be protected with a simple lock and key, those jobs require passwords or secret knocks. For the latter, you can go the extra mile and build a knock detector using a few basic pieces of equipment.

Steve Hoefer's secret knock detector is little more than a piezo speaker, a tiny gear reduction motor, an Arduino and some PVC pipe—basically a bunch of stuff he had lying around the lab. It works by keeping track of the time between a pattern of successive knocks. It's probably not the most secure way to lock a door, but Hoefer notes that there is a lot of room for improvement on this design. Besides making it small enough to actually fit in a doorknob, you could program it to accept a variety of knock patterns, including different knocks at different times of the day. Hit the link for instructions on how to build one yourself. [Grathio via Make]

 

 

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Coke Zero Has Zero Calories and Sugar, But Is High In Spy Cameras [Spy Cam]

 

 

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Coke Zero Has Zero Calories and Sugar, But Is High In Spy Cameras [Spy Cam]

via Gizmodo by Sean Fallon on 11/2/09

This realistic-looking can of Coke Zero isn't filled with a refreshing, low calorie soda—it's actually a 4GB spy cam DVR that can capture footage in VGA (640×480) resolution.

The can also has a wireless remote, rechargeable battery and a false bottom that hides a USB port and the on/off switch. It looks pretty convincing, but I'm less impressed by the '80s-looking version of Coke "Clossic". [ChinaGrabber via Technabob via DVICE]

 

 

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Stick This Thing to Your Kid and You Won't Lose Them [GPS]

Stick This Thing to Your Kid and You Won't Lose Them [GPS]

via Gizmodo by Mark Wilson on 10/23/09

The Insignia Little Buddy is a $100 child-tracking GPS system. You simply duct tape the Little Buddy to your kid, and you'll never lose the little bugger again (involuntarily).

A web interface positions you various little ones on a map marked with your custom "safety zones." But the most enticing feature, if we're studying the GPS tracking page properly, is that you can assign your children with various barnyard animal iconography. That'll teach little piggy the consequences of being late.
The Little Buddy will be on sale at Best Buy shortly, and we assume the service could come with some sort of monthly cost. [Best Buy via navigadget]

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ลองใช้ program Getdataback

download ได้ที่นี่

http://www.4shared.com/file/116878093/bfe81d96/Getdataback_-_full.html

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สามารถใช้กับ harddisk / SD card ได้หมดค่ะ

Fundrazr: PayPal's Adaptive Account and Payment APIs Realized

Fundrazr: PayPal's Adaptive Account and Payment APIs Realized

via ReadWriteWeb by Dana Oshiro on 11/3/09

Canadian company ConnectionPoint is about to unveil its FundRazr Facebook application as the only service utilizing both PayPal X's Adaptive Account API and its Adaptive Payment API. Initially launched in private beta at TC50, Fundrazr allows users to collect fees and donations through Facebook.

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While this may seem like a simple Groups tool, users can add members, create fundraising campaigns, generate reports, add organizational admin and most importantly, collect payments. Some of the groups who benefit from Fundrazr include sports teams, school clubs, charities and campaign managers. Members of the company's closed beta include major universities needing to charge fees, political candidates on the campaign trail and national nonprofits looking to overcome donor fatigue in a poor economy.

According to ConnectionPoint CEO Daryl Hatton, the beauty of using PayPal X is that users never have to leave the Fundrazr page to setup a PayPal account. Charities no longer have to redirect donors to external payment sites in order to collect their donations. Instead there's a frictionless process where donors have absolutely no reason to deny payment. To check out Fundrazr's newest feature releases visit the blog at blog.connectionpoint.ca. For an invite to the company's closed beta program email beta[at]fundrazr.com.

Discuss

Flickr Sprouts App Garden: Five Cool Apps We Discovered

Flickr Sprouts App Garden: Five Cool Apps We Discovered

via ReadWriteWeb by Jolie O'Dell on 11/4/09

Flickr, the ever-more-popular photo-sharing service, has a five-year history of apps built on its API. From the interesting to the useful to the pretty to the downright silly, these applications make up a colorful and varied ecosystem around the service itself.

Flickr has organized these third-party apps into a "garden," complete with user favorites, tags, descriptions and screenshots. The App Garden represents a significant evolution from the former "services" section on the user side, and the revamp includes new features for developers, who can now use the Garden as a tool to help users discover their products. Read on for details and a few spotlighted Flickr apps we thought were fun.

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As Flickr software engineer Mikhail Pachenko wrote on the Flickr developer blog, "We've tried to make things as simple and straight-forward as possible" for developers. On a new Apps By Me page, devs will find their apps are kept private until the creator decides to go public with the product.

"When you click on one of your apps," Pachenko continued, "you will be taken to the owner view of your app page. This page is where you tell the world about your app - provide a description, link to a website, set screenshots, and add tags. When you're ready, change the privacy setting to public. That will make your app visible to other users and allow it to show up in searches."

Now, for end users, here are a few apps we picked from the Garden that we think you might like.

Bubblr Makes Comics

Make comic strips from your or others' Flickr photos with this fun, simple application from Barcelona-based shop Pimpampum. The app allows users to search for photos by user or by tag, string the pics into strips, and add captions, thought bubbles and speech bubbles. Creations can be shared via a user's blog, Delicious or email.

Flickr For Busy People Speeds Up Skimming

This delightful time-saver shows a compact grid of photos uploaded from a user's contacts during given time periods between 30 minutes and 8 hours prior to the current time. Below each user's avatar is the number of photos uploaded, and the avatars can be clicked to display (or hide) an array of thumbnails to quick digestion of the day's pics.

Suggestify Geotags Photos

This app lets users geotag other users' Flickr photos by suggesting a location to the photo's owner. That geotag information is stored with Suggestify until the photo owner approves or rejects the suggestion. If approved, the photo is geotagged and the user who suggested the geotag is credited with a special tag on the photo.

Flogr Turns Flickr Pics Into Photo Blogs

Flogr is a PHP/MySQL-powered photoblog interface that displays a main photo page with EXIF data and Flickr comments, a customizable thumbnails page of a user's recent pictures, a slideshow component, a tag cloud and an about page showing the Flickr user's profile. Users can also determine which photos are displayed by telling Flogr to only include images with certain tags.

Flickriver Surfaces Interesting Photos

This app is focused on delivering a seamless, quick viewing experience with minimal visual distraction. Users can choose to check out interesting photos filtered by user or by group. They can search for photos or simply browse to discover the most interesting photos on a given day. Flickriver also includes a keyboard-operated slideshow mode. Better still, Flickriver offers a dynamic badge for bloggers to showcase their images.

Discuss

As Facebook Ages, Gen Y Turns to Twitter

As Facebook Ages, Gen Y Turns to Twitter

via ReadWriteWeb by Sarah Perez on 11/5/09

Facebook is getting old. No, people aren't getting tired of it, it's actually getting old, as in its population is aging. In May of 2008, the median age for Facebook was 26. Today, it's 33, a good seven years older. That's an interesting turn of events for a site once built for the exclusive use of college students. So where are today's college students hanging out now? Well, to some extent, they're still on Facebook, despite having to share the space with moms, dads, grandparents, and bosses. Surprisingly though, they're also headed to another network you may have heard of: Twitter.

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As it turns out, Gen Y likes Twitter...Well, maybe not, but they are using it

Over the course of the year, there have been countless reports - some more substantial than others - but all with the same message: Generation Y is just not interested in Twitter. The reports generally cited members of this demographic as saying Twitter was "pointless" and "narcissistic."

Apparently, that's beginning to change. Well, maybe not their perception of Twitter, but certainly their use of it. Today, Twitter is now the second-youngest of the top four social networking sites. Its median age is 31. MySpace's is 26, LinkedIn is 39, and, as noted above, Facebook is 33.

When looking at specific younger demographic segments, and not just Gen Y, you can see strong Twitter uptake over the past year. For example, 37% of those 18-24 now use Twitter when only 19% did back in December 2008. And in the slightly older 25-34 bracket, a portion of which could still be considered Gen Y, 31% are now using the service compared to only 20% in December of last year. Combined, these two groups account for more than half of Twitter's network.

Why is Gen Y Now Flocking to Twitter?

So what gives? Why has Gen Y seemingly changed their minds about the social microblogging network that only months ago they avoided? A recent AP article offered up some ideas including the influx of celebrity tweeters, pressure from teachers or bosses, and it even hinted that Gen Y'ers entering the workplace have found value in the network for business-related purposes. That same sentiment was shared by Meredith Sires of Gen Y trend-watching site, YPulse. She theorizes that the rapid growth in the 18-24 demographic has to do more with the recent college graduates segment of that group finding ways to build entirely new online contact lists and create new identities more closely tied to information-sharing.

However, there have not been any in-depth studies that detail all the various reasons that Gen Y has chosen to adopt the microblogging network. To date, everything cited consists of just theories and speculations based on anecdotal evidence. But while all the ideas have merit, the theory that rings truest to our ears is the one put forth by Craig Watkins, a University of Texas professor and author of the book "The Young and the Digital." He says that what we're seeing is "...a kind of closing of that generational gap as it relates to technology." In other words, young and old alike are joining the same networks and socializing in the same spaces.

At this point, we would have to agree. After all, Gen Y (or Gen Z for that matter), hasn't all of a sudden flocked to some new social networking site where the majority of the online user base mostly consists of their peers. Although some niche sites like FML, Failblog, TextsFromLastNight, and Sporcle have apparently attracted this young crowd, their numbers are dwarfed by those of Facebook, Twitter, and the like. It seems as if Gen Y is simply content to join the older adults on the top social networks of today and not strike out on their own...and vice versa. The older social networking users, in turn, never really set up shop on networks designed just for them like the (now "hibernating") Boomj, a social network for baby boomers, or the online old folks home eons.com. They, too, have gravitated towards Facebook and Twitter.

Will this ever change? Will there ever be another network dominated by the digital youth? Of course no one can know for sure, but odds are that unless it's a closed-off network where entry is barred to those over a certain age, any new social network will have trouble keeping the grown-ups out these days. And even if some such network ever sprang into existence, it may struggle to attract the Gen Y members it desires - especially since they're so content to socialize on the sites they already use. And now that they've added Twitter to that list, the challenge to draw them away to yet another social networking site may prove even more difficult than before.

Note: statistics in this article are from Pew Internet's Recent Report on Twitter for Fall 2009

Discuss

Yanko Design: Map Hole Points The Way

Yanko Design: Map Hole Points The Way

via Design Corner by Long Tran on 11/13/09

Map Hole is a new road guidance tool designed to direct pedestrians and travelers to their final destination using existing elements in the urban landscape. It locates the pedestrian with a starting point and provides information on the exact distance or average walk time to the listed landmarks. It sounds intriguing but I feel like I need a cartography degree to understand it. If this were real, you might just enter a city full of confused people looking down at the ground.

Designer: Jiae Kwon

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show ♥ to Yanko Design

ไอ้แอนนนนน.com » Blog Archive » 331 | Keynote จากงาน #WordCampBKK 2009

ไอ้แอนนนนน.com » Blog Archive » 331 Keynote จากงาน #WordCampBKK 2009

16 WordPress Sites to Help You Build a Better Blog

16 WordPress Sites to Help You Build a Better Blog

via Six Revisions by Jacob Gube on 11/9/09

So you finally decided to step up your blogging game and build yourself a site with WordPress. You've install a pretty good free theme and have a few posts under your belt. After a few days, you get seriously bored with the "My blog kinda looks like everyone else" syndrome and start your search for some creative ways to make your blog stand out from the crowd.

In this article, I will help you on your journey by showing you the 16 best places to find WordPress tutorials, hacks, themes and design inspiration to take your blog to the level it deserves.

1. Yoast

Yoast is the home of blogger and developer Joost de Valk. He has released over 20 WordPress plugins on his site and several other tools for webmasters and online marketers. If you are looking for a plugin for SEO or to track your site visits, Joost will certainly have exactly what you need. You can find all his plugins on the WordPress page of his blog. If you consider yourself a more advanced WordPress user, then I suggest you read through his "Guide To Higher Rankings For Your Blog". You will certainly see a difference in search engine traffic if you implement just a few of the tips that Joost shows you. I personally use the Breadcrumbs plugin and have implemented almost everything he has mentioned in that article.

2. WPBeginner

Are you a total WordPress novice? Perhaps you've been using another publishing platform such as Drupal or Joomla! and want to see what the fuss is all about with WordPress. Have I got the perfect site for you. WPBeginner offers tips, tools, resources, and suggestions to WordPress users. Check out the Tutorials section for all the help you will need when doing customizations to your blog. If you need help with installing WordPress, then WPBeginnner also has a service where they will install your blog for free. Prefer to learn about WordPress on your own? Visit the Beginners Guide and you will be an expert before you know it.

3. WPSwitch

WPSwitch is kind of like a Premium WordPress Theme on crack. In other words, if you're searching for a sweet theme for your blog, design tips, or WordPress hacks or tutorials, this is the place you need to be. WPSwitch has all the top Premium WordPress themes from the most prominent designers in the world. You literally need to go nowhere else. Be sure to pay this one a visit whether you are a complete newbie or consider yourself the king of all that is WordPress.

4. WordPress Tavern

WordPress Tavern is a thriving community focused on all things WordPress. Those interested in the software can hang out with fellow WordPress'ers to engage in enlightening discussions. On WordPress Tavern, you'll find reviews, news, screencasts, guest blog posts from some great community members and much more. Be sure you hook up to the WordPress Weekly podcast to keep up with all the latest hot WordPress topics.

5. WpRecipes

WpRecipes is a great place to find quick, clear and concise WordPress recipes. When you really need that little piece of code to do a certain thing, these handy, little snippets will do the job. I consider this site to cater to the more advanced WordPress user as a lot of these recipes involve diving into the code. There's also a forum where you can ask a question to get help or even request a recipe.

6. WordPress.tv

WordPress.tv is "Your Visual Resource for All Things WordPress". There are hundreds of How-To videos that cover a range of topics to help you have a better blog. If you missed any of the Wordcamp's, you can also view some of the speakers lectures at the events.

7. WP Topics

As WordPress has become mainstream, the number of news sources and tutorial blogs has become overwhelming. WP Topics only publishes feeds from established WP sites that provide useful, meaningful content on a regular basis. Here you will find the most relevant WordPress news, useful tutorials and influential voices in the WordPress universe — all in one place. This is a must-see resource for those who need to be in the loop of the latest WordPress trends.

8. Weblog Tools Collection

If you have ever used WordPress, you have more than likely seen this feed coming through your admin page. Weblog Tools includes the latest plugins, theme release and general WP news. This is great for the beginner, as you stay updated with new themes and potential plugins that make blogging even easier. I highly recommend keeping this site in your admin arsenal.

9. WordPress Hacks

WP Hacks is a place to discuss all things WordPress. In addition to featuring a large variety of WordPress themes and providing reviews of WordPress plugins, WordPress Hacks was set up to cover the world surrounding WordPress, including the latest WordPress hacks, news, tips, tricks, and how-to's of the popular open source blogging software.

10. Hongkiat WordPress Category

If you are any kind of Web guru, you have at one time or another visited the blog of Hongkiat. When visiting this popular design blog it is an absolute necessity to take a trip to the WordPress category. Hongkiat covers a wide range of topics from inspiring blog designs, all the way to the detailed hacks. If you are a fan of WordPress at any level, this is definitely a place you want to go.

11. Pro Blog Design

Pro Blog Design writes about web design (blog design in particular!), coding, and WordPress (Yay!). They cover all the technical bits that bloggers should know, so they can get the most out of their blogs. For sake of this article, you should definitely browse their WordPress category as it offers numerous hacks, the best plugins to use, and super design techniques relative to your WordPress blog.

12. WPSeek

A WordPress search engine for developers and theme authors is what WPSeek.com is all about. You can find all kinds of code snippets for WordPress using this search site. This includes various WordPress functions, template tags, function sources, and random user notes. I would definitely say that this site is for the advanced WordPress developer.

13. WP Engineer

Three WordPress Junkies who love WordPress, created WP Engineer. They show various ways to make WordPress a little bit better, more convenient, more flexible or in short – just awesome! You'll find some very in depth tips and tricks to really build a better blog. Some of these are very simple for the beginner and some can get pretty in depth to the WordPress core.

Where to find WordPress Design Inspiration

These sites are showcases of WordPress-powered sites to inspire your next blog design. They all feature an up-to-date collection of websites created using WordPress.

14. We Love WP

15. WP Inspiration

16. WP Float

Where do you go for all your WordPress hacks, tutorials, and design inspiration?

If you have a favorite WordPress site that I have not listed here, I would love to see it. I hope that there are some great finds out there that a lot of people don't know about. Tell us all about it in the comments below!

Related Content

• 50 Beautiful Free WordPress Themes
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• Related categories: WordPress and Web Development

About the Author

Matt Alexander is a passionate Web junkie from Dallas, TX specializing in WordPress blog design. He is currently a full time freelance designer and blogger at WPSwitch. If you need some help with WordPress you can always find him on Twitter.