You-Tube@Home
Have you ever wondered what technology powers You-Tube, Google Video, all the live streaming Videos on the net? Yes, it is Flash. Now Adobe lets you take that technology home for free. Download the Flash Media Encoder Here, and get any of the free flash video players to view it. It is an amazing light weight option even for putting up videos in your intranet websites. Many Open Source CMS solutions like Joomla have free components that support flash video.Go ahead, enjoy the freebies.. :)
Labels: Adobe
Image Tagging Timepass
Don't feel like working? Never able to find graphics you are looking for in Google's image search? Purrfekt! Go right here to waste your time! Google seems to be getting a difficult image processing task done for free, with eager enthusiasts willing to waste time and energy in labeling images. Where is the need to develop cutting edge algorithms that identify objects within images and tag them, when you have millions of idle human brains at your disposal.The concept is novel to say the least. You are paired with a random unknown partner, and both of you are shown a common image. You are supposed to type out whatever occurs to you when you see the image, and if any of these words match, the image is tagged with that label. Pretty safe and effective. Try it for yourself, its fun.
I still don't know what I'm supposed to do with the points I've earned though.. Can I exchange them for lifesavers... anyone??
Labels: Web
Naming Software (Or naming blog posts??)
Most software companies pay no heed to giving interesting names to their software. Microsoft is probably the worst i'd say. Take 'Office' for example. How obvious is that? I still remember that in a quiz in Modern School, we were asked, "Which software made by Microsoft, is named after one of the buildings in their complex?". I believe I need to explain the general psyche of people taking part in these quizzes. There were free chocolates for being funny, and there was a particular hot chick of modern school sitting in the front row, who used to giggle when people gave funny answers. Do I need to elaborate?? I don't think so.So, our unanimous decision was "Office". Unfortunately, the quiz master thought it was a good guess despite our honest intention of sounding funny, and as the girl didn't have a brain of her own, we didn't get any giggles either.
The point to be noted is that, (well the answer was Outlook) companies can be pretty unadventurous with the christening of their software. Some companies fare a little better, like Adobe (I'm referring to the erstwhile Macromedia here). Most of their software have very hip and gen-x names. Flash, Shockwave, Flex, ColdFusion. The list is endless. However, none, I repeat none comes close to Ahead Software Inc. Does that ring any bells? Ever burnt a CD with Nero?
When we first realized the connection, we were spell bound to say the least. The name was so perfect, it had the perfect connotations, the ROM(e), the fiddle, the burning! It was so amazing that our instant reaction was to include this as a question in the upcoming Panache! (I have to add that we did feel like idiots when we saw that the Nero logo clearly shows the Colosseum on fire..), but we were impressed nevertheless..We seldom realize, that a thing as simple as the name of the software can be a great insight into the kind of people who worked on the software! The only vision I ever get of the people at Ahead Software is that of an Intelligent, fun-loving lot..
So much for my visions of people at Microsoft!
If you are still wondering what I am talking about, read this...
Labels: Software
