Exploring and Sharing Tech and non Tech Topics: December 2010

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Using LED Ceiling Lights For Digital Communication

Using LED Ceiling Lights For Digital Communication: "PatPending writes 'A Minnesota start-up company, LVX, is developing products under several patents and about a dozen pending applications, e.g., 'Building illumination apparatus with integrated communications, security and energy management,' that put clusters of LEDs in a standard-sized ceiling light fixture. The LEDs are in optical communication with special modems attached to office computers. The first generation of the LVX system will transmit data at speeds of about three megabits per second, roughly as fast as a residential DSL line. LVX Chief Executive Officer John Pederson said a second-generation system that will roll out in about a year will permit speeds on par with commercial Wi-Fi networks. It will also permit lights that can be programmed to change intensity and color. Pederson said the next generation of the system should get even more efficient as fixtures become 'smart' so the lights would dim when bright sunlight is coming through a window or when a conference room or hallway is empty. Hurdles: speed and installation costs. No word on the reliability and security of this system.'

Saturday, December 25, 2010

20+ essential programs for your new Windows computer

20+ essential programs for your new Windows computer: "

Our regular readers can probably rattle off a list of their 20 favorite apps without breaking a sweat -- as the comments on this post will no doubt prove. But for our less in-the-know friends, family, and co-workers, it can be challenging to figure out where to download high quality programs that actually do what they need them to do.

We've put together an assortment that will help you hit the ground running with your new Windows PC. If you've got your own suggestions to add, feel free to post them in the comments.

Now let's take the jump and check out the apps!

Continue reading 20+ essential programs for your new Windows computer

20+ essential programs for your new Windows computer originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 23 Dec 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tuesday, December 21, 2010

16 Ways to Kick Bad Habits

16 Ways to Kick Bad Habits: "

Written by: Taha Ghayyur.

Few things are more demanding than eliminating bad habits, since they are part of our daily routines and personality. It takes days of patience and practice to break old habits.

However, the good news is, Ramadan offers a perfect and natural environment for moral training. Interestingly, researches from “positive psychology” (scientific study of successful people) have repeatedly shown it takes 30 days to kick a bad habit and develop a new one.

In addition to the physical discipline in the 30-day boot camp of Ramadan, the increased spiritual exercise and connection with Allah, can transform your habits for life.

Try these proven techniques for a successful positive change in your habits (during Ramadan and beyond!):

1. Acknowledge and identify your bad habits: First step is to admit you need to change. If you are in a state of denial, you won’t recognize that you have a bad habit to change.

2. Pick a habit for 30 days: Prioritize your bad habits and focus on one for 30 days. Take a 30-day trial to re-condition your habits. If you are committed to changing at least one habit, you will see remarkable results, God-willing.

3. Realize that it’s in us to change: Don’t believe the old saying, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” You can break a bad habit if you really want to. No one else can change your habits, if you don’t want to.

4. Remember, Allah loves those who commit mistakes and repent: Prophet Muhammad said:

“By Him in Whose Hand is my life, if you were not to commit sin, Allah would sweep you out of existence and He would replace (you by) those people who would commit sin and seek forgiveness from Allah, and He would have pardoned them.” [Sahih Muslim]

5. Intention & plan to change: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” A healthy process of change in character requires a gradual pace, which entails planning. Develop concrete milestones to measure your progress.

6. Replace a bad habit with a good one: Completely eliminating a habit is more challenging than replacing it with a more productive habit. Moreover, it’s crucial to replace the lost natural needs, such as the need to socialize and to be entertained with something healthy.

For instance, it’s easier to replace or balance your addiction to TV with a physical workout or reading, than to suddenly remove the TV from your life. Interestingly, Prophet Muhammad, the greatest ‘psychologist’ of humanity, illustrated this principle in these words:

“Fear Allah wherever you may be; follow up an evil deed with a good one which will wipe (the former) out, and behave good-naturedly towards people.” [At-Tirmidhi]

7. Change your environment: Resist the negative peer pressure by finding a better company of friends. Collective action to change is very powerful. Prophet Muhammad explained this peer pressure effect with this analogy:

“A good friend and a bad friend are like a perfume-seller and a blacksmith: The perfume-seller might give you some perfume as a gift, or you might buy some from him, or at least you might smell its fragrance. As for the blacksmith, he might singe your clothes, and at the very least you will breathe in the fumes of the furnace.” [Sahih al-Bukhari & Muslim]

8. Exercise (physical and spiritual): A habit of regular physical exercise is obviously important for lasting weight loss. But you may not realize that exercise helps in eliminating a number of bad habits. For example, among smokers who become competitive runners, for example, over 80% give up smoking.

Moreover, exercising your will power (struggle to fight temptations) for 30 days helps you kick all kinds of bad habits and form new good ones. Willpower is like a muscle; the more you exercise it, the more you strengthen it.

9. Think of yourself as a changed, different, new person: This simple psychological shift in your thinking about your own image can do wonders. Tell yourself, “I can’t continue this ill-behaviour. I am better than that. I am stronger. I am wiser.”

10. Reward success: The most fundamental law in all of psychology is the “law of effect.” It simply states that actions followed by rewards are strengthened and likely to recur. Unfortunately, studies show that people rarely use this technique when trying to change personal habits.

Setting up formal or informal rewards for success greatly increases your chances of transforming bad habits into good ones, and is far more effective than punishing yourself for bad habits or setbacks. As Muslims we should also remember that the ultimate reward is Allah’s Pleasure and Paradise in the Hereafter.

11. Schedule / limit your bad habits: If you are really struggling to kick a bad habit, try limiting the habit to a specific time and place. Research and case studies confirm that this rather unconventional approach can be a useful first step in changing bad habits or learning new good ones.

12. Tell someone about your effort to change if it helps: He or she may keep you on track.

13. Resolve to continue on and follow up: Giving up bad habits or learning good habits requires regular maintenance and determination. It is a long, ongoing process, also known as “Tazkiyyah” in Islamic terminology. It’s more difficult than the first few steps of change. (“How many times have I dieted, for example, only to gain the weight back?”)

14. Remind yourself of death and hereafter often: “Remember often the terminator (or destroyer) of all the pleasures [i.e. death],” the Prophet once stated. [At-Tirmidhi.]

15. Develop a relapse strategy: How do you ensure not to return to your bad habit you are trying to change? Some people donate money to a good cause every time they return to sinning or a bad habit. This reminds them of the ‘cost’ of going back to old bad habits. Others try physically demanding acts to deter them from reverting to old ways.

16. Ask Allah for help: Last but not least, make Asking for Allah’s Help an integral part of the overall change process. Ask for Allah’s Help before, during and after every attempt at kicking a bad habit. Do so sincerely, even begging and crying, like a child does when he or she really wants something. Allah is Ever-Willing to Help and to Respond to our needs, but it is us who must take the first step towards Him.

“And whosoever is conscious of Allah and keeps his duty to Him, He (Allah) will make a way for him to get out (from) every (difficulty), and He will provide him from (sources) he could never imagine.” [Quran 65:2-3]

References for Further Reading:

■ How to Replace Bad Habits with Good Ones – Stephen Kraus

■ Tazkiyah: The Islamic Path of Self-Development – Abdur Rashid Siddiqui

■ I want to Repent, But…. – Saalih Al-Munajjid

Source: Productive Ramadan

A Quick preparation tips for RAMADAN,
What After Ramadaan?,
16 things you can do on the Night of Power (Laylatul Qadr),
Ruling on using perfume,
What Have We Gained From Ramadan?,
Ramadan Tips,
15 Ways to make Ramadan Special for your Kids this Year,
How to Welcome the Month of Ramadan,
Ongoing Project – Ramadan: Let’s Recharge Our Emaan!,
Top 10 Tips – Keep Ramadan Spirit alive all the Year"

Friday, December 10, 2010

Still life. Totally brilliant.

Still life. Totally brilliant.: "

Wires transform these objects from inanimate to hilarious works of art.

Found on: www.bentobjects.blogspot.com

Submitted by B.Jones

Thursday, December 9, 2010

The Best Web Apps of 2010

The Best Web Apps of 2010: "

2010 has been quite a year for web apps with HTML5 and CSS3 really beginning to catch on, giving web apps more power and capabilities than they’ve ever had before and bringing them closer to their desktop rivals—or completely redefining the way we do certain things (social media?).

With 2011 right around the corner, the AppStorm team thought it would be a great time to take a look back on 2010 and some of the best applications developers have brought us. So we bring you 30 of the best web apps from 2010.

In preparing this post, I was taken back by the incredible number of fantastic web apps I’ve seen this year, so it’s very possible you’ll find something new and amazing yourself. Go on and take a look!

Dropbox

Although Dropbox’s primary function isn’t its web app, it’s still one of our favorite apps with so many uses it’ll blow your hair back. The desktop application is, without question, the world’s best multi-platform, multi-system data sync software.

The number of tips, tricks and hacks for Dropbox make it one of the most versatile apps I’ve likely ever come across. The combination of the powerful desktop and web apps ensure you always have access to your data, regardless of where you are.

Be sure to take a look at our Ultimate Dropbox Toolkit & Guide for a massive (and growing) list of ways to use this amazing app.

Facebook

You’re probably wondering why I’m even including Facebook on this list considering it’s user-base is so massive it could be its own country, and one of the largest at that. But, let’s face it, Facebook has changed the way we interact socially, it’s been in the news more than any other app—especially for its privacy concerns—and has also changed dramatically over the last year.

Facebook is “THE” social network. There’s just no better way to stay in touch with your friends, family co-workers, favorite brands, bands or media. Web.AppStorm has also covered Facebook incredibly frequently; see a few of the following posts.

25 Tips for Killer Facebook Marketing

35 of the Best Facebook Fan Pages

15 Simple Ways to Integrate Facebook into Your Website

7 Fun Facebook Video Conferencing and Chat Apps

Creating Facebook Groups & Downloading Personal Data

Great Apps to Customize Your Facebook Fan Page

Top 10 Facebook Apps

Facebook’s New Messages

Google Products (Apps)

Google Products

Google is a killer app producing beast, no doubt—possibly the king of web apps. Not only do they run the worlds most popular search engine but they also offer apps that are arguably the most popular in their own categories; Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Docs, Picasa and Google Chrome.

You’re all likely familiar with at least a few of Google’s amazing apps and the reach they have in the web world, so I need not further explain!

Check out our guide on setting up your personalized Google Apps suite.

SmugMug

As great as SmugMug is, it’s still hard to choose between it and Flickr considering they’re both top of their class but work better for different people’s needs. Over 2010, however, I’d have to go with SmugMug considering the number of improvements and new features they’ve implemented.

SmugMug is one of the best apps you could choose for storing and sharing images, not to mention the abilities it gives users for customizing galleries and printing & framing options. SmugMug also has options leading their field in video, allowing 1080p quality at up to 10 minutes.

TweetDeck

While there are several fantastic Twitter web apps, TweetDeck stands out of the crowd and isn’t just popular on the web but also one of the top choices for desktop users as well. TweetDeck offers a version of their app for essentially every major device and platform, from desktop to mobile and as of just recently, the Chrome Web Store.

TweetDeck isn’t just a Twitter powerhouse, it’s a social media connection hub for pretty much everything.

Aviary

From image editing to music creation, Aviary is a powerhouse of killer web apps. While their primary apps are Flash-based, they’ve recently launched a lightweight HTML5 image editor that can even be embedded in your own apps. Aviary isn’t the only ones providing a fantastic online image editor, but they certainly have one of the best (if not the best) collections of great apps for tackling lots of different media types.

Runner up: Splashup.com

OnLive

OnLive is attempting to revolutionize the way games are made available and against all odds, they’re doing a pretty dang amazing job of it. They’re pushing their new game system pretty heavily but you can just as easily play via browser capable computer and most recently view live players with an iPad.

The OnLive team is taking their technology even further, however, with rumors and demos of video streaming and remote system access (e.g. Windows 7 through a browser). While OnLive’s game list is still pretty limited, it’s growing and the service is taking fantastic steps forward all the time, recently even offering unlimited gaming for $10 per month!

If you want a deeper look at OnLive, be sure to read our early review (with video preview), OnLive: Next Generation Gaming.

Hulu Plus

Hulu was quite the hit as soon as it was released and it’s been in the news quite a bit through this last year for the struggles they’ve had obtaining and offering more content. One thing’s for sure though, Hulu is arguably the best place to catch up on your favorite TV shows.

With the addition of Hulu Plus, you can get all your favorite Hulu content shortly after airing, usually in HD and on a solid number of devices including the iPhone and iPad. At $7.99 per month, it’s not a bad deal. Unfortunately it’s not available outside the states just yet.

Runner up: Netflix

Groupon

Groupon is a relatively new app but has really begun catching on this last year, introducing many to the new concept of social shopping. It’s popularity and success has really taken off this year and it doesn’t look like it’ll be slowing down any time soon.

The concept behind Groupon is pretty simple; you subscribe to daily deals (just notifications) and purchase deals you like along with your friends and family (though you can purchase them alone). In some of the deals, groups are required and it can be much more fun snagging a deal on an event with your friends.

Grooveshark

While Pandora is still one of the most popular music streaming web apps, it’s still only radio via the web and hasn’t changed all that much this year. Grooveshark, however, is a music library with access to music and “radio stations”, all for free (with an optional VIP paid subscription).

Throughout the year, Grooveshark has made lots of improvements to their web app along with offering mobile apps for all the major mobile platforms (including Blackberry and Palm). Grooveshark works amazingly well, has a great selection of music and the price is hard to beat!

Evernote

Evernote is similar to Dropbox in that it’s a powerful data sync tool compatible with nearly every platform; desktop, mobile and web. It’s not exclusively a web app and requires a downloaded app whether on windows or a mobile device to really make use of it but all your data is accessible via the web as well.

Evernote differs from Dropbox in the type of data typically stored, based on a note and notebook concept and built to help organize your notes and data (including images, files, etc).

If you want to learn more about Evernote and how to take advantage of its awesome capabilities, check out the following posts.

The Note Taking Trio that Trumps the Rest

Don’t Forget: Use Evernote

Kickstarter

Kickstarter is easily one of my favorite apps of 2010, making things possible for people in a very elegant and social way not previously possible. Users can start projects, requesting backers to reach the projects financial goal. If the goal is reached, the project is funded (by the backers). Other users can back any project they’d like (I’ve already backed two, both reaching their goals) and if the project reaches its required financial goal from their backers, you’ll then be required to pay the money you backed the project for.

It’s a fantastic idea and makes it much easier for every day people to back projects and achieve their goals. They’ve already had tons of fantastically successful projects! See Rocking Kickstarter for Easy Project Funding for a more in-depth look.

SlideRocket

SlideRocket is a presentation web app that really shows what kind of incredibly powerful apps can be developed for the web. In my opinion, even current desktop powerpoint apps fail to offer the capabilities SlideRocket does. It’s even available on mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad.

SlideRocket is free but many of the more powerful features are reserved for the Pro plan, which will be well worth it for business or heavy presentation users. See our review of SlideRocket, Power Your Presentations with the New SlideRocket, more a more in-depth look but keep in mind they’ve added many fantastic features since then.

Freshbooks

It’s difficult to say Freshbooks has been the best invoicing app for freelancers as there are definitely others that are more appealing to those with different levels of needs. Freshbooks does, however, offer one of the widest range of capabilities and features and is certainly one of the most widely used.

Invoice, track time, organize expenses, manage clients and integrate with many other amazing web apps for your business needs with Freshbooks.

Other invoicing apps I would highly recommend are Blinksale, CurdBee, Ronin and Invoice Machine. I’d encourage you to also take a look at our review of Blinksale—Blinksale:

A Revamped Butt Kicking Invoice App.

Penzu

When it comes to private journaling, Penzu has rocked 2010. They’ve added plenty of new features and more recently released a full HTML5 app for mobiles that rivals some native apps. The app is a pleasure to use, not to mention how therapeutic private journaling is, and offers plenty of features for you to customize your journal and connect with services like Flickr for adding your photos.

Be sure to check out our reviews of Penzu’s apps for a more in-depth look.

Penzu Goes HTML5 Mobile

A Private Web: Digital Journal with Penzu

Threadsy

Threadsy takes a different approach to email and social media, bringing the two into a single app but in a way that makes it easier for you to organize and stay on top of everything. So many of us have multiple email and social networking accounts—Threadsy enables you to pull them all into one place to easily manage it all.

Although it’s still in beta, it’s come a long way this year and boasts some really killer features, proving just how powerful web apps can be.

Forrst

Forrst is a fun and creative app for designers and developers to share links, snapshots of their work, code and ask questions. Although some might argue Dribbble should be here instead, Forrst brought the Dribbble concept to a new level and with more creativity.

Both are invite-only apps, meaning you must be invited by current members who are encouraged to only invite those who will compliment the community. For creatives and coders, it’s a valuable resource and a great social community.

FontStruct

Font creation and sharing used to be a much more exclusive club, not to mention much more difficult. FontStruct changed that and opened up the world of fonts to every day users with an app that anyone can start using without extensive training. It’s also free!

There’s a lot more to the app, community and website though—definitely worth checking out if you’d like to design fonts or are interested in the subject. Take a look at Creating Fonts with FontStruct for a more in-depth look at the app.

FormStack

Formstack

Online forms and their associated data can be a massive pain to build and manage, especially for those who aren’t web developers. FormStack takes the pain out of this whole web forms nightmare, making it incredibly easy to build and manage forms and the data you’ll receive from them. It really doesn’t get easier than this!

In 2010 Formstack has made lots of great improvements and added incredibly useful app integrations to easily enable things like payments. They even offer a free plan should you not need more than a few simple forms, but pricing plans are very reasonable should you need more.

LastPass

We all know how important password security is and how difficult it is to manage and remember more than a few complex passwords. LastPass takes care of it all for you on Mac, Windows and Linux with integration in every major browser and even mobile access on iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows phone, Symbian and Android. That’s impressive app support but your passwords are that important and the LastPass team knows it!

LastPass has been around for awhile but they deserve a spot on this list as they’ve acquired Xmarks, the best browser bookmarks sync app around, saving it from shutting down. Hopefully the two will be combined but either way, LastPass is a stellar group for keeping Xmarks alive.

A Few Favorite Posts

We’ve reviewed and rounded up some truly fantastic web apps this year and I can’t wait to see what next year holds. There are a few posts I’ve really enjoyed this year as Web.AppStorm and our fantastic team has grown and I’d love to share them with you. Take a look!

The Ultimate Dropbox Toolkit & Guide

35 of the Best Facebook Fan Pages

10 Reasons I’m Switching from TweetDeck to HootSuite

30 Best Free Online Games

10 Fantastic Lightweight CMSes You Should Try

50 Great Web Alternatives to Desktop Software

15 Web Alternatives to Popular Desktop Software

22 Brilliant Tumblr Themes

10 Marketing Resources Every App Should Provide

10 Fun and Free Browser-Based Games

What’s Coming in 2011?

Looking back on 2010 we’ll see that web apps have really started coming of age and are further blurring the line between desktop and cloud computing. This is really just the tip of the iceberg though, with new web technologies like HTML5 and more powerful browsers making their way into people’s day to day lives. So, what do we have to look forward to in 2011?

For starters, the just launched Chrome Web Store and Chrome OS will further develop and hopefully flourish. These two products are a unique perspective on the world of web apps and one that many feel is overdue. Google may just be able to start the full-on cloud computing revolution and we might see it blossom next year.

As more people shift to entertainment sources on the web, we’ll very likely continue seeing the growth of apps like Hulu and Netflix, possibly even getting a truly usable system to access our content in the living room—potentially allowing more people to “cut the cable” and ditch their cable TV providers.

One development I’d absolutely love to see next year is for OnLive and their collection of games and media offerings. OnLive’s technology has capabilities that could change the way we compute and consume media. They’re off to a great start already and moving ahead quickly so I have high hopes for them in 2011.

With all the incredible developments and advancements coming out at break-neck speed, it’s hard to keep up on it all—and not just in web apps.

The Best iOS and Mac Apps of 2010

If you’re a fan of the your trusty Mac, iPhone, or iPad (and let’s face it, who isn’t?), you may also like to take a look at the companion posts published across the AppStorm network. These include some seriously amazing software, and it’s a good way to quickly see what you might have missed over the course of the year.

Take a look at:

The Best Mac Software of 2010

The Best iPhone and iPad Apps of 2010

Thank you so much for reading AppStorm in 2010. We’re really excited about everything that 2011 has in store, and I hope you’ll take a minute to subscribe to the site if you haven’t already! The AppStorm team of sites will be working hard to bring you the latest in reviews, roundups, how-tos and more.

Bamboo Structure Project / Pouya Khazaeli Parsa

Bamboo Structure Project / Pouya Khazaeli Parsa: "

Design: Pouya Khazaeli Parsa
Location: Ramsar, Mazandaran, Iran
Collaborators: Kaveh Akef, Milad Haghnejad
Construction: Javad Abbasi
Client: Manouchehr Mirdamad
Total Cost: €850
Materials: Gas pip, Bamboo, Rice stream
Maximum diameter: 8 sqm
Minimum diameter: 6 sqm
Maximum height: 3,30 sqm
Project area: 40 sqm
Project year: 2009
Photographs: Pouya Khazaeli Parsa

This project is dedicated to a student of mine who didn’t know how to create a dome!

The student in question was tasked with producing a model of the Sultaniya dome. He set about cutting 3mm strips of foam and bending each strip into a semi-circle, rotating and joining them by their tips. It was not until he had installed nearly one third of the semi-circles that he realized the strips were far too thick to create a dome. He wanted to completely change his method of construction, but to me he was creating a wonderful method of sheltering far more interesting than a conventional dome, so beautiful and very simple. I asked him to complete the model with the same method and, as I had anticipated, the result was quite amazing.

model

Two years later when I was approached by Mr. Mirdamad, who was looking for a novel model of construction for the development of a resort town near the forests of Katalom in northern Iran, the method returned to me.

I decided to use bamboo as there is plenty of it the region making it cheap and easy to gather sufficient materials. We used seventy bamboos in our realized model, with two bamboos completing a curve from one side to the other side of the project.

The bamboo was cut two days prior to use. This ensured it was still soft and flexible during construction and would subsequently become rigid once built. It is however possible to keep the bamboo alive after construction and thus ensure the structure remains green and supple.

We acquired gas pipes from the local market to make a base for the bamboo, but did not fix the base to the ground. In so doing we provided for the possibility of moving the structure by simply taking out the bamboos from the pips and installing them again in another location.

extra panel 03

shelter drawing 01

This distinctive structure provides highly cost effective shelter and emergency housing. The total cost for a structure covering approximately 40m² was €700, while the unique shape provides reasonable resistance against horizontal forces such as strong winds or earthquakes.

Furthermore it can be built by non-professionals and can be constructed by three people in merely two days.

In completing the membrane we collected bunches of cropped rice streams from one of the many post-harvest rice fields in the area. Each bunch was wrapped together at the top and the structure was covered by overlapping these bunches around it.

A major benefit of using rice streams for this purpose is that when they become wet in rainy weather, they expand to the extent that they do not allow rain to pass through the membrane. On the other hand in sunny and warm weather they become dry and allow wind to pass through lots of small holes, providing natural cool ventilation. However, in every part of the world local material can be utilized thereby changing the appearance of the structure to reflect its setting while ensuring costs are kept low.