Evsion Lab

Flektor to Launch Amazing MySpace Mashups

Posted by Eunjin Gregorio under Uncategorized

The kids on MySpace will kill for this. Flektor, which a tipster told us will launch on Monday, is a tool for creating mashed up videos, photobooks, animations and basically anything media-related in Flash, then post that creation to MySpace, hi5, Piczo, Stickam et al. The site was created by Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin, co-founders of game developer Naughty Dog (Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter). They’re coming out of the gate running, with an extremely advanced Flash tool that lets users import content from sites like Photobucket and Flickr, and build a slideshow, video, or whatever you like, using the timeline to insert transitions. These can all be shared, rated and commented on in the “Watch” section. I’m not crazy about the overuse of Flash, but I think in this instance it’s ok: Flash is fine for generator-type applications, and the rest of the site isn’t using it to such a degree. It’s clear that these guys want to hit the MySpace market hard, and I’ve no doubt that RockYou and Slide.com will be calling them up pretty soon, if they haven’t already. Bound to be popular, provided they avoid the dreaded MySpace Block (TM). [ Continue reading..link to original post ]

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Do You Have What It Takes To Be A Startup Entrepreneur?

Posted by Eunjin Gregorio under Uncategorized

If you’ve applied for a job before, you’ve probably fretted over how to answer questions like “are you inclined to rely more on improvisation than on careful planning?” or “do you like to create challenges for yourself when you take on a new project?”. Companies commonly use personality tests filled with questions like these to assess the fit of a potential employees with the company. There’s a whole laundry list of these personality tests here. Some companies, like Google, have even developed their own. All of these tests are sets of written questions meant to poke and prod at a candidates mind to get a real sense of their ability and personality. However, the meaning behind these questions is relatively transparent, motivating candidates to give the answers they think their employer wants to hear. Startup Pairwise is taking a different approach to personality tests. Instead of words, Pairwise will use images to test a candidates mentality using data gleaned from their LikeBetter picture game. LikeBetter is a flash based game that shows you a series of pairs of images uploaded by users. For each pair, you pick which image you prefer. [ Continue reading..link to original post ]

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TGIF: This week’s best posts

Posted by Adam Pash under Uncategorized

For a once-weekly update on Lifehacker's best posts, subscribe to our Highlights feed - or get our daily, cream of the crop with the top stories feed.

This week's best posts include:

• LH Top 10: Must-have Firefox extensions
  "Over the past 2 years we've tried, loved and posted dozens of feature-adding extensions for our favorite web browser. But today we have the master, grand daddy list of 10 must-haves."
• Alpha Geek: Start-page showdown
  "I put five "home" heavyweights to the test: Google, Netvibes, Pageflakes, Windows Live and Yahoo. Which one rocks hardest? You may be surprised."
• Hack Attack: A beginner's guide to Quicksilver
  "Whether we're talking Mac, Windows, or Linux, freeware or shareware, this Mac-only, freeware application launcher-and-then-some is the best productivity booster I have on my computer."
• Geek to Live: Mount a file system on your Mac over SSH
  "MacFUSE has progressed to the point where it's dead simple to set up. Here's how."
• Screenshot Tour: A look under the hood of Quicksilver
  "Understanding this bit will go a long ways toward increasing your Quicksilver power."
• Stop web sites from resizing Firefox windows
  "Tired of sites that forcibly resize your Firefox window?"
• How to mount a Windows shared folder on your Mac
  "Turns out that Mac OS X can connect to Windows shared folders very easily. Read on to find out how."
• Add Vista-like taskbar window previews to Windows XP
  "Free software Visual Tooltip can give you Vista's pretty taskbar window previews in XP."
• How passwords get cracked
  "One Man's Blog explains how alarmingly easy it is to crack passwords and offers tips on choosing safer ones."
• Office Supplies Fetish: Power plug ID labels
  "There are 12 outlets on that power strip under your desk, and you hate playing the "pull the plug and see what gadget cuts off" game to identify what's what."
• Google Notebook gets a facelift
  "Web-clipping service Google Notebook has a new interface and a couple new features..."
• iTunes adds Complete My Album feature, charges only once for a song
  "iTunes [now] lets you purchase the rest of the songs from an album you've already bought single tracks from for a reduced price."

Alexa’s Indelicate Handling of Statsaholic

Posted by Eunjin Gregorio under Uncategorized

First, the back story: I created Alexaholic.com (now Statsaholic.com - more on that later) over a long weekend in February 2006 for my own selfish purposes: I found the Alexa.com website to be slow and clunky, and I wanted faster access to their excellent traffic graphs.

I had seen their graph images hotlinked around the web by hundreds of sites, so I went about playing with the urls and discovered they would allow the direct comparison of up to five domains (vs. two domains exposed by Alexa’s interface) and offered a smoothing parameter (not exposed by Alexa’s interface). I wrapped the graph images in a fast, lightweight DHTML interface, eliminated page reloads between graph reloads, and that was the basis for Alexaholic — a place for an Alexa traffic junkie (me) to get his fix. [ Continue reading and link to original post ]

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Why Do Most Technology Entreprenuers Fail?

Posted by Eunjin Gregorio under Uncategorized

The majority of technology entreprenuers fail. They fail to receive adequate financing and as a result, they fail to build a successful company and to commercialize their product. Moreover, their dream of turning their vision (in the form of their product or invention) into reality fails as well. Approximately 1 out of every 300 invester presentations that are heard, or business plans that are read by investors, ever receive the appropriate levels of funding required for commercialization. When coupled with the number of public and private grant applications that fail to receive funding that number increases. So why do most technology entreprenuers fail while providing clear and practical steps that can be immediately implemented to empower them with a better chance of success. [ Download PDF file ]

You must have PDF Reader in order to read the rest of the essay. By Peter Abramo, Ph.D & Michael Edmondson, Ph.D

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The Startup School 2007 review. Notes on event.

Posted by Eunjin Gregorio under Uncategorized

Inside the Kresge. No Wi-Fi and it really sucks. Actually, the only one network exists, it’s a Stanford and it’s open, but it requires username and password (the same like last year) and unlikely I don’t have either one. Somebody already created a computer to computer wireless networks with attractive names like Free Wireless, free stanford Internet, etc. or something like this, the Internet still doesn’t pass through. However, it looks like somebody is just having fun with sniffing passwords or just kidding.

Not much seats have a power outlets on the floor and it makes a big problem. We were lucky enough to get two seats with two plugs, but the most of the people are missing them badly. A lot of power outlet extenders and extra wires, but still doesn’t help a lot. About 70% of people has got different kind of Macs. It’s a pretty impressive how popular are these computers among the students. [ Continue reading..and link to original post ]

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Ningin: Asian Digg Impresses

Posted by Eunjin Gregorio under Uncategorized

Ningin, which launched over the weekend, is a media ranking site geared towards Asians. Ningin was created by Mixr Media, based in NYC, which specializes in social sites for targeted audiences. In the words of Ningin’s co-founder Hoc Poeng, it’s “a niche version of Digg for the Asian related news and content.” Ningin has a more social slant than Digg, bringing in more interactive functionality for its users. Ningin has a color-coded, five-star ranking system for each bookmark, but doesn’t show the actual number of votes. The site claims to use a more involved ranking algorithm than Digg, and even gives love to the lowest ranked stories via a “back page” tab. Ningin’s users are promoted as much as the posts, including a level bar, stats and a tag cloud for each user. They have also incorporated a rewards system for frequent users, offering incentives for furthered site activity. Hopefully Ningin will avoid the same fate as Digg’s “Popular User” feature, which was removed, as many of these users were offered money in exchange for getting a submission to the front page. Ningin has a very sleek design, and it will likely appeal to the target audience. [ Link to original post ]

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TwitThis: Twitter + social bookmarking

Posted by Eunjin Gregorio under Uncategorized

This morning I came across yet another online utility for Twitter called TwitThis. It’s the equivalent of the Digg and Reddit buttons we have below our posts, and allows users (like you) to bookmark things you like and share them with other Twitter users. It also turns Twitter into a social bookmarking service, letting you share links with other Twitter users in real time.

The system uses TinyURL, the URL shortening service, to tighten up ungainly lengths so they’ll fit within Twitter’s stringent 140 character limit. They also provide a bookmarklet, and a plugin for WordPress users to add the button to every post.

If you’re wondering what Twitter is, check out our detailed Newbie’s guide. I’ve added the TwitThis button below.

[via Digg & WebWare]

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On Forbes List of The 400 Richest Americans

Posted by Eunjin Gregorio under Uncategorized

Forbes is out with its list of The 400 Richest Americans.

Have you ever wondered how Forbes knows who to put on the list (and where)? Here, in the magazine’s own words, is Forbes’ methodology:

Our estimates of people’s net worth are deliberately conservative and should be considered “at least” figures. We do our best to value everything, from stakes in publicly traded or privately held companies, real estate and investments in natural resources to art, yachts and mansions. We dig through SEC documents and court records; call analysts, employees, competitors and ex-wives; and look at newspaper and magazine articles. We also take a hard look at debt. However, we do not pretend to know everything on a private balance sheet.

All numbers have been rounded to the nearest $100 million. All publicly traded shares were priced Aug. 31. Privately held companies are valued by coupling estimates (or, in some cases, company-provided numbers) of revenues or profits to prevailing price/revenues or price/earnings ratios for similar public companies.

A lot of people have been (and will be) commenting on this list. So, I’d like to do something a little different. I’m simply going to go through the list (in order) picking out those names that might be of interest to readers of this blog and saying a few words about them (and their companies). [ Continue reading..and link to original post ]

..who then is the worlds richest man?

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Which is better for the web: Single Vendor Homegeity, or OSS/Web2.0 Style Innovation

Posted by Eunjin Gregorio under Uncategorized

Brendan Eich, the principal creator of JavaScript and one of the leading developers for the Mozilla project, follows up his SXSW presentation, which illustrates parallels between historical examples of user-community-driven innovation and the current state of affairs in the web useragent space. (Say that fast ten times.)

In today’s post Eich highlights the advantages, and more prominently the disadvantages, of closed source web applications; Flash is held up as a prominent example, with Microsoft’s platforms not far behind. His ultimate point is that Firefox and its alternative-browser kin are in a position to provide support for platforms that can compete with existing RIA tools.

Eich concedes that single vendor control of application platforms (e.g., Flash) creates a stable environment for developers that is attractive at first glance, but goes on to say that such control eliminates the opportunities that are created when application developers (and even end users) are afforded the opportunity to affect the evolution of those platforms at the most basic levels… which is exactly what happens with Open Source projects.

While the post reads at first like OSS cheerleading, Eich is looking for feedback — he wants to hear from other developers and users how Firefox can best take a leading role as a platform for RIAs (via the canvas object) and other emerging web technologies.

…So I repeat Eich’s closing question: what do you think can and should be done with Firefox for the sake of RIA innovation? [ Link to original post ]

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Blast from the Past: Happy 6th Birthday OS X

Posted by Eunjin Gregorio under Uncategorized

OS, Blast From the PastIt’s hard to believe, but today marks the 6th birthday for Mac OS X, at least as measured from when OS X 10.0 (Cheetah) first went on sale at retail outlets on March 24, 2001. Apple’s original press release is still online, and is the source of some mild amusement. It heralds “amazing new functionality such as the Dock, a breakthrough for organizing, documents and document windows.” And Apple’s trumpeting of there being over 350 native applications for OS X is a far cry from the 5000+ Universal apps available today. Nonetheless, as far as Apple has come it’s clear that much was already in place 6 years ago. And with the Leopard launch coming soon, OS X is now really reaching its stride. You can’t help but wonder where we’ll be 6 years from now (OS XI?). In any case, happy birthday to our favorite OS! [ Link to original post ]

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Viewer Prank: Police Raid Justin.tv

Posted by Eunjin Gregorio under Uncategorized

When a bunch of geeks live their life online, it’s tempting to do things to disrupt those lives and watch the fun from the comfort of your computer. So it’s no surprise that some fairly funny pranks have already been played on four day old Justin.tv.

The best so far? Wednesday at 1:40 AM someone spoofed the caller id of the Justin.tv official cell phone number (which is listed on the Justin.tv site), called the San Francisco police department and reported a stabbing in the North Beach apartment. [ Continue reading at TechCrunch ]

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Justin.TV 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

Posted by Eunjin Gregorio under Uncategorized

While reading an article at PaulGraham.com, I stumbled upon Justin.TV, a very interesting website. He’re are the facts about Justin.TV

1. Justin wears the camera 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Even in the bathroom. Even on a date.
2. The man, Justin, with gear:

   

3. This is really live. Honest. Right now.
4. Justin will wear the camera until the day he dies. By which we mean if he takes it off, we’ll kill him.

Visit Justin.TV

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TGIF: This week’s best posts

Posted by Adam Pash under Uncategorized

• LH Top 10: Free Mac Downloads
  "Sure there's tons of fantastic Mac software out there, but most of it isn't free - unless you know where to look, that is."
• Alpha Geek: Make Microsoft Word less annoying
  "It's time to take back the word processor, to put Word in its place and make it your ally instead of your adversary."
• Hack Attack: Roll your own killer audio player with foobar2000
  "Let's dive into foobar2000 and take a look at some of the best plug-ins and methods for customizing this player to fit your needs."
• Geek to Live: Instant, no-overhead blog with Tumblr
  "A new blog format, called a "tumblelog," is a no-hassle, no-writing-required way to share those bits and maintain a personal site with the least possible commitment."
• Screenshot Tour: The beautiful and varied world of foobar2000
  "When I highlighted the wildly customizable foobar2000 on Tuesday, I asked readers to send in screenshots of their latest and greatest foobar2000 configurations, and dear readers, you did not disappoint."
• Download TaxCut for free
  "Travelocity's got a deal going on with H&R Block and offering the TaxCut software as a free download for Mac or Windows."
• OS Encryption Showdown: Vista's BitLocker vs. Mac's FileVault
  "If BitLocker and FileVault went head to head in a cage match, who would emerge victorious?"
• Calculate your caffeine intake
  "Ever wonder just how much caffeine you're ingesting every day?"
• Download of the Day: ThinkingRock (All platforms)
  "Free personal organizer ThinkingRock helps you work David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology to the letter right on your desktop."
• Make your computer react when you leave and arrive
  "Wouldn't it be nice if your screensaver automatically unlocked when you sat down at your computer, and locked up again once you got up and left?"
• How to double your reading rate
  "Despite the incredible importance of reading, most people are wildly inefficient at it."
• Ask Lifehacker: Download a whole web page full of music?
  "...your next step is to get a good download manager that can help you suck down files without all those extraneous clicks."

Best Online Documentaries

Posted by Eunjin Gregorio under Uncategorized

“A comprehensive list of documentaries, to be viewed online for free”

start watching | digg story

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Spike TV’s Sexiest Babe Found in CS Lab

Posted by Eunjin Gregorio under Uncategorized

I walked in to the undergrad CS department lab here at Pitt and found one of Spike TV’s Sexiest Bracket Babes sitting working on a CS programming assignment! Voting for her is a vote for sexy geeks everywhere!

read more | digg story

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