Witheringtree » Links

Searchme Visual Search

David Freerksen — Wed, 06 May 2009 06:08:58 +0000

I thought this was pretty cool. I play with it for about an hour when I first found it. Searchme is a search engine with a twist. Instead of showing a list of text based results, it visually shows the results. I guess it’s a screenshot of the website and displayed in the iTunes CoverFlow type design. You just have to see it for yourself.

[Update July 28, 2008] I just came across Viewzi which is supposed to be the same type of thing as Searchme. To be honest with you I think it’s broken. I searched for “david” and got some completely unrelated stuff. The first link was a few recent news articles. None of which had the word “david” in them.

Flex Explorers

David Freerksen — Wed, 06 May 2009 06:04:10 +0000

I’ve always been a big fan of the Flex Style Explorer. I use it almost on a daily basic. But I’ve now run across more explorers. The first is the Flex Filter Explorer. I think the biggest issue I have with this one is it only shows the MXML code and not the Actionscript code. The next and final explorer is the Flex Primitive Explorer. This one does primitive shapes using the Graphics class.

OS X Software

David Freerksen — Wed, 06 May 2009 05:59:54 +0000

There is just so much great software out there for the Mac. Before I got a Mac I was under the impression software for the Mac was few and far between. Here is a list of some great places for Mac software or individual software:

Cool OSX Apps
TinyAlarm
MacUpdate
Mac Specialist – Essential Mac OS X Software
SCPlugin
Titanium Software

Very First Video On YouTube

David Freerksen — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:18:20 +0000

Here is the very first video ever added to YouTube by one of the original YouTube creators, Jawed Karim, at 8:27 pm on Saturday April 23rd, 2005:

Internet Archives

David Freerksen — Tue, 05 May 2009 04:13:35 +0000

After I found this, I spent the next 3 hours looking up websites. It’s call the Wayback Machine. Not to be confused with the time machine from the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.

What it does is allows you to look at old versions of a website. Some of the images won’t be displayed but it still works pretty well. It’s funny to look at older versions of websites.

Check out Google.com from back in December 1998.

Dropbox: A flash drive, without the flash drive

David Freerksen — Tue, 05 May 2009 03:46:32 +0000

A while back Dropbox held a private beta. I missed out on that by about 3 days. That’s what I get for being lazy and procrastinating.
Well, yesterday they came out of private beta. Dropbox is a little similar to Subversion but without merging. Better yet, think if it as a flash drive that you don’t have to carry around.

Dropbox is a freeware application that
instantaneously backs up and syncs your files over the internet and to
any computer. After you install, it will create a
folder on your hard drive. Any file you put inside that folder
will automatically be synced and monitored for changes, and each time a
change is saved, it backs up and syncs the file again over all of the machines connected to that folder. Dropbox even does revision history. So if you accidentally saved a file and
wanted to revert to an old version or deleted a file, Dropbox can
recover the previous version.

Dropbox even has a web interface so if you are on a machine that doesn’t have the Dropbox software installed you can still work with your files and even add files.

DropBox is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux and is free to sign up and allows up to 2Gb for a free account. Paid accounts are coming soon.

FancyZoom 1.1

David Freerksen — Tue, 05 May 2009 03:16:45 +0000

I recently found FancyZoom 1.1 which is the Mac-esque version of Lightbox or Thickbox. I like it and I think it has a lot of potential. The pros and the cons:

Pros:

It doesn’t black out the entire screen to display the image.
Allows you to be able to click on other images or links that are on the screen while the image is open.
Very much styled after the Mac.

Cons:

Only works with images.
All image links on the page will display using the zoom, not specific ones with a CSS or piece of Javascript attached to the link.
Every once in a while the loading image doesn’t display and you get a strange white box with the ‘X’ in the top left corner because either the image can’t load or hasn’t loaded.
Very much styled after the Mac.

I wonder what would happen to it is you linked to an image that wasn’t there? Does anyone know what would happen? I’m too lazy to find out for myself.

ActionScript Error Repository

David Freerksen — Tue, 05 May 2009 03:14:35 +0000

I found a great resource today called the ActionScript Error Repository. Let’s say you are working in Flash, Flex, or AIR and you get a fun error message: Error #2032: Stream Error. You can search for the error code and it will explain the cause and how to fix it. It will give an example of bad that that will cause a similar error and it will also give you an example of good code that you can copy/paste.

10 Reasons It Would Rule To Date A Unicorn

David Freerksen — Tue, 05 May 2009 02:33:08 +0000

All I have to say is wow. 10 Reasons It Would Rule To Date A Unicorn

Smart Grid Augmented Reality

David Freerksen — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 09:52:06 +0000

A friend of mine sent me a link today of a really cool site. It’s called the Smart Grid Augmented Reality.

What you do is print out a piece of paper. Once it is printed out, you click on either “Wind Turbine” or “Salar Energy” on the site. This will open up a new window that will connect to your webcam. Hold the printed piece of paper up to the webcam and watch what happens.

The picture you printed will fold out and build a screne for you. You can turn and tilt the piece of paper and it will turn and tilt along with you.

There is even a link to the source code using the FLARToolKit so you can build your own if you want.