Cool | Technology Blog

Download Free Apps for Your Phone at Phoload

December 2nd, 2008

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For mobile phone owners, finding good applications to use can be tiresome. Firstly, you have to ensure that the software is compatible with your particular phone model. In addition, if the application you want is a paid one, you need to scout around to find a suitable freeware alternative.

Phoload makes your search for quality mobile phone applications much easier. In the site’s own words, they are “a community website based on the idea that it should be simple, easy, and fun to discover and download free mobile phone games and applications”.

Downloading any application from Phoload is quite simple. You have an option to select your phone and then view the applications available for it. Alternatively, you can browse through application categories and select the one that appeals to you. Each application is labeled as to whether it’s free, a trial version, ad-supported, etc. While downloading an application, you can either download it to your phone directly or save it to your computer.

Get Your own TV Channel at UStream

November 2nd, 2008

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How many times have you turned on the TV and thought 鈥楬ey, I can create better shows than what’s on’? If you’re one of those people with a penchant for creating your own videos, you now have a place to show them off. You can use UStream.

Ustream is a live interactive video broadcast platform that enables virtually anyone with a camera and an Internet connection to create their own video and broadcast it to a global audience. Ustream is both quick and easy to setup and use. The site claims that creating a channel takes as little as two minutes.

Use Screensavers As Vista Wallpapers

September 30th, 2008

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Windows Vista Ultimate comes with the Dreamscene extra which can turn videos into background screensavers. Several other applications like VLC offer this options as well. A tip was posted over at Tech Recipes today that mentioned a hidden setting in Windows Vista that makes it possible to use any screensaver as a Windows Vista wallpaper.

This hidden setting works in all versions and editions of Windows Vista. All that needs to be done is to execute a single command to execute the screensaver as the Vista wallpaper. The best method is to test run the feature with the default screensavers that are shipped with Windows Vista and use custom ones after making sure that everything is still working properly.

Open a command prompt by pressing Windows R and typing in cmd. Now execute the command aurora.scr /p65552. It can take a few seconds before the changes become apparent. What you should see is the screensaver as the new wallpaper in Windows Vista.

Flickr Tools Tag Galaxy

September 30th, 2008

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Tag Galaxy is one of the Flickr Tools that visualizes Flickr image browsing utilizing tags and planetary constellations to show their related tags. A search for night for instance displays the related tags light, sky, dark and city rotating around the central tag. The interesting aspect of this display is that a click on any other tag other than the main tag will combine the old tag with the new tag to include only pictures that have been tagged with all tags.

Clicking on the central “star” will close in on that star and fill it with exactly 235 picture thumbnails. The planet can be rotated with the left mouse button and zoomed with the mouse wheel. A click on a preview image will load that image in front, another click will load information about the picture like the name of the artist, a description and a link to the Flickr page.

The Flickr page of the selected photo are loaded in a new tab. The user can use the navigation on top of the screen to load another batch of thumbnail pictures from Flickr which replace the old photos shown on the planet.

Use Worldcat to Search Libraries Worldwide

September 26th, 2008

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I never quite understood why most people shy away from going to a library. After all, 9 times out of 10, the information you are looking for is available at your local library. In fact, libraries have an excellent collection, not only of books but also CDs, DVDs, scientific journals, etc.

One common reason people shy away from libraries is that they cannot find what they are looking for. The solution to this problem is to use Worldcat. It is a publicly accessible online interface that lets you search the collections of libraries in your community and around the world.

Worldcat lets you search for books, CDs, DVDs, audio books, journals, and just about anything that a library stocks. The best part is that you can search all the libraries in your area at one go. Just type in your search query and your pin code and voila! a list of all the libraries in your neighborhood with the item you searched for.

NASA Images

July 27th, 2008

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The NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, partnered up with the well respected Internet Archive to provide access to a huge collection of pictures and videos of a total of 21 different collections. The non profit organization will administrate the collection which is expected to go live in the coming week.

Lo and Behold the official website NASA Images is already online and everyone can take a sneak peak of what the website has to offer. It feels a bit crowded over there currently though with many users receiving a dreaded “NASA Images is experiencing high load, please wait 30 seconds and reload.” message instead of images and videos that they came to see.

The user can search the website by keywords, use one of the four major pillars of the website (Universe, Solar System, Earth Astronauts) or enter the website by clicking on one of the missions that are presented in a timeline on the main page.