Songbird

Songbird is a Web player built from Firefox's browser engine. Songbird is open source, will run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux and supports user contributed, cross-platform extensions. Songbird plays your music too - it has all the features you expect in a desktop media player, and it’s free. Give it a whirl at http://www.songbirdnest.com/home

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Paul McCartney

Paul McCartney has his own website – he even blogs occasionally! Check out http://paulmccartney.com/main.php

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Youth Resources

A new page has been set up on the STDC website featuring the activities of the community’s youth. Currently the page includes a photo gallery from the “Can Do” startup event and the Human Powered Vehicle challenge. The photo gallery uses a nifty new system called “Lightbox” which displays full-size photos in a much more interesting way, and is an example of how web technology is evolving.. Check it out at http://www.stdc.co.nz/index.php?page=youthresources.php

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Photoshop Airbrushing Tutorial

If you’re a Photoshop user and you’ve wondered how they “touch up” photos of models, this tutorial is for you. It takes you through the steps involved in creating a magazine-cover ready model shot from a fairly ordinary photo. Check out http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=171753

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Snipshot

Now you don’t need expensive software to edit your digital photos. Snipshot lets you upload and edit your pictures online, handling images up to 5000 by 5000 pixels wide or 10mb in size. Snipshot imports and exports to and from your Flickr (http://www.flickr.com) account and is free. Check it out at http://www.snipshot.com/

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MOG

Mog is a free service that provides you with a free web page to share your musical tastes with others. The downloadable Mog-O-Matic tool scans all of your music files and adds them to your online profile so you can find other people who share your musical tastes. It includes the usual tools for creating blogs, customising your personal page, uploading photos and so on. The develoeprs claim you'll soon be able to link your MOG profile to your MySpace account. Sign up for free at http://mog.com/

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Brandon Hardesty’s Re-enactments

Brandon Hardesty re-enacts scenes from famous movies using only himself (playing every character) and household items. Despite the low budget approach, each production is hilarious and brilliant in it’s accuracy. He has re-enacted scenes from The Princess Bride, The Shining, Pulp Fiction and more – check them out at http://www.brandonhardesty.com/reenactments.html

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What’s Everyone Doing?

This website attempts to chronicle what everyone in the world is doing right now – pop along and add your own current activity ("reading the paper" perhaps?) and see what keeps the world occupied. http://www.whateveryonedoes.com/

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Surrealist Art

Artist Charnine has been impacted by the Masters as well as by the surrealists but his style is pure Charnine. He combines whimsical images with precision in his execution. The result is poetic and seasoned. Check out his amazing surrealist paintings at http://www.charnine.com/paintings/paintings_index.htm

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Giza Pyramids Walkaround

Jason Clay walked around the pyramids of Giza and took a photo every ten steps. Check out the resulting video animation at http://www.jasonclay.com/pyramidswalkaround.html

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Atmospheric Optics

Light playing on water drops, dust or ice crystals in the atmosphere produces a host of visual spectacles - rainbows, halos, glories, coronas and many more. Some can be seen almost every day or so, some are once in a lifetime sights. Check out Les Cowley’s Atmospheric Optics gallery at http://www.atoptics.co.uk/

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Google Browser Sync

Google Browser Sync for Firefox is an extension that continuously synchronises your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions. When you first start Firefox, your settings are uploaded to your Google account (you’ll be prompted to create a free account if you don’t have one). You can choose to encrypt this data for privacy if you wish. Then whenever you start Firefox on another computer that has the Google Browser Sync extension installed, your settings from both browsers will be merged – bookmarks, cookies, stored passwords etc. This is very handy if you regularly work on more than one computer. Download the extension for free at http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/browsersync/index.html

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Bank of New Zealand fraud

It may be too late to mention this, but you may have noticed a flood of emails purporting to be from the Bank of New Zealand, containing a message like this: “Bank of New Zealand technical services department is carrying out a scheduled software upgrade to improve the quality of services for the bank’s customers. We request you to go to the link below and confirm your bank details.”. This is a SCAM. Although the email and the link appear to be from the Bank of New Zealand, they are not. Clicking the link will take you to a fake website designed to collect your personal bank details for fraudulent purposes. Do not respond to the email, or click the links within it. If you have mistakenly followed the link and entered personal information, you should immediately change your BNZ password and call the BNZ on 0800 999 269 or +64 4 494 7153 from overseas. Banks never send this sort of request by email. You should not respond to any requests for personal information by email. You can find out more at http://www.bnz.co.nz/

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X-Men website

The website for the current X-Men movie is an example of Flash animation at it’s best. Make sure you have the Flash 8 plugin installed (grab it from http://www.adobe.com) and browse to http://www.x-menthelaststand.com/

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Happy Birthday Mum!

It’s my Mum Florence’s birthday today so if you see her while you’re out and about wish her all the best! Now, to make this a legitimate article entry... http://www.birthdatabase.com is a U.S. site that lets you search for an american’s birthday by entering their name and approximate age. SocialNotes (http://www.socialnotes.com/) let’s you build a website to celebrate an event such as a birthday or wedding without having and technical computer knowledge – you choose from their range of colours, fonts and styles and pay a small fee, after which you can upload images. Whether you want to tell the world about your happy event, or you're looking for a singular, personalised gift for a wedding, new baby, birthday, anniversary, or graduation - SocialNotes is an easy solution.

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Structured procrastination

I’ve been meaning to post this link for some time now... Anyway... procrastination does not necessarily mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganise their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important. If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him do it. However, the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important. John Perry has written an interesting essay called “Structured Procrastination” at http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/ and as soon as I get a chance I’m going to check it out...

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Tesla Down Under

A Tesla coil is device to develop very high voltages pioneered by Nicola Tesla over 100 years ago. In its simplest form it is an air cored transformer driven by discharging a high voltage capacitor through a few of the primary turns. This sets up a high frequency resonance in the secondary coil. This resonance occurs between the inductance of the coil and the capacitance of a rounded metal object (typically a donut shaped toroid) and a very high voltage results in streamers directly into the air or sparks to nearby objects. The upshot of this is an amazing display of lightning bolts streaming from the equipment. Peter Terren from Perth is a 40-something year old, 1st year university physics dropout who builds Tesla coil and other high voltage toys in his spare time – check out his site at http://tesladownunder.com/index.html

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Amazing R/C Plane video

Geek24.com have posted a video of a remote-controlled plane being flown indoors by a master pilot. The control and manoeuvres are incredible – check out the video at http://www.geek24.com/g/2006/06/03/amazing-r-c-airplane-flying-what-a-pilot

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Orrery Maker Brian Greig

Named for the Earl of Orrery who, at the beginning of the 18th Cent. in Ireland, had one made for his personal collection of scientific apparatus. Orreries are three dimensional models of how celestial bodies orbit the Sun in our solar system. They may be exceedingly complex or very simple, finished with precious stones and gold, or made from wood and paper. Brian Greig is an Australian who builds orreries for sale, and you can check out his site and amazing catalogue at http://www.orrerymaker.com/

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Crystal Cave of the Giants

Photographer Richard D. Fisher has chronicled the interior of one of the most amazing caves on Earth – the Crystal caves of Chihuahua Mexico. The temperature and humidity are so high that humans can only bear the environment for a few minutes at a time. The cave contains crystals that weigh many tonnes and cover the walls and floors. Check out the photos at http://www.canyonsworldwide.com/crystals/index.html

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Office supplies trebuchet

Bored at work? Build your own 3" trebuchet out of paperclips and throw balls of blu-tac up to an amazing 4 feet. Step-by-step instructions are at http://www.instructables.com/ex/i/535B13C242DD1029AC23001143E7E506/ (or visit the On The Net article archive at http://www.digitalus.co.nz/onthenet/ for a friendlier, clickable link).

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Tornado Pictures

Check out these amazing tornado photos from Warren Faidley, a renowned storm photographer. These photos are also available for purchase in higher resolutions. http://www.weatherstock.com/tornadocat3.html

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Da Vinci Code tour

Some of the amazing, spectacular and historic location used the Da Vinci code movie and book have been captured as panoramic (360 degree) spherical images at http://www.panoramas.dk/da-vinci-code/ You’ll need Quicktime Player installed (free http://apple.com/quicktime/). You can look around the amazingly detailed virtual environments which include the room housing the Mona Lisa, The Louvre, and the Temple Church in London.

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Soft drinks - unsafe beverages?

The MindConnection website at http://www.mindconnection.com/library/health/softdrinks.htm paints an interesting picture of soft drinks, claiming among other things that the carbonation (the “fizz”) weakens bones by causing the body to use excess calcium counteracting it’s acidity. Whether you believe it or not it’s worth a read...

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Fubon

Once in a while a website comes along that is just amazing to look at – fubon is one them. Check out the homepage of the Russian web design company at http://fubon.co.uk/ (you’ll need Flash installed)

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Twelve Principles of Finding a Lost Object

So you’ve lost something, and your first thought - your basic instinct - is to look for it. You’re ready to start rummaging about. To hunt for it in a random, and increasingly frenetic, fashion. To ransack your own house. This is the most common mistake people make. And it can doom their search from the start. Read Doctor Solomon’s Twelve Principles of Finding a Lost Object at http://www.professorsolomon.com/pr1.html

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Making your own fonts

If you’d like to try your hand at building your own fonts without needing a degree in typography, take a look at BitFontMaker at http://pentacom.jp/soft/ex/font/edit.html

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