Month: March 2013

By Ben Blanquera, Techlife – April 21, 2010 at 09:00PM

Battelle – URS Corporation awards Battelle $61 million for on-site laboratory and technical support

By Sean Michael Ragan, MAKE – April 21, 2010 at 10:08AM

Instructables has a good thing going with their regular “theme” contests. They just finished up with paracord; now they’re starting in on coffee cups. Reminds me of the “MacGyver Challenge” that ReadyMade magazine used to run back before their facelift. Shown above is user bertus52x11‘s simple hack for catching the plaster that would otherwise fall everywhere when you drill into the ceiling.

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By Rich Whittle, Business Opportunities Weblog – January 26, 2010 at 01:10PM

According to a story at OPENForum.com, stories of Zappos, the online shoe retailer, and how they pioneered a new way of doing customer service, using social media, and selling products online are now all over the business and trade media.

Whether or not you think that the Zappos model may work for your business, there are definitely some lessons you can take away from their 10 guiding principles.

1. Deliver WOW Through Service.

2. Embrace and Drive Change.

3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness.

4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded.

5. Pursue Growth and Learning.

6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication.

7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit.

8. Do More With Less.

9. Be Passionate and Determined.

10. Be Humble.

Photo by Zappos.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

By Dennis Crouch, Patent Law Blog (Patently-O) – May 03, 2010 at 02:42PM

By Kevin Purdy, Lifehacker – May 01, 2010 at 12:00PM

There’s more to Google Maps than a place you double-check your directions. Google’s data-stuffed site offers a lot of helpful tools for vacationers, spreadsheet nerds, bikers, and others. Today we’re digging into Google’s data-rich geo-tool and pulling out some helpful lesser-known features.

Photo by heiwa4126.

10. Use Starred Addresses Instead of Your Memory

It’s a subtle little thing, but clicking the star icon next to a location listing in Google Maps is a real time saver. On Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian phones—and, presumably, iPhones in some future update—you can pulled up “Starred Items” when you’re plugging in the address you’re getting directions to. It’s a lot faster than thumb typing, and if you’re assembling a temporary list of places to go, starred items can be a disposable checklist.

9. Show a “You Are Here” Marker

It’s easy to miss, between the four-point navigation tool and the zoom slider. But click that little button while using Firefox or Google Chrome and, through the magic of the geolocation standard, Maps will use nearby Wi-Fi and IP data to pin down a (rough) approximation of where you’re at. It’s convenient when you’re in a foreign place with only a loose sense of direction—or if, like some Lifehacker editors, you seem to have inherited no sense of direction in general. (Original post)

8. Create Multi-Day Walking Itineraries

Want to get around a new city without having to pull out a smartphone or big folding map at every other intersection? Google City Tours pieces together a multi-stop itinerary for you with easy walking directions, formatted for easy printing. The tool has that Google-y quality of knowing what you’re looking for after typing the vaguest search, but you can also move your destination pins to any specific address. If nothing else, it’s a paper-saver: one map and set of directions, as opposed to 10 print-outs. (Original post)

7. Fine-Tune or Report A Bad Location

Maps doesn’t get everything right every time. If Maps has a marker that’s off, a wrong number, or a dead web site listed, you can sometimes fix it yourself. Click the pin for an address, hit the link for “More,” and select “Edit Details.” It won’t work on businesses that have “claimed” their listing through the Local Business Center, and there are limits on what you can move, but if you know a pointer is just fundamentally wrong, there’s a fix for that. You can also simply report a problem if you’re unable to actually edit the wrong information.

6. Map Out a Great Bike Route

Google Maps’ biking directions do more than just estimate how long it would take a very slow car to get from one point to another. Google takes traffic into account, sure, but also hills, routes that an area or cycling group has deemed as bike-friendly, designated bike lanes, and other cycle-specific data into account. Bicycle routes that normally wouldn’t be shown in seeking car directions also appear on the map, in a green color that stands out, and the tool as a whole is a cyclist’s best friend in visiting a new area, or looking to vary up their excursions. (Original post)

5. Provide Instant Lat/Long (GPS) Coordinates

If you’re into the geocaching phenomenon, or need GPS coordinates for a webapp or another use, Google Maps can provide them, but not by default. Click the green beaker-style Labs icon in the upper-right corner of Google Maps, then enable the LatLng Tooltip to see coordinates wherever your cursor is, or the LatLng Marker to be able to drop a “pin” wherever you need coordinates. Don’t like to keep experimental stuff running? Try this previously posted bookmarklet, which pops up with the positioning coordinates of whatever’s centered on your Google Map.

4. Show Photos Taken Nearby

Wherever you go, someone has been there before, and probably snagged a picture, too. So if you want to make sure you recognize a particular destination from the road, or want to see what the fuss is about any old place, find it in Maps, click on its pin and access Street View, then look for the Photos button to appear in the upper-right corner when you’re virtually facing the place in Street View. As you “walk” around, you’ll find different perspectives taken from various spots, and possibly some historical photos that have been properly geo-tagged, too, from Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, and Panoramio. (Original post)

3. Find Places Near Any Point on a Map

If you’re searching for a particular place—a street name, a business, or other landmark—you can click on a marker and hit the “Search nearby” link to find coffee, gas, banks, or whatever else you need. What if you don’t have a place to pin down, but want to generally browse an area? Right click anywhere on a Google map, click “What’s Nearby?” in the box that pops up, and Google will create a pin based on a rough street address estimate, or with precise GPS coordinates. From there, you can click on “Search Nearby” in the box that appears in the left-hand pane, and search around without worrying about specifics.

2. Provide Directions via SMS

When you’re lost and out of mobile internet territory, that’s when directions are probably a really helpful thing. If you can still eke out an SMS message, you can text GOOGLE with a message formatted as “Directions A to B,” substituting a town, ZIP code, or street address for A and B. Google will hit you back with the same directions it would provide via Maps, and your friends will say that you’ve saved this road trip.

1. Map Spreadsheet Addresses Onto a Map

Spreadsheets are the best way to gather and organize information in standard form. If you’ve got a whole host of options to keep track of in different locations, the clever Maps/spreadsheet mashup BatchGeo will take your spreadsheet and plot it out across a Google Map. Simply paste your spreadsheet data, and BatchGeo standardizes the addresses and creates a custom My Map, filled with your locations and each one retaining the other data you plugged in about it. It’s a fast way to make it look like you did a whole bunch of work, and that’s never a bad thing. And while it’s not technically a Google Maps feature, we think it should be. (Original post)

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What cool little thing in Google Maps doesn’t get enough love? What hidden-in-plain-sight offerings would you have included in this list? We want to hear about your favorite geo-tools in the comments.

By Brian Barrett, Gizmodo – April 30, 2010 at 08:20PM

Yesterday, the FDA approved a drug called Provenge. It trains the body’s immune system to fight off advanced prostate cancer. It’s also the first proof we have that immunotherapy works in the fight against the disease. More »





Cancer – Health – Conditions and Diseases – Genitourinary – Dendreon

By Franky, ForeverGeek – April 30, 2010 at 09:40AM

Yesterday evening I received an email like at least 10 others every day. The subject was Love the site! and of course we are pleased whenever we get a similarly titled email but usually… they are bait and the email sender wants something from you whenever the subject is a highly emotional expression of love. Of course I was right in my judgement of the email subject:

We listed your site in our “General Pop Culture” category. Just hoping you might be interested in linking back to us. If you do, let me know, and I’ll upgrade your listing to be “featured” – which will make it more visible in the directory for sure.

Also, if you register on our site (free, of course) let me know your username, and I’ll hook your account to your listing – so you can edit your listing, add a Youtube video, RSS feed etc.

But there was something about this email. First let me tell you that I get at least 15-20 emails every day of people who think their stuff is cool enough to be listed on FG (14-19 are PR agencies looking for some love on some 3000 or more sites). But there was something about the email. Something more than a site owner asking for a link and some promotion. Something… Star Wars. I should have known better but against better judgement I decided to mark the email as unread and said to myself that I would visit the site before going to bed.

Actually I managed to finish work rather early yesterday and around 01.30AM I was about to hit the pillow. I had even caught up with V. This was going to be my early night of the month. Boy was I wrong.

GalacticBinder.com, Star Wars Directory and news. Of course the first thing I did was check out our own listing in the category Pop Culture. Now let me tell you that if as a site owner you place ForeverGeek next to Den of Geek and Empire Online, you are doing everything right in my little book. You make my day. But what about lightsabers?

If more so you have awesome Star Wars News and a blog with lots of Star Wars swagalicious, what you actually do is steal away lots of time of my life. And of my sleep. But after having reduced my ‘early night of the month’ to less than 4 hours I left disappointed. Disappointed because I did not get enough lightsabers! That’s right, I had hoped to see more lightsabers and recently there have been some awesome drawings with lightsabers. And Darth Vader. And Batman.

To say that creating a mashup of Batman and Darth Vader epic is would be an understatement. But what if you add lightsabers?

It seems that rumours of a Dark Horse – Batman cross-over comic could become reality? Who knows whether the dream of many a nerd, no I do not mean that bikini, will finally be realised. What we already do have is this awesome drawing by Dave Dorman.

Lightsabers and Batman. Can it get better? Maybe not better but it certainly doesn’t get worse if you throw sharks in the mix, does it?

Via iheartchaos.

Pete, from GalacticBinder, this is to you: you actually just stole more than 4 hours of my life but I do NOT want them back! I want 2 hours a day more so I can browse those more than 1000 sites in your directory. Well done, awesome site man! Still… needz moar lightsabers though.

By Whitson Gordon, Lifehacker – April 29, 2010 at 05:00PM

Windows: When Windows’ Device Manager just can’t seem to give you information about a piece of hardware, free, open-source utility UnknownDevices will point you in the right direction, allowing you to find the necessary drivers to get it up and running.

Screenshot from AddictiveTips.

Generally, when you install a new device, you know what it is and where to find drivers, but if you’ve just done a clean install of Windows, for example, it can be difficult or time-consuming to determine what your many “unknown” devices in Device Manager actually are. Luckily, UnknownDevices is a portable app that can quickly give you more information about the manufacturer and model of those unknown devices to help you on your hunt for the necessary drivers.

Unfortunately, all my devices are communicating just fine with my computer (even the weird ones I dug out of the closet)—so I couldn’t test this one out myself. Software blog AddictiveTips says it worked great for them, though, so if you try it out, let us know how it worked for you in the comments!

UnknownDevices is a free download, Windows only.

By Jason Kottke, kottke.org – April 29, 2010 at 02:35PM

Or so says Errol Morris. It’s certainly the most honest advertising I’ve ever seen.

A bouncer in Birmingham hit me in the face with a crescent wrench five times and my wife’s boyfriend broke my jaw with a fence post. So if you don’t buy a trailer from me, it ain’t gonna hurt my feelings. So come on down to Cullman Liquidation and get yourself a home. Or don’t. I don’t care.

(via fimoculous)

Tags: advertising   Errol Morris   TV   video

By Lee Mathews, Download Squad – April 29, 2010 at 01:31PM

Filed under: Utilities, Troubleshooting

One thing I’ve found with a number of the malware infections that come across my workbench is that they do their best to make it difficult to run cleanup tools like MalwareBytes and SmitFraudFix.

In typical malware author fashion, however, their application-blocking abilities are lazily programmed and pretty easy to sidestep. Here’s what I do when an infection won’t let me run my favorite tools: find the tool I need to run and change its extension from .EXE to .COM.

Windows still knows how to execute .COM files, but most malware isn’t smart enough to intercept this less-used extension. Make the change, and you’ve got an easy workaround to let you run Malwarebytes and some of the other tools you need to clean even a heavily-infected system.

To change a file’s extension, open any folder on your computer and go to tools -> folder options (you can also find Folder Options in the Control Panel). Click the view tab and remove the check mark next to hide extensions for known file types. You can now click on the file (mbam.exe above), replace the exe with com, and launch your app despite the malware’s best efforts to stop you!

This won’t work with every infection, of course, but it has helped me out of a jam on several occasions.

Got another malware-thwarting tip? Share it in the comments!

Change file extensions to outsmart pesky malware originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Malware – Microsoft Windows – Control Panel – Download Squad – Filename extension