Category: ifttt

By Myra Per-Lee, Inventor Spot – Inventions, Innovations, and Interesting Ideas for the Inventor in All of Us – August 03, 2012 at 12:12AM

If I were to tell you that you can get a complete, worldwide
patent search conducted on your invention idea for $9.99, you would
think I just swallowed a whole lot of advertising bull.  I thought it
was too good to be true too, so I went to the source, the company that
owns and offers the ideaAPP for Apple and PC products, and asked the
founder an irritating amount of questions.  He answered.

By Justin Pot, MakeUseOf – August 04, 2012 at 04:31PM

Is your ringtone boring, phone-like and stupid? Don’t be embarrassed – mine was too. Until, that is, I saw the light and changed it to one of the best sounds in the known universe: the Underworld Theme from the original Super Mario Bros. Now every time my phone rings, the people around me gaze in wonder and listen to my awesome ringtone, wishing they thought of that before me.

And don’t get me started about my text message ring – it’s the coin sound from that same game. Every time I get a text I feel as though I’m one percent closer to earning an afterlife.

Keep reading to find just a few sites where you can download music and sound effects from a few of video gaming’s classics. For a while I’ve hidden this knowledge from the web, mainly because of my selfish desire to feel unique. I know the second people realize this is even hypothetically possible everyone on earth will do it, and I wanted to keep it to myself. Sadly the pressures of writing three blog posts a week mean this week I’m caving in and revealing my satisfying secret to the world.

If you live in Boulder, Colorado, however, you are forbidden from reading this. This is my thing, not yours.

Mario Ringtones

Let’s start with the sounds you’re actually looking for – Mario. There are a variety of fansites around the web offering the music and the sounds; I looked through a few and think these are the best. Yes, I basically just Googled, but that’s like half of what bloggers do. Get over it.

Mario Mayhem offers direct MP3 links to songs from almost every Mario game, if that’s what you’re looking for. Alternatively, if you’re more interested in sound effects, The Mushroom Kingdom has an extensive collection.

Legend of Zelda Ringtones

Do you like saving princesses, but prefer to do so wearing a pointy green hat? Fair enough. Here are some site with potential ringtones from The Legend of Zelda.

This site seems to be the best collection of Zelda sounds on the web. You’ll basically find every sound effect from every game.  Are you more interested in music? Zelda Universe offers every song from every soundtrack.

You probably just want this sound, though:

Pokemon Ringtones

If you want your phone sound to be a Pokemon, fine, I won’t argue with you. Kingdom Hearts Insider has a disturbingly complete collection for some reason. For some reason, all of these sounds are followed by what I assume is a Japanese explanation of the sound, so get an audio editor ready for cutting that out. Unless you like it, I guess.

The sounds come from the old Gameboy game, so don’t expect to hear the annoying cries from the cartoon. The original 151 Pokemon are there.

The Sounds of Sonic

If you like inexplicably blue hedgehogs that run through dystopian landscapes you’ll be happy to know that fansite SonicHQ offers every piece of Sonic music ever, even the terrible ones.

I can’t find any sites with just the sound effects; share it below if you can. Alternatively, if you own Sonic 2, fire it up and go to the settings. You’ll find the “Sound Check” there; record the sounds from there yourself.

Audio Editors

Do you need to edit some of these sounds, or convert them to MP3? You’ll need an audio editor. I recommend Audacity for Linux and Windows. Christian outlined how to create valid MP3 files with it. If you’re on a Mac you can still use Audacity, but it might be easier to use Garageband or Macsome audio editor.

Once you’ve edited your file you can use it as your ringtone.It’s probably easy to find in your phone’s settings, but if not check the user manual.

Conclusion

If you’re done reading this and you’re not hard at work improving your phone, shame on you – you can do better. Find the best sound in all the collections above and change that ringtone now.

I hope you enjoyed this useless article, and that you keep the uselessness going by sharing links to other collections in the comments below. For example, my friend and colleague Dave LeClair used to use the Mario coin as his ringtone, but then discovered this collection of Diablo ringtones.

Together we can make the real world sound like a retro video game, and in no way is that not awesome.

By info@innovationamerica.us (Administrator), InnovationDAILY for Syndication – Saturday August 04, 2012

In their 30 years of studying leadership, coauthors James Kouzes and Barry Posner have discovered the practices common to the best leaders. We’ve grabbed a few from the fifth edition of their “Leadership Challenge” to help you put together your own bench of superstars.

When people recall their personal-best leadership experiences, they always think about some kind of challenge. Why? Because personal and business hardships have a way of making people come face-to-face with who they really are and what they’re capable of becoming. They test people, and they require inventive ways of dealing with new situations. They tend to bring out the best in people.

Read more…

By Whitson Gordon, Lifehacker – August 04, 2012 at 11:00AM

Wi-Fi is one of the most useful and important parts of using a computer, and yet it’s also one of the most frustrating. If you’re plagued by slow speeds, bad reception, and other Wi-Fi issues, here are 10 ways you can power up the Wi-Fi in your home.

10. Use the Latest Wi-Fi Technologies

One of the best ways to make sure your network is as fast and reliable as possible is to use up-to-date hardware. We’ve gone through the basics of router hardware before, so check out the first lesson of our networking Night School for the full lowdown. The main thing you need to know: Wireless A, B, and G are old and slow, and wireless N will give you the fastest speeds around. Note that you’ll need both a wireless N router and a wireless N card in your computer if you want the full speed boost.

9. Find the Perfect Spot for Your Router

Routers may be ugly, but that doesn’t mean you should hide them behind the TV cabinet. If you want the best signal, you’ll need it out in the open, free of any walls and obstructions. Point the antennas vertically, and elevate the router if you can (one reader found that his attic was the perfect spot). Lastly, make sure its in the center of your house, so you have the best coverage possible throughout your home. Photo by Oliver Bruchez.

8. Find the Right Wireless Channel

If you have neighbors, their routers may be interfering with yours and causing the signal to degrade. Wireless routers can operate on a number of different channels, and you want yours on a channel with as little interference as possible. Use a tool like Wi-Fi Stumbler or Wi-Fi Analyzer to find the perfect channel in your house. We have more detailed instructions on how to do that here.

7. Get Rid of Interference from Other Appliances

Other routers aren’t the only thing that can cause interference. Cordless phones, microwaves, and other appliances can muck with your signal as well. Buying a dual band router can help with this, but you can also buy cordless phones on other bands too. If you don’t want to buy new hardware, you can always try moving your router further away from interfering appliances, too.

6. Thwart Wi-Fi Thieves with Better Security

Even if your router has a password, it can be really easy to hack. There are easy ways to find out if someone is stealing your Wi-Fi, but the best thing to do is just lock them out with better security. Using a WPA password is absolutely essential, but even those can be cracked pretty easily—so see our security recommendations here to fully protect your network from prying eyes.

5. Control Bandwidth-Hogging Applications

If someone in your house regularly video chats, plays online games, torrents files, or uses services like Netflix, they may be hogging bandwidth and making the internet slower for everyone else. Luckily, you can use something called Quality of Service—or QoS for short—to reign in those bandwidth hogs. With QoS, you can prioritize certain applications (say, video chat) over others (like video games) so the most important applications get the bandwidth they deserve. For more info, check out our full guide to setting up QoS on your router. Image by Juan Pablo Olmo.

4. Increase Wi-Fi Range with DIY Tricks

If your router still won’t reach far enough, you can extend its range with simple DIY tricks. Our favorite is the Windsurfer tin foil hack, thougn you can also use an old beer can or a cooking strainer to extend your router’s range. The results won’t necessarily be mind blowing, but you should be able to eke a bit more distance out of your Wi-Fi network with minimal effort.

3. Boost Your Router’s Signal with a Bit of Hacking

Another great way to extend your range is to hack your router and install the DD-WRT firmware. Not only will it give you a ton of great security features and other enhancements, but it gives you the option to boost your transmitting power. This can be dangerous for your router, but most routers can handle an increase up to 70 mW without causing any issues, and you’ll be able to access your network from much further away!

2. Turn an Old Router Into a Wi-Fi Repeater

If that still doesn’t help, you’ll need to get a range extender for your home. They aren’t super expensive, but if you don’t want to pay for another piece of hardware, you can actually turn an old wireless router into an extender with the aforementioned DD-WRT firmware. Note that you may not be able to get as fast of a connection through your extender, but if you just can’t seem to get Wi-Fi on the edge of your house, this’ll get the job done on the cheap.

1. Set Your Router to Reboot on a Schedule

If you’re one of the many folks that has to reboot their router every so often so it doesn’t drop out, there is a solution. You can run a few tests to make sure the problem isn’t caused by heat, old firmware, or excess downloading, but an easy way to solve the problem is just automatically reboot it once a day or so. You can do this with DD-WRT or just a regular old outlet timer. When you’re done, you shouldn’t have to reboot your router so often (which is great if your router’s all the way up in the attic).

After going through these tweaks, you should find that your home Wi-Fi is faster, more reliable, and more secure than ever. When you’re done, make sure you check out our favorite clever uses for Wi-Fi, too—after all, it isn’t just for connecting to the internet.

By info@innovationamerica.us (Administrator), InnovationDAILY for Syndication – Saturday August 04, 2012

Ever wondered how much your company is worth?

In this episode of eLagaan Whiteboard Friday, the eLagaan team discusses how to valuate a company, when starting a startup, raising their venture fund, exiting the company.  Some of the formulas to use are based on net profit or revenue.

Read more…

By Alan Henry, Lifehacker – August 03, 2012 at 07:00AM

We’ve shown you how to use a sheet of paper to test the sharpness of your knives, but if you’re no fan of slicing paper, Master Bladesmith Bob Kramer has a few other ways to make sure your blades are in good condition too. The next time you’re prepping a dish that requires tomatoes or onions, pay attention to the way your knife cuts through it—they may be due for a good honing.

The video above tells all, and while Kramer also shows us the paper trick we mentioned before, he also uses a rolled-up magazine page to really put his knife to the test. Still, his onion test is most compelling: if your blade can slice cleanly through an onion like his, you’re in good shape. Ultimately, if your knife can make clean cuts in paper or magazine paper, make smooth slices into a tomato without catching on the skin, or dig right into onion skin without trying to slide off the surface, you have a sharp knife.. I admit, I cringed when he dulled that blade against his honing steel just to show you what a dull blade looked like.

Sadly, I doubt many of the knives in my kitchen could pass that test right now, so it might be time for a good honing or trip to my favorite sharpener. Speaking of honing, we’ve shown you how to do that before, but Kramer has videos on how to properly hone or stone a knife as well, if you’re looking to perfect your technique.

What Is Sharp? Bob Kramer Has Five Ways to Tell If Your Knife Is Sharp Enough | The Kitchn

By (author unknown), The Big Picture – August 03, 2012 at 02:50PM

Sophie Van Gestel of Norway digs out a ball during a beach volleyball match against Brazil, Aug. 3, 2012. (Dave Martin/Associated Press)

By Alan Henry, Lifehacker – August 03, 2012 at 07:30AM

Windows/Android: Hideman is a VPN service that’s free for 4 hours per week and lets you select the country you want to look like you’re coming from while you surf, perdect for getting around regional restrictions on streaming media services.

We’ve discussed several VPN services before, and even shown you how to roll your own, but if you’re looking for a simpler option, Hideman is it. The service is ideal for getting around regional restrictions, but you can use it just as easily to stay somewhat anonymous while you surf the web. If you want to surf for longer than 4 hours every month, you’ll have to pony up between $3 for a full week’s browsing up to $69 for a full year. For occasional users, it could be a decent bargain. Hideman’s biggest benefit is its simple interface, and the sheer number of locations you can choose from, including the US, the UK, Canada, Singapore, France, Germany, Australia, and more.

Of course, if a paid service isn’t up your alley, you can always give the Tor project a try, although it definitely requires a bit more setup (but does a better job of protecting your anonymity.) Hideman is available for Windows and Android only.

Hideman | via gHacks

By Mike Masnick, Techdirt. – August 03, 2012 at 01:22PM

Recently we’ve seen a number of cases, both civil and criminal, brought against websites that involve either links or embeds of videos hosted elsewhere. UK student Richard O’Dwyer is facing extradition and criminal charges for hosting a site that did exactly that. But, as many of us have wondered in the past, how is such a site infringing at all? After all, the videos themselves were uploaded by other people to other sites. The streaming occurs from those other servers. The embed just points people to where the content is, but it does that neutrally, no matter what the content might be.

A few months ago, we wrote about how the MPAA had jumped into a copyright infringement appeal involving porn producer Flava Works against a video “bookmarking” site called MyVidster. The MPAA argued that links and embeds are infringing, in support of a questionable district court ruling against MyVidster.

The appeals court ruling has now come out, written by Judge Posner, and it’s absolutely worth reading (embedded below). Posner goes into great detail about how MyVidster’s linking and embedding features don’t even come close to infringing. They’re not infringement and they’re not contributory infringement. He goes through a pretty accurate description of how embedding works, and why MyVidster is separate from the uploading/hosting/streaming. But then he notes that those watching the videos aren’t even infringing, so there isn’t even any infringement for MyVidster to contribute to:

Is myVidster therefore a contributory infringer if a
visitor to its website bookmarks the video and later
someone clicks on the bookmark and views the video?
myVidster is not just adding a frame around the video
screen that the visitor is watching. Like a telephone
exchange connecting two telephones, it is providing a
connection between the server that hosts the video and
the computer of myVidster’s visitor. But as long as the
visitor makes no copy of the copyrighted video that he
is watching, he is not violating the copyright owner’s
exclusive right, conferred by the Copyright Act, “to
reproduce the copyrighted work in copies” and “distribute
copies . . . of the copyrighted work to the public.” 17
U.S.C. §§ 106(1), (3). His bypassing Flava’s pay wall by
viewing the uploaded copy is equivalent to stealing
a copyrighted book from a bookstore and reading it.
That is a bad thing to do (in either case) but it is not
copyright infringement. The infringer is the customer
of Flava who copied Flava’s copyrighted video by uploading
it to the Internet.

Got that? It’s actually important. He’s saying that those who are watching a video that someone else uploaded are not infringing on the reproduction right under copyright. Only the uploader has potentially violated that right. So there can’t be a contributory infringement claim over that right.

Of course, copyright includes a few other rights beyond reproduction. There’s also the “public performance” right. After running through a few different theories there, Posner again finds no clear case of infringement.

Flava contends that by providing a connection to
websites that contain illegal copies of its copyrighted
videos, myVidster is encouraging its subscribers to circumvent
Flava’s pay wall, thus reducing Flava’s income.
No doubt. But unless those visitors copy the videos
they are viewing on the infringers’ websites, myVidster
isn’t increasing the amount of infringement…. An employee of Flava who embezzled corporate
funds would be doing the same thing—reducing Flava’s
income—but would not be infringing Flava’s copyrights
by doing so. myVidster displays names and addresses
(that’s what the thumbnails are, in effect) of videos
hosted elsewhere on the Internet that may or may not be
copyrighted. Someone who uses one of those addresses
to bypass Flava’s pay wall and watch a copyrighted
video for free is no more a copyright infringer than if
he had snuck into a movie theater and watched a copyrighted
movie without buying a ticket. The facilitator
of conduct that doesn’t infringe copyright is not a contributory
infringer.

In other words, the person watching the video isn’t doing a public performance (though the hosting server may be). But since myVidster is only helping the person watching the video, then it’s not violating the public performance right either.

As we noted in our post about the original case, part of the ruling hinged on myVidster losing its DMCA safe harbor protections by not having a repeat infringer policy. But Posner notes that the DMCA safe harbor isn’t even in question here because those viewing the videos have not infringed and thus there is no copyright infringement related to myVidster for showing the embeds:

myVidster received
“takedown” notices from Flava designed to activate
the duty of an Internet service provider to ban repeat
infringers from its website, and Flava contends that
myVidster failed to comply with the notices. But
this is irrelevant unless myVidster is contributing to infringement;
a noninfringer doesn’t need a safe harbor.

This ruling makes it clear that watching embedded videos is not infringing and then neither is hosting the embed code. While limited to the 7th Circuit, this ruling could still be quite handy in a number of other cases, including O’Dwyer’s and the Rojadirecta case, which also involves embedded videos. Eric Goldman is a bit more skeptical of the impact of the ruling, arguing that Posner reasoning isn’t particularly clear (well, he calls it a “train wreck.”) While I rarely disagree with Goldman, I’m not convinced that this is such a train wreck. While Posner’s explanation is, at times, convoluted, he does clearly make the main point: if there’s infringement, it’s completely disconnected from the user watching the video and the site doing the embedding.

Either way, Posner vacates the lower courts ruling, and notes that there are a few other issues with the case (mainly having to do with some other aspects of myVidster’s business), but the main fight shows no infringement. Oh yeah, and Posner doesn’t even reference the MPAA’s filing in the case, suggesting how compelling that argument was…

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By Aaron Cohen, kottke.org – August 03, 2012 at 10:15AM

Nate Jones was disappointed about how women’s Olympic beach volleyball has been photographed at the Olympics so he decided to show us what other sports look like through the lens of women’s Olympic beach volleyball photographer’s lens. The results are hilarious.

(via ★mathowie)

Tags: Nate Jones   Olympic Games   photography   sports   volleyball