The Google Book project started a few years ago, where they started scanning the library collection of a number of universities. Well starting today, you can now embed a reference to the digital version of the book in your own blog. You can select any part of the book to be the image which you embed in your blog. Very cool. Finally you can read the old classics from the comfort of your own blog. The Google Book reader displays each page as an image. You can zoom in and out, but you cannot select or copy the text.
Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
Google Books in your blog
September 7, 2007Ringtones for iPhone
September 2, 2007
If you want to convert your favorite song to a ring tone, look no further. Ambrosia‘s excellent iToner is the program for creating and transferring ring tones to the iPhone. Unfortunately, you cannot use any of the songs that you’ve bought on iTunes because of copy-right protection.
National Archives on Demand
August 1, 2007
Amazon in partnership with the National Archives is now offering newsreels in DVD format. They have started to digitize the National Archive collection and using the Amazon owned CustomFlix technology to create the DVDs on demand. I just ordered a copy just to see what it is like. Given the public domain nature of the content, I wonder if I can convert parts of it to Adobe Flash and show it on this blog?
WordPress Video Player
July 19, 2007WordPress now offers a video player. You can upload a video in a number of different formats, they convert it to Adobe Flash and offer a very nice looking player.
I used SnapZ Pro X to capture a couple of minutes of video from the Red Star: Red Army Chorus and Dance Ensemble
How to copy & playback DVDs on OS X
July 4, 2007
Today I tried to copy a DVD that I own to a network drive so that I could watch the movie from any computer on my home network. After a number of false starts and paths that lead to no where, I managed to find a solution that works:
To copy the DVD, you need a DVD copy application that can decrypt the DVD. I found Xilisoft DVD Copy does a good job (it is however not free: $49). The copy creates a folder for the movie and two sub folders: AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS. You can try the DVD Copy for free but it compresses the video and you’ll lose quality (although it looked pretty good). To get the full quality you’ve to buy it.
Once you’ve copied the DVD, I tried playing the copy using Apple DVD Player. This player refuses to play, giving the following error:
After some more Google searching, I found a free player (VLC) that works pretty well (the DVD menu, audio selection, chapter selection and a lot more).
ning.com?
June 2, 2007
I had never heard of ning.com until today. It is a site that allows users to create their own social networking sites (SNS). Since users can create their own SNS, it is a very much a hit or miss to find something useful. But there are useful sites, e.g. Hiking Trail Reviews.
Useful Google Map Sites
May 31, 2007I’ve come across a number of interesting sites that allow you to create a route and display it on Google maps.
- WalkJogRun allows you create a site by clicking on a map. You can share the route, search for a route and download a GPX representation of the route.
- TierraWiki lets you directly import a GPX file and add associated details such as photos.
- Gmaps Pedometer is supposed to be similar to WalkJogRun, but I couldn’t get it to work.
- Click-to-route allows you to click on a map to create a track.
A few sites offer scavenger hunt: Waymarking, Geo Caching & then there is Garmin’s MotionBased site for runners.
May 28, 2007
The Where 2.0 conference is worth following. I couldn’t find an RSS feed for this conference but someone from Google Earth said that they will be attending & blogging about it. The list of conference sponsors is a who-is-who of location based systems and services.
G P S on O S X
May 24, 2007
Did you ever wonder exactly where you’re on this planet? Wonder no more, the personal navigator are now a dim a dozen and buying one wont break the bank. I just got my Garmin eTrex Legend Cx personal GPS navigation system. Two key features that it has are its ability to create & use tracks and routes. A track is an electronics log (aka bread crumb) of the GPS information about points along the path. The device automatically starts recording as soon as it gets a location fix. The amount of the information recorded is limited by the amount of the memory that you’ve (you can extend the amount of memory by replacing the supplied 64MB microSD). You can control how often the device records GPS data. You can choose either time interval or distance. The track log is stored in gpx (GPS eXchange) format.
Did you ever wonder exactly where you’re on this planet? Wonder no more, the personal navigator are now a dim a dozen and buying one wont break the bank. I just got my Garmin A route is similar to a track but you need to manually add the way points (read bread crumbs). This device can store up to 50 routes with 250 points each.
After you recored a track/route, you can import it to your computer. You can exports routes from the computer to the device. Garmin at this point does not offer a device driver for the Mac, but all is not lost, you can use GPSBabel on the Mac to import/export way points, tracks or routes to and from the device (screencast of how to use GPSBabel on the Mac).
Adobe Document Center
May 23, 2007
Adobe Document Center beats Autotask and Salesforce.com Winter 07 to be the finalist in the eWeek‘s Software as a Service channel product of the year (see rankings). With the Adobe Document Center you can protect your important PDF, Microsoft Office Word and Excel documents, track their usage and revoke access to the documents even after they have been distributed. It is a remarkable product that empowers the user to distribute important documents with confidence.
