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Swype is a new input method for your cell phone. Instead of typing each letter all you have to do is draw lines from one letter to another. The application figures out what word you are trying to type based on the line. You can go right through the other letters it doesn't matter.
Gizmodo wrote a story on this input method and they were saying that they don't know how legitimate the speeds gains are because the video did come from the swype camp. I have to agree with that. The guy on the right with the iphone is a pretty slow iphone typer, and the Swype guy's fingers are moving a lot faster.
The new input method will be featured on the Verizon's Samsung Omnia II, which will be here sometimes next month. Should be interesting to see how well it works and if it will be well received.
That brings me to a question for the readers. Do prefer a physical keyboards or a virtual one? I prefer to have a virtual one. The keyboard on my iPhone works very well and I think it is pretty fast.
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Nowadays everyone has all kinds of content that they post to the web. That content is stored on someone else's server so people can access it. What happens if something goes wrong on their servers and they loose your content ? We have learned from the Sidekick incident, where all the mobile data was lost, that the cloud is not aways the best place to store your data.
So what is the solution? Back it up! Thats right back it up with an online website called Backupify. With Backupify you can backup your stored content from your favorite websites. Backupify will backup Twitter, Wordpress, Facebook, Delicious, Basecamp, Google Docs, Gmail, Zoho, Flckr, and Photobucket .
Once you setup an account Backupify it will automatically backup your online content for you. Unfortunately the service is not free. You can backup your Twitter account for free with 10Mb of space, but the paid plans play out like this.
You might be thinking well what if Backupify looses my content? Well I guess that is possible but it is unlikely that you will have two services go down on the same day. So if Backupify was to loose your data you could just back it up once again.
Backupify Website VIA Lifehacker
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Apple has officially announced that they are going to be offering deals the day after Thanksgiving November 27, 2009. Apple's Black Friday deals have not been officially been started yet. Websites have been speculating that Apple will have some of the best deals they have ever had. The only thing the Apple teaser ad tells you is that their will be deals and free shipping. This of course does not stop people from talking and trying to find the leaked holiday deals.
Here are the deals according to BGR! “iMacs starting at $1098, iPod nanos starting at $138, iPod touch starting at $178, MacBook Pros starting at $1098, Apple TVs starting at $208, Airport Express starting at $88, Magic Mouse and Wireless Keyboard going for $64 each.” This is for Black Friday only mind you and this is also just a rumor. BGR had already made a Black Friday prediction and this is their second one so don't hold your breath. It is also worth mentioning that the black friday deals are only for the online Apple store.
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Facebook has been trying to become more and more like twitter as it evolves it's status updates into a internal Twitter like service. The first step for Facebook was to get rid of the required “john is” statement before every post. This allows your updates to be about anything not just what you're up to. This made Facebook more like Twitter and was the first step in duplicating the service internally.
Facebook made the next step a couple months ago by adding the ability to mention people in a status update. I am not sure if a lot of people know about this but Facebook has the ability to “@mention” people in a status update. So if you want to mention your friend John in a status update you can hit the @ sign and start to type his name. Facebook will find your friend and you can select his name from the drop down. Your friends name will be linked to his profile in the update. The update will also appear on their profile. The @mention scheme is something that Twitter has been built on from the beginning. It is a way of informing someone you are talking to them and not just talking to the masses.
Facebook has not officially released this next feature, but it allows you to respond to a update by email. This is something that Twitter does via SMS. When you get a tweet to your phone you can reply to it via SMS. Facebook has been testing out the email reply feature with a small set of people. It will slowly be released to more people in the future.
I just thought it was interesting the way Facebook has been trying to copy Twitter and create their own Twitter like application inside Facebook. I don't mind that they are coping Twitter I think it's great. Facebook apparently was going to try and buy twitter but I guess they decided to create their own and also integrate with Twitter for current Twitter users.
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According to the Daily Herald a 15 year-old boy in Buffalo Grove, IL called 911 when his parents took away his Xbox 360 as punishment. The call was a 911 hangup, but of course they tracked the call and send a police car over to the house. The boy asked the officer if his parents had the legal right to take away his Xbox. The police office informed the boy that he should listen to his parents.
Some kids are just spoiled rotten. This kid has an Xbox that he most likely didn't pay for himself and his parents provide for him and all he wants to know is if it's legal for parents to take things away from him. What is the world coming to? One day it really will be illegal for parents to do anything to their kids. All forms of punishments will be eliminated.
Oh well for now I guess we can laugh about it for now!
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Have you ever thought that a photo was missing something, but couldn't quite put your finger on it. Well, how about a nice little kitty in your picture! Big or small the new Cat Paint app for the iPhone will let you put one cat or thousands in a photo! You know to give your photos that little touch of awesome.
Am I kidding? No it's a real app and I think I am going to go get it right now for $.99 at the App Store
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People get caught up in how many pixels their digital camera has and when it comes right down to it it doesn't really matter. The photographer is what makes a good photo, and to steal the slogan of thebestcamera.com “The Best Camera Is The One That's With You”. So you see whatever camera you have on you is better than no camera.
Photography purists would turn their nose up at notion that taking pictures with a phone and applying heavy filters to them is really photography. And in some ways they are right, but why do we have to have this solid definition of what photography is. I think that anytime you take a photo be it a film camera, digital SLR, point and shoot, or a camera phone it's photography and art. There are always ways to make your camera phone pictures interesting and fun. Most people always have their phone on them so why not take pictures of anything interesting you see?
The camera phone mind set has started a new trend of camera phone photography. It sounds kind of dumb, but as camera phones get better camera's built-in it becomes a real possibility. Some of my favorite pictures I have taken have been from my iPhone, because I was able to capture the moment just like it was without the “oh wait let me get the camera.” The iphone is a great mobile camera because it has decent resolution and has software that you can get to edit and apply filters.
There are several applications to edit your photos on the iphone. One that is growing on me is the “Best Camera” app. It's simple and allows you to apply and remove simple filters. You can then share your picture with facebook, twitter, email, and thebestcamera.com website. It's a great app and is worth the $2.99.
Okay so sure the guy that is behind the app is also selling a book but who cares. The application works well and has a really cool iphone photography community behind it.
Even if you don't have an iphone I would encourage you to take pictures with your camera phone. You can get them on to your computer and edit them and start your own collection of camera phone photos.
Here are some that I took on my iPhone and edited with the Best Camera App.
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The japan Self-Defense Force Sunglasses are officially endorsed by the Japanese military and are super strong and durable. According to the Japan Trend Shop, Who sells them, "The lens will not fracture even if struck at 171km/h (106mph) by a
6.55mm (0.3") diameter object, nor do they shatter if a 500g shaft of
iron is dropped on them from 1.27m!." If you know anything about physics this is highly unusual. They can't actually stop a speeding bullet but I think you get the point.
So for those of you out there that often find yourself stepping on or dropping your glasses these might just be for you. The ultimate in indestructible sunglasses.
VIA Dvice
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I found an interesting website today called Posterous. Posterous allows you to make a Blog without signing up and allows you to post to it simply by emailing post@posterous.com. You can post text, URLs, images, music, audio, and other file types to your email and Posterous posts it for you. It's a great idea for people who want a blog but don't want to deal with all the hassles of CMS systems. This would be perfect for your mother or grandmother, all she would have to do is email the post@posterous.com and she is done. It creates a URL for you that is home to all your posts. You can however signup and get a “yourname.posterous.com” which I would recommend so you can edit and change your posts.
Posterous is a nice clean blog interface and is great for people who don't want to deal with all the confusing controls. I have to say however that even though they make it easy to post blogs the CMS behind ii isn't a whole lot easier than Blogger or Wordpress. But if you are the kind of person that will never touch it anyways then you don't have to worry about it anyways.
Checkout my Posterous Blog I made for fun!