Google says everyone is at risk - don't panic

I got hit by this on my iPhone earlier today - and couldn't read the captcha.

Cap on IT contracts

http://is.gd/hnsR

Well is certainly is good to me. Coming days after the government admit that the vapourware that is the NHS IT records system is beset by further delays. Ill spec'd, ill thought out, ill cost'd and frankly ill wanted.

Steve Jobs surgery rumour

These are the current offerings on Digg's recommendation engine for me. I've not clicked the story, I'm not going to. If it's true then let him get on with it and just send him your well wishes.


All I can do is try and empathise, given he's such a private guy if this is true it'll be a tremendously testing time - Mr Jobs doesn't need everyone twittering on about it.

Picasa remote desktop version

We're considering starting the herculean task of tagging our library of photographs used in marketing - some 10k images.

In my research we wanted a solution that would have allowed cross platform tagging. The benefit being that any staff at a later point can, from anywhere in the enterprise, search for photographic material to use when putting together their own materials - or just for some stock shots for lessons etc.

I have thus settled on Picasa from Google. Mainly since this will run on both Mac and PC (only recently admittedly.) This is one up on iPhoto, for obvious reasons. Again though by moving off the mac we're giving up some ease of use. Trust me - go compare taggin photos in Picasa (full free form tagging) to iPhoto (you can do it all point and click)

The benefit to point and click tagging in iPhoto is that we could prescribe what tags would be available to whomever we employ to torture their soul by tagging and tagging and tagging and tagging and tagging and tagging. Whereas in Picasa the pour sap has to type any and every tag they wanna apply, complete with typos. Not only that we'll be leaving the judgement of the tags to a third party.

What I did find wonderful, and daunting, during this research is that all the iSstockphotos we've been buying over the past few years come complete with tags, lots of tags. It really brought home to me how well indexed and tag'd to the infinite power our images should be! Dozens and dozens of tags - pour sap!

If anyone has any suggestions on how to make this process less painful, even if someone could suggest how much the mechanical turk would cost for this task - lemme know.

My final descovery during this odyssey was how well thought out Google software can be. I've been working remotely recently, and I logged into my machine this morning via the VPN and set about installing Picasa for my research. Once installed it launched, but presented me with this brilliant dialogue...



Isn't that genius!

Being Human

Well some months ago, I was visiting some friends. I happened, through no fault of my own, to be perilously ill during my visit. This put a stop of some of our more exotic plans and one evening we just visited with some other friends near by, stayed in and had a take out. All very sedate.

On the TV that night was the pilot of this innovative show. We hoped that they would commission a full series turns out 18 months later they did. They changed two of the principal actors but not the main protagonist the Werewolf.

I'll admit I've not seen any of this new revamped version but it heartens me to see it at the top of the iPlayer BBC3 chart. I'll have to check out at least some of the new series.

If the original pilot is available on the "tubes" I'd highly recommend it.

Another Skitch

I do wish it would automatically copy the posted image url to the clipboard!



or that you could manually type in a width or height number. I have to drag things about in Skitch and then "land" on the correct width. ie for the blog I like images to be about 409 px wide - each time I edit an image I have to move the window to manually set this.

Finally I want to rant about how awful Safari was to me this morning when it crashed... when I had lots of tabs open

well I thought "it's OK Safari has a session saver built in now" - which it does, and that promptly began trying to open my crashed tabs. Then it crashed again, meaning when I re-opened, it merely tried to recover the one window and one tab that it had in the last session before it crashed! 97+ tabs lost forever!

At least FF has an add in for "managing" multiple sessions.

##Update##
I thought it'd be polite to link to the Merlin Mann's blog post about his desktop tour...
http://www.43folders.com/tour1

Using Skitch

Here is one of my first pictures taken and edited with Skitch! I have added a drop shadow. I found out about skitch.com from Merlin Mann. I'll admit it takes a bit of getting used to since nearly every keystroke does something Skitch but that just underlines the power it has.

Skitch will likely, depending how this picture and post turns out, replace ImageWell for me. ImageWell was a great little App for re-sizing and briefly editing photos before uploading them for the blog. However since they started charging for a premium version (which they're fully entitled to do) every time I launch it I get pestered! Skitch frees me from that!

So Skitch helped me out just now, by
I take picture using +Shift+5 (which is right next to 4 what I usually use to invoke the cross hair for screen grabbing)
This opened the image in Skitch
I choose "Tools" and Add shadow
I click WebPost

I've already entered my ftp account details, and told it I'd like the html for the image placed on my clipboard. Job Done!

Blogging from your iPhone.

After sending my pictures of cocktails to Blogger from my iPhone, i then found this google video on exactly that - blogging from your mobile and the demo they use is.. an iPhone!

Tried this before ?

I'm sure I have attempted to blog from my iPhone via e mail and it
didn't work ? However if it now does I'll be greatful and you can
expect me to ramp up my content.

M

Help Menu on Handbreak

Here we go again, another year - another commitment to do more on my blog.
I might draw myself into it a bit by starting off with titbits fro starting m here and there...with


yes the help menu from handbreak, but it might be iSquint I have them both open tonight. I don't know if this has always been the case, being the obstinate so and so I am - I rarely use help functions.

It did amuse me though when I clicked on help.