sharing
Latest
'Smart' photo-sharing site releases Mac OS X upload client
Riya is a unique photo-sharing site I remember hearing on Inside the Net (iTMS link) a while ago: it can look at your photos and learn to recognize things like faces and text, essentially bringing that whole Star Trek thing (or 'Minority Report thing', for those wearing tin foil hats) one step closer to the image sharing and tagging experience. It sounds like a great concept, though I haven't played with it much since they haven't offered an upload client for Mac OS X - until now. Macworld is reporting that Riya has indeed released a Mac-friendly client (you need an account for that link to work), removing my only excuse for not signing up yet.If you've been using the service and/or play with this client, feel free to post your thoughts on the experience, then go let Flickr know they need to make an acquisition so their users don't have to spend so much time tagging photos anymore.
Gawker updated with more camera support, desktop time-lapsing
Gawker, the clever app for recording, sharing and combining time-lapse movies, has been updated to version 0.70 with some unique features. It is now compatible with non-iSight cameras, including even DV cameras, and can record from up to four cameras simultaneously (when you consider the power of using other cameras through Bonjour, this gets pretty interesting). The ability to capture desktops as well as a countdown timer have also been added.Gawker is an open source project and available from its home at SourceForge.
Software lets neighbors securely share WiFi bandwidth
Instead of fighting about property lines and whose dog is keeping everyone up at night, researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign want you and your neighbors to get together and share your WiFi signal in a method that supposedly delivers better performance to each individual user. Assistant computer science professor Haiyun Luo and graduate student Nathanael Thompson of the school's Systems, Wireless, and Networking Group have released a free download that analyzes local airwaves and exploits unused bandwidth from one network to complement ones experiencing heavy usage, but always gives users priority access to their own signal. Part of the two-year-old PERM project, the application uses flow-scheduling algorithms to determine bandwidth allocation, and has so-far undergone testing on Linux clients and with Linksys routers. Security is obviously a key concern in such a sharing setup, so PERM developed the software to both "preserve a user's privacy and security, and mitigate the free-riding problem."[Via PCWorld]
MultiSwitch hub will allow LAN-less USB sharing
Sharing USB devices is about to get a lot simpler thanks to a new hub powered by technology from chip developer SMSC, which will allow two computers to access up to four shared devices without the need to set up a local area network. Called the MultiSwitch hub, this device creates a proprietary behind-the-scenes network, allowing USB-equipped printers, cameras, hard drives, and other peripherals to be accessed by any combination of desktop, laptop, HTPC, or game console -- with both machines able to interact with the devices simultaneously, according to the developer. PC OEMs are supposedly working on MultiSwitch-enabled chips for distribution this fall, with the resulting consumer electronics products expected to hit stores early next year.
Kodak's Bluetooth camera module
We're not entirely sure of the purpose here, but Kodak filed with the FCC for a Bluetooth camera module that "is to be installed only by the professionals and used only with any product produced by Kodak." Yes, this thing's internal -- normally they'd just file for a camera with the radio, but this isn't the camera, this is the component. See why we're a little confused? So unless Kodak's going to start offering Bluetooth upgrades for their point-and-shoot cameras (which would arguably cost in parts and labor more than the camera itself), it's dubious this is anything more than a proof-of-concept for future, yet unearthed-in-the-FCC cameras, like the one in which the device appears to be implanted (that dual-lenser that sure as hell aint a V570, that much we can tell you).[Via MobileWhack]
iTunes 6 shares videos
C.K. thought we had posted on this already, but neither of us could find the post so, here goes: DownloadSquad picked up on a quiet new feature in iTunes 6.0.2: sharing video (along with audio) on a local network. Fortunately, it sounds like you don't have to do anything aside from enabling sharing in your preferences. DLS also picked up on an odd quirk: videos purchased in 6.0.1 can't be played on 6.0.2 machines, which is surprising to me because I thought DRM'd content couldn't be played through sharing on other machines no matter what. Either way this is a great new feature, and the original digg post DLS found this at brings up all the media center and video-enabled AirPort Express rumors, which I'll just let y'all tackle in the comments.
MacWindows.com - OS X and Windows integration resource
As we Mac fans and users must concede, we do still live in a Windows world. For those of who also work in a Windows world (including banging your heads against a wall), I've found a site that could help Windows and OS X shake hands and (dare I say it) work together better: MacWindows.com. Need to learn about using a Mac with Active Directory? How about using Mac OS X Server with Windows clients? Cross-platform file sharing, Exchange server and applescripts for converting file names - it's all here. This site gets pretty in-depth on a lot of these topics, and it looks like the best one-stop resource I've seen to help with all those OS X Windows-related headaches.
Safarilicious updated to 0.77
Just over a week after Scott blogged Safarilicious, it's already been updated to version 0.77. This minor update fixes a couple of bugs, namely one that caused an "Index Error" crash and another that caused a crash upon receiving an Error 500 from del.icio.us. "Initial" Unicode support has been added as well, as the author states over on the PimpMySafari.com page that Unicode titles and tags display properly in Safarilicious and *seem* to export properly as well.I snagged this app the second I saw it in our newsfeed, as I've been dying for a way to get my extensive collection of bookmarks - 1044 to be exact - archived out to del.icio.us for easier sharing. The first time I ran Safarilicious it crashed on me (though I don't know what the error was), but in defense of del.icio.us, I was exporting my mammoth collection of 'marks right around the time they had some server issues and a power outage. If you've been on the fence as to whether you want to play with Safarilicious, I'll vouch that it does the trick, and well, so get sharing!
