Xenovoyance Do Stuff

Technology — 24 views— No comments
23
Oct 09

Face-taging now also in Flickr

I started using Flickr as the service where I show off my photos not too long ago. I liked the simplicity of it and the ability to integrate the photos into my site without any problems. Feature-wise Flickr is minimalistic at first but the more one work with the service, the more one find that can be done to organize and show off your work in a good way. And now it got just a bit better.

Face taged in photo and also a small list of persons above the tags in the lower right part.

Face-taging in Flickr is just as simple as adding a regular tag, and to be completly honest they are almost the same thing. What do differ a face-tag from a regular tag is that faces are beeing organized and linked to profiles which makes it possible to also list pictures of specific people. You will also be notified when someone tag your face in a photo and you have the ability to remove all tags for yourself in all photos at Flickr if you identify that they are beeing missused. It is also configurable wheter it should be possible to tag your face in photos and who should be able to do so.

Adding a face-tag is just as adding a regular tag.

All in all this was a nice new feature which is not very new or inovative but still good to have in a otherwise very good photo-sharing site. Keep the good things coming Flickr!

Resources:
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2009/10/21/people-in-photos/
http://www.flickr.com/help/people/

Technology — 3 views— No comments
20
Oct 09

Would you give a stranger your birthdate?

Last week there was something called the ‘National Identity Fraud Prevention Week’ in the UK. One of the biggest goals of this themed week was to make people aware on how easy it is to get your identity stolen if you spread your personal information around you to strangers. One of the writers over at Techradar went out on the street asking people for their information to see if people would give them right away or if they actually would hesitate due to the fact he was a complete stranger.

As you may already guessed people gave their information away without a thought on why. And the most disturbing part of it all was that two minutes later (after they just gave their information) whether they would give their information up to a complete stranger most of them said no. And I think that the real problem resides just there. People know that the problem exist but they refuse to see that it might happen to them.

To steal an identity today might cause even more pain and distress then to do an actual burglary. If someone was to hijack your electronic profile they can both get you into very hard financial problems as well as destroying your social life. By spreading propaganda or other abusive information they can hurt the image of you for a very long time ahead. This is a hard fact which we can not discard. But instead of just being scared and avoid or abandon you electronic identity you can always instead do your best to keep it safe.

Just some week ago there was 10’000 user passwords that leaked from Hotmail and it was first mentioned as a security breach but later revised. As it was explained later was that the passwords had been sent by the users themselves answering a phony mail asking them to send in their passwords. Once again, most people know that they should never ever send a password to anyone asking for it – but nothing will happen to me.

Out of the 10’000 passwords leaked from Hotmail-users the most used password was ’123456′. Second most used was ’123456789′. If you have anyone of these as a password to anything at all, you better go and change it right now. Choose passwords which you can remember and try to make them more complex then just numbers or just letters. Use the opportunity to be creative!

And while your at it, never use the same password for everything you can find. It is even better to keep different passwords and storing them in a log at home or somewhere you feel is ‘safe’ if you were to forget any passwords.

Resources:
http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/caught-on-video-brits-handing-their-identities-to-complete-strangers-643548?src=rss&attr=all

http://www.acunetix.com/blog/websecuritynews/statistics-from-10000-leaked-hotmail-passwords/

http://www.stop-idfraud.co.uk/

Lifestyle — 11 views— No comments
18
Oct 09

A first glance at Geocaching

Haven’t we all since we were children dreamt of finding a treasure just as in the tales? Something tells me that this is exactly the feeling people doing geocaching is feeling once again in their lives. And that was really the feeling I had when I went out last night with my trustworthy iPhone looking for my first hidden treasure in a game which is growing ever stronger right not – Geocaching! For people who never heard of this I will give a quick rundown on how it all works.

Geocaching is what one would call a game or a sport where people all over the world is looking for hidden treasures, here called caches, using map, problem-solving and a GPS-unit. First of all the people looking for the caches go to geocaching.com and can search for caches in their own vicinity. Taking down the coordinates to the cache or a place nearby and then head out to find it! Some caches are easy to find and it is just to go to the given coordinates while other is more complex to find and you need to solve problems and even triangulate new coordinates using riddles and math-problems. All caches contain a log-book in which finders can write a small note to other finders or just to claim their find. But in some caches there is also things to barter with. The rule that apply to the things in a cache is that if you take something out, you must put something back in. And the content can be really just about anything

So who did hide these caches from the very beginning you may ask? Well this is the complete beauty of it all. Everyone can create a cache and just log it at the website making it available for other people to find! some caches are big and other is small. The more one look for them the more you can find, some caches is shown right out in the public but invisible when you are not looking for them. After you start being a geocacher you quite fast have to take nothing for granted. Things can be hidden everywhere!

Equipment needed to start geocaching is really nothing at all. You can look up caches at home, mark them on a map and go out looking without nothing else. What really makes this easier though is if you have a portable GPS-unit which you can bring. Nowadays when GPS is something built in to ever more mobile phones this makes geocaching more available to the public then ever! What I quickly learned was to create a small kit you can bring when hunting for caches. The kit can be a couple of pens so that you can enter the log of a cache even if the original pens is gone (or in some caches the pen just wont fit), some things to trade if you find something in a cache you want to keep and an electronic map and preferably a GPS.

I found my first cache yesterday and was out today as well and found my second cache which was located very near my home! So if you feel this sound interesting, go to geocaching.com and search for caches near your home. Perhaps you find just as I that I pass by small hidden treasures everyday. Not until now I knew about them and now I can’t stop looking for new ones.

Reflection — 21 views— No comments
17
Oct 09

Goodbye and thank you for the fish

This is the question one undoubtedly ask after reading about the movie ‘The End of the Line‘ which have is premiere this coming Monday. The movie is a actually a documentary on how we and our fellow humans evolved our methods of bringing fish and shellfish out of the oceans in the most cost-effective way, no matter the ecological impact on the world from which we borrow some time.

According to WWF the global fishing fleets is about 250% larger then the oceans can sustainably support and for a bystander, these numbers seem to tell us something. If we take out more then what can grow back from the oceans, will they actually run out?

“Can the sea really let us eat sushi in these numbers?” – Caroline Bennett, Founder, Moshi Moshi sushi chain

Oceans are vast and huge and seem to hold an unlimited amount of life but the fact is that they are limited. There is a set amount of live fish in the oceans at every given moment in time. Based on this number there is a set number of fish that can be reproduced each year. This is quite basic facts which most people agree on.

In a time where a growing number of people is in starvation and we have a financial problem on our hands we need to start looking on what the impact will be of our decisions. As of today we have have an enormous waste in our fishing fleets trying to find premium animals. While fishing tuna with long lines we get turtles, birds and sharks as waste. While fishing cod using trawl we get everything coming in our way together with the cod. All this so called waste is just dumped back into the ocean as garbage when it actually is a surplus of the oceans total amount of life which we just kill and drop back. The oceans can of course handle decomposing live matter as it is a part of the natural way but in the same time it can not handle tons after tons of the same fish killed and dumped right back. Species will become extinct, and they will become extinct soon.

This dumping of unwanted fish is never the less the only problem we have today. The greatest error of them all is that if we sum up what we take out of the waters it exceeds what can be reproduced. We are killing the oceans, and doing it fast and industrious.

“It is true that fishermen feel an almost desperate need to catch as many fish as they can when they’re allowed to. That sense of desperation … can’t be an excuse for the policymakers of the world and this country to allow that to cause the universal collapse of fisheries.” – James Greenwood, former US Congressman

More information

The end of the Line (movie)

Are tuna stocks being overfished?

Overfishing raises question over fish stocks

Oro för hav tämda på fisk (Swedish)

So what can be done to halt this spiral of doom which we spin around in every day of our lives? As almost always when it come to ecology and people, all we have to do is become aware and to use our power as consumers. Avoid buying fish that is on the verge of being extinct and ask questions and raise the topic. And as always, if you can buy food produced nearby, it most likely is a good option.

Consumers have the power to change the market, we all just have to start asking questions.

Lifehack — 32 views— 2 comments
15
Oct 09

10 ways to stay concentrated at the office

Working at a office today there is so many things around us which will compete on stealing your concentration. The information overload is upon us and at the same time we use the computer as a tool just as much in our work as in our private life. Social networks, multiple mailaccounts, calls and news-flow – they all need you attention at all times which will be a struggle to hold back while at work. Here is a few tips on how you can try to maximize your concentration while at work.

Shut down automatic mail-fetching – The flag in your system tray may be small but every time it lit up you lose a bit of concentration. Not only this but quite often you may find yourself starting to work at the issue you just recieved instead of working on what you did from the start. Task-switching is dangerous.
Use an alternative browser without private bookmarks – If you have one browser at your work-computer I bet you have bookmarks there for your personal sites, news-sites and networks. By installing an alternative browser in which you keep only work-related links you wont get distracted by that link to amazon.
Read up on material – Do not start working on a task until you understand the problem you’re facing.
Regular breaks, routine is your friend – If you usually have your morning-coffe at 9, plan it so that your body knows that you’ll get it at 9. By doing this you wont get an urge until the time is right anymore.
Scheduele planning time for each day – Start each day by going through what you should achieve before your day is ended.
One task at a time – Multitasking and task-switching is time-consuming. Work at one task at a time, creating sub-tasks to narrow down what it actually is you are to do.
Keep a calm workplace - If you are working on one project, don’t let the papers for your ten other projcts linger on your desk. By just having them in your field of view you might have a big portion of your mind in the other things you did earlier.
Reward yourself by not working on breaks - If you are on a break, take a break! Do not read mails, make work-calls and such, just take the time to restore some energy.
Minimize surrounding sounds - If you work in an open area or in a cubicle, get a pair of headphones which stops sounds as well as play good sound. Wear these even if you are not listening to music, if so only to get a more silent work sphere.
Socialize – Comunicate with people in your workplace or if you’re working from home, comunicate with your customers. Speaking will get your body going on that something is worth taking notice of and you will work better afterwards.

Weird — 12 views— No comments
12
Oct 09

Majestic cloudformations over Moscow

Mother nature has an ability to produce some quite impressive things, most often in places and times when you did not see it coming. I found this movie over at Telegraph of really amazing cloud-formation which indeed look like the start of an alien-invasion. As I first saw it I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that this must have been the look over the skies of Johannesburg when the ship arrived in District 9.

Here is the video from youtube