Having tried to post a torrent without logging in to a tracker site, I found the Beehive – a site that lists a whole load of trackers with additional information about what kind of files they track.

This software real-time distorts projected images so that they fit seamlessly onto 3D objects, which means that the projection only appears on the object at the right angle.

We can’t all have a fingerworks keyboard as they are out of production, but we can install software that uses the keypad to mouse around quickly and effectively. This link has two programmes that allow this for windows, plus a whole load of different links to shortcuts etc.

These sites have news, information and techniques for doing weird stuff in Flash. Some very cool stuff in there.

http://www.levitated.net/
http://www.chewinggumfortheeyes.com/
http://www.nanolabs.net/
http://www.ultrashock.com/
http://www.gotoandlearn.com/

Undelete Plus is a freeware proggie that undeletes from NTFS/NTFS5,FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 volumes. Can be very useful indeed!

This site takes a file up to 100MB and spits it out in any one of quite a number of formats. The privacy statement claims they delete the files but keep the emailadress because they mail you the converted file back instead of offering to download it. They also keep your IP address for logging and measuring useage. They won’t sell, rent or share your email address to other companies.

Planet MySQL is a blog centred on MySQL. Loads of refresher stuff and new stuff comes out on this.

MySQL Forge is the site for MySQL addin projects and snippets – if you want to add to MySQL or if you want to see what’s being added to MySQL this is the place to be.

Top SQL Performance tips

Google Earth now has some really nice historical maps under the Layers pane, Featured Content > Rumsey Historical Maps. You may have to upgrade your version of the software before it will display though.

For all the haters – Flash is the new internet video medium!
Here is a nice guide with information on compressing to FLV and serving it.

VideoLAN VLC media player is a streaming media server and client solution that runs on loads of platforms and goes for free.

This is a nice piece of software that starts up with the insertion of your USB drive giving your home address and a little message.

For some reason Internet Explorer has a problem opening websites containing the Google Maps API with a totally non-saying why error leading to a generic page. The linkielist contained this API, and it has now been removed, so IE users can get back to reading this.

Do something they should have done – and then for a supplier that will win!

Now if they could only get those Pocket PCs to not wipe every time they run out of batteries…

If you’ve seen the future of UIs with Vista, Mac and Linux (search this site for ‘cube’) you know that Compiz with the flying cubes wins hands down – looks very very cool.

There is, however some confusion as to how to get it to run – it’s not trivial, but not so hard either.

1) Compiz (vanilla by Novell)
2) Beryl (formerly Compiz-QuinnStorm, the branch which the users have split off due to users building more and more of their own plugins).

Debian Unstable allows you to install compiz-vanilla.
They are still working on a Beryl package.

Ubuntu allready has a Beryl package. The installation wiki is here.

This guy has made a study of how to decrease web page load time using server settings, caching, code and browser settings.

Sysinternals PageDefrag defragments your registry and pagefiles on windows machines, optimising your performance as other defrag programmes leave these areas of your disk untouched.

This is a huge list of different tools for CSS.

Ever wanted to save that YouTube video? This page lists some good YouTube tools.

Interesting things you can do to improve your working experience with XP.

With the EU software patents going to vote on Oct 12th, this could be controversial, especially if it indexes code left and right wildly. Slashdot also has links to a few other code searching sites.

Just after VMWare went free, Microsoft has opened up as well – I haven’t researched it, but probably for the good monitoring tools etc you’ll have to pay up to MS. Download it here.

I didn’t know about this service – it’s a bit obscure like Google Sitemaps, but by entering a little code in your pages, Google tracks and analyses your referrers using pretty pictures and graphs. It integrates seamlessly with adwords, so you can track the succes of your campaigns easily. It also integrates with other such initiatives. Looks nice!

Google has just released around 200 years worth of news archives on their new page. They are not telling how many sources they have, but for some reason the OCR is mediocre and when I click on the pictures I keep ending up at newspaperarchive.com. Of course, I did go looking for current events in the early 19th century, later results will probably have more sources.

Nimbuzz is the new Skype for mobile phones – free phonecalls and text messages to other mobile phones connected to the Nimbuzz network (over GSM, not GPRS/UMTS/etc). It seems to be out for a lot of brands, including a version for the Palm Tungsten C as well as the usual crop of Nokias etc. It also comes for Windows PCs. Unfortunately I couldn’t get it for my Treo, so can’t tell you much more about it, but this looks worth following, as Skype isn’t looking at Palm at all yet.
It’s all still in alpha / beta and you download it using your phone’s browser.

Note: I got this email in from Moondust, but thought it was well worth posting here.

This compares interfaces from Ubuntu, Mac and Windows – it’s great how far Linux has come: it looks way better than Mac and Windoze…

So, check out these videos and tell me which interface you’d rather use.

1. Windows with a little more polish (still fugly)
2. A shiny but tame UI for hardware you don’t have, or
3. The Cube From Beyond (mine has 5 sides)

http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/2915/linux_xglcompiz_graphics

No really, check out these videos.

[salesmode]

And in case you were wondering, linux has *excellent* support for Wacom
kit. (Using a Graphire4 here).

Photoshop-wise there’s GIMPShop
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMPshop

Vector-wise there’s Inkscape
http://www.inkscape.org/screenshots/index.php

You can even run IE6 natively for testing webapps,
http://www.von-thadden.de/Joachim/WineTools/

That funky live-desktop-search stuff?
http://beagle-project.org/Main_Page

Need WoW?
http://wiki.kaspersandberg.com/doku.php?id=howtos:wine:worldofwarcraft

Skype, Google Earth, Adobe, etc all have native Linux builds.
It’s gotta tell you something when these guys consider linux a market.

You want chat?
http://gaim.sf.net/
It’s nicer and multi-protocol! I log into two work accounts, icq and
gtalk (and sometimes msn) all the time!

Manage your photos?
http://f-spot.org/Main_Page

Do some DTP?
http://scribus.sourceforge.net/gallery/

But, but – it’s linux, so all this is hard to install? Hell no, get up
and running with a single cd in under an hour!

But, but, linux doesn’t support most hardware! The hell it does, if it’s
been on the market for over 6 months I don’t even bother to check the
compatibility lists for most things!

Developing Java? Ha! Eclipse, JBuilder, NetBeans and friends are all
linux native! Developing PHP? apt-get install and let every developer
run their own database and webserver with mod_php for testing!

Need media? Your camera, ipod, scanner, usb drives, etc all work out of
the box! Need to burn stuff? Why bother with the linux native version of
Nero when you have gnomebaker and k3b?

Need playback, media centers and whatnot? We have it all!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythTV
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
http://xinehq.de/index.php/releases
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/

Audio playback?
http://www.gnome.org/projects/rhythmbox/screenshots.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amarok_(audio)
http://www.lynucs.org/?xmms

Sync your phone?
http://www.multisync.org/

Browsers? You use t3h web and still run IE? Pfah! Take your pick from
Firefox, Flock, Opera or Konqueror! Or do you think that IE7 will fix
everything for you? (If you do, I have some profitable swampland in
Florida for sale.. it’s a bargain!)

Email?
http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/
Oh, you really like Outlook? (Why?)
http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution/

Collaboration and calendaring?
http://www.hula-project.org/Hula_Project

Come on, who are you kidding? Install Ubuntu today, it’s not like I’m
asking you to touch the command line..

And the coolest part? You won’t have to go through the hassle of
installing Vista for your own personal use sometime next decade.

[/salesmode]

-Michiel.

PS – What virus scanner, product code, online registration, malware
shields, etc? None of the above! And the Cube has an “inside” toggle, so
when you flip it you are no longer outside the Cube, intstead it rotates
around you. Muchos cool.

—
Move ‘zig’ for Great Justice.