If Google Maps’ integration of geotagged photos piqued your interest, Wired blogger Charlie Sorrel focuses his lens on geotagging photos, the practice of adding location to a photo’s metadata that will tell you where a photo was taken. He highlights several options for the budding geotagger, from for-a-price solutions, like the new Eye-Fi Explore SD card and GPS cameras, to no-cost solutions, like Flickr’s integrated geotagging tools. We’ve also covered a couple of no-cost geotagging options in the past that might do the trick, but for the not-that-high price of $US130, the Eye-Fi Explore is an excellent upgrade to my beloved Eye-Fi memory card. How to Geotag Your Photos [Wired]
When Firefox’s bookmarks are a scattered mess of links, you can restore order instantaneously by alphabetising them. Simply reordering the column in the Bookmarks Manager won’t do it though—you’ve got to invoke the context menu. Macworld explains: Select a folder full of bookmarks in the left pane of the Bookmarks Manager window. The right pane will fill with that folder’s contents. If you want to sort all the items in the right pane by name, just Control-click (Ed: Windows users, right-click) on an item in the right pane and choose Sort By Name from the contextual menu. Firefox will first organise folders alphabetically, and then follow those folders with alphabetised items that carry URLs.
If you’re a heavy bookmarks user, your newly alphabetised list will be a lot easier to navigate. Alphabetizing Firefox bookmarks [Macworld]
Failing to listen during an important conversation not only requires you to ask questions later, it can give off the impression of not caring, even if it’s really just bad habits. Workplace consultant Gretchen Neels tells the New York Times’ Shifting Careers blog that subtly “mirroring” the gestures of the person you’re listening to—they lean their head to the left, you lean to the right—can push your brain into listening and leave a reassuring impression. While this might sound odd, apparently this kind of activity puts you into the same groove. Ms. Neels says that if you are with friends and feeling very connected, you are probably mirroring each other’s body language since it’s something people automatically do in situations where they are comfortable.
Not a bad trick, but you might want to practice it on a spouse or a friend who can laugh at you first. How do you force yourself into receptive listening if it’s not in the cards for that moment? Share your tips in the comments. Photo by b d solis. What? [NYT / Shifting Careers blog]
Google Maps has integrated Wikipedia articles and geotagged photos so you can see points of interest and images of any geotagged photo on a Google Map. The data, accessible through a new More dropdown button next to Traffic, can be toggled on or off by simply ticking the check box. Once turned on, Wikipedia points of interest show up on the map as a “W” and images show up as small thumbnails. Clicking either will give you a closer look at the object. Both tools promise to bring an excellent layer of information to the already impressive Google Maps, and who knows—soon Street View may be overshadowed by a wealth of geotagged pics. Google Maps [via TechCrunch]
If you’ve been tinkering with (or just thinking about) Adobe’s multi-system AIR platform and wondering if any apps are worth your time,
The busy folks working on XBMC for OS X just dropped beta 2, which fixes several bugs I listed in yesterday’s feature story, XBMC Turns Your Mac into the Ultimate Media Center. Most notably, scripts and live weather forecasts now work.
The latest version 9 of the Fedora Linux distribution is now available for your downloading and installation pleasure. The Fedora-lovers at Ars Technica report: Fedora 9 delivers a cutting edge desktop stack with the latest software and version 2.6.25 of the Linux kernel. This release includes GNOME 2.22, which has some significant improvements like the GVFS virtual filesystem abstraction layer.
The Ubuntu Unleashed blog has an excellent guide to the ins and outs of the Uncomplicated Firewall (ufw), a new feature in Ubuntu Linux 8.04, or Hardy Heron, that makes it easy to control the traffic into and out of your system. While turning on the firewall is as simple as typing sudo ufw enable, you can do a lot more with ufw, including:Check the status of ufw with the ports in the listening state: sudo ufw status Block a single host: sudo ufw deny from {IP address} Allow all access to port 80 (for web serving): sudo ufw allow 80/tcp
Hit the link for a handy bookmark or printout that lets you control your net security with single terminal commands. Howto: Use, setup, and Take advantage of the New Ubuntu Uncomplicated Firewall UFW [Ubuntu Unleashed]
Mac OS X only: Freeware application iTunesVolume is an attractive iTunes controller for your Mac desktop. Like many before it, iTunesVolume offers playback control and displays album artwork (and it looks great doing it), but iTunesVolume sets itself apart with a very simple always-on-top control: a volume slider. Through this simple slider, you can access and control everything else the app does, which is virtually everything you can do in iTunes. iTunesVolume takes a little time to wrap your head around, but once you do, it offers a really nice way to interact with your music. iTunesVolume is freeware, Mac OS X only. iTunesVolume [via TUAW]
Free travel guide site Schmap has crafted a pretty nifty interface for iPhone and iPod touch users looking for spots to hit while travelling. Navigate to the city you’re travelling through, pick a category like restaurants or banks, and scroll through the vertical list of results. Flip your iPhone/touch sideways, and points from the section of the list you were scrolling through are mapped out, and contact and directions info are provided when tapped. Pretty handy for finding notable spots nearby without having to cross over applications. Point your iPhone or iPod touch to the link below to access the web app (but regular browsers can head there as well). Schmap [via TechCrunch]
