Sunday, October 12, 2008

ALIPR Learns How To Auto-Tag Photos

9:00AM Gina Trapani | New image recognition webapp ALIPR (Automatic Linguistic Indexing of Pictures in Real-Time) is a on a mission to assign relevant tags to digital images based on their content, and wants you to help it learn. While digital image recognition has come a long way in recent years, it’s still got a long way to go, and ALIPR’s got its share of hits and misses. Upload an image to ALIPR or hand it a URL of an image already online, and the engine will suggest tags, and ask you to add to its list. Some of ALIPR’s suggestions are spot-on, but others are way off. You can confirm the hits and suggest other tags to help the engine learn. Check out how ALIPR did with a few images from my Flickr photostream. More »

Inventory Your Home Storage

7:00AM Gina Trapani | You just know you have some obscure, need-it-twice-a-year item, like a camping lantern or holiday wrapping paper stashed away somewhere—but where the heck did you put it? The Unclutterer blog recommends a system for creating a permanent storage inventory so you know what you’ve stored where. In short, number and photograph all the items you’ve got stowed away in boxes in the basement, and enter them into an Excel spreadsheet, with links to the digital photos on your hard drive. Store a paper copy of each box list in the box itself, and then somewhere off-site, for insurance purposes. This is one of those “I know I should do this” projects that would make finding stuff—and dealing in case of a disaster—so much easier. A quicker way might be just uploading the photos to Flickr, setting them to private, and using tags to note where each item is. How have you kept track of what stuff you have and where it is? Let us know in the comments. Photo by tracyhunter. How to create an inventory of your permanent storage [Unclutterer] More »

Firefox Mobile Alpha Screenshot

6:59AM Gina Trapani | The alpha build of Mobile Firefox (codenamed Fennec) has been available for testing by brave Nokia N810 users for some time now, but Mozilla developer Brad Lassey just got it up and running on a Windows Mobile device, and shares a couple of screenshots. Obviously there’s quite a bit of work to be done, but it’s an exciting preview at what getting Firefox in your pocket will look like in the near future. [via] More »

Convert Record Albums Into MP3s

6:00AM Gina Trapani | Got a stack of LPs you want to store on your hard drive instead of on a shelf? Wired’s How-To Wiki runs down the steps to convert LPs into MP3s using free software. Of course, you’ll need a turntable and a computer with a line-in port on the sound card to get the job done, too. Photo by timsamoff. More »

How To Tie A Bowline Knot

1:00AM Gina Trapani | One DIY skill many of us don’t have is the ability to tie a bowline (knot, that is). Unless you’re a sailor or a Girl or Boy Scout, you’ve probably never heard of a bowline (pronounced “boh-lin”). But this super-useful knot creates a loop that’s strong enough to put around someone’s waist and pull them out of the water, or hold down heavy objects, and it’s very easily undone. Hit the play button above to learn how to tie a bowline using an easy-to-remember bunny metaphor. Just recently I hung a hammock using a bowline. Any knot nerds out there put the bowline to good use in regular everyday life? Any other knots you know and love? ‘Fess up in the comments. How to tie a bowline knot [YouTube] More »