Monday, May 07, 2007
Set Up Your Own Private Web Proxy with Psiphon
Developed by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, Psiphon is a private web proxy for bypassing censorship. We first mentioned it back in November when it was still more of an idea than a reality, but it's come a long way since then.The idea behind Psiphon is to get users in countries or areas that don't censor web traffic to act as proxies for users in countries that do censor. It's private in the sense that only users with the right access details like usernames and passwords can access a "psiphonode". Like a private social network, only members can gain entrance. This makes it tough for psiphonodes to be discovered and blocked.
Not only can you bypass the Great Firewall of China by using Psiphon, you can also use it to set up your own private web proxy that you can use from school, work, or any other place that censors or monitors your web traffic. Traffic is encrypted between a psiphonode and the user. Importantly, only the user who sets up a psiphonode needs to download the software; users who simply want to access a psiphonode don't need to install anything.
It's easy for censorship software to block access to sites that have the words "proxy" or "proxies" in the domain name or site content, but it's rather more difficult for said software to detect a psiphonode. That makes it a moving target for censors everywhere, and an extremely valuable tool for any web surfer.
Colorful, step-by-step user guides available in both English and Spanish will help you quickly set up Psiphon.
Labels: Technology
Megaupload Movie Links
We've mentioned search engines that help you locate files on Rapidshare and Megaupload. Taking a different approach is MULinks, which is regularly updated with links to movies hosted on Megaupload. The eclectic collection includes films like The Painted Veil, Turistas, and The Secret Life of Words. Each movie is split into 7 or 8 pieces that need a program like WinRAR to put back together.What's more, the webmaster of MULinks encourages visitors to freely distribute links found on the site.
Labels: Technology
Get Your Windows Live Hotmail Accounts Now
The much anticipated re-launch of Microsoft's Hotmail webmail service has arrived. You can now get Windows Live Hotmail accounts with 2GB of storage and Ajax-enabled capabilities like drag-and-drop filing, address auto-complete, and preview pane customization. If you already have a Hotmail account, you can upgrade by clicking on the green Join Windows Live Hotmail button after logging in.
Unfortunately, you will still need Outlook or Outlook Express to access your emails from a desktop. In the coming weeks, a beta email application called Windows Live Mail will be rolled out as a successor to Outlook Express.
Although it's a significant update of the classic Hotmail interface, Microsoft is still playing catch-up to GMail and Yahoo Mail Beta. If you're already using those other two services, you probably won't feel compelled to switch.
One thing noticeably missing from the announcement is when the @Live.com email addresses will be made available for public sign-up. Microsoft may still be testing the waters with the new user interface design before rolling out the new email addresses.
Unfortunately, you will still need Outlook or Outlook Express to access your emails from a desktop. In the coming weeks, a beta email application called Windows Live Mail will be rolled out as a successor to Outlook Express.
Although it's a significant update of the classic Hotmail interface, Microsoft is still playing catch-up to GMail and Yahoo Mail Beta. If you're already using those other two services, you probably won't feel compelled to switch.
One thing noticeably missing from the announcement is when the @Live.com email addresses will be made available for public sign-up. Microsoft may still be testing the waters with the new user interface design before rolling out the new email addresses.
Labels: Technology
Aggrega: Pandora for Music Videos
The newly launched Aggrega lets you create your own custom music video channels. Similar to music recommendation service Pandora, Aggrega attempts to find out what kind of videos you will like given the artists or genres that you input.
For the time being, most, if not all, of the music videos have been indexed from YouTube, but they are soliciting video uploads from users. Seeqpod, which mainly focuses on audio music recommendation, also uses YouTube as a music video source.
A move into personalizing blogs and images is forthcoming, but given the obstacles that have plagued personalized news services like Findory and Spotback, it's unclear how sustainable the model is. One service has become one of many "walking undead" Web 2.0 companies. The other has taken its personalization algorithm and developed widgets that let you rate things online. The two developments don't bode well for Aggrega's chances.
For the time being, most, if not all, of the music videos have been indexed from YouTube, but they are soliciting video uploads from users. Seeqpod, which mainly focuses on audio music recommendation, also uses YouTube as a music video source.
A move into personalizing blogs and images is forthcoming, but given the obstacles that have plagued personalized news services like Findory and Spotback, it's unclear how sustainable the model is. One service has become one of many "walking undead" Web 2.0 companies. The other has taken its personalization algorithm and developed widgets that let you rate things online. The two developments don't bode well for Aggrega's chances.
Labels: Technology
Sunday, May 06, 2007
How to Stop Joost From Crashing Your Computer
Many readers have taken us up on our Joost invites offer, and some have doubtless experienced "technical difficulties" in getting Joost to work properly. One extremely annoying habit Joost has is of crashing your computer when you try to exit the application. This happened to us several times before we concluded that, yes indeed, it was no coincidence.The method we found most effective in dealing with this problem is to force-quit Joost. All you have to do is press Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up the Windows Task Manager. Then you simply click on Processes, select tvprunner.exe, and click "End Process". Joost was formerly know as The Venice Project, hence the "tvprunner" designation.
If you have other Joost difficulties, you can check out the official knowledgebase or support forum.
Labels: Technology
Saturday, May 05, 2007
G2P: Using Google to Find Shared Files
Power searchers might know all the obscure ways to find software, music, and ebooks using Google, but for the rest of us, a simpler alternative is always appreciated. G2P takes the P2P metaphor and applies it to Google: after all, making files publicly accessible on a website is a little like sharing files over P2P networks.You can search for ringtones, albums, software, and music using G2P. Or, learn how to build your own customized searches by checking the search strings G2P puts together. For instance, G2P doesn't support searching for movies or videos in open directories, and it's fairly easy to change a few strings here or there to make video searches a snap.
[via]
Labels: Technology
Friday, May 04, 2007
Pandora Alternatives: Personalizing Online Music with Slacker, Seeqpod, and Last.fm
Can't access Pandora anymore? If the problem is that you're outside the US, we've got solutions that let you bypass the IP block, but in case you are looking for alternatives, we got those too. Like Musicovery and Blogmusik.net, which we've covered before, Last.fm, Seeqpod, and Slacker are respectable alternatives to Pandora for creating personalized webradio stations.
Last.fm works just like Pandora. You enter an artist you like, and it tries to find similar artists that you'll like too. Added to that, there are also some neat social features that attempt to match you to other Last.fm users based on the similarity of your musical tastes.
The genome algorithm-powered Seeqpod lets you search for music all located all over the web and add them to playlists. By far the neatest part of Seeqpod is that it lets you make a choice: you can either search directly for a song (by clicking "Search") or get a list of similar songs (by clicking "Discover"). It also searches YouTube for music videos.
Not to give you deja vu, but Slacker works just like Pandora too. You can either specify an artist that you like, or browse through the top stations based on genre (Classic Rock, Today's Hits, etc.). You can also favorite stations by adding them to your presets list.
Slacker is unique in at least one way: it plans to release what looks to be an iPod killer, the Slacker Portable Player, that will be able to sync with your Slacker profile to load up on new music whenever you get near a Wi-Fi hotspot. It also comes with a 4-inch color screen to display album art and visualizations. This promises to change the game considerably.
As you can see, there isn't much innovation in the personalized music space as far as user interface is concerned. Whether the algorithms they are using to compare songs and artists are sufficiently differentiated is another matter, and one that will depend on your own tastes. So get listening!
Last.fm works just like Pandora. You enter an artist you like, and it tries to find similar artists that you'll like too. Added to that, there are also some neat social features that attempt to match you to other Last.fm users based on the similarity of your musical tastes.
The genome algorithm-powered Seeqpod lets you search for music all located all over the web and add them to playlists. By far the neatest part of Seeqpod is that it lets you make a choice: you can either search directly for a song (by clicking "Search") or get a list of similar songs (by clicking "Discover"). It also searches YouTube for music videos.
Not to give you deja vu, but Slacker works just like Pandora too. You can either specify an artist that you like, or browse through the top stations based on genre (Classic Rock, Today's Hits, etc.). You can also favorite stations by adding them to your presets list.
Slacker is unique in at least one way: it plans to release what looks to be an iPod killer, the Slacker Portable Player, that will be able to sync with your Slacker profile to load up on new music whenever you get near a Wi-Fi hotspot. It also comes with a 4-inch color screen to display album art and visualizations. This promises to change the game considerably.
As you can see, there isn't much innovation in the personalized music space as far as user interface is concerned. Whether the algorithms they are using to compare songs and artists are sufficiently differentiated is another matter, and one that will depend on your own tastes. So get listening!
Labels: Technology
Megaupload Premium Link Maker
We've talked about a premium link maker for Rapidshare so it's only fair to mention one for that other popular file hosting service: Megaupload. The Megaupload Premium Link Maker lets you get download links to files without going to the Megaupload site. It is mainly targeted toward users in countries with limited download slots.
It's a three step process: all you need to do is paste in the Megaupload file's URL, enter in the CAPTCHA, and click to get the download link. On occasion, the link maker will throw up an error so just reload the page and try again.
You probably won't want to use it if you aren't experiencing download problems because the wait time is 45 seconds before the link maker will give you the actual link. This is longer than the wait time if you register on Megaupload (25 seconds).
It's a three step process: all you need to do is paste in the Megaupload file's URL, enter in the CAPTCHA, and click to get the download link. On occasion, the link maker will throw up an error so just reload the page and try again.
You probably won't want to use it if you aren't experiencing download problems because the wait time is 45 seconds before the link maker will give you the actual link. This is longer than the wait time if you register on Megaupload (25 seconds).
Labels: Technology
The Art of Packet Sniffing: What Does Your Traffic Look Like?
A packet sniffer is a program that captures the information going into and out of your computer. Normally, it's not too pretty: it's just a bunch of text that doesn't mean anything to most people.
Packet Garden, on the other hand, turns packet sniffing into an art form, letting you visualize your footsteps on the Internet. The developer, Julian Oliver, describes it like this:
Packet Garden, on the other hand, turns packet sniffing into an art form, letting you visualize your footsteps on the Internet. The developer, Julian Oliver, describes it like this:
To do this, Packet Garden takes note of all the servers you visit, their geographical location and the kinds of data you access. Uploads make hills and downloads valleys, their location determined by numbers taken from internet address itself. The size of each hill or valley is based on how much data is sent or received. Plants are also grown for each protocol detected by the software; if you visit a website, an 'HTTP plant' is grown. If you share some files via eMule, a 'Peer to Peer plant' is grown, and so on.Not to worry, though. All the information that is captured is stored on your computer so there aren't any privacy issues.
Labels: Technology
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Spider-Man 3 Available for Download Online
Ahead of its weekend release, Spider-Man 3 has hit the streets of China and is now online at many of your friendly neighborhood BitTorrent sites. One commenter has this to say about one of the releases:I downloaded only the first part. It's in english, with chinese subs. Filmed from the left side of the theater at a 45 degrees angle. You see heads popping up, but I only got the first 5:44 minutes.How's the quality? Judge for yourself: a sample 2-minute clip can be seen here, and screenshots are available here.
Although unlikely to affect box-office receipts, this latest incident will no doubt raise further outcries about lost revenues due to movie piracy.
Labels: Technology
How to Listen to Pandora From Outside the USA
Loyal listeners of Pandora's customized radio stations who live outside the US will be in for a shock evening today (May 3): the site will be blocking all access to its services for users whose IP address doesn't reside in the US. Previously, all you had to do to prove you lived in the US was to input a US zip code.Pandora is working on obtaining proper international licenses and is close to securing deals in the UK and Canada. However, listeners in the other countries may need to use more exotic means to access Pandora like using proxies or VPNs. This development isn't so great for Pandora, either: more than 50% of their traffic is from outside the US, according to the notoriously inaccurate Alexa.
Longtime readers will know that we hate censorship of any sort so, of course, we have come up with a list of alternatives to Pandora as well as ways to bypass the IP filter. All of this even before the censorship begins.
If you live outside the US, for now, your options are:
- Musicovery: This European webradio service serves up music based on your mood. One drawback is low audio quality in the free mode.
- Blogmusik: Like a giant jukebox in the sky. All you have to do is search for a song, and it'll be played immediately. Unlike Pandora, they don't try to give you alternative songs that sound similar; they just give you the song you want.
- If you can't bear to part with Pandora, you can always use a proxy or VPN to access the service.
Proxies don't work too well with Flash, unfortunately. You can test the web proxies on this list by trying to access www.pandora.com and seeing if the Flash player loads. However, sometimes, you'll see this message pop up:
Using a VPN (virtual private network) is probably the most reliable way to access Pandora. VPNs are very general purpose solutions since they let you do anything on the Internet that you're able to do with your own net connection. You can look into SecureIX and Hotspot Shield for free, publicly accessible VPNs. We've written about them in conjunction with downloading BitTorrent files and accessing TV streams from outside the US.
Labels: Technology
Koonji Guides Help You Get Things Done
Koonji is a site that helps you get things done, offering step-by-step guides to online resources and information. The word "Koonji" means "Cliff Notes" in Hindi, and the tutorials on the site are basically condensed how-to guides. Each step is assigned a number and has a little descriptive text along with recommended links that you can follow to get more information.Some popular Koonjis include "How to Make Your Dream Wedding A Reality", "Immigrate to Canada", and "How to make Turkish coffee".
If you click on a link in one of the guides, a Koonji toolbar will show up in a frame that follows you from site to site. This lets you navigate to the next step in the guide. I like the idea of breaking each step into its own separate page, but it could get cumbersome for tutorials with many steps.The basic idea behind Koonji is reminiscent of Squidoo lenses, which are "handbuilt" catalogs of information that center around a particular topic. In addition, like Squidoo, Koonji offers royalties on the tutorials you build.
If you're not a fan of text-based tutorials like Koonji, you can check out video tutorials on sites like SuTree and VideoJug. Video tutorials also tend to be a little more amusing.
Labels: Technology
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
100 Free Legal Internet TV Channels
On the Internet, there's always something to watch. The trick is finding the right channel, which is where DailyIPTV comes in. They've put together a list of 100 free, legal Internet TV channels. The list is broken down into categories: sports (NFL, golf), news (CNN, BBC), TV networks (ABC, NBC), comedy (Adult Swim), and movies (Turner Classic Movies).
Unfortunately, most of these channels don't really deserve the name: oftentimes there are only clips or promos running on these sites, but some channels do run full length classic movies and TV shows. They did the hard work; now all you have to do is click.
Unfortunately, most of these channels don't really deserve the name: oftentimes there are only clips or promos running on these sites, but some channels do run full length classic movies and TV shows. They did the hard work; now all you have to do is click.
Labels: Technology
Joost Invites Update
I've just sent out Joost invites to all the Digital Alchemy readers who left their emails in the previous post. You can check the comments to get individual confirmations.If you don't see a comment from me (Alchemist) with the message "sent", please add a comment below this post with your email address in the "Comment" box. Not the "Send replies to email" box.
I hope some of you who have already gotten Joost invites will help out other Digital Alchemy readers with invites. If you do, please reply with the comment "invite sent".
You can invite other readers by clicking on My Joost, which will bring up an invite form.
Labels: Technology
Tab Scope: Firefox Thumbnail Preview and Tab Navigation
Among the many features that impressed me about Opera was the tab thumbnail preview, which pops up a thumbnail image of whatever tab you hover your mouse over. Now, a Firefox extension developer has done one better: he's created an extension called Tab Scope that not only pops up a tab preview, but let's you navigate that tab from the preview window. You can also scroll through the page and click links or buttons in that page.It's an extremely neat extension that was only released a couple days ago. Time will tell if it ends up being a keeper, but Tab Scope has potential.
Labels: Technology
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Joost Invites for All
Joost is one step closer to opening its doors to the general public. They're giving current Joost users unlimited invites and have signed content deals with CNN, Sony, Sports Illustrated, and the National Hockey League. Classic shows like Charlie's Angels, Transformers, and Starsky and Hutch are among the new offerings.For readers who've emailed me about getting an invite, the unlimited invites feature doesn't seem to be available yet. If you want to be added to the invite list, just give me your email address in the comments below. I'll send the invites out as soon as possible.
Update: Invites have been sent. If you don't see a reply in the comments below from me (Alchemist) saying "sent", please comment again. This time, leave your email address in the "Comment" box, not the "Send replies to email" box. Otherwise, I won't be able to see your email address.
Update 2: PLEASE READ THIS:
Make sure to leave your email address in the "Comment" box, not the "Send replies to email" box. Otherwise, I won't be able to see your email address.
Labels: Technology
World Without Oil Launches
The PBS-funded World Without Oil "alternate reality event" has launched. The goal is to get people thinking about what a real oil crisis would actually feel like. Content from YouTube videos, blogs (LiveJournal, Blogger, Vox, WordPress), podcasts (Box.net), and MySpace profiles is being used to chronicle World Without Oil.
What's the nightmare scenario? Gasoline prices have jumped by over a dollar, oil delivery contracts were renegotiated upwards, and nations like China and India are rushing to secure the remaining contracts. And this is only week one.
This blog excerpt encapsulates the chillingly real feel of the game:
[via]
What's the nightmare scenario? Gasoline prices have jumped by over a dollar, oil delivery contracts were renegotiated upwards, and nations like China and India are rushing to secure the remaining contracts. And this is only week one.This blog excerpt encapsulates the chillingly real feel of the game:
Back in early 2003, I read something that changed my life. It was a site called "Life after the Oil Crash" and it told in chilling detail the problem that our society faces in terms on an impending peak in oil production. I knew long before this that eventually the day of reckoning would come, but I had no idea it was literally on our doorstep. In the context of Peak Oil, so many world events finally made sense in a connected way. Before this realization, I saw history unfurling in a patchwork of random events. After it, there were almost no questions left. The big question became instead, what am I going to do about this? What would I do with this information? How would I change my life?An immense amount of world-building has been done to support the game's scenario using all the tools of Web 2.0. How do you actually play the game? By creating your own content, anything from blogs to videos. You can also call in and leave a phone message, which will be posted on an audioblog.
[via]
Labels: Technology
