A Ninja pays half my rent

An oldie, but a goodie. This was in the Sundance Film Festival a while back.
http://www.atomfilms.com/af/content/ninja_rent

A Scanner Darkly- 30 minute preview

http://media.filmforce.ign.com/media/670/670907/vids_1.html

Free peek at A Scanner Darkly. The style is awesome.

From the director of Waking Life.

Never use your own email again…

I have three email addresses I use to control spam.

 - The primary one I use every day, that everyone I know sends to.
 - The one I use to sign up for less important things like newsletters, groups etc
 - High risk account - if I’m not sure I use this. I can still get to it, but I can dump the account if I want if it starts getting too much spam.

“There HAS to be a BETTER way…”
Yes. There are several online services that will handle some of the risk for you.
They’re super convenient, no signup, no risk.

Picture this. You’re mid way through filling in a form and you don’t want to use your own email, but you still need to pick up a password or collect a URL from the email that gets delivered after you fill it in.

1. Just make up an email in this form eg: temp12345@mytrashmail.com. (you have to use ‘@mytrashmail.com’)
2. Now go to myTrashmail and enter ‘temp12345′ and pick up any mail sent to this address. Wicked.
3. Account exists only for a few days, and is then gone, so if you need it, fwd it to yourself.

http://www.mytrashmail.com/

Some points to note.
- There is a risk others might see names, details passwords …so don’t use it for anything serious.
- Web companies - if you see trashmail accounts in your database, you may as well delete them… these are not real email accounts.

PS (Thanks to PeterV for putting us onto this).

Secret Laptop Mouse…

Laptop users rejoice! A mouse that stores away in your PCMCIA slot.
Uses Bluetooth and charges in the slot.
No scroll wheel, very thin - I imagine it’s still better than a touchpad.

Official Site

Read review at Slashdot

Collaborative version control for PSDs? Adobe Version Cue works

Sick, tired and confused with keeping track of everyone’s unique take on version naming conventions with Photoshop docs? Looking for a smoother way for a team of designers (and developers) to collaborate on a project? Look no further than Adobe Version Cue. Yes, that little green icon you’ve ignored all this time is actually the gateway to a world of usefullness.

Why Version Cue?

You don’t need to save multiple versions of PSDs manually, it does it for you.

Instead of projectname-pagename-v1.0, -v1.1, -v2.3b and -v13.56abcxz you just save ONE FILE NAME into a Version Cue project. Each contributing designer saves consecutive versions and you can go back at any time to open previous versions.

This way there’s always a most recent version in the project that everyone can access - no heaping pile of PSD mess.

Read more about it at http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/versioncue.html

The Elements of User Experience

http://www.jjg.net/elements/

Awesome book about building usable websites. Quick and easy read. Makes A LOT of sense.

What the reviewers are saying:

“brilliant“
“invaluable“
“a must-have“
“an instant classic“
“a quantum leap in explaining user experience”
“will change the way you think about Web development”
“the best book I have read so far about creating a great user experience”
“there is probably no better book on the market that so clearly and rationally covers the entire area of user experience”

It started with a diagram: http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf - the book explains how the diagram works.

New Valve Puzzle Game - PORTAL

From the makers of Halflife…  Watch the trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4jnl0hRB9I

How popular is your name?

Now this is VERY cool. The Baby Name Wizard is a site devoted to helping expectant parents find a perfect name for their progeny. By far the coolest bit of the site would have to be the NameVoyager.

Enter a name and see its popularity every decade since 1880!

Great example of a Rich Internet Application! You’ll need Java to run it. Download it here if you don’t see anything on the site.

The most useful windows add-on ever?

http://foldersize.sourceforge.net/using.html

If you’re like me and constantly wondering which folders are taking all the room up on your drive, this is great. No, its better than great. Yes I’ve tried ALL the programs like DiskSizeManager, but this just does it all in the explorer window as you browse your folders. Follow the instructions on the page above, once your columns set up, just apply the settings to all your folders and voila!

It’s invisible and fast. Hurrah

.

Links to some recent Amnesia projects

OK, here’s a dump of some project links - I know I’m missing heaps. I’ll add when I get time.

(updated Nov 30)
www.dunstanbaby.com (Priscilla Dunstan)
www.whatsin.com.au (Xbox)
www.braintrain.com.au (Lipton - Train your brain!)
http://games.ninemsn.com.au/flightsimxgame/ (FlightsimX Microsoft Paper Plane Game)

www.mywingman.com.au (Sunsilk)
www.blind-date.com.au (Sunsilk)
www.seeitfirst.com.au (Holden)
www.impulsetease.com.au (Impulse)
www.officepranks.com.au (Pepsi) - personal favourite
www.maxpreacher.com.au (Pepsi)
www.063xobx.com.au (xbox)
www.befree2go.com.au (nrma)
www.ikea.com.au (ikea adelaide)
www.disney.com.cn (disney china)

Still going strong www.driftgame.com.au (nearly 7 million games?)

(and this is MY Wingman page : www.mywingman.com.au/iain )

You are only a pixel

On Digg today… a website that shows the earths population in pixels.
http://www.royalsapien.com/pop1/

Although its not the longest sideways scroller we’ve seen - this goes to the ELEVEN MILE WEBPAGE which shows the scale of a hydrogen atom:
http://www.phrenopolis.com/perspective/atom/index.html

Oh - if you have a really slow connection - stay away - these sites are also the longest loaders you’ll ever see…

Video Refs… hmm

OK so Italy won the world cup. But here’s where there are clear double standards coming from FIFA regarding technology. Zidane is sent off based on video footage viewed by a fourth official - but neither the ref or linesman saw his unsubtle head butt on an Italian (who must have said something nasty about Zidane’s mum).

How can a player be sent off using retrospective video footage, when clearly incorrect decisions on field are not corrected using the same technology. (Ahem - Australia’s last minute penalty to Italy).

FIFA - step out of the dark ages. You just built an awesome website for this world cup. (http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/06/en). Now back up with some sanity and bring the fourth official into the game. Nuff said.

Australian Governments disasterous web skills:

Wonderful - Tax cuts for everyone so TRY THE TAX CUT CALCULATOR!
http://www.treasury.gov.au/documents/976/HTML/docshell.asp?URL=tax_cuts.htm 

Oh wait - it doesn’t work…
Even better it points to an internal Government private IP address!
Johnny H - I think you need a little help here…

Nicely spotted by the guys at Whirlpool Forums:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=550969

Ebay English

My latest ebay purchase was a hard drive case - I was very impressed as it has a major feature I’ve never heard of before: “Prohibition to Throw Down“

I’m still not sure what this means but it’s sure to come in handy one day.

So in my quest to find out what it means, I went to http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr.
Here I translated this title by parsing it through every language, hoping for a cure, but the best that came out was “This one prohibits the costume which played” - What the?

So what about a test with some words which might be ambiguous (aka Contranyms):
Here I translated the sentance below to each Language shown then back to English…

“I thought I would table the idea that we should weather the storm, but we decided that to stay fast. Quite a solid move I believe.“
& THE WORST TRANSLATION AWARD GOES TO KOREA!
Korean: It goes out and that we must overcome storm right, it will put an idea in the table and theyn the place thing me it thought, but we in order to stay quickly decided that. It goes out and it believes and it is hard positively and and it moves.

THE BEST(!)
German: I thought that I would shift the idea that we should weather the storm, but we decided that, in order to remain fast. Quite a firm movement, which I believe.

The Rest:
French: I thought that I would defer the idea that us should draw us from business, but we decided that to remain quickly. Completely a full movement which I believe.

Portuguese: I thought that I would price the idea that we must resist the storm, but we decide that one to remain quickly. Completely a movement that continuous I believe.

Simple Chinese: I thought I meet the scheduling idea we to be supposed to undergo the storm, but we decided that fast pauses. Is equal solid migration which I believed.

Russian: I thought 4 will be placed idea on the consideration that we they must maintain storm, but we solved that in order to remain rapidly. Sufficiently solid motion, I is which I believe.

Yep. Ebay english.
Turns out its a ball of sting that can’t be untangled.

Personally I love it. Buying appliances has never been so much fun.