Yesterday YouTube presented its newest tool – the online video editor. It enables you to edit your videos, create sequences and add selected soundtracks in a very simple and usable manner. While maybe not suitable for creating the next Star Wars sequence, it surely is usable enough to create short videos from footage you have shot with your camcorder, or create a compilation from your favorite songs. See for yourself:
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YouTube video editor
June 18th, 2010TinEye – a reverse image search engine
April 30th, 2010
You know how search works – you open your favorite search engine, type a keyword or two, and there – a list of thousands of pages, containing info about your topic of interest. There even is an image search – you go to Google images and there again – hundreds of images, corresponding (better or worse) to the keywords you entered. But what if you do not know what you’re looking for? What if you have an image of a painting and want to know who painted it? Or a photograph of a place, you want to know where?
TinEye is the “reverse image search engine” you need – you just have to upload your image (or give the URL-address, if it is published on a webpage), and you will get results from other pages, containing the same image. It gives you the chance to learn what it is, since you will probbably get pages, containing info about it. Here is how it works:
It is also a good tool to see who is using your images 
ePubBud – free children’s eBooks
April 26th, 2010
ePubBud is a new service, that allows you to download children’s books for free. On your PC/Mac, on your iPhone, on your eBook reader. Oh, and the newest gizmo – the iPad, for those who have it already.
It also allows you to publish your own stories and books for kids. And to send paper books for digitizing.
What’s the Deal with ePub Bud?
Well, it’s pretty much just “YouTube for Children’s eBooks.”
So far, it features hundreds of children’s books in epub format (hence the name of the site), with covers, short synopsis, suitable age, ratings and reviews, etc. It looks like a project with a lot of potential to grow and be really useful.
[via Michel]
Invaluable knowledge resources
March 1st, 2010
There are numerous sources of knowledge on the Internet. Among the eLearning resources, specialized reading, focus groups, portals, etc., you can find the topic that is of interest to you and spend a lot of hours reading and watching videos on the subject.
I am also very keen on learning new things and gathering knowledge in various spheres of life. So, I was very excited, when several years ago, one of the most prominent universities in the IT sphere – the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), decided to start an innovative project – to make the courses, taught to MIT students, available online. Since then, many universities have made this step, and as a result, you can now “attend” top universities’ courses from the comfort of your own home, to mix and match content according to your own interests and needs, and to design unique curricula for yourselves.
So here is (hopefully, an ever growing) list of links to the publicly available university courses and other knowledge resources:
Academic Earth [http://www.academicearth.org/]
MIT Open CourseWare (OCW) project [http://ocw.mit.edu]
MIT World [http://mitworld.mit.edu]
UC Berkeley Webcasts [http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses.php]
Open Yale Courses [http://oyc.yale.edu]
Apple iTunes U [http://www.apple.com/education/mobile-learning]
Research Channel Video Library [http://www.researchchannel.org]
Sceince Stage [http://sciencestage.com]
TeacherTube [http://www.teachertube.com]
TED Talks [http://www.ted.com]
Udemy [http://www.udemy.com]
videolectures.net [http://videolectures.net]
YouTube EDU [http://www.youtube.com/education]
Yovisto [http://www.yovisto.com]
RSA [http://www.thersa.org]
Open CourseWare Consortium [http://www.ocwconsortium.org]
Feel free to propose other valuable resources, that belong to the list. Also, be sure to revisit this article, as it is my intention to keep the list updated as I find other valuable resources.
[Image by svilen001, taken from www.sxc.hu]
MagCloud – Magazine Publishing Reinvented
January 31st, 2010
MagCloud – a new (beta) service by HP Labs brings the magazine universe in a single place. It is social, it is eco, it is innovative. It is the virtual magazine newsstand. It is a service, that offers print-on-demand magazines to end users. The beta is so far only available in United States, Canada and United Kingdom, but they promise to expand to more countries soon.
MagCloud started as an HP Labs incubation project to evaluate new, online marketplaces for buying and selling custom and niche magazines with print on demand fulfillment. MagCloud is inventing new ways to bring consumers and publishers together in a web-based marketplace where choice, flexibility and print on demand are the cornerstones of the community.
Give it a try!
Always-On PC
August 19th, 2009
There is a new service available for the people, who wish to have a full-featured desktop while on the road. The service is called AlwaysOnPC, and is in essence a virtual desktop, stored on a server that you can access anytime, and from anywhere.
As it is described on their website:
Introducing AlwaysOnPC, the world’s first personal cloud computer that works from any device, anywhere – including your iPhone™.
Your own online virtual personal computer loaded with a full set of applications and 2 GB of personal file storage. Accessible from an iPhone (other platforms tba) as well as any netbook, laptop, desktop, Internet kiosk.
The service includes an always-on PC with 2 GB of storage, available for documents, files, photos, etc. It is ideal for the travelers, who need to access their desktop remotely from different locations – a computer, their iPhone and soon-to-come other internet-connected platforms. It includes a variety of applications:
- Internet applications – Firefox browser, Email client, Instant messenger (supporting multiple IM services, such as AOL, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo!, etc.)
- Office package (Word processor, Spreadsheet, Presentation application, Project-management application)
- Utilities (Contacts manager, Calendar, Text editor, Archive manager, Calculator, Dictionary, etc.)
- Multimedia (Movie player (no sound for the time being!), GIMP – a full-featured image editor, etc.)
- Games (17 board and puzzle games)
and even some heavy-duty programming tools including Eclipse and Glade interface designer.
Important! You can get a free registration to try it for 5 days, but in order to get the service permanent, you have to download the AlwaysOnPC app from the Apple AppStore (a one-time 29.99 USD) and login from your iPhone or iPod.
From Xform Computing.
Wave – the next big thing from Google
June 2nd, 2009A technology that promises to become the next revolution in Internet. From Google.
Google Wave has been presented at the Google I/O 2009. I was amazed when I watched the demo presentation, the features and functionality combined in such a simple and convenient way! And what is amazing for me is the fact, that the technology is as equally appealing for the teenager as it is for the corporate manager! And bearing so much potential for future uses, that it will change the way people communicate, just like Skype did. Have a look:
[Via Seth Godin. Didn't I tell you to follow his blog's RSS feed?]
Brand new Skype
February 5th, 2009The completely redesigned Skype 4.0 is now available. Among the highlights of the instant messenger are the improved video calls, the somehow more “Web 2.0″-ish style of chats, the improved review of your contacts’ details, directory, including information about businesses all over the world, et cetera, et cetera.
The interface with the “real life” telecoms are also enriched. An interesting feature is the ability to buy an online number – in this way people can call your Skype from a regular (landline or mobile) phone. You can choose your number from 21 countries. You can also save money on the road – call a local number, then select a contact from your list to be automatically called. The ability for calling landline or mobile numbers from Skype has been around for quite a long time, but now it is enriched with the option to send text (sms) messages. And being the de facto standard for free internet telephony, it definitely is on the telecoms map now too.
It generally looks much better, everything is organized in a more user-friendly and convenient way. One unique feature, that the old version also had, is the option to edit (or completely remove) a message you have already sent, with a simple right-click. You can download the new Skype IM and start exploring it yourself.
