I’m guessing that you didn’t know. I found a couple of these articles scary and a couple pretty informative. This deserves to go under the title “Did You Know…”? Anyway, I thought I’d just compile articles into a post. They may have nothing to do with each other, but each one gives some insight.

1) If you’re planning a crime and it involves shooting someone, beware: I know this sounds like something from CSI or some futuristic show, but this is in fact REAL. The head of forensics at the Northamptonshire Police in UK has come up with a new way to fingerprint bullets, with: Electricity. He made a couple of startling discoveries, all of which could help identify a criminal who loaded the gun. Be careful guys. He discovered that the extreme heat that occurs when firing a gun causes salt from a fingerprint to slightly corrode the casing of the bullet. By zapping the casing with electricity, he can detect the prints even years after the shots were fired. It’s hopeful that a whole bunch of cold cases will be re-opened and solved. I guess you should wear glove when you LOAD your magazine too.

On the same line of bullets and guns, let’s see how and iPod can save your life. The iPod below saved a man’s life in Iraq. He was ambushed in the streets of Tikrit and shot in the chest at close range with an AK-47. Thankfully he had an iPod, the 20gb version and it slowed the bullet down enough. Pretty lucky dude. Lesson? Carry a huge iPod in your pocket.

2) Students prefer Gmail and text messaging: It’s just not the same. In Japan, it seems that e-mail is the way to go. That’s what phones are for there. Instead of actually talking on the phone or even text messaging, instead, they e-mail each other. However, here in the US, a survey was done by eROI taken by 283 high school and college students from 20 states to determine which e-mail was the most popular and the preferred methods of communication. The results? Gmail is the preferred e-mail at 32%, followed by Yahoo at 19%. 37%  of students prefer text messaging and 26% use e-mail, followed closely by social networks and then instant messaging. Just a look at our habits.

3) Golfers are at risk for hearing loss, do wear earplugs, or be seen with a hearing aid: From BBC, players who are using the new high tech and more modern thin-faced titanium drivers should wear ear protection. Ear specialists suspect that the “sonic boom”, when the club head hits the golf ball damaged the hearing of a 55 year old golfer. The man played with a King Cobra LD titanium club and said that the noise of the club sounded “like a gun going off”. It turns out that since the modern drivers are so thin, it makes a louder sound. For example, the Ping G10 driver clocked in at 130 decibels. That’s pretty loud. The prolonged exposure to this type of sound could cause a lot of damage, so researchers are recommending ear protection. Oh, and just so you get a sense of how loud this stuff is: a rifle gunshot is 140-170 decibels and the threshold of pain is 130 db. With a suppressor, it may be reduced to around 115 db. So if you golf with those high-tech drivers, get some ear protection.

4) Tetris wipes out bad memories: According to researchers at Oxford University, playing Tetris can help significantly reduce emotional scars. I guess Tetris really is the greatest game ever invented in computing history. Researchers showed subjects graphic images of violence and asked half of the group to play Tetris. Those who played the game reported fewers bad memories than those who didn’t play it. Researchers are trying to apply it to people who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, especially military vets. How in the world does Tetris do it’s thing? According to Dr. Emily Holmes of Oxford’s psychiatric department, Tetris blocks the brain’s ability to store painful memories because it requires intense concentration, competing with your brain’s resources for sensory information. That means that it interferes with the way sensory memories are laid down. Too bad I can’t just play away my bad memories. You have to play the game immediately after your traumatic experience. I guess I just have to live with my bad memories. Boo hoo hoo.

5) Recycling Bins are more effective when they have holes: I saw this on Treehugger. I try my best to recycle wherever I go. However, there are places where recycling bins are just not available. In that case I keep my recyclables in my pack until I get home. I’m big on this subject. Anyway, according to Sean Duffy, an associate professor of psychology at Rutgers, small holes in bins make people more willing to recycle. It’s believed that people associate holes on the lids of recepticles with recycling. It increases the rate of reycling by 34%. Since recycling bins are starting to spring up in all over public places, it makes sense that they use this research in their design.

Here is an updated compilation of more online resource tools. So far, the only reliable software download that can replace Adobe Photoshop is GIMP. However, if you are willing to do your work online, you might as well take a look at the following websites. I would recommend trying a couple of them out just to get a feel and see which ones you like more. Feel free to comment on the ones you prefer.

1) Alilg.com

It’s a pretty good site overall, but definitely not a match for sumopaint or even Photoshop Express. It can be a little bit slow and sluggish, since it does run on Java. However, it is simple and easy to use. If you only need minor editing, like editing text, gray-scaling, cropping, or adding simple text to the picture, it’ll be the ideal thing. Sadly, not up to my standards.

2) Pixlr.com

Excellent site! Reminds me almost exactly of Photoshop. Yea I know it’ll never be Photoshop because Photoshop costs $300 with a student discount. Most of us, unless you are really into graphics or are a designer/developer don’t need something so powerful. If you just want to doodle or are looking for an online program that has most of the features of Photoshop, look no further. I found that Pixlr has a couple of really cool filters, like the Kaleidoscope filter pictured below. I say definitely give this one a try. It’ll most likely end up at the top of your list.

3) Pixenate.com

A great site! It lets you upload pictures from your desktop or import them directly from Facebook. It’s a little bit slow, but that’s not much to complain about. It’s not that great if you want to do all the editing manually like in Photoshop, but it’s great for preset effects. Among the tools are flipping, basic fills, sepias, red eye fixes, and oh, my favorite! They also have a TEETH whitening tool. It’s not every day you get one of those. It’s simple to use, but it recommended only for photo editing.

4) Phixr.com

Another site that is good for doodling, but not much of anything else. I found it really easy to make speech bubbles with. The tools are simple, but the use interface can be a little bit confusing. However, one thing about this internet tool is the ability to save your finished “masterpiece” onto all the popular image hosting sites. Could be handy?

5) DrPic.com

Not much to say about this one. Free, easy, simple and clean. Like most of the other photo manipulation tools, it doesn’t resemble Photoshop much, but it will lift your photos out of the rut.

6) Aviary Phoenix (and suite)

Aviary is a compilation of Phoenix, Peacock, Toucan, and Raven. Each one is a different element of design. It’s amazing and I’m actually really glad I stumbled onto it. Phoenix is your standard online image manipulation tool. I would recommend Aviary Phoenix. One, because it has an excellent interface, and two, because it’s simple and easy. Pretty close to Photoshop, but still lacking in complexity, as expected. If you like Phoenix, try out the other tools on Aviary. I’ve tried them all and I really like them.

EDIT //* 31 Dec, 2008 8:17 PM

7) Online Photo Editor

     This was just brought to my attention in the comments. How could I have missed it? I’ve never personally used it, but I’m definitely going to give it a shot. It looks pretty good. So far, I’ve seen a whole bunch of features such as rotations, color fixing, red eye removal, de-blurring, artistic effects such as sepia and black and white, as well as instant make-up. The instant make-up actually automatically detects faces. Excellente!

Well, that brings us to the end of the ONLINE tools. What about the software you can download that can take the place of Photoshop. I haven’t used all of these, but here is a list of what I have found so far. These are all for windows.

l Paint.net l Pixia l PhotoPlus l PhotoFiltre l CinePaint l Photobie l Photo! Editor l Phantasmagoria l ArtWeaver l  Active Pixels l PaintStar l Photo Pos Lite l Magix Xtreme Photo Designer l

There you have it. A post with the best online image manipulators and the links of downloadable programs that resemble Photoshop. Enjoy!

WordPress 2.7 is out, if you haven’t noticed. If you have used wordpress before, you would know. If you are currently using wordpress, you would already know, since you would have been made aware of the update when you first logged into the admin side of things. What is so great about wordpress anyway? I’ve done a couple of posts related to wordpress and I hope you all check it out. I power a great deal of my pages using wordpress, since it is easy to post, easy to maintain, and visually appealing. It is easy to customize and fiddle around with. A novice user can publish quite a blog just by spending a couple of minutes a day on it. It is so widespread that everywhere you look, whether you google something or stumble upon something, you are bound to come across a wordpress blog. WordPress has given an everyday citizen the power to post on the Internet, which in turn gives each citizen a voice. Anyway, back to the real news. WordPress has updated from 2.6 to 2.7. It has a whole new interface and a couple of interesting features that I’m sure all wordpress users would love. First of all, and perhaps the most important aspect of this update, is that it will automatically upgrade your wordpress installations. Most of us who host our blogs elsewhere rather than at WordPress.com have to manually update files. With WordPress 2.7, it is the end of manually updating and configuring. Now wordpress will notify you when there are updates and with just one single click, it will download and do all the installation for you. No more fiddling with codes and uploading files. Not only does it take forever, but if you manage a couple of different installations, it can be a pain. WordPress 2.7, also called “Coltrane”, aside from the automatic update system, also includes a whole new look from the admin end. If you have experience with WordPress.com hosted blogs, you’ll feel the similarity. Navigation, instead of being in a bar at the top is now docked to the left hand side. Everything is neater and can be customized simply by dragging windows. Windows can also be shrunk down so that you have more screen space if you need to. After a little bit of moving around, I’ve found that it is pretty easy to navigate and get things done. Organization is easy and accessing control panels, options, and settings is a breeze. On the aesthetics, I would definitely give it a 9/10. That is really high according to my standards. This should make blogging even more of a breeze. According to the wordpress blog, every screen is customizable, You are able ot drag and drop, causing the windows to grow or slim down. For example, as I am writing this post, I dragged the navigation bar that is on the left side and it automatically shrank down to icon view. When I hover over the icons, my menus pop up. This is really handy when you don’t need the navigation bar and just want the text area to be as big as possible. It is also possible to minimize the publish, tags, and categories bars that are on the right hand side or move them below the text area for an even larger place to write, but I like having those open so I don’t forget to apply them. Either way, the visual style is awesome. For more information on the new WordPress 2.7 “Coltrane”, (named after John Coltrane) update, visit either WordPress.org or watch the video below to have a look at the new features. Enjoy, because I certainly am!

I just came across this article on CNET posted by Rafe Needleman about his “Dirty Secret”. I confess that I keep exactly the same secret as he does. I know what you’re thinking. Ohh you PC wannabe but not really MAC. Yea right, I think I love Macs and I would definitely consider buying one if I had the money to do so. Right now I’m a PC, but I’m definitely a Mac at heart. Wow, to hell with this PC and Mac controversy already, although I must admit I rather enjoy these commercials going back and forth. It’s pretty entertaining, yet annoying. Well, back to Safari for Windows. There are tons of people who bash Safari for Windows, opting for browsers like Firefox, IE, and Opera. There are tons of browsers out there and now the recent hype about Google Chrome is growing too, although it seems like Firefox is still dominating. Like Rafe Needleman puts it, “the more I use it, the more I like it.” I totally agree with him. I downloaded it because I wanted something to match with my iTunes on my Mac themed PC. (We’ll deal with that at a later time.) It is definitely faster than Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and even Flock at start-up (I’m a proud supporter of Flock!). The Safari style is awesome. The text is definitely a lot more aesthetically pleasing, because of the font-smoothing technology. Who can forget the awesome search? The graphics in Safari is also excellent. I guess the beauty of the system is why I’m so attracted to Macs. Anyway, now you know one of my secrets!

Safari in action.