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…merely the World’s richest according to Forbes?
Why doesn’t Forbes ever publish how many jobs they’ve created, lives they’ve saved or what they’ve done to make the World a better place?
Why is it so difficult for mere mortals to bring things into context and do what is simply right!
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This article is intended for a more technical audience, i.e. those Mac users who wish to have a greater control of their system or application preferences.
Property list files are the files on your Mac OS X that end with the extension “.plist”. These files are used to store small amounts of persistent information that an application will have to access at a later point in time, such as user settings or application preferences. Those familiar with Windows may see property list files as performing the same functionality as the Windows registry.
In the past, plist files were in XML format, but this format has been replaced by a more storage-efficient binary format. Hence the need for a specific viewer or editor to read or modify the information contained in the plist files. Apple conveniently proposes such a utility in the Developer Tools that are provided with the Mac OS X. Once the Developer Tools have been installed, you’ll find the Property List Editor located in the folder Developer > Applications > Utilities.
Those who find the features a little too basic may want to try any of the following applications that serve the same purpose:
Trial versions and screenshots are available for all the applications listed above.
Those wishing to dig deeper about property lists will find more technical information at the Apple Developer Connection.
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Last year, some of us will remember, Charis Tevis, a graphic artist commissioned by Fortune magazine for its cover story on Apple’s CEO, created an amazing portrait of Steve Jobs. The image was built using nothing other than Apple’s complete portfolio of products.
More recently, Dylan Roscover, a talented designer from Aloma, Florida, has created just as amazing a portrait. Rosco created a portrait of Steve Jobs using the words from Apple’s Think Different “Here’s to the crazy ones” ad campaign. A close look at the portrait reveals that the words have been rendered using a variety of Apple related fonts: Motter Tektura, Apple Garamond, Adobe Myriad, Univers, Gill Sans and Volkswagen AG Rounded.
The web site Cult of Mac holds a short explanation detailing how Rosco created the portrait using Photoshop and Illustrator.
A full size image for print is available over at deviantART.
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For those who haven’t yet heard of him, Stephen Wolfram is a bright British physicist and mathematician who received his Ph.D. in particle physics from Caltech at age 20. He is also cofounder of Wolfram Research, the company that develops and markets Mathematica, and the authour of the controversial book A New Kind of Science, an empirical study of computational systems such as cellular automata, that was published in 2002.
And, since the publication of his book, Wolfram has been busy. Indeed, tonight, Wolfram Alpha, an answer-engine will go live. Unlike Google, Wolfram Alpha isn’t a search engine per se, as it doesn’t produce results based on indexed web pages. Instead, it computes results by making advanced inferences from a smaller set of structured data or knowledge base. Mathematica is the computational engine that powers Wolfram Alpha. But that’s enough talking! Time for a screencast to demonstrate what the engine is capable of doing.
The engine will likely be popular with scientists and it’ll be interesting to see what new applications or mashups emerge using Wolfram’s API which enables developers to integrate the results in their own web sites.
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- The 2009 flu outbreak in humans, known as “swine flu”, is due to a new strain of influenza A virus subtype H1N1 that contained genes most closely related to swine influenza.
- Transmission of swine influenza virus from pigs to humans is not common and properly cooked pork poses no risk of infection. The influenza A (H1N1) virus is killed by cooking temperatures of 160°F/70°C.
- In humans, the symptoms of swine flu are similar to those of influenza and of influenza-like illness in general, namely chills, fever, sore throat, muscle pains, severe headache, coughing, weakness and general discomfort.
- Recommendations to prevent spread of the virus among humans include frequent washing of hands with soap and water.
- If a person becomes sick with swine flu, antiviral drugs can make the illness milder and make the patient feel better faster. They may also prevent serious flu complications. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the use of Tamiflu (oseltamivir) or Relenza (zanamivir) for the treatment of infection with swine influenza viruses.
Extract from Wikipedia
It is all very nicely summarized in the poster shown below:
An embeddable flu tracker Google map has also been created using data compiled by Dr. Henry Niman.
I’m honestly not sure how reliable the data is as there are some divergences with the data published by the WHO. More information may be found on the World Health Organization’s web site.
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Just love ‘em!
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I have to thank Google for reminding me it’s Earth Day today, April 22nd, and hence a good opportunity to make the world a better place to live in, for us and for future generations.
Since the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, Earth Day has been an annual event for people around the world to celebrate the earth and renew our commitment to building a safer, healthier and cleaner world for all of us. There are many ways you can get involved. Volunteer. Go to a festival. Install solar panels on your roof. Organize an event where you live. Change a habit. Help launch a community garden. Communicate your priorities to your elected representatives. The possibilities are endless! Do something nice for the earth, have fun, meet new people, and make a difference.
Because I don’t have the patience to plant a seed and water it everyday until it’s a full grown tree, I’ve decided to contribute by reducing my dependency on paper. Here’s how:
I first decided to purchase an application for the iPhone called beamMe. beamMe helps you exchange contact cards with other devices (not necessarily an iPhone) over SMS or email. The Pro version allows you to:
During Earth Day, the Pro version is selling at a discount for $4.99 and, more importantly, the creators of beamMe will plant a tree for every sale through their partner, the Arbor Day Foundation.
It would be nice to include an “Edit” button in the history view to delete the beams you don’t wish to keep. I’m also not sure whether it’s a bug that remains to be ironed out, but photos of the contacts I beamed wouldn’t appear in the vCards. Other than that, it’s a nice application. Although, hadn’t it been for Earth Day, I would probably have stayed with SnapDat, which is free.
Now, for those of you who don’t possess an iPhone, I’d like to recommend GreenPrint. GreenPrint is an application, available both for the Mac and Windows, that will help you avoid wasting pages when you print. Like beamMe, there’s a free (World) version and a premium version. Make sure you try the free versions before buying! Below is a short tutorial describing how GreenPrint works.
One thing I thought was missing, though, is the possibility to select specific text, images or portions of pages and exclude them from being printed. Yet, a nice addition to GreenPrint, is their EverGreen font, which helps save ink and toner. And, if you’re still keen on doing more, why not spread the word by telling a friend or by using email signatures.
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Last Saturday, Susan Boyle, a 47 year old unemployed church volunteer, received a standing ovation from the audience during an audition for notorious British show Britain’s Got Talent. She sang “I Dreamed a Dream” from “Les Misérables” and impressed the judges, including Simon Cowell.
Within days, Susan has become an internet sensation after her performance was published on YouTube and has attracted over 30 million hits.
To those familiar with the concept of memes, Susan Boyle’s experience is a typical example along with the Hampster Dance, Numa Numa and many other internet phenomenae.
When refering to an internet meme, the term “meme” designates a concept or information that spreads rapidly from one person to others, via the internet, through the use of emails, blogs, video clips, social networking sites, instant messaging, etc. The term “meme” was actually first used by one of the most controversial evolutionary biologists, Richard Dawkins, in his 1976 book: The Selfish Gene.
Internet memes are characterized by the tremendous speed with which they propagate, often associated with a short life as they quickly go in and out of popularity, unless they are engaging and evolve as new interpretations emerge. To learn more about memes, I encourage you to explore Meme Central, a web site about memetics.
It will be interesting to see where this all takes Susan Boyle!
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A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world’s most high-profile file-sharing website, in a landmark case.
Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail. They were also ordered to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages. The damages were awarded to a number of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and Columbia Pictures. Record companies welcomed the verdict but the men are to appeal and Sunde said they would refuse to pay the fine. (BBC News)
The four partners running The Pirate Bay have been found guilty of organized crime by “assisting making available copyright material”. Although the four men haven’t directly been making the copyright material available on the internet, they have put in place the infrastructure that allows the files to be shared. If you were to apply the Swedish Court’s reasoning in the US, you would have to jail all those selling weapons that were used to commit a crime and not just the offenders themselves! You might, just as well, jail all the members of the National Rifle Association as accomplices!
At first sight, the judgement therefore does seem surprising. However, it may be argued that the large corporation’s shareholders are earning less and less income, which is being redistributed to a handful of opportunists, thanks to the advertisements being posted on the sharing platform. But then, isn’t The Pirate Bay our modern times version of Robin Hood, taking from the rich to give to the poor? This actually leads us to a political rather than legal debate. Should those who are unemployed be deprived of the privileges of listening to music, watching movies or using the best software on the market? There is no question artists should earn a fair share of the revenue stream made by the large corporations. But, while a few very talented artists make it to the top and have rather extravagant lives, many more, less talented artists, struggle to make a living. Thus, God given talent, beauty and brains does make selfish men (and selfish women) of us! Maybe the purpose of intellectual property is to allow a minority of people to live a much wealthier or more comfortable life than the majority! How many of the world’s wealthiest, glorified by the media on numerous magazine covers, would be willing to trade some of their huge gains for saving or improving the lives of the less fortunate?
Let the real debate begin!…
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Whether you’re looking for an entertaining device, a stress relief distraction or even a new age rosary, the NeoCube may hold the answer! The NeoCube is composed of 216 magnetised beads that combine to create an outrageous number of patterns! Challenge your imagination as you unravel this 3D puzzle.
To learn how to manipulate the NeoCube check the following video instructions.
