Yummy Wakame

So I want to get an expansion pack for Sims 2 but don’t know which one to choose. Between Sims 2 Nightlife, University and Business which is the best one? Is it worth getting them all?

electro^plankton gives you the rundown on why this new social networking tool is so sweet. Also: “Wallop is devoid of advertisement banners but features a new system for people and companies to make money by creating cool widgets or modules and selling them thru what they call the Wallop Modder Network.”

Ask for an invite and be part of the Beta testing team!

Flickr MiniCards

Yet another fab link off just for the record

Thanks Ken!

Google Transit, an extension of Google Maps that lets those of us who are car-free traverse out cities via walking and public transportation, has recently expanded from a Portland-only offering to five other cities, including Pittsburgh!

So if you’re thinking of moving to the US, or you already live here but maybe you’re stuck up in a red state or just don’t like the weather up in New England, you might want to think about moving to our happy mountain home.

Wow wow wow!! This is such great news for those of you living close to one of these areas:

Nov 01 Dublin - Ireland – Olympia
Nov 02 Manchester - England – Academy 2
Nov 03 London - England – Barbican
Nov 05 Gent - Belgium – Vooruit
Nov 07 Barcelona - Spain – Casino L Allanca
Nov 09 Paris - France – Le Bataclan
Nov 10 Cologne - Germany – Gloria
Nov 11 Amsterdam - Holland – Paradiso
Nov 12 Copenhagen - Denmark – Vega
Nov 14 Oslo - Norway – Sentrum Scene
Nov 15 Stockholm - Sweden – Berns
Nov 17-18 Reykjavik - Iceland – Frikirkjan Church

Sufjan is just amazing!! I’ve always wanted to see him live so if you miss this opportunity I’ll never forgive you. And St Vincent is my new favourite artist – take a listen to “Paris is Burning” to see what the fuss is about.

iPod Shuffle Unleashed
There are long suffering Shuffle owners out there with little to no regard for iTunes yet they are forced to install and use this junky software just to ulpload tracks onto the little device. Suffer no more! Someone has created a tiny free app that you can use to upload tracks with no strings attached. Now you can transfer songs to your iPod Shuffle from multiple computers without iTunes raping your poor little Shuffle first.

Alas, iShuffle doesnt work on my computer because iTunes is so broken it won’t even uninstall anymore, but I have already decided you shall be blessed with better luck!

“Jump in my car” – SONY BMG Music Entertainment Australia

Click here if you can’t see the video above.

And don’t miss the Hoffmeister’s rules to winning his heart! via

All found by Cait &Miko ;@)

“flickrflick151 shows how he put together a poor man’s iPod dock with only a cardboard box, some tape, and the tools that Jobs gave him.

There aren’t a lot of instructions included, but the pictures do most of the talking. Basically, using the plastic insert that came with your iPod, you cut a hole in the top of the cardboard box and get busy with some tape. Granted, if you want to you can certainly pretty this method up a bit (e.g., this very cool embedded iPod dock), but the point is that you can make your own iPod dock for pretty cheap if you’re dying to have a dock but aren’t pleased with the hefty price tag.

Cardboard not your thing? Try building an iPod dock with Legos.”
~ LifeHacker

“Introducing the mobiBLU Q-Bling MP3 Player with GENUINE SWAROVSKI CRYSTALS!”

“Bioengineered Buddies”

Found by Bob!

May your day be filled with birthday snails! :@)

Lifehacker: “When I bought my first Mac last month – a 15″ MacBook Pro – I wasn’t thrilled about the $2000+ price tag (even though I did save a few hundred upgrading the RAM myself). But I wasn’t just buying one computer, I was getting two. Not only was I: 1) getting a Mac, a platform I’d long wanted to dive into, but 2) I was also purchasing a computer that could run a familiar old friend – Windows.”

Click here if you can’t see the video above.

“Using the previously-mentioned virtual machine software, Parallels Desktop for Mac ($79.99), you can run Mac OS X and Windows (XP, Vista, you name it) side-by-side. Here’s how I’ve set up my Parallels installation to make working in multiple OSes easy and fun.” more…

socks of the day

Ooh I am just raving over this groundbreaking little gadget!!! Sony is constantly coming up with innovative ideas that should be blasting away the competition and this is my favourite example:

Sony S2 Sports® 2 GB MP3 Player

Available for pre-ordering @ $150 and comes with the wristband. Expected ship date: September 15, 2006.

My favourite feature:
Music Pacer – switches between playlists based on the tempo of your workout. It’s based on Sony’s G-Sensor technology, which automatically detects speed variation via the Music Pacer. The Music Pacer detects your speed, tempo and acceleration and automatically selects an appropriate playlist. This is such an awesome idea! I would use this feature all the time – even for determined walking to the store or just daydreaming through my neighbourhood.

Highly notable features:
Shuffle Shake – activates shuffle mode by shaking the player 3 times with the LCD facing up.
Target settings – set your target distance, time and calories burned.
Pedometer – Yay! I wanted one anyway.
Stop Watch – time your own circuit.
FM Tuner – with programmable presets. Every mp3 player should have one anyway. This one is able to tune into TV programs playing in many gyms.
Water Resistant – against perspiration and water splashes.
2GB Capacity – for storing up to 1,350 songs. 1GB and 512MB will also be available.
lightning fast recharging – just 3 minutes to charge up the batteries for 3 hours of playback, or total of 18 hours of battery life on a full charge.
Sleek, durable aluminium casing – available in black, pink, or silver.
One-line organic electroluminescence (OEL) display – accommodates both left-handed and right-handed users.

Now someone please explain to me how the iPod continues to be the number one choice mp3 player when the only thing innovative about it is the casing… and lets face it, even that is getting old. Its entirely reliant on iTunes which completely sucks, has a limited interface and forces you to use iTunes only to play the large music collection you’ve invested in and paid good money for through their store. I dont like how it snoops either to see if you have other copies on other machines / devices. So what!?! I own that track! A few months ago I uninstalled iTunes and it wiped out my entire music library including tracks I didnt purchase through iTunes that I’d collected since ‘98. Yesterday I tried to run iTunes and it cant even find its own folders or my iPod. Reinstalling doesn’t make any difference. And today it wont even let me uninstall at all. I can’t wait to purge it from my system and my life once and for all when completely reinstall my laptop.

OhGizmo reports: “We usually hide videos after the fold, but this is special. See, a lot of people got weak at the knees, back in December of last year, when news that Japan’s Asahi Breweries were giving away 5,000 beer-pouring robots as part of a special contest. Check out the comments on that article to get an idea of the level of excitement. Well, it’s eight months later, and obviously, there are some lucky Japanese now owners of said robot. And, one of them was kind enough to post a video of it in action to Youtube.

Click here if you can’t see the video above.

In case you can’t see the video, here’s the skinny: you don’t have to place the beer on its hand, but you do have to place the mug yourself. It fetches the beer from its refrigerated belly itself and pours it in your mug all by itself. It takes for freaking ever, and yelps little high-pitched Japanese things at you while it’s doing this.

It’s awesome.

You could do a much better job yourself, sure, even at a fraction of the time. But, then, you’d be missing the whole point.”

This video is from a recent TV show – “Hey, I have talent!”

Click here if you can’t see the video above.

Thanks Hamlet!

CHRISEKBLOG:

“FreeEnigma brings cryptography to webmail, with an ingenious set of free and open browser plug-ins that work with Yahoo, Gmail, and others. The plugins implement a version of GPG (the free/open version of Pretty Good Privacy) and scramble and de-scramble the text in your webmail before you send it and after you receive it, reducing the amount of information that webmail providers have on your communications. This is long overdue, as webmail and other hosted mail solutions are a ticking bomb, just waiting for a hacker, spook or copper to come a-knockin’, there to get a look at your private communications.”

“Though this is miles and miles better than the privacy that plain webmail delivers, there are a couple of ways in which this is less than perfect — the system doesn’t protect the To: and From: and Subject: information in your email; an adversary might be able to harm you just by knowing the fact that you’ve gotten encrypted mail from a specific person.”

Freenigma website

And here is a different optionI found if you’re interested.

Think of an object and the AI will try to figure out what you are thinking by asking simple questions. The object you think of should be something that most people would know about, but, not a specific person, place or thing.

Water fluoridation was first advanced in the US at the end of the second World War when the government had tons of fluoride – a nuclear waste byproduct – to get rid of. We have found ingenious ways to get rid of it – partly by introducing it into our water supply and toothpaste. Proponents argued that fluoride in water and toothpaste would help to protect teeth and prevent decay. Over the last few decades, fluoride has been added to public water supplies across the USA and UK.

While the benefits of fluoridation have been held to be unquestionable, accumulating evidence points to serious adverse health effects, including infant mortality, cancer, congenital defects and IQ. Today fluoride is an industrial waste byproduct of the aluminium and fertilizer industries and is known for poisoning the environment. We have a limitless supply of it. more…

Found on ClickNathan – I can’t wait until this fabulous service is available to addresses outside the US and Canada…

Stenograhr will send your words as snail mail via the web for only $2 a piece! Handy for keeping in easy contact with gran and your buddies in jail. Currently there is the option to get your blog printed and mailed as a digest to family members, clients and prospects.

Pretty soon there will be the options like printing photos from flickr or other sources to send with your letter, handwritten letters, more layouts and fonts to choose from and Christmas cards!

Im keeping my eye on this one.

On the eve of Tristan’s first day of kindergarten at the local Waldorf School, and thinking about how lucky he is to get to explore and play all day, learn to bake bread and make boats, I couldn’t have stumbled on anything more perfect…

Life Is a Journal:

“In my humble opinion, if we model our lives on the structure of how we were educated as children, our lives would be a lot more balanced. We would constantly be learning. We would appreciate literature, music, science and history – even more now than when we were kids…”

This is such a great article and has really inspired me. I hope it awakens something in you too :@)

Via

I’ve been using PDF995 for years now to save my documents to PDF format. Adobe Acrobat Writer is unaffordable for most people and why bother paying for it when PDF995 is free?

It’s a tiny app, installs quickly and to save a document as a PDF you just hit the print button and select “PDF995″ from your printer list. So easy! A small sponsor ad will display for a few seconds (or not if you purchase the software for $20) and the PDF opens up in Adobe Acrobat.