For all you animal lovers out there!!! This is a live web cam that focuses on a Bald Eagle’s nest in Oklahoma. I know there are a lot of these live cams out there, but this one actually works. This pair of eagles had been nesting in a nearby tree for a long time, but last year the tree fell down. Well, thanks to a lot of donations, the Sutton Center spearheaded the undertaking to build a suitable nesting site for the eagles. A pole with a series of “fingers” was erected and, low and behold, the eagles took right to it and built another aerie in the “artificial tree”. As of this writing, one eaglet has hatched and there are more eggs in the waiting. It is very interesting to watch Mom and Dad trade places in the aerie watching over their brood, and bringing back sustenance from hunting expeditions. I have witnessed them bring back large fish, and even another bird once. This is really a Wicked Cool Site and I am waiting with baited breath to see if the other eggs hatch.
Click HERE to watch the Live Eagle Cam…..
Once the site opens, you need to scroll down a short distance to view the cam. It may take a little bit for the viewing window to connect, so be patient. One more thing, the cam is only available during daylight hours.
Enjoy!!!
Remember Downadup, aka Conficker? I posted about it a couple of months ago, when it first became news. Well now the thing has become even bigger news. The Downadup worm that I wrote about was the first version of this worm. Well now it has mutated, so to speak. Downadup initially became news when it quickly infected over 11 million computers, and when I say quickly, I mean within a week. And mind you, the spread of this worm was because of computers that, for whatever reason, were not updated with Microsoft’s latest updates back in October 2008. Well a concerted effort to track this worm down and shut it down by anti-virus vendors was initiated. Now not to fault the cause, this effort probably caused a mutation of this worm to what was known as Downadup B. When this version was reverse engineered, it was found to have a data base of around 250 websites in which it was to use to “phone home”, on February 12th, in order to get further instructions on what it was supposed to do. Once this was discovered, quick action was taken to shut these domains down, thus not allowing the worm to phone home.
This now brings us to Downadup C. In a brilliant, although devious move, the worm has now mutated once again and will no longer try to connect with the 250 domains anymore. Instead, it has been re-scripted to attempt to contact, not 250, but 50,000 possible domains. The 250 domains could be managed, but 50,000 is going to be just about impossible. What’s more, when this newest version was reversed engineered, it was also found that it’s time to phone home is almost here. April 1st. This is a notorious date for viruses and worms to activate in history. But nothing that we have seen in the past compares to what this is capable. The one thing that we do NOT know, is exactly what Downadup is going to actually do. Anything from data erasure, to attacks on particular networks, to identity theft, to denial of service attacks are all very real possibilities. For those of you who do not know what a denial of service attack is, it is basically a mass attack on a particular site’s server(s). This is accomplished by the use of a botnet, which is a network of stolen computers in which the hacker has control of. By causing these thousands to sometimes hundreds of thousands, of stolen computers to simultaneously attempt to contact a particular web sites server’s, it causes the servers to overload and crash, thus shutting down the website.
I personally feel that this thing is going to die a quick death, but who knows. I guess we will find out on April 1st. One thing for sure, make sure that you have all the current Microsoft Updates. You can get them by going HERE in Internet Explorer. It will not work in any other browser.
It will be interesting to see what happens on April Fool’s Day!!!!
Who will be the Fool though???
Let me know what you think…….
Remember the days when you would need to do something but did not have the necessary software? I do!! I would need to purchase the software, and then load the numerous floppy disks (remember them?) into the drive and install the software. The DVD made this a lot easier as it was only one disk, but still required going to the nearest computer retailer to purchase the software. With the internet now, you can almost always go to the software manufacturer’s website and download the software, then install it. Well, that is a little better, but now all that you have is a digital copy of the software. If you do not back it up externally, you can face the risk of losing it when your hard drive crashes. Notice I said “when” your hard drive crashes and not “if’. Hang around computers long enough and it will happen.
Well, now starting to grab hold is a concept known as “cloud” computing. Think of it as having all of your software and some data stored in the “cloud”, which is someone else’s server. No more software to install, no more backing up to external drives and making sure that the backed up data is stored off site.
So how does this work? It is a cool concept and one that you have probably been doing for a long time and not even know it. Use Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Gmail, etc., well that is a perfect example of “Cloud” computing. All the software is on someone else’s server, not stored locally on your computer’s hard drive. This is what it is all about
and it is coming, like it or not. Google is doing it in other applications other than Gmail. Google Docs is another example of how this concept works. Go to Google Docs, start a new document, save it, and then you are able to edit it, print it, save it, and most importantly share it with others. Others can view the document, edit it, and save it (with your permission of course). What a concept!!!! Apple and Microsoft are also jumping on the bandwagon. A really cool site, which should be listed as a “Wicked Cool Site”, is Skydrive.com. It is a file sharing, file storage, backup, or anything else that you want to do with it. It is basically a free 25gb drive that you can get on the “Cloud”. Everything that you load to it is stored off of your computer. Just upload any file, and it will remain there. You can keep your files private, or share them with whomever you want, it is all up to you. Apple’s iWork.com is similar to Google docs, but is currently in beta, and quite frankly, shows it. I am sure that Apple will get the final version right.
So what does the future hold? Well, no more downloading or purchasing physical copies of Office or any other software. Go to the manufacturer’s site, purchase it, log on, and use it. That’s it. No downloading, no installing, no eating up your hard drive space. You simply log on and use the software, saving any file locally on your hard drive. When your hard drive crashes, you need not download and install all of the software locally on your computer anymore, just simply log back in to the softwares server, and you are up and running.
Wow, sounds good doesn’t it?? Except for privacy issues. What will keep these sites from keeping track of all that we do. Well, this is my thought about this. First off, if you are not doing something illegal or creating sensitive data, who cares? And secondly, the amount of traffic that these servers are going to see is going to be so great, that your file is not going to matter. It would be like trying to sift out a particular ant in an entire ant colony.
I personally welcome this. Not that my opinion really matters as it is coming whether I like it or not.
Go to Google Docs HERE
Go to Skydrive HERE
Go to iWorks HERE
What are your thoughts about “Cloud” computing?
Sunday morning, you wake up, make a cup of coffee, grab the newspaper off the front porch and sit down and browse the paper. This has been part of our way for as long as I can remember. Well, how does this sound?……Wake up, make the coffee, and then open up your laptop, or turn on your Smart Phone, and get your newspaper subscription on line. How does that sound? Well, hopefully it does not sound that bad to you as this is where we are going. Printed newspapers are going to fast become a thing of the past. Rising costs of paper, ink, printing, marketing, and transportation coupled with the fall in newspaper advertising, including Want Ads is forcing many newspapers to either close their doors, or resort to online subscriptions. Papers like the Rocky Mountain News, one of Denver’s two newspaper publications printed their last edition a couple of weeks ago. Other major newspapers like the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Seattle Times are also facing a losing proposition. In fact the San Francisco Chronicle posted a $50 million loss last year. It is estimated that it costs the New York Times almost $600 million dollars per year just to print their daily editions. With approximately 800,000 subcribers, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that this is not very lucrative. And this is not a localized problem, but is a reality for most major publications in the U.S., including magazines, and books. But what is causing the demise of the printed publication? Well, the short of it is the Internet. Because of sites such as CraigsList, advertising income to newspapers has fallen off substantially, thus creating an income deficit. Digital books and audible books, are fast becoming the rage, thus hurting publishing companies. With the addition of high quality book readers, such as Amazon’s Kindle ($359.00), and aps for smart phones such as the iPhone, which enable subcribers to download (in seconds) exact copies of books, newspapers, and magazines, who would have the need for suffering through the “black finger” syndrome caused by browsing printed versions?
As for me, I think it is a good thing, I would much rather receive RSS feeds, or browse the New York Times website to get my news, and digital & audio books are also very appealing. Why would I want to go to a bookstore, and buy a book when I can download one, in many cases cheaper than the printer versions, with a couple of clicks on the keyboard. I can literally have hundreds-of-thousands of publications at my finger tips. I can have the New York Times delivered to my computer everyday, and do not have to worry about soggy papers, non-deliveries, or missing pages. It will simply work.
Now there are other pros and cons that need to be looked at here. What will happen to the little local news publications? What about the jobs that will be lost due to the digital publications? These are potentially both downsides and serious ones at that. However, let’s think “Green” and save a few trees, actually a few million of them, this is a positive. Not to mention the cost reduction, and convenience of receiving these printings digitally.
Now I specifically mentioned Craig’s List earlier in a negative way……this was unfair. Who has not used Craig’s List? What a great way to advertise, search for employment, sell items that are of no use to you anymore…..the possibilities on this site are endless. Job hunting is done mostly over the internet. Mass posting of job resume’s is common place in today’s day and age. No more going from business to business and dropping off printed versions, by hand. Employers have also bit on the digital solution to finding employees. I don’t know of any business who, may still collect paper printed job applications, but does not also look on the internet for potential applicants. The WWW just opens up so many doors on both ends of the stick.
What are your thoughts on this? Is the printed newspaper doomed? Is all this for the better or for the worse?
Hit Me!!!!
Ever wish that you had Adobe Photoshop Elements?? Many of us have, however the $99 price tag for Elements is a little steep and the $699 price tag for CS4 is way out of line unless you are a professional photographer. Well now there is a place to go to do your photo editing for free. Now Pixlr is no Photoshop Cs4, but it is very similar to Elements. In fact the UI is even very similar. I have been playing with it now for a few days, and some of the features are amazing. It is “Cloud” computing at it’s best. Just upload a photo to the editor, no software to download, and start your project. The upload, using my cable connection, was extremely fast. Once you’re finished editing your photo, just save it back to your computer and do what you may with it. It works equally well on Windows XP, Vista, and on a Macintosh. I did find Internet Explorer to be a little slower than Firefox, but that is just the nature of that beast.
The Gimp is an Open Source GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is also quite adequate at editing and manipulating
your photos. I found the UI in Gimp to be a little difficult at first, but once I used it for a while, it became easier. I found “Help” in Gimp to actually be useful for some processes, like creating animated .gif’s. I did find some options in Gimp that I did not find in Pixlr, or maybe I just did not look hard enough, but for the most part they were very similar and both are extremely adequate photo editors…….
I highly recommend these photo editors, and think that you will find them extremely useful.
Start using Pixlr HERE……..
You can download Gimp for OSX HERE……..
Download Gimp for Windows HERE…….
**Note** Running Gimp using OSX will require using Apple’s X11 Environment. X11 is an optional install package that can be found on your OSX install disk.
Both of these photo editors are free, and both work very well. The difference is that The Gimp runs natively on your computer while Pixlr runs in “The Cloud”, but best of all, both are FREE.
Let me know what you think……
My Edible Earth 