Info Freaking

For the centuries people invent various things. Most of them are made with purpose to help and simplify the life. However, some of them – although they could still have their purpose – are utterly and unexplainable weirdly made.
Here is the small list of 10 really weird products from the last few years.

USB Eye Massager

Since USB ports started to supply power to whatever is connected via them, they’ve spawned a gazillion of useless USB-powered gadgets. One of the strangest I’ve encountered is this ‘toy’ made for eye relaxation after the many hours spent in front of the computer.
Small hand with two fingers sticking up vibrates at either a high or low speed, supposedly relaxing the areas around your eyes. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather keep them away.

http://www.sundayo.com/htm/product.asp?id=450

Rubik’s Cube Mp3

Similar to the Rubik’s Cube, each layer of this weird but interesting MP3 player has a specific function such as play, pause, forward or back. Also, to turn it off you must complete the cube.

http://www.yankodesign.com/2007/01/17/rubik-cube-mp3-player-by-hee-yong/

Nose Picker


Are you lazy enough to use this instead of your own finger? And is that real finger on the holder?

http://www.medgadget.com/archives/2007/02/the_nose_picker.html

Boob Radio

This is the breast… I mean the best radio ever. By twisting the left nipple you adjust volume and the right you tune the station. And in the same time, you enjoy the view.

http://www.gobaz.com/prodpage.asp?ProdID=6664

Musical Condom

You can throw away all your Barry White CDs. You don’t need them anymore thanks to Grigoriy Chausovskiy, inventor of the musical condom.
A miniature loudspeaker and motion sensor implanted in the condom’s upper cuff provides a range of musical tones during sex. Music volume depends on intensity of love-making and tone varies based on the sexual position.
That’s right, just lay and play.

http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3458374

Das Keyboard

Das Keyboard is made for advanced users only. Beginners or average users might not like the idea that this keyboard comes without any printed key. That’s right. It’s completely blank, forcing users to learn ‘blind’ typing… In very unconventional way.

http://www.daskeyboard.com/

USB Hamster Wheel

If you don’t have a room for real pet, this might be great substitution. All you have to do is to plug it in USB and load program from CD. As you start typing, the hamster will start running, spinning the hamster wheel. The faster you type, the faster he runs.

http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/new-arrivals/usb-hamster-wheel/index.html

Aquariass - Aquarium toilet

There are a lot of weird toilet inventions, but this is probably one of the best. Instead of toilet cistern, you have an aquarium. You’ll probably have to get new set of fishes each time you flush your toilet.
I just don’t know what PETA would say on Aquariass.

http://www.elsewareinc.com/products/aq.htm

Smallest HD TV

Behold the smallest HDTV on the world. It’s called Lilliput and it’s only 1.8 Inches big (?).
However, I don’t really see point, except if you want to make your cockroaches happy.

http://lilliput-sz.diytrade.com/

Bacon Floss

Tired of mint smell coming from your mouth? How about to spice it up a bit with a favorite taste of crispy bacon? By using Bacon Floss, waxed floss flavored like crispy fried bacon, you could make the boring process of flossing a little more fun.

http://www.fredflare.com/customer/product.php?productid=3756&cat=255

First of all lets define success on Digg. You can become successful user relatively quickly with some effort. But to become REAL power user you will need years. However, becoming Digg power user won’t guarantee you any success in promoting your own blogs, articles, news to the Digg’s frontpage. To hit the frontpage you will need:
1. lot of time
2. love from Digg’s administrators/moderators

You need lot of time because you have to make quality website which is not “overnight” task. Also you will need to become true leader in posting stories. That way your submits will get more attention from newcomers who often digg submissions of power user who they try to befriend. But, what is the most important you need a lot of time of regular activity (probably few years) to become relevant source of new domains in Digg’s algo. This means you have to be marked by Digg’s administration as a “trustworthy” user.

More twisted resource, love from Diggs administration, is hardest to obtain. It’s almost certain that Digg has whitelist of “nice” websites which pass through filters easily with fewer diggs. These are highly relevant, authority websites with large audience like Reuters, BBC, Telegraph, YouTube, Yahoo, ArsTechnica, etc. You can find full list on di66.net or just by observing “populars” directly on digg.com for few days. It’s IS possible to hit the frontpage without being on the “whitelist” but you’ll need extraordinary story or unique breaking news which is rare. So you need to be whitelisted to get more consistent results. And nobody know for sure the key of being whitelisted. We can make logical speculation on the prerequisites:
1. authority website
2. quality content
3. interesting and relevant content for Digg population
4. lots of submissions by power users in relatively short time
5. lots of natural diggs

OR you can probably pay for inclusion if you know an operator who works for Digg. You can befriend them on Digg meetups & events. Just buy him few beers and that’s it

Next time I’ll write about how to become regular power user in 7 days, so stay tuned.

5 years ago only few of us knew what social networking is. Today it is almost impossible not to have a profile on one of social networks. Some love FaceBook, and some are ‘addicted’ to Twitter. It’s all a matter of personal taste. Social networks cover topics like dating, software development, music photos and films. There are social networks that work as news generating sites, and there are networks that will help you find people that you haven’t met for the past 10 years.

What is your favorite social network? Where do you spend your time? 

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Thank you for your vote!
 
There are many more social networks then these listed in the poll. Please post a comment, and I will include your suggestions in the poll.
Thanks!   

Few weeks ago I got college assignment to explore about the thing tech people favor the most. Of course, tech people like tech things, gadgets, games, software… Further research led me to specific brands like Apple, Sony, IBM, MS, Creative, etc. I thought about creating poll with most popular gadgets as options. As a test I gave this poll to my friends and it came out that Apple gadgets become absolute winner. For that obvious reason I decided to change initial poll and to make things more uncertain. Second test unveil quite tied results. Unfortunately my offline test sample was too small so I put this poll on internet in hope that I’ll attract larger audience and complete my assignment with more accurate results.

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If you’re able and if you want to help, forward this poll to as much TECH people you know until Friday. Also I would like to hear your opinion on what other possible answers should I add to the poll. I’ll add the most interesting options.

THANKS A LOT FOR YOUR VOTE AND IDEA!

As you probably know mod_deflate is Apache module which can be used to compress server’s output so you can benefit in lower bandwidth consumption and faster web page load time. Client-server connection time is also shorter so in some cases this might lead to lower overall memory/cpu consumption.
However there are drawbacks as well. Compression is cpu intensive process so it could slow down your server. It’s always specific situation creator of your decision whether to go with mod_deflate or not. Most people experienced significant benefits and you may give it a try to see if it fits your case.

Setup is quite simple. You can compile mod_deflate into the Apache or you can load it using following directive inside httpd.conf (Apache main configuration file):

LoadModule deflate_module modules/mod_deflate.so

Then in the same file you may put these lines:

<Directory “/path_to_htdocs”>
       AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css application/x-javascript
       AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml
       AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-httpd-php
       BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
       BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
       BrowserMatch \bMSI[E] !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
       Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary
</Directory>

Above directives instruct web server to compress specific media types and to compress only if client browser supports compression. Most modern web browsers do support compression. Anyway there are few exeptions, so they are excluded.

Finally if you don’t want to compress some web pages for whatever reason you can do it by adding following directive:

SetEnvIf Referer URL no-gzip

where URL is actual web address of the page or directory you don’t want Apache to compress.
When you’re done with configuration don’t forget to restart your web server.
Good luck!