ideavine | stylebook

Add multiple Camera Raw formats, live zebra preview and color histograms, motion triggers, time-lapse, extra-long exposure, stacked exposures, 1/25000 shutter, 1/64000 flash sync, auto-bracket, framing grids, longer video, calendars and tons more to your consumer Canon camera using the free, opensource, camera-hacking project CHDK. The Kit enhances embedded Canon Digic II and III firmware by loading the hacks from a memory card whenever you wish to use it. To turn it off, restart the camera. To stop using it, delete the files. It’s easy and non-permanent.

The Kit can also run scripts to trigger and perform actions, for programmable interval time lapse or motion trigger fast enough to capture lightning. Programmers can write their own, and better yet, programmers already have written large collections ready for download. Since many programmers actively develop the Kit, new features debut regularly.

For a straight-forward guide, see this Wired How-To Wiki too.

Laws require corporations, as legal entities owning property, entering contracts, and assuming debt, have a governing board of directors, accountable as a fiduciary to its shareholders, members, or the public. These governing boards organize and operate according to articles of incorporation, bylaws, resolutions, and policies, oversee corporate purpose and plans, select and supervise management, ensure sufficient resources for the organization, and ensure compliance with laws and regulations. This linked page outlines and links many more pages covering governance and policy; roles and responsibilities; operations and systems; accountability and ethics; staffing, compensation, communications and the issues of running an organization. It also covers director training as a comprehensive overview and exemplar of how boards should work. The scope and volume of information make it suitable for a weekend workshop with additional homework in addition to a checklist and toolkit to introduce best practices.

Some websites import friends utterly wrong, but Flickr gets it right. Their revised finder no longer asks for your password to other sites before logging in as you to fetch your address book. Such interactions can compromise password and site security. Most people reuse the same small set of usernames and passwords. A not-so-small number of sites store cleartext passwords; they can even mail it back to you. Regardless how well sites execute security, a breach at any other site can compromise security across many user accounts across many sites.

Several weeks ago a Web 2.0 company launched a Gmail backup app that asked for addresses and passwords, which at least 1777 unwitting folks provided. In addition to backing up Gmail as expected, the app also socked away the address and password combo. When the scheme was exposed, the company claimed debugging code made it to production inadvertently.

I can see scenarios where governments may be the least of our worries. Much more likely are significant others’ jealous exes who are also system administrators, and hacked sites with weak security. The sooner we move away from passwords and shared-secret systems, the safer we’ll be.

Flickr now joins that cause and can dig up friends across instant messenger and e mail address books at Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and Google Mail without asking for your password on these other systems. For those already logged into the target site, the follow-ups ask only to authorize the transaction. For those not yet logged into the target site, note the url. Requests for passwords come only from the target site itself, as with OpenID.

After a few minutes, Flickr found missed and misplaced friends, nearly doubling my Flickr contacts to over 100. This is how finding friends should work. Other sites, take heed.

Not very many Rochesterians have hit it big at Google or in Silicon Valley and have their own Wikipedia entry, so the few who do, stand out. In many ways, they seem like ordinary folks with ordinary schedules and ordinary tribulations, but just got lucky. They can also have an amazing talent for programming and new enterprise. In this 4000 word interview, read about one of them: Paul Buchheit.

If something is wrong with the copy, you can probably blame me. Even experienced eyes sometimes miss things read too many times. One footnote to the interview, in editing the transcript, i changed none of the dialog or wording, using only paragraphs and punctuation to render the sequence of words readable and comprehensible

A big warm thanks go to Rajesh for inviting me to contribute questions for the interview, and for turning me onto FriendFeed.

I would have been curious what distribution across demographics and psychographics uses social calendars. Merely replacing paper with computers without adopting innovations offered by the technology kinda misses the point. Most electronic and online calendars let users collaborate to set up meetings, but few people now share their calendars so software agents can suggest dates and schedule meetings. Instead, they propose dates via e mail through multiple round robins of okay and not okay. That gains hardly any productivity and maybe even hurts it. I suspect most people would prefer their computer work for them than to work for their computer.

Digg began ostensibly as alternative to Slashdot. Its founders found Slashdot too closed, dominated by articles an elite group of editors found interesting. Though Digg used algorithms and not a cabal of anointed editors, many users complained a defacto cabal of frequent users did dominate the front page. In response, January 2008 Digg modified their algorithm to select for diversity and independence. Though it may in effect be more fair, i find it dominated by pubescent boys and articles they find interesting. Though i use it, i prefer Ma.gnolia, Faves, Reddit, and other recommenders.

A protocol, implementation, exemplar and inspiration for a decentralized social network, NoseRub uses already available standards such as OpenID, FOAF, and RSS to support truly decentralized social networks. Several sites, such as sister site Identoo, already implement it. Based in Bonn and Köln, Germany, but under an MIT license, and hosted at Google Code, it’s free and opensource.

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Tags: social networks, social media,

An experimental palette sharing site for graphic designers, based on Shockwave Flash and Adobe Air, here create harmonious color themes online and publish them as resources for others. Explore, create and share color palettes. For sharing swatches, it’s the neatest thing i’ve seen since the Pantone color Matching System. Now, go calibrate your monitor!

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Tags: graphic design, color, palettes, tool, tags, …