Hate those Captchas? Try cats and dogs

Captchas are an idea whose time has come. As soon as new ways of disguising words are found, so are new ways of cracking the code. It seems that words that can be deciphered by humans are also (and quite unfortunately) decipherable by silicon chips known as computers.

Fortunately, the world of technology and security is always full of innovation. The folks at Microsoft Research have developed a new kind of Captcha that does not use a single word. In fact, it uses two common household pets, cats and dogs. According to their website:

Asirra (Animal Species Image Recognition for Restricting Access) is a HIP that works by asking users to identify photographs of cats and dogs. This task is difficult for computers, but our user studies have shown that people can accomplish it quickly and accurately. Many even think it’s fun!

Furthermore, the images are selected randomly from a HUGE database of cats and dogs up for adoption at Petfinder.com. In fact, on every image, there is a link to the pet on Petfinder.com, and if you find a pet that you like, you can adopt it. How cool is that?

One of the disadvantages of this system is that it takes considerably more time than a word Captcha. But it is a very effective way of blocking out spambots and automatic account creation.

Four tips on getting the most out of your scroll wheel

Most of you who have a computer mouse probably use the scroll wheel to go up and down long web pages such as this one. It’s a godsend to the world of technology, but even so, it is oft neglected. You can show your scroll wheel how much you appreciate it in three easy ways:

1. Use it to open a new tab

The obvious way to open a new tab would be to click that + sign, but did you know you can open a new tab simply by middle-clicking on the empty space to the right of the “+”? It’s amazing, try it out! And yes, it works on browsers other than Firefox.

2. Use it to close a tab

Similarly to #1, middle-clicking on a tab will close it. No more mousing over a tab and trying to find the X.

3. Open links in a new tab

Mouse over a link, and middle-click on it. It will open in a new tab. No more right click -> Open in new tab!

And last but not least…

4. Open a new window

(For Windows users only)

Normally, you would open a new application window by left-clicking or doing right-click -> Open New Window. The middle mouse button replaces the latter. Middle-click on an application icon, and it will open a new window.

Taking time to appreciate the scroll wheel will increase your happiness and decrease your stress. Now that you know what it can do for you, use it to its full potential!

If you want to rewrite an entire sentence, try this sentence thesaurus

Microsoft is well known for their operating system Windows, their Zune HD player, and the XBox, but did you know they’re making what’s called a “contextual thesaurus?” It works just like a thesaurus, but thesaurusizes entire sentences in one fell swoop.

Making the most of your USB: Autorun.inf

Does that window look familiar? Ever wish you could customize it with options such as:

• opening a file,
• opening a website, or
• running a program?

Guess what?

You can. And here’s how!

Skills I’m thankful for: Knowing how to open my laptop

Its rare that anyone would loosen the screws on a laptop and take it apart, unless that person so happened to work at a laptop factory or service department. For those who know the skill, it can come in handy sometimes.

For me, one of those times was today, when I inadvertently spilled red bean soup all over the wrist-rest and keyboard of my laptop. My first reaction: “OH, SHOOT!” Quickly, I ran to the bathroom to get some paper towels and clean up the surface mess. But it was too late: the liquids had already spilled into the laptop.

Why technology scares me

Here I am, sitting in my car as a passenger, heading home from a friend’s concert. I’m using this iPhone to post to my blog, I have google maps loaded, and it’s tracking this car’ down to the meter via gps. Meanwhile, on another tab, safari is loaded on twitter and gmail, and every time I pull down the page it refreshes with my latest tweets and emails.

And this is all on an iPhone.

Sometimes, it’s scary to think about how far technology has come these days. The world of technology is growing at an exponential rate, and there seems to be no sign of slowing down. Will we be become completely reliant on cellphones, tablets, and laptops?

Here are some other aspects of technology that I look forward to, but at he same time, have a slight fear of:

-sapient robots that have human emotions and can learn like a human being.
-computer chips embedded with in us instead of credit cards
-adding a hard drive to the brain to record every waking moment from birth to death
-security cameras and sensors everywhere that know where you are, what you’re doing, and who you’re with

1984 may be closer than we think.

Interactive Project: The Hello Wall

This is another example of a great project that uses social networking crowd-sourcing. I re-discovered this while looking through my Twitter following list. Check it out:

The project gathers @replies and mentions from Twitter, and displays an animation on a giant screen mounted on a building based on users’ tweets. (When it first came out, it was mounted in London, but now, it’s looking for a place to stay.)

Using the iPhone 4

I am currently posting to my blog with the iPhone 4. not using the wordpress app, but the wordpress admin itself. I’m making a typing mistake like every other word, butthanks to the iPhone 4″s superior spell checking thing, I barely notice it. I can type way faster on the iPhone 4 than the blackberry storm, but for some reason I can’t “grasp it” very well lol. The oleophobic screen is quite amazing and his phone is an impressive piece ofthechnology .

And yep you guessed it . I am in Portland

Apple employee “loses” iPhone at bar. Could this be a planned leak?

Today, there was a story circulating about the Interwebs about an Apple employee who “accidentally” left an iPhone at a bar. The iPhone was found by Gizmodo (who wrote a post here), taken apart, analyzed, and then returned to the employee. Was the iPhone really forgotten? I don’t think so. There must be a reason for the Apple employee leaving the iPhone at the bar.

Magic Mouse Review: Part 2

 

After testing out the Magic Mouse, I must revise what I said before. The Magic Mouse is like any regular mouse gone through Apple’s minimalism factory. It works as well as any other mouse, and there are actually buttons. In fact, the mouse is just one button. This would invalidate my comment about how there are no buttons. The click sound is also as fresh as ever.

One cool feature about the Magic Mouse is that you can scroll with momentum. It’s more like inertia, where an object keeps moving when forces stop acting on it. It’s great for applications like Safari (and it has a nice natural feel to it,) but I prefer it off since on applications like Google Earth the zoom continues even if you stop scrolling. As a side note, I like to take my hand off the mouse completely while zooming; it’s just easier that way although it causes the mouse to move just a bit. However, it’s really amazing how it’s so touch responsive; i barely have to use any pressure to operate it and i can use the zoom feature anywhere.

There was only one major bad thing. The scroll “wheel” allows for 360 degrees of freedom, but scrolling diagonally causes things to be shaky. It’s more of a combination of walking up/down stairs really fast then it is a smooth movement.

Other touch motions include swiping to go back/forth, and rotating, which didn’t appear to work. I also wish that the Magic Mouse had a pinch zoom-in/out feature, although my friend claims there’s not enough space.

However, touch technology for the price of 69 dollars still isn’t worth it. The concept is cool and it works, but not the price. I give the Magic Mouse an 8/10 but do not recommend it unless you’re one of those rich peoples.