Bear Warning

The Colorado State Department of Fish and Wildlife is advising hikers, hunters, fishermen, and golfers to take extra precautions and be on the alert for bears while in the Dillon, Breckenridge, and Keystone area.

They advise people to wear noise-producing devices such as little bells on their clothing to alert but not startle the bears unexpectedly. They also advise you to carry pepper spray in case of an encounter with a bear. It is also a good idea to watch for signs of bear activity.

People should be able to recognize the difference between black bear and grizzly bear droppings. Black bear droppings are smaller and contain berries and possibly squirrel fur.

Grizzly bear droppings have little bells in them and smell like pepper spray.

Free Is Not Cheap

WinXtraLogo

Steven Hodson over at WinExtra.com has published an interesting piece that dives into the subject of how people could care less about their privacy. In my opinion, Steve hits the nail on the head on so many points that I wish I could copy and paste his entire post but that wouldn’t be right. But I will post a quote from his article which I think is the most important point he makes.

The idea that we have any say in what is done with our data once it is in the hands of companies like Facebook is ridiculous. In fact the moment you click on that submit button on the last page of the signup form you have given away all those rights – read the damn terms of service and you will see that. That clicking of the button is your electronic signature – you have just signed a contract … you get a bunch of bullshit free services in exchange for the company being able to do whatever it wants with that data. It is now theirs and any subsequent updating of that data is also theirs.

Over the past few weeks, I have heard so many people complain about Facebook and what they are doing with the data you have given them. I’ve given it some thought and have come to the conclusion that social-networks are nothing more than marketing data harvesters. Asides from having a ton of eyeballs to market to advertisers, most of the user’s on these social-networks provide accurate user data. The reason I believe this to be true is that, you want at least most of your profile to be accurate so your friends know who you are on that network. This accurate data makes for good demographics that the social network owner doesn’t have to work so hard to retrieve.

In the end, you’re not an end user. Your a pawn within a giant game called online advertising. If you don’t like it, don’t use the damn service. Here is a better idea, buy a webhosting account, download WordPress, and create your own social network that you control, around your blog.

URLAO Another Pretty URL Shortener

UrlLao Logo

I know what you’re thinking. We have enough URL shortener’s already, right? Despite that fact, URLAO has come along looking to introduce some new features into the mix. urlao pronounced (“earlao“), is a project that was created by pooliestudios.

Under The Hood:

urlao works like any other url shortener service. They give you a box to place your ugly URL in, and out comes a beautiful looking url. However, there are some useful features hidden underneath the ADVANCED link.

Advanced Link For More Options

In this example, I used the following ugly URL;

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&saddr=Cupertino,+Santa+Clara, +California,+United+States&daddr=new+york,+ny&sll=37.0625,-95.677071&sspn= 52.152749,73.300781&ie=UTF8&cd=1&ll=39.571822,-98.085937&spn=50.61825, 73.300781&z=4&om=1

Without using any of the advanced features, URLAO spits out http://urlao.com/5sqm6 which if you ask me, is pretty, but far from what I’d like to see. Now let’s dig into the advanced features using the same URL I provided above.

The advanced options give you the ability to customize the URL output, password protect the redirect, cloaking the URL which only shows the shortened URL text within the address bar of a user’s browser and finally, a url preview function. When someone clicks on your shortened link, the user will be shown the redirect and will be asked to click a link to confirm their destination.

Advanced Options Area

In my opinion, for a preview feature, why couldn’t it be automatic by simply copying the Title text of the webpage being linked to into the “ALT” attribute for the shortened link. This would allow me to hover over a shortened link with my mouse cursor and at a glance, preview the destination. Seems pretty simple to me yet, none of the URL shortening services that I know of do it.

Becoming A Verified Owner:

Once you create and save your shortened URL, you become a verified owner for that link. This means you can log into URLAO to check on the total amount of hits for a specific URL, or you can change any of the settings for that URL in case you change your mind or the URL that you linked to has changed.

Conclusion:

I like how URLAO has added in features that I haven’t seen in TinyURL or URLtea. If these guys could implement my idea of making the links automatically descriptive via the “ALT” attribute within a link so that all anyone has to do to preview a link is to hover over it, then you’ve got yourself a URL Shortener service that is damn worthy of using. All of the other bells and whistles of URLAO make it a viable alternative to URLTea and TinyURL.

If you happen to use the service, be sure to chime in your thoughts below.

History Of LoLCats Maybe

Pwned Before Time

This episode of BoingBoing TV talks about the history involved with the site, LoLrCats. Or at least, thats what I thought it was going to talk about. In all honesty, I think this is more of a spoof video than of actual fact but it’s hard to tell. As a commenter mentioned on the BoingBoing site, one of the comic strips shows one of the cats actually saying the word “PWNED“. However, after closer inspection, it appears as though the cat is walking past a Pawn shop and since the comic routinely left out vowels from words, Pwned was most likely substituted for Pawned.

It’s also interesting to note that this comic may have been well ahead of its time. This comic series is most likely the inspiration behind the current naming conventions of Web 2.0 based companies. Seeing the word PWNED used before it’s time is CLASSIC! And by the way, I still think LOLCats is as stupid now as it was when it launched.

Google Design With Comic Sans

All Graphic Design has posted a funny picture of Google if it were designed with the font, ComicSans. The funny aspect of this is the actual search terms combined with the results. The search terms “comic sans sucks” brings up a number of search results, including a spoof from Google.com themselves. Comic Sans is not the best looking font, and it’s pretty apparent that it has it’s own hate club.

ComicSansSucks

Check out the Google Spoof and the full screen shot here.

Open Web Awards Nominations Open

OpenWebAwardsLogo

Nominations for the Open Web Awards have opened up today. The Open Web Awards is the first ever online, open collaborative awards event, to recognize the best online communities representing web 2.0. Today’s nominations center around Widgets and Applications.

To nominate a widget or application, leave a comment with the word “NOMINATE” in it. Nominations will remain open until 11:59pm PST on December 4th (next Tuesday). At that point, we will tally up the nominations and enter the second stage of the competition – voting.

Nominations are taking place at THIS POST on Mashable.com. I ended up nominating Cliqin and their associated widget. Other than the MyBlogLog widget, I can’t have much of a say in terms of nominating other widgets or applications because I don’t use them!

Turn Your Desktop Into A Forest

I don’t know what it is that makes me such a big fan of forest photography or forests in general. Every time I see a photo taken from within a forest, it makes me wonder what lies beyond the horizon. If the photo is a pathway, I wonder where that path leads. Occasionally, I come across photos of giant Redwoods that are shrouded in fog with the bases of these massive trees surrounded by the deep green colors of ferns. These are the types of photos that really make me wish I was their at that exact moment, to experience that moment for myself.

Unfortunately, due to finances and other obligations, I don’t have the option of traveling that much. However, one of my lifelong goals is to visit Redwood National forest in California so I can see for myself just how big those trees really are. At any rate, since I can’t travel to the forests of the world, my next option is to turn my desktop into a forest via Wallpaper Images.

Some of the best forest photography that I have ever seen comes from DeviantART. DeviantART is the world’s largest collection of talent that I have ever seen. They have so many categories for creative artists, it’s unbelievable. Here are 10 of my favorite images depicting forests. If you have a favorite, please post a link within the comment section.

A Redwood Stream by ~serendipity2 on deviantART

Redwood Forest by ~runescapeandmaple on deviantARTART

immobilization by *werol on deviantART

Stairway to…? by ~jendonoghue on deviantART

Emerald Myst by `aquapell on deviantART

The Battle Of Evermore by `aquapell on deviantART

Goblin’s Hollow by `aquapell on deviantART

sonnentor by *ssilence on deviantART

Redwood Rays by *Timberwolf4u on deviantART

redwood sunshine by ~calinaurban0 on deviantART

Holiday Icon Packs

The holidays are fast approaching and it would only be appropriate to spruce up your blog or website with some colorful holiday icons. Dezignus.com has released a Holiday Icon pack in (eps) format which contains everything from candles to party hats.

Happy Holidays Icon Pack

If your looking for Christmas specific icons, then you should enjoy another icon pack released by Dezignus called X-Mas icon2, also in (esp) format. Some of the icons featured in this set include a Christmas tree, snowman and a snowglobe.

Xmas Icon Pack

Last but not least, Xmas Icon Pack 1 (esp) format. This is more of your typical icon pack with various trees, candy canes and the infamous gingerbread man.

X-Mas Icon Pack 2