Scratch 2.0 - programming for kids

Scratch is programming for kids - with LEGO-like building blocks. Program your own Story, make a Game. 

There are millions of projects to try, and investigate. 

Links: 1min tutorial, TED-talk, Related-LittleBits

Microsoft ExcelWebApp - Online Slicer Graph

Source file: ferrero consulting

Also upgrade from Excel 2003 to Excel 2010, with an Excellent free pdf book. Learn a bit more PowerPivot, at powerpivotpro.

World statistics - interactive time

StatPlanet looks like a Trendalyzer clone; similar categories, with ticking time scale.
It's is a free software that is very easy and intuative. As they say "StatPlanet can be downloaded as a stand-alone application and used as free educational software. It comes with up-to-date world statistics in the categories shown below."

Source: Wikipedia, Trendalyzer

Excel 2010 & PowerPivot

This will grow
* PowerPivot team blog, other
* Excel 2010 compared to 2007 and 2003
* Old Comparisons

Microsoft Live Drive - 50Gb free

Microsoft Live Drive offers 50Gb storage space for free.

With the free SDExplorer addin the space is available direct in Explorer (without login).

Source: Freewaregenious

Portable computer 2.0 - 6th sense

This demo, from the Fluid Interfaces Lab of Pattie Maes at MIT, and spearheaded by PhD student Pranav Mistry, was the buzz of TED. SixthSense [pranavmistry.com] is a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment. The innovative device allows to literally overlay everyday objects with real-time visualizations, in order to inform users about normally invisible information relevant to the objects in view. Imagine ingredient pie charts beamed on top of apple pies. Imagine Facebook comments projected on people's foreheads.

Source: Information Aesthetics

Roam Bi - from Xcelsius

RoamBi transform your existing data from a variety of sources into state-of-the-art, interactive visualizations for the iPhone. Explore and analyze your data with the ease of playing a video game and the power of an enterprise reporting tool.

And for now, It's Free to Try.

Just register, then use RoamBi.com to start turning your own data into dynamic visualizations for the iPhone.

Santiago Becerra behind RoamBi also started Xcelsius (another software I have written about). Buy Xcelsius

If you have time please check out Antivia, mentioned as Bi 2.0. I think it too early but it's a step in the right direction. , i

Source: Information Aesthetics

The Compartmentalized Desktop

Kseve has put together a workspace-oriented desktop with a few programs.

This desktop is a combination of several tools including layered wallpaper to establish boundaries between items, previously mentioned Fences to further enforce those boundaries by creating the gray corrals around the icons. Rounding out the computer-as-real-desktop theme is Launchy, skinned with a sticky note skin. The final tweak comes courtesy of Start Killer, which removes the start button in Windows Vista. The widgets are native to Vista, but Windows XP users can install the sidebar too.

Kseve's Work Desktop [Flickr]

Modified copy from Lifehacker

OLAP Cube for Excel

Articles:
1. Create OLAP Cube
2. CUBE Functions 4: Deconstructing the PivotTable
3. Creating data cubes with Excel and a database

Some Software

Screen Capture
BB-Flashback Express

Screen share
Mikogi
Yuuguu

PDF
Best PDF-writers
PDF Split & Merge, Gios PDF Splitter & Merge
PDF to Excel (or Word)

Transfer large files
EatLime

Software lists
Freeware lists & reviews (Gizmo's)
Best freeware sites
Open Source ALTernative
Sourceforge Software List


Other
Zipeg, Peazip, 7-zip
MultiMonitor
Media Decoder, FLV editor
Password managers
Zoho, Office live
Desktop Screen stream
Feed creator
Disk Defragmenter

Screen recorders +/-

Camtasia
+ used by many professional. Has everything
+ good Learnings center: High Quality and Small file size
~ $299 30day trial

Jing - what is it
+ On-line freeware. 5min limit
- Can not zoom.

BB Flashback - get started
+ Appear sometimes on "Giveaway of the day"
+ Simple to use
- Can not zoom
~ $225

Instant Demo - Tutorial
+ Easy to get started
+ Very small file size and still High quality (0,1Mb/min). File type .swf
+ Demo version can be used indefinitely
+ streaming playback
~ $299 watermarked endless trial

CamStudio - Blog
+ Open source/Freeware. File type .swf
- Can not zoom
- still sound problems?

Links

Quick Note:
Teach2000(memorycards)
Automatic 3D-models
How to surf sites that are blocked by your ISP or a company firewall
Fleshmaps, Bedpost
Ubiquity, 2
Teddy
Google redesigned
Report portal OLAP/OWC

Comparison of Spreadsheet functions

This is a Comparison of Spreadsheet Functions between Excel, Google Spreadsheets, EditGrid, ThinkFree - Calc, OpenOffice Calc and Zoho Sheets made in July 2007. It consists of more than 500 unique Spreadsheet functions.

It took some time to compile this list since the quality of the Suppliers Spreadsheet functions lists are far from flawless. Also the interpretation of what category a certain function belongs to varies. Since then I have not attempted an update.

Still, I think it is the most complete Spredsheet function comparison list right now.


Update June-2008:
EditGrid just took a great leap with the introduction of 41 External Data Retrieval Functions. They now have more then twice the amount of functions compared to Google, and more the 50% more the Excel and the other competitors. Here is one example what you can do with the new external data retrieve functions.

Protein folding software - for free

Foldit is a revolutionary new computer game enabling you to contribute to important scientific research.

It will teach you:
* What is a protein?
* What are amino acids?
* Why is shape important?
* What do proteins do?
* Why is this game important?
* How does my game playing contribute to curing diseases?
* What other good stuff am I contributing to by playing?

Over the summer, they will add new functionality to the game to allow users to design brand new proteins that could help prevent or treat important diseases. Some say this "Could Earn The Nobel Prize In Medicine".

Google Motion chart

Google just announced a gadget gallery containing one gem for the business intelligence consultants. It's a motion chart, that is, an XY chart with a time dimension (feel free to play with it). The motion chart comes from Gapminder Trendalyzer.



To read the complete article, go here.

The most influencial Flashsite of the decade

2Advanced Studios have received the FWA award - the most influential flash site of the decade. The runner ups - like the 2006 award, In Sync Challenge - are worth viewing as well.
Every day the FWA posts a sites and then from them selects the Site Of The Month. Many of them are fun, interesting, or impressive. So be sure to have plenty of time before you start visiting them.

Interesting notes:
- 2Advanced Studio also features Neverrain on their v2. site. Their latest site V.5 makes heavy use of Flash Dynamic Deep Linking (DDL) and XML data cache to end the debate of the usability of Flash.
- Jeroen Wijering (I've used his free MP3 player on my site + the MappedUp news ticker) he has a good explaination of different Video compression formats on his site.
- ZamZar converts any format to any other format.
- Nice flash players from Flowplayer, imagevueX.com, discovered by the FlashGuru.
- Asual - Open software that pushes the limit
- Macromedia FlashPaper2: PDF and Flash merged

Actionscript 3.0: Use the mouse to change perspective:

OCR program

JOCR is a little program that can capture an image from any part of the desktop and perform optical character recognition (convert images to text) on the contents. It is free to download and use but it uses a resource provided with MS Office, and requires that Microsoft Office 2003 or higher be installed on the machine where it is used.

• Works remarkably well; OCR conversion is instant and the results are respectable (no OCR recognition is ever 100% accurate)
• Can clip any area or window on the desktop, or the entire desktop.
• Results are dumped into a notepad text file, where they can be edited and/or clipped.
• Does NOT require JAVA (despite the name).
• Extremely small footprint; very low on resources.
  

The recognizable languages by MODI and JOCR are, in the alphabetical order, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish. Confirm your available language by executing "Microsoft Office > Microsoft Office Tools > Microsoft Office Document Imaging" and selecting "Tools > Options > OCR tab > OCR Language"

I’ve been looking for a freeware OCR program that does exactly this sort of thing. The only drawback with this is the MS Excel requirement; otherwise it is a very simple, straightforward program that works well.

Source:freewaregenius

Flash Applications for Free

Flash-gear is a no name website that helps you add flash applications to you blog. If you want to add a poll to your blog. Here is a small flash application that can do the job.



Other sites not yet sorted:
FlashKit, Kirupa.com, flashmo.com, ffiles.com, Adobe,

Chart chooser from Juice analytics

The Extreme presentation Blog is known for presentation recommendations, along with a few other sites like Stephen Few's Perceptual Edge or Junk Charts. Some have also taken to create great charts, like Juice Analytics, maani.us, Adobe's flex charts or Engauge's Digitalizer.

Some time ago I mentioned a sites to find nice Excel charts. Now there is a new option, built on the of popular Chart Chooser diagram. Well, here it is, live, thanks to their hard work: http://www.chartchooser.com/. Juice Analytics are also providing customized versions of the chart chooser, which will link with your own company's databases to automatically create or update charts. See their post at www.juiceanalytics.com/writing.

You could also check out Process trends, Exeluser or Xcelsius.

Content Aware Image Resizing

"We all resize images quite frequently, but more times than not the result is not what we want. Either the image doesn’t scale correctly, or we are forced to crop off content that we would otherwise want to have. A solution for this problem might be just around the corner.

Content aware image resizing will more than likely be a common occurrence in the future. It uses a seam carving technique to eliminate the less important portions of an image, thereby leaving only what people want to see. The two images above are a good example of how this works. The one on the left is the original, and it shows two red lines indicating the next two "seams" that have been marked to be stretched or removed. The image on the right is the result: wider than the original, but only half the height. It was most of the water that was removed, which is exactly what most people would want to happen.

The creators of the system, Ariel Shamir and Shai Avidan, have thought a lot of things through, and they left me drooling. If there is a portion of the image that is marked to be removed, you can reverse that action and tell the software to preserve that area (useful for preserving faces). If there is a portion that you want removed first, you can do that as well which makes removing people out of images easier than ever!

Go ahead and watch this video to see what I’m talking about. The end is one of the most exciting parts, and I’m sure you’ll be wanting to get your hands on this after you see it:

Video resizing .mov (66mb)
Source:CyberNetNews