X-Box Cheat Sheets

A serious gamer wouldn't think twice when it comes to cheating. Obviously, he would want to finish the game without any help whatsoever. But there are those who get stuck at one point in a game and the solution they can resort to is the numerous cheat sheets that can be found online.

Before, gamers purchase the gaming magazines for a better viewpoint of the game. However, thanks to the internet, one can just sit back and surf and get all the information he needs for the game.

XBox cheats are rampant on the world wide web. So many kind souls have been generous enough to share what they know to players who are in need of it.

An example of a site that has all the cheats you need is the www.xboxcheats.com. There you will find every XBox game code, hints and video game cheats to every Xbox game out there on the market.

Gamers have collected cheat codes either from their own game play experience or from various network and sites out there. These have been placed up in their data base.

Not to mention that all these are added up thanks to the countless cheat submissions from visitors.

This access to various cheat codes is one reason why so many people find XBox to be the best video game console. It lets them try out the games that are released for this console and enjoy these in every possible way.

Take advantage of this information at your fingertips. Other sites offering the same knowledge are:
- xbox.gamezone.com
- teamxbox.com
- cheatscodesguides.com
- cheats.gamespy.com
- xbox.gamespy.com
- xbox.ign.com

And so much more. Sometimes what gamers do is they type in the game along with ‘cheat’. Example: “Need for Speed XBox Cheat”. Those keywords alone allow the search engine to peruse through page after page of the available codes, hints and cheats that have been uploaded by previous gamers.

It is interesting to note that these sites also include cheat sheets for other consoles such as the Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 3. If you feel that you can no longer solve the puzzle to a role playing game, or you want to have infinite lives in order for you reach a further stage, these are all possible just by clicking on the cheat sites mentioned above.

If you feel guilty doing about it, just think, ‘everybody else is doing it, so why can’t you?’

PicAnswers helps identify house plants, the rest of life's little mysteries

By Josh Lowensohn

A few months back my roommate's rare house plant was dying. In a last ditch effort to bring it back to life, he enlisted my help. We scoured various message boards and Q&A sites with little success to get help identifying the plant (he got it as a gift).

The plant ended up going to that big greenhouse in the sky. The experience made me realize there's a pretty basic need for sites, such as PicAnswers, which lets anyone upload a picture and ask a question about it. Interestingly, the amount of high profile Q&A services that don't let users do this is surprising. One of the few to allow it is the AOL-owned Yedda, while sites such as Yahoo Answers, Microsoft's QnA Live, and Amazon.com's Askville are limited to text.
Like Amazon's Mechanical Turk project, PicAnswers is driven by humans. People upload their photos, and other users chime in if they can answer the query. A lot of the questions posed on the site range from simple identification issues like "what the heck is this?" to advice about what to do about a problem posted in the picture.

Here are a couple of my favorites so far:
Toothpick or food skewer?
My chili is yellow
Is there any Chinese poison in this toy?

Despite its simplicity, PicAnswers is missing two very helpful components: a way to vote on other user's answers to help filter down the best responses, and a karma system that makes it worthwhile to answer other people's questions. As it stands, you're left to sort through the answers yourself and answer out of the goodness of your heart. I'm hoping the site's creators add these soon. In the meantime, it's definitely worth bookmarking for the next time you unearth something that needs photo identification.

Ask.com offers news page

By Elinor Mills

Ask.com has quietly launched a news page called "BigNews" that aggregates top news stories from a variety of sites ranging from The New York Times to small blogs.

The company, whose parent company InterActiveCorp is having troubles of its own over plans to split off its different brands, enters a crowded field with more established news aggregators like Yahoo, Microsoft, and even Google, as well as sites like Digg and Topix.

Ask.com says the news page stories are dynamically generated based on freshness, source authority, social media references, article content, and multimedia availability. You can use a source filter to search for stories based on geographic region and track stories via the site or RSS.

The top stories on the site Thursday afternoon were Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney dropping out of the race, the Shuttle Atlantis launch, U.S. Defense Secretary defending NATO's mission in Afghanistan, two studies concluding that biofuels are not so green, and a Utah couple and their dog rescued after being stranded for 12 days in the snow.

By contrast, Romney, Atlantis, and a story on a baby found alive amid the wreckage of a tornado in Tennessee led on Yahoo News, which was similar to news on the MSN and AOL portals. Google News led with Romney, mob raids in Italy and the U.S., and a standoff between police and a gunman in Los Angeles.

Ballmer: Yahoo brand will live

By Ina Fried

Microsoft says it can find $1 billion in cost cuts by combining Yahoo's business with its own Internet services operation, however CEO Steve Ballmer says the Yahoo name isn't one of the things on the chopping block.

"Yahoo, the brand, will live," Ballmer told BusinessWeek.

Even if the brand lives, though, it is unclear which of Yahoo's technologies Microsoft would adopt. A merged company would have to choose among two e-mail systems, to ad platforms and two instant messaging systems, to name just a few of the many overlaps.

Microsoft has thus far offered few details on what it might look to cut if its deal goes through, and Ballmer didn't offer much in the way of new details in the magazine interview.

Of course, the biggest hurdle at the moment is convincing Yahoo to take its offer, one which has declined in value since it was made last week.

Better your Gmail, again

By Seth Rosenblatt

Better Gmail 2 is a Firefox extension that collects a bunch of Gmail customization scripts from Greasemonkey under one control panel. The latest update, to Version 0.3, brings Better Gmail 2 mostly up to speed with features that were in the original Better Gmail, but had to be abandoned when Google rewrote Gmail's code last November.

The biggest of the latest additions include a revamped insertion of Google Reader into the Gmail user interface. This is not merely a rehash of what came before, but a better-looking, faster-loading UI that makes switching between Gmail and Reader seamless.


There's also a new rollover highlight for messages. The highlight colors aren't customizable, but it's still a great little tool for grabbing your attention, and the colors change depending on whether the e-mail you're currently mousing over has been read or not. One-click conversations have returned, too. This tool inserts a small head-and-shoulders icon in between the star and the e-mail sender. Click on it to show all recent conversations with that person.

Skins are back, with two flavors for those who get sick of Gmail's layout. "Grays and blue" gets rid of most of the white in the interface in exchange for a more muted palette, while the Gmail Blue Skin leaves the whites intact but creates different shades of blue backgrounds behind the navigation options. Both include substantial font changes.

The plug-in's other features are nothing to sneeze at, either. You can forced encrypted connections for security, change the attachment icon to reflect the file type, modify keyboard shortcuts, automatically show message details, and more. Better Gmail 2 is a must-have Firefox extension.

Napster kicks it old school with MP3

By Jasmine France

For my money, one of the most exciting pieces of news coming out of CES this year is Napster's announcement that the service will be offering up its entire download catalog in the DRM-free MP3 format. It may not be free, but it still hearkens back to the olden days of Napster. Of course, Amazon.com's digital music store has been selling MP3 files for months now (and eMusic much longer than that), but having another major online music service push for the most universal of digital music formats is just one more step in the right direction--it makes things infinitely less complicated for the consumer to have access to one type of file that will play back on any MP3 player or computer.

The change is set to roll out in the second quarter of 2008 and will apply to Napster's entire catalog of pay-per-download tracks and albums. Subscription tracks will still come in the DRM-wrapped WMA variety, a necessary evil for that type of service.

Glogster brings glitter graphic blogging to the masses

By Josh Lowensohn

Glogster is a new publishing tool that's been making the rounds over the last week. The service is focused on letting people create "posters" of various bits of premade and user-generated content using a Flash editor. Unlike some blogging platforms, Glogster has no inclination to go after people who want to write something every day. Instead, the site is geared toward the tween crowd, or anyone else who enjoys partaking in glitter graphics, or those strange greeting cards with dogs and cats that have been Photoshopped to have enormous eyeballs. That being said, using the right tools, Glogster users can create classy looking stuff with a distinct visual style, even if it's got a single-use, disposable life cycle of something like an e-card.

Glogster's editing tool is simple to use, although a little flawed from the get go. Its categorization, which divides up all the content you can place onto a Glog, places a limited number of items together that the user must then sort through one piece at a time. Considering the amount of preproduced content that can be placed on the page, it's an exercise in patience for people to find what they're looking for. In comparison to what I consider a comparable Flash editing environment, video mashup tool Flecktor and competing scrapbooking service Scrapblog do a far more graceful job at putting all the options in one place. The one saving grace is that anyone can dive in and start making a "Glog" without having to register with the service, which is a great way to get a feel for things. Each premade item is also a vector graphic, meaning you can resize it ad nauseum and it won't get pixilated.

Besides being a niche publishing platform, Glogster doubles as a social network of its own. Users can add each other as friends, and each Glog gets its own place for comments and a five star rating that can get it featured on the "top glogs" section. Users can also embed a Glog elsewhere (example), although for some strange reason you can't pick out how big it is, so it looks enormous nearly anywhere you put it.

While there's no integration with some pre-existing photo and video hosting services to help users pull down media they've already had to upload, my guess is that Glogster will add that later down the line. In the meantime, you're required to upload both pictures and videos, the latter of which requires a fair bit of processing after upload before you can add it to a Glog. Scale that to three or more video clips and things get tedious.

I'm not quite sure what to think about Glogster. It's certainly not ugly, but it can be in the hands of its users, who have already created a wide array of Glogs that fall mostly on the side of visual overload. It's amazingly simple if you're just sticking to images with text captions, although compared with Scrapblog, it's missing some of that panache and easy integration that I think keeps users coming back.

Web achievements 101: Things to do before you die

By Josh Lowensohn

While the Internet might be a soulless place that's mostly devoid of any real human warmth or compassion, there are certain things that make it better. While there might be a YouTube, we're still very much the me generation when it comes to defining a personal identity online. Some of these "Web achievements" people pick up over the years require some serious talent. Others can be had with a little luck. We've compiled a list of some of the more prominent ones--consider it a list of things to do on the Internet before you die.

Skill.
Achievements that require talent, skill, or personality

Get on Flickr's interesting picture wall. Flickr's interestingness algorithm is based on several qualities of user interaction with a photo. Flickr lists them as "where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments on it and when; who marks it as a favorite; its tags and many more things which are constantly changing." In short, it's about how popular your photo is on an aggregate scale.

Chances of it actually happening: Depends on skill. It could be one of the best pictures on earth, but if nobody's looking at it, you're out of luck. That being said, the photos you tend to see on Flickr's explore page (the listing of interesting photos) tend to be great-looking, but even the occasional bad shot of something amazing makes the cut.


Make the YouTube featured videos list. This elusive honor puts your video on the front page of YouTube.com. Many unknown artists have gotten huge view counts and channel subscriptions out of a front page spot, which gets millions of eyeballs each day.


Chances of it actually happening: Slim. The smattering of videos in the featured videos section on the front page is picked out by a team of YouTube editors. These folks are in charge of cool hunting, and given the amount of content that's uploaded to the site each day, the best way to get noticed might be to get picked up on some other social sites for visibility first. Mark Glaser from PBS' MediaShift has a great post on the editorial process here.


Get your post on The Best of Craigslist. This elusive honor is reserved for some of the best-written, or just plain obscure postings on the popular classifieds site. There's no real science to it beside the fact that your post must be nominated by a certain amount of users before it's picked out from the crowd.


Chances of it actually happening: Slim. Getting on Best of Craigslist is incredibly tough. Nationwide only a handful of posts are picked out each week, and you're relying on Craigslist users to not only read what you've written, but nominate it.


Making the front page of social news site like Digg, Delicious, Reddit, Slashdot, and Newsvine.


Chances of it actually happening: Reasonable. The beauty of getting on these sites is that you don't have to write an article you're submitting. In most cases, the only responsibility is to write title and description. Adding a little style and flair to the original title and description can do wonders. On the other hand, writing a story, taking a picture or video that makes the front page of any of these sites is a far greater achievement than simply adding the link.

Continue reading to learn about repetitive and ego-stroking achievements galore...

Become the Reddit's all-time karma gainer. We'd classify this under repetition, except that Reddit's karma system actually requires users to submit quality content. If you're just spamming the site with a bunch of useless links, your karma will be buried into oblivion.


Chances of it actually happening: Not without some work. If you're unemployed or working for a news wire service you might have a shot. Otherwise, you probably won't be able to keep up with some of the folks on top who are submitting more than a dozen quality news links each and have been every day for years.


Repetition.
Getting these requires countless grinding or tireless participation

Acquire Elite status on Yelp.com. Becoming a Yelp Elite isn't an exact science. According to the Yelp Elite info page, people are picked out based on a number of qualities, ranging from writing style to how much content they're adding to the site. That being said, it doesn't happen overnight. For some it takes months of countless reviews.

Chances of it actually happening: Pretty good as long as you're willing to invest yourself in the site and participate. The payoff is invites to private parties, and a snazzy looking profile badge. In the case of Yelp's latest shindig, Elite members got to get into the party an hour earlier than everyone else.

Reach your Gmail in-box size limit. Google is currently giving everyone a little over 6GB of storage, but it wasn't always like that. Google broke ground by giving people 1GB free along with a little counter that would add more and more storage as time passed. Throughout the years they've tweaked the speed of the counter along with total storage. The service is now at six times the original storage capacity.



Chances of it actually happening. Depends on use. It's happened before, and it can happen again. While most home users will be fine--if you're trading around a lot of media files that max out that 20MB attachment limit, that space can eventually fill up. To those who have crossed the sacred threshold and fear deleting old messages, Google offers a paid storage expansion option to push the account up to 400 GB at a mere $500 a year.

Egosphere cred.
These are the nerdiest achievements of the bunch, and will make you feel important 2.0


Make the Twitterholic 100. The Twitterholic listing is based purely on followers on the popular microblogging service Twitter. These are people who are following your tweets, not the number of friends you have, or how many times you've updated your status.


Chances of it actually happening. If you're a male or female blogger with lots of fans, or a large Web news service, it's in the bag. Otherwise you probably need to know at least 1,000 people with Twitter accounts who want to pay attention to what you're saying. Currently No. 100 has a little over 1,100 followers with the No. 1 garnering nearly ten times that.

Get publicly slammed by Dave Winer. If you don't know who Dave Winer is, he probably doesn't know who you are either. Winer, who helped create the Web standards for podcasting, blogging and RSS is well known for writing or saying snarky things ranging from people to products.


Chances of it actually happening: Slim. If you've built a popular Web app or retail product with some usability flaws, the damage might already have been done. He could also simply disagree with your opinion.


Make the front page of Valleywag. Silicon Valley's self-proclaimed gossip rag is a blog at heart, and that means getting on it requires garnering the interest of its editors. Getting a mention on Valleywag holds more than some freebie potential traffic. You can become a hallowed member of its Facebook group "I got slammed by Valleywag."


Chances of it actually happening: Decent. Getting on the front page of Valleywag is no easy task but if you leave your cell phone unattended at a bar, are attractive, or and are dating one of Google's founders, you're a shoo-in.

Convert Firefox into a text-only browser

By Dennis O'Reilly

Last week I described how to use a simple Javascript to determine the age of a Web page. The only problem: if the page has any dynamic elements that update automatically when the page loads (and these days most Web pages do), the script shows the current time and date.

For pages without auto-update content, type javascript:alert(document.lastModified) into the address bar and press Enter to see a window pop-up with the date and time of the page's last update. I'm still looking for a way to find out how recently specific content on a Web page was updated.

As I was looking for such a method, I stumbled upon a great Firefox add-in from Chris Pedericks called the Web Developer Toolbar (download). As the name implies, the free toolbar is intended to help Web designers test their pages, but it can also be used to show only the text of Web pages, which often makes them easier to read--and to print out.

After you download the toolbar, click Options and check Persist Features. Next, click CSS*Disable Styles*All Styles. Now click Images*Disable Image*All Images. Lastly, click Disable*Disable JavaScript*All JavaScript. You'll see only the page's text, and perhaps a couple of broken-image place markers. Be warned, however, that the results are rarely pretty.

In addition to making the pages easier to print, the text-only versions are also much easier to scan for specific information. (Note that you can retain much of the page's original formatting--minus images--by keeping CSS enabled.)

Tomorrow: Put Microsoft Word's styles to good use.

Google's privacy faux pas with Reader

By Elinor Mills

In its attempts to add social elements to products, is Google pulling a Facebook?

Google Reader has allowed people to share items they are interested in with others since 2006 with hyperlinks, clips on blogs and storing them on a public page that you had to know the URL for to see.

Last week, Google tweaked Google Reader so that your shared items are automatically made available to your Google Talk contacts.

But, as anyone who uses instant messaging knows, not all of your IM contacts are friends. Many are acquaintances or people you barely know and with whom you may not want to share a reading list.

Recently, Facebook was forced to modify its new Beacon ad targeting service that notifies friends in your network when you buy things on sites of Facebook partners. Facebook made that an opt-in feature, however, after consumer groups and Facebook members complained the service violated people's privacy.

Google, too, has been crucified in the blogosphere over its Google Reader change, with bloggers saying the Google Talk contact sharing feature should be opt in, not opt out.

To calm the masses, Google posted an item on the Google Reader Blog that explains the company's reasoning behind the change and tells how to clear the shared-items list and how to tag items to share with a limited number of people.

"We'd hoped that making it easier to share with the people you chat with often would be useful and interesting, but we underestimated the number of users who were using the Share button to send stories to a limited number of people," the blog says.

Danny Sullivan, editor of the Search Engine Land blog, writes: "Frankly, a better solution would be to dump the friends sharing feature until it comes back in a new form, where you specifically and deliberately create a list of contacts that you do want to share material with."

How to find a Wii

by Daniel Terdiman

After spending hours driving more than 60 miles Tuesday in search of a Wii, I am pretty much convinced that there are next to none available in retail stores anywhere, nor are any stores likely to be getting more before Christmas.

You never know, of course. A call I made to a Nintendo representative revealed that it's not entirely clear if retailers will be getting more before the holiday. But time and again, salespeople told me that they didn't expect to get any more after receiving shipments last Sunday that quickly sold out.

So what's a Wii hunter to do?

As a Toys "R" Us salesman told me during my stop at one of their stores, one method would be to "Call everywhere in the world, every single day of your life if you really want one."

But if that doesn't work, here's what else you can try.

First, GameStop retailers are having a promotion on Friday in which they will accept paid preorders and will guarantee delivery of a Wii sometime in January.

But this program has gotten enough attention that I was told by one GameStop clerk that you'll probably have to line up to preorder.

You could also try buying one online. eBay, for example, seems to have many of the consoles for sale, though I would tend to doubt at this point that you could get delivery prior to Christmas. But you never know. It's certainly worth checking out the possibilities.

This is what Nintendo recommends:

"Get to know your store managers. Ask them when their shipments come in, so you can be on hand the day they show up."

"Call around. You can increase your odds by checking in with more than one store."

"Try smaller stores in out-of-the-way places. Many different kinds of stores sell video game products, so don't go to the same megamall that everyone else is going to."

"There's no one surefire way to find a Wii. But by teaming up and getting creative with your approach, you're bound to have more success than the people who just go to their local mall and do nothing else."

"If you see one, be sure to grab it!"

This is surely fine advice, and if you follow those suggestions, you'll probably find a Wii eventually, though it may still take you some time. Certainly, try to temper your kids' expectations that there will be a Wii under the tree on Christmas morning, because if you don't have one already, odds are you're not going to find one.

For its part, Nintendo is certainly aware that the shortages of the console are causing consternation among consumers, but it is taking the position that it's doing what it can to address the issue.

"If it were possible to snap our fingers and manufacture millions more, we would do it," Nintendo said in a statement it delivered to me Tuesday. "We're continually putting more and more Wiis into the pipeline, but they all sell through almost instantly. Production has already been boosted more than once, and we are actively increasing the number of systems provided to retailers around the world."

That's all fine and good, but it certainly doesn't put a Wii under your tree. And from my experience, it doesn't look as if much will. The best bet at this point is to accept that you're going to have to wait.

My advice? Keep your tree up, and when you finally find a Wii, wrap it up, put it under the tree, and pretend Christmas has been extended into January. What kid wouldn't love that idea?

Firefox 3 beta 2 is out and about

Mozilla fans can now download Firefox 3 beta 2 for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.

The new version sports a wide range of improvements over the first test version of the browser upgrade, most notably plugs for memory leaks, security fixes, and a download manager that includes improvements previously available only through plug-ins.


The security enhancements get fairly technical, but the Firefox developer's Web page states that the new version offers "protection from cross-site JSON data leaks, tighter restrictions on site-specific content using effective TLD service, better presentation of Web site identity and security, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages, antivirus integration in the download manager, (and) version checking for insecure plug-ins."

The updates to the download manager are pretty good, and they're far easier to parse. The new manager lets you resume stopped downloads, and it has the aforementioned built-in virus checker.

You can also zoom in on parts of a Web page, and the integration between bookmarks, the location bar, and bookmark folders has become tighter. There's now one-click bookmarking, smart folders for bookmarks, and the location bar checks against your bookmarks and history for page titles and URLs.

The Firefox developers also claim that Web site rendering is now faster than it was in FF3 beta 1, but empirically, I couldn't detect any difference. Either way, it's definitely faster than it is in FF2.

If you're a bit nervous about accidentally damaging your current installation of Firefox 2, but you'd like to try out the Firefox 3 beta, I recommend installing the portable version. It doesn't affect your old settings, though you can't run both Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 beta portable simultaneously.

Yahoo Maps gets drag-and-drop rerouting, enhanced business listings

By Josh Lowensohn

Yahoo's mapping service has been tweaked today to include a rerouting feature similar to the one Google's had since June. The new addition lets you pick up and drag your directions at any point to get the service to reroute according to the guidelines you give it. Once you've made changes, the service will pop up with a small comparison to show you how many miles have been added (or taken away) and how the change affects the time on your original commute recommendation.


Rerouting is a handy feature, and if you've given Google's implementation a try, you'll know how nice it can be to not have to create two or more separate sets of directions to help get you from point A to point B when including shortcuts or side trips. I have to give a slight nod to Google's version, however, as it shows you street name, mileage, and time estimates while you're in the middle of dragging the marker around.

In addition to directions, Yahoo has also made some slight improvements to the business listings that show up on the map, which now include photos and user ratings that have been pulled in via Yahoo Local. You get to see only one photo and review before having to jump off to the attached Yahoo Local page. The process isn't nearly as seamless as Google Maps, which allows users to read several while remaining on the page, but it makes the service feel like more of a directory.

Yahoo Maps has rolled out some pretty cool features this year, including a send-to-car option, an all new look, travel maps, and tighter integration with Flickr.

DNA dating site predicts chemical romance

By Elsa Wenzel

The first dating service to use lab-based genetic profiling launched online last week. Scientific Match promises to pair up people who will be physically attracted to each other because their DNA is different.

Well-matched couples will like each others' natural scents, have more fun in bed, and bear healthier children than those who are genetically similar, the company claims.

The service, available only in the Boston area, charges $1,995 for a year-long subscription.

"I strongly believe this will dominate the future of dating services," said founder Eric Holzle, a mechanical engineer.

Members swab their cheeks and send in saliva samples. A lab spends two weeks analyzing the immune system genes, and then the company matches individuals with genetic profiles that are unalike.

"We look at six specific genetic reference points on DNA, and none of those six can match to make a match," Holzle explained.

He was inspired by a well-known "sweaty T-shirt" study of a dozen years ago, in which biologists found that women liked the smell of dirty shirts worn by men who were immunologically dissimilar to themselves.

As with other online dating sites, Scientific Match's users can fill out written profiles and upload photographs. Genetic details are not displayed, except to indicate a match. The service runs criminal background checks to exclude anyone who has committed crimes involving violence or identity theft.

Scientific Match is open to straight and gay people. However, women taking the birth control pill are turned away because some studies show they are more attracted to men with similar immune system genes.

The success or failure of the service can't be measured, however, with only a handful of customers so far. Although Holzle doesn't guarantee finding one's true love, he insists that people paired by Scientific Match will at least smell appealing to each other.

The romantic role played by scent is well-documented in poetry and science. Perfumers even add synthetic versions of pheromones, suspected aphrodisiacs found naturally in the body, to fragrances that include Paris Hilton's eponymous perfume.

But the ability to bottle attraction or to predict it through genetic profiling remains unproven by science.

Scientific Match sounds more like pseudoscience to Dean Hamer, the molecular biologist and author credited with discovering "gay genes."

"That sounds like a complete and utter rip-off that preys on people's lack of knowledge of causation and correlation," he said, adding that people could wrongly write off a potentially great mate due to genetic discrimination. "Why don't they just smell their underarms?"

Nevertheless, entrepreneurs are sure to try to capitalize on advances in genomics and biotechnology to reshape the landscape of high-tech matchmaking. The field is wide open. For instance, nobody has tried to set up couples based upon genes that have been linked to promiscuity or libido strength.

And Googling a date's full genetic code could be on the distant horizon. The cost of sequencing someone's DNA has dropped to the low six figures.

The latest online services to incorporate genetic testing include startup 23andMe, Ancestry.com, and the Genographic Project, which sell swab-and-send testing kits for uncovering the deep roots of a family tree.

Microsoft releases final version of HD Photo plug-in for Photoshop

Microsoft has taken the beta tag off a plug-in to let Photoshop read and write files in the HD Photo format, which Microsoft is standardizing as JPEG XR.

The free plug-in is available for download for Windows and Mac OS X systems. The plug-ins work on Windows XP and Vista, Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, and Photoshop CS2 or CS3, Bill Crow, who's overseen the HD Photo and JPEG XR effort, wrote on his blog Thursday.Microsoft hopes HD Photo eventually will replace the ubiquitous JPEG standard overseen by the Joint Photographic Experts Group. Among the HD Photo advantages that Microsoft touts: it offers more efficient compression, richer color and a much wider dynamic range; it can optionally store images without data loss from compression; it's free of royalty and licensing constraints; and it can run in camera hardware. Support for the file format, initially called Windows Media Photo, is built into Windows Vista.

HD Photo also can be used to show images online at different resolutions, transmitting only the portion of the image that's shown on the screen. That's useful for zooming in to a high-resolution photo without having to download a vast image, a technology Microsoft uses in its HD View software for viewing detailed images online. One organization using HD View is Xrez.

However, Microsoft faces significant challenges in encouraging adoption of the technology. Building it into Vista is a big step, and an endorsement from Photoshop publisher Adobe Systems helps, but JPEG is deeply entrenched. Standardization through JPEG could encourage industry players to adopt the standard--in particular those who are leery of Microsoft's power.

But there are plenty of standards that never catch on. What could really tip the balance in favor of HD Photo/JPEG XR is if it gets built into cameras directly so photographers can start using it from the outset.

The final version of the plug-in, developed in part by Pegasus Imaging Systems, looks mostly like recent betas, Crow said.

"All the changes we've made since the last beta are under the covers, fixing a couple minor bugs, addressing several theoretical security vulnerabilities and generally bringing the code up to current Microsoft standards for released software," he said. "Don't forget that the beta versions will expire on December 31st, so you should definitely download and install these new released versions."

Firefox churns to version 2.0.0.11

By Stephen Shankland

Mozilla on Friday released the third update to Firefox this month, version 2.0.0.11, to fix a stability problem in the previous version.

"We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release," a post on the Firefox developer blog said.

The open-source Web browser update arrived swiftly after version 2.0.0.8, released October 18, version 2.0.0.9 from November 1, and version 2.0.0.10 from November 26. Which explains why I'm getting a lot of software update messages from my Web browser.

Version 2.0.0.10 broke a feature that lets images be displayed with special effects such as rotated pictures and image reflections, according to Mozilla's bug-tracking site. The problem was fixed within a day and distributed within five, but not before some whose sites were affected by the bug had voiced frustration.

"Customers are complaining because their Firefox automatically updated to 2.0.0.10 and now they can no longer order photo prints in our shop. I think this is a very serious problem and I hope it will be fixed immediately in a 2.0.0.11 update," a post by Klaus Reimer said.

In an indirect response, Firefox coder Nick Thomas pointed to mailing lists that people can use to test their sites with imminent new Firefox versions. Thomas also said that the five-day turnaround is "the fastest turnaround between Firefox releases to date."

As long as the Mozilla coders are stamping out bugs, one that's annoyed me has become more prominent of late because it shows up when I install a Firefox update.

When I restore my Firefox browser sessions upon rebooting my computer, it's impossible to get rid of the "You've been updated to the latest version of Firefox" page. Even if I close that tab, it comes back later, so I have to start with a clean browsing slate to make it go away. It's not a stability or security problem, but it's not a credit to what is a notably influential project.

Mozilla released the first beta version of Firefox 3, called Gran Paradiso, less than two weeks ago. The second Firefox 3 beta should be done in "late December" if all goes well, according to another Mozilla developer blog post Friday.

Transferring big files with DropSend and TransferBigFiles

By Michael Horowitz

If you need to send files to someone and they are too large to email, there are untold numbers of web sites offering this service, both for free and commercially. However, if you need to transfer very big files, your choices are more limited. When I recently needed to transfer some files of 650MB to a client, I tried a handful of these services. Previously I wrote about free services from SendThisFile and EatLime. Here I relate my experiences with the free services from DropSend and TransferBigFiles.


All these services operate by letting you upload files to their servers, notifying the recipient that the files are ready to be downloaded and providing a link that points to the file(s). Some of the services have optional software, but installing software scares me, so I used nothing but a web browser (except in one instance).

DropSend

DropSend offers to send files up to 1 gigabyte for free (the same limit applies to their paid accounts). They allow only five file transfers per month, but also include 250MB of permanent online storage. The limit of five transfers does not apply to uploads to the permanent storage.

Registration is required, they ask for your name, email address and require you to chose a password.

The status display while transfers are in-flight is pretty complete, you see an estimate for the remaining time in minutes, the upload speed and the upload progress both in percent and total megabytes.

A constant annoyance with bandwidth speeds, nothing specific to DropSend, is that they are reported as "bps" and sometimes the "b" stands for bits and sometimes bytes. I emailed DropSend asking if the speed they display is bits/second or bytes/second. I never received a reply.

I didn't like the fact that DropSend opens a new browser window to display the upload status, it crowds the tasksbar. The new window opened despite the fact that Firefox was configured to open new windows in a new tab.

After an upload completes, DropSend tells you the number of megabytes transferred and how long the transfer took. No other service I tried did this.
TransferBigFiles

TransferBigfiles is, according to their website, an "experimental project". The word "BETA" appears in read at the top of each web page. In politics, they call this lowering expectations.

The maximum supported file size is either 1 or 2 gigabytes. In describing their optional software it says "Upload up to 1gb per file". However, in their FAQ it says "TransferBigFiles does not limit the amount of space your account can use on our servers, the only storage limit we have is that your files may not be larger then two (2) gigabytes." Apparently "beta" applies to the documentation too.

A great thing about TransferBigFiles is that neither the sender nor the recipient needs to register. To use the service, as shown above, all you need to do is select a file on your computer and provide an email address for the recipient. It couldn't be any simpler.

While a file is being uploaded, you see the upload speed, an estimate of the time remaining and an estimate of the overall time. For a 650MB file, the initial estimate was 3.14 hours. The first time I tried it however, the upload failed with a Timeout error.

The next day, I tried again to upload a 650MB file and after a while a window popped up with a Timeout error. However, after clicking OK, the upload kept on chugging along. Soon there was another Timeout error and again after disposing of the error window, the upload continued. In all there were a handful of Timeout errors, but the upload completed nonetheless.
The information provided afterwards was disappointing, there were no stats of any type, just a message that the upload worked.

On November 24th, I tried to upload another 650MB file using Firefox and it failed with "The connection was reset - The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading."

About 45 minutes later I tried again using Internet Explorer. This time the upload never even started, after clicking on the start upload button, IE hung and eventually gave up saying it couldn't find the server. I waited about 3 hours, tried yet again and this time too the upload never started.

Thinking maybe they were just having a bad day, I tried again on November 25th. Still, the upload never even started. Instead, Internet Explorer reported that "The page cannot be displayed - Cannot find server or DNS Error".

At this point, I installed their free DropZone client software in a Windows XP SP2 virtual machine. Or rather, I tried to install the software, the install failed with a message that "The application failed to initialize properly".

Not being able to take a hint, I instead researched the software requirements for DropZone. Turns out it needs the .NET framework, an optional component of Windows XP. Specifically, it needs version 2 of the .NET framework, which also comes in versions 1 and 1.1. XP users can check if they have it installed using the "Add or Remove programs" applet in the Control Panel (look for "Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0"). Installing the .NET framework fixed the problem and I was able to install and run DropZone version version 1.1.7.23433.

The website doesn't say it, but to use the DropZone software you have to register for a trial account and provide a valid email address.

I started small with DropZone, transferring an 11K file. Or trying to, this transfer also never started. After waiting a while, I clicked on the Retry button but Windows complained the application was not responding. Task Manager showed it was using 99% of the cpu. I killed it an re-booted.

Next, I tried DropZone with a 1.4MB file. Yet again, the transfer never started. I let it sit for about 30 minutes but still nothing. As before, I right clicked on the file name and click on Retry. Again cpu usage spiked to 100% but the transfer still didn't start.

On November 28th I tried again transferring using the web interface. This time, I was in a different location and using Windows 2000 instead of XP. Despite these changes, the upload again wouldn't start. The error this time was unknown.
Persistence eventually paid off though, shortly thereafter I was able to upload a couple small files. But this turned out to be a waste of time as I sent the file to myself and I never got the notification email informing me that a file was ready to download. After a few hours, I uploaded another file to a different email address of mine. This time the upload failed with the unknown error.

Just for good luck, I tried again late on December 2nd. Again, the upload failed with the unknown error.

Final Thoughts

Despite not being able to transfer a 650MB file, EatLime was, in some ways, the most appealing. There is no registration and thus no password to remember, and, they never learn any email addresses. I was able to send small files with it a number of times. I persisted with TransferBigFiles because it has the simplest user interface, but the many failures speak for themselves. SendThisFile was slow, but reliable (see first posting).

It should go without saying, but never send anything you consider sensitive with any of these services, unless the file is encrypted before it leaves your computer.

Finally, there is another approach altogether, one that cuts out the middle man. You can install software that directly connects two computers over the Internet and lets them transfer files to each other. This approach shouldn't have any inherent limit on file sizes. I didn't try this because the sender and recipient both have to be online at the same time.

Digg images going live later tonight, News Corp. buyout next? [PICS]

By Josh Lowensohn

Digg's long-awaited images section will go live later tonight. Similar to the way Facebook's sharing tool works, users submitting stories to Digg will have the option to pick and choose from thumbnails that have been crawled from whatever URL was supplied. There's no need to upload anything, or hotlink to an image--it'll simply be made available. To help users sort through it, Digg has also reconfigured Digg's category system, letting users submit all three types of media (news, images, and video) into any category. This aims to get rid of the previous system of users figuring out their own ways to get through Digg's limited categorization methods, by inserting "[PIC]" or "[VIDEO]" into submitted titles.

To help make use of the new visual draw, Digg's also launching a new way to browse through images using a "mosaic" view. It looks a little bit like Johnathan Harris' 10x10 project by organizing upcoming and popular stories in a cloud of thumbnails (which you can see in the screenshot at the bottom of the post). The company is also attempting to curb duplicate submissions using image recognition from Toronto-based Idee Inc, which is already listing Digg on its featured clients page.

One of the more interesting tidbits from the launch of Digg images is the partnership with Photobucket. The photo service is supplying integration with member images, giving users a new submission button that will jump them straight to a tailored Digg images submission page, as well as giving Photobucket users a whole new channel of photos that have been submitted to Digg. If you've been keeping track of any of the Digg buyout rumors, you should know that Digg's recently gotten deep integration with the News Corp.-owned Wall Street Journal to let WSJ readers submit stories to Digg, while allowing Digg users to read the premium content free of charge. Photobucket also happens to be owned by News Corp. While News Corp. owns two of those pieces (WSJ and Photobucket), why not go for all three?

Adobe slashes price for Flash Media Server

By Martin LaMonica

Adobe Systems on Tuesday is expected to announce that it will dramatically cut the price of its server software for streaming video over the Web.

Flash Media Server 3, which is set for release in January, will now come in two versions. Flash Media Streaming Server will cost $995, and Flash Media Interactive Server will cost $4,500.

With the current version, Adobe sells its Media Server for between $4,500 and $45,000.

The company is lowering prices in response to customer requests, said Kevin Towes, product manager for Adobe Media Server. "What we've been hearing is that the cost of streaming video over progressive download is the barrier," he said.

The new server is also designed to cut the cost of deploying streaming video with the ability to better utilize a server's network card, he said. A typical media server with a 1-gigabit network card could serve about 2,000 people.

Also on Tuesday, Adobe is scheduled to release a version of its Flash Player that supports the high-definition video standard H.264.

Although Flash is widely used on the Internet for streaming video, it is facing growing competition from Microsoft and its Silverlight plug-in, which is going after the same digital media market.

Hands-on: Two free video-to-iPhone converters

There's no shortage of video-to-iPhone converters on the market, but these two freeware contenders do a more-than-decent job of making individual files iPhone-ready. Don't expect much interface gloss or batch conversion with either. However, both apps quickly produce workable iPhone videos without much fuss.

Free Video to iPhone Converter tells it like it is. The rough 'n' ready app takes up minimal screen space and memory. Browsing for links and converting quickly is easy, since there aren't too many additional tabs or buttons where you can get lost. There is, however, a useful function for trimming videos before converting them.

Videora is a larger and busier, app by Red Kawa. On the plus side, Videora lets you format videos for iPhones and three flavors of iPods, including the iPod Touch. You can also browse for and convert YouTube videos online. Videora's multiple tabs and settings let you control advanced encoding and conversion details; it can also pop the finished product straight into iTunes (download,) which can in turn autosync to your iPhone.

Step-by-step prompting (which you can step down or turn off) is useful for walking you through the process, but the double-pane interface adds confusion and superfluous steps for an essentially simple program. The end product was just as good as Free Video to iPhone Converter, but took far more clicks and doesn't have the added advantage of trimming a clip. Dragging a file to the iTunes library is hardly a hardship, though Videora's autoload feature is still a convenient perk.

I currently prefer Free Video to iPhone Converter myself, though Videora will appeal to those further up the power user scale.