Are you looking for my non-technical blog?

This is now my technical-only blog, my non-technical blog is here.

28 April 2007

Sortak.com

Sortak (Your Photo) is a new Egyptian site, where people can upload their photos and share them with others like in Flickr and Zooomr. It's free, and so far I cannot find any limitation on the number of photos (kilobytes) you can upload there. The good thing is that you can also let them print selected photos from your account and send them back to your home. The different photo sizes and their equivalent printing prices can be seen here.

URL: http://www.sortak.com/

Tags: , ,

23 April 2007

When Twitter Met Foxy Tunes

I don't know if you use Foxy Tunes, but it is a Firefox plug-in that I use in order to control my Music Player from my browser's interface. The creators of Foxy Tunes have created another plug-in called Twitty Tunes, it allows you to publish the music you're currently listening to to your twitter account.

Tags: , ,

17 April 2007

Is The Blogging Hype Over !?

I may be wrong in this, but I think that the blogging hype is dying. A couple of years ago, it was really normal to see people blogging about their own cats, or how they brush their teeth. And this is what I meant by the term "Blogging Hype".Every one has a blog, and they all write about everything. Later on many other technologies were introduced, and they all share the collaborative nature of blogs.

Twitter for example is a tool where people write what they are doing for their friends to read it. Try adding twitter to your IM, and you will really hate yourself after getting zillions of updates from your friends every minute. Flickr and Zooomr - One of the main reasons that I don't use Zooomr is that I never remember how many o's are there in its name - are site where people can upload their photos and leave comments on other people's photos. Facebook is todays hype, it is a social network where people can meet new friends, but it also has a mixture of Flickr, and Twitter's features.

So the point is that many bloggers started to emigrate from blogging to those sister-technologies. People interested in photography will sure prefer to use Flickr to upload their photos than customizing there blog or photolog, especially that Flickr has built in forums where they can have further discussions about cameras, techniques, etc. and it can be a good alternative to their blogs commenting system. Those people who prefer to consider their blog as a personal notebook, where they write their daily routines will sure prefer to use a purpose built system for that such as Twitter. And as a result, many bloggers started to use alternative tools to fulfill their collaborative needs, and hence the blogosphere is really changing now.

May be this means that blogs are getting more mature, or may be they are becoming more dull. After having a quick look on my Google Reader, it was obvious that most of the blog posts there - at least for the Egyptian blogs - are political ones, especially the holy mixture of Leftist, Islamic, and Anti-Regime blogs. By the way, here in Egypt, the religious parties are located on the left side of the political spectrum instead of its right side as in everywhere else.

Finally, I do not want you to jump to a conclusion that blogs will die. Blogs will sure be there in the near future at least. However the blogosphere will be different from what it used to be a couple of years ago.

Tags: , , , , , ,

01 April 2007

Do You Turn Your Wireless Router Off At Night?

Many of you have a Wireless ADSL Router at home, so let me ask you, do you turn it off at night when you go to sleep for health reasons!? You know, we are always scared of waves, our mobile phones, WiFi, Microwave ovens, DECT phones, etc. And many people turn their mobile phones off when they go to sleep, however I do not do so. So, back to our question, do you turn your wireless router off at night, or it is just placed in another room so you don't care, or you have your own reasons not to turn it off, or what?

Tags: , ,

300 Spartans

Tonight I went to the movie 300, which took place in ancient Greece in 480BC. The movie is about the Battle of Thermopylae, where Spartan King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and 300 Spartans fought to the last man against Persian King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) and his army.

The movie itself is not that good, however the visual effects are brand new. Do you remember The Matrix, and the rotating camera - also known as Bullet Time - that was really cool, and many other movies imitated it later on. As well as many other visual effects. I also think that 300's visual effects will be copied in other future movies too. The colors and lighting where intended to make it look like a fantasy comic book. In some scenes, it was hard to tell if they are Black and White, or Colored. Some other scenes looked like Film Noire to me. The movie itself was based on a comic book with the same name by Frank Miller, and this can explain the presence of beasts, giants, and strange creatures in the Persian army.

The question now, don't you think that the current tension between US and Iran has inspired the move creators to shoot this movie. Greek is always considered as a symbol of the western civilization. Sparta is shown as a democratic state in this movie, while the Persians were shown as a slave empire, which is however a historic error, since slavery was also very common among the Greeks. The image of the Persians where they were shown as homosexual, handicapped and/or deformed in some way, was intended to show how evil they are, and how brave the Spartans/Americans are.

By the way, since it is the 1st of April, has any of you come out with a cool April's Fool for this year!?

Tags: , , , , , , , ,