I’ve decided to create a blog to go along with my photography website so this blog will be moving to a new address, www.sgawne.com/blog/.

The new blog will be split between photography related posts and technology related posts. I feel this is a good move for me because I would never be able to maintain both blogs individually and it allows me to focus more on my photography hobby while still posting periodic tech related tips, tricks and news.

So please join me at the new blog!

Thanks!
–
-Scott

Photo By: XirannisX en Off”

No matter how large your music collection you’re probably getting tired of hearing the same songs over and over again? And this can’t be more true for those of us who’s collection is full of popular songs heard constantly on the radio. It’s time to Discover New Music!

The other day I ran across a blog post with 10 ways to discover new music. Two of the programs I’ve previously talked about in my “Calling All Music Lovers” post, Pandora.com and Last.fm. Both are large music discovery services with free personalized internet radio without audio advertisements and slightly different methods for recommending new music, last.fm also has the added bonus of a large social network.

If you’ve tried both of these be sure to check out “Top 10 Ways to Discover New Music” for 8 more unique tools. Skreemr, an MP3 search engine, and Musicovery, find music from a particular era and genre that fits your mood, are just two of the tools mentioned.

Out of these 10 tools I’m sure you’ll find something to help expand your collection beyond the over played radio hits. But don’t forget to check out Amie Street if you like independent music. Their unique pricing methods make it easy to discover popular independent artists of all genres.

Technorati Tags: discover, music, web tools

Think you are always aware of your surroundings? Think again! I ran across this little awareness test today and figured I would share it with you. I’ll admit that I failed and I consider myself to be more aware of my surroundings than most. Enjoy!

Take the Awareness test!

Technorati Tags: awarness-test, just-for-fun

Still having trouble deciding who to vote for? Lifehacker list the “Top 10 Web Tools For Election Season” to help you learn about each of the candidates and where they stand on the issues that matter most to you!

The tools included everything from side-by-side comparisons, video clips, spending & donation trackers, polling locations, recent news, candidate positions on your hot-button topics and fact checkers.

Rounding out the top three are Microsoft’s Political Streams and Google’s blog search for tracking current stories at #3, fund raising and donation trackers OpenSecrets.org and Fundrace 2008 at #2, and FactCheck.org at #1 for finding the truths.

Check out the full Lifehacker article to see all ten tools and learn more.

Technorati Tags: 2008-election, campaign-2008, president

Three weeks ago I stumbled upon hundredpushups.com. I briefly looked over the site and thought what a great idea. A 6 week training plan that builds you up to one hundred consecutive push ups. Well actually, my initial thoughts were “Wow, one hundred consecutive push ups, that sounds like something I would never be able to do.” But after a brief look over the plan it seemed like something that might actually be obtainable and wouldn’t take much time out of each day.

I’m currently training for the Army Ten-Miler run September 5th in Washington DC and I was forced to take the whole month of July off due to a hamstring injury so I needed to get back into shape quickly. This seemed like a perfect challenge to take on the days I’m not running, plus it’s perfect for getting me started on some upper body exercises.

I just completed week 3 (Friday) and I’m ready to start week 4 Monday. So far each of the workouts have been pretty tough but I’m getting through them and I’m already noticing a big difference in the number of good form pushups I’m able to complete successfully. Week three had me completing 102 push ups in 5 sets. I have to admit, the last set was very difficult and I had to take a few seconds in the rest position after 10, and then again after 15 in order for me to finish the workout. Week 4 looks similar so hopefully I’ll be able to complete it successfully because week 5 starts changing the routine a bit and looks like it could be difficult. I love a challenge though!

3 more weeks to see if I can get to one hundred consecutive push ups.

Technorati Tags: hundredpushups.com, push-ups, fitness

Looking for a little fun on the web? Dig up a photo of yourself and check out MyHeritage’s Celebrity Facial Recognition software. After uploading your photo using their simple web form MyHeritage does two quick scans, one to locate the face and a second to detect facial features. The facial features are then compared to a database of  that it uses to compare to a database of celebrity photos.

The celebrity comparisons are based off of multiple photos of each celebrity to give higher quality results. The results are pretty accurate from the photos I’ve uploaded of myself and friends, you can quickly see the similarities. With each photo uploaded you’ll get multiple celebrity matches, each with a percentage showing just how close that match is.

Be forewarned, don’t submit your own photo if you can’t handle the reality of finding out you don’t look like Brad Pit or Angelina Jolie.

My top three closest matches were 74% Chad Michael Murray, 68% Adam Brody, and 68% Leslie Caran.

Technorati Tags: facial-recognition,, celebrities,, free

Searching the web through Yahoo! just became much safer thanks to a new feature called SearchScan. Every time you search the web using Yahoo you will see warning messages alongside the results alerting you to potentially dangerous websites. What a great feature! Now you have a heads up whenever a site you’re about to visit has the potential to harm your computer!

SearchScan was created through a Yahoo! partnership with the well-known antivirus provider McAfee, leveraging their SiteAdvisor technology! The three main protection features SearchScan offers are as follows:

• Browser Exploits — These are sites that can stealthily harm a user’s computer or install malware simply by visiting the site. Beginning today, any such sites or pages included in McAfee’s data will be removed from search results automatically.
• Dangerous Downloads — SearchScan will display warnings next to search results for sites that offer potentially dangerous software, such as viruses, spyware or adware. Users often may be unaware that these can be passed along with the screensavers, games and other software downloads.
• Unsolicited Email — SearchScan will alert users to scanned sites that send unsolicited emails or inappropriately share email addresses with third parties.

The best part about this feature is that any website known to take advantage of browser exploits will be removed from Yahoo! search results automatically. This means once a problem site is found and reported it will be removed from the Yahoo! index preventing it from infecting other Yahoo! visitors.

Another great idea, SearchScan is turned on automatically so everyone is protected right from the start, you don’t have to do anything. I love this and hope other search engines will jump on the bandwagon soon. A feature like SearchScan has the potential to inform and protect millions of users who don’t know how to recognize potentially harmful sites, WAY TO GO YAHOO!

Technorati Tags: Yahoo!, SearchScan, McAfee, SiteAdvisor

Everyone has sent an e-card at one point or another, you know this usually boring online greeting cards you can email to celebrate a holiday or someones birthday. E-cards are typically quite dull and boring, but they don’t have to be. The next time you look to send an e-card take a look at someecards.com.

Someecards.com has cards for just about any occasion you can think of, plus more. These aren’t your typical e-card though, they range from adult oriented to strange to just plain funny. So if you’re looking for an e-card that’s fun and different, try someecards! Here’s a sample e-card:

Technorati Tags: e-cards, someecards

Mark Hendrickson of TechCrunch.com is reporting that Microsoft has purchased the airfare prediction search engine Farecast.com (confirmed on their blog). Farecast.com, previously talked about here, is an airline flight search engine similar to Kayak.com. It searches across multiple travel sites including the airlines themselves, finding you the best bang for your buck!

Farecast’s claim to fame is their airfare prediction engine that provides and easy to read arrow display that suggest weather your should buy now or wait based on their prediction of whether the price will rise of fall. A confidence level percentage is also shown to help you decide if you would like to follow their advice or not.

Now that Microsoft owns farecast we’ll probably soon see it integrated into the MSN travel site.

Technorati Tags: microsoft, search, farecast

Adobe has launched it’s online version of Photoshop called Photoshop Express. It’s currently a public beta and open for anyone to sign up.

The online Photoshop Express is a nice little photo editor for some of your more basic editing needs but if you’re used to the advanced features of the full blown Photoshop then it’s not for you.

Photoshop Express features 17 editing tools including red-eye removal, crop & rotate, saturation and sharpening (see left). It’s not the greatest selection of edition tools but the ones they do give you are quite nice. It looks like they took a page from Microsoft Office 2007, most of the tools display a row of thumbnail images across the top of your photo, just hover over a thumbnail and you’ll see the effect applied instantly to your image. This is great if you’re not quite sure what a specific tool can do.

The undo capabilities are also great! You have your typical undo and redo arrows but you also have a nice little ribbon like feature that displays a series of thumbnail images with all of the edits you just made. Click on a thumbnail and revert back a that particular point. Unlike most photo editing tools, it’s also easy to remove any particular edit without loosing any of the changes you made after words. All you have to do is remove the little check mark next to the tool and that particular edit is removed, leaving all others in place.

Photoshop Express isn’t just an editing tool though, you also get 2GB worth of storage for an online gallery you can share with friends and family. I have to admit, it’s nice to have 2GG for free, but I’m not all that fond of the gallery, it seems to be lacking in features a bit. You can organize your photos into albums and view the albums as a slide show but there really isn’t much more than that. The search feature is only helpful if you have commented or named each photo. The addition of tagging would make it much easier to keep organized.

Over all, Photoshop Express is a pretty nice little editing tool, especially since you can import directly from other services like flickr, photobucket and picasa. But if you’re and advanced user you’re probably better of with desktop software and if you’re looking for a place to store your images and show them off, I recommend using flickr.com, zooomr.com or picasa web albums, they have many more options when it comes to sharing.

Technorati Tags: Photoshop-Express, photography, adobe