A.Viary.com Online Photoshop replacements

A.Viary.com is currently beta testing many separate tools that promise to reduce the worlds dependence of PhotoShop. Image manipulation programs directly in your browser. These tools look extremely good never-mind the fact that they are browser based.

Take a look at their product blog and be sure to watch some of the fast paced videos.

Even though they are invite only at this point, find a tool that you would like to use and sign up to get in the beta. They will usually get you an account within a few days.

This is an exciting time to be in the tech industry.

Mechanical Turk – Amazon Web Services

While looking at S3, Amazon’s in the cloud storage service used for such things as Jungle Disk. I spotted an oddly named service. Mechanical Turk. This is a very different type of web service. It gives you API access to human resources. (strange I know) So you create an AWS account and can post a HiT (Human intelligence task). You write the instructions for what the human who accepts the task should do and set a price for successfully completing it. You then use the API to check to see if the task is done and get the results. You can also create tasks using the API so there is no manual action on your part.

The humans go to mturk.amazon.com to see a list and search for tasks to complete. You can filter your workers by having them take aptitude tests or based on their past performance. You also set a time limit for your task to be completed once it is accepted.

I think this is a great idea and cannot wait to find a problem for this solution.

CastingWords.com is a podcasting transcription service that uses Mechanical Turk to handle some of it’s workload.

I suggest taking a look at all of Amazon’s web services, they are revolutionary and once the price comes down (EC2) I plan to put it to use.

Microsoft 2008 Launch Event

I attended the Microsoft 2008 Launch event today.

I signed up for the database track.

I sat through the first two segments of the track.

I pretty much learned one thing that might help me out with SQL 2008, compressed backups.

MSSQL 2008 has support for compressed backups simply by adding COMPRESSED to the backup TSQL statement.

Since the company I work for is still running SQL 2005 I am thinking of just trying to gzip the backups once they get onto the linux server where they are stored.

Side note, we have only one Microsoft server at the company I work for. It runs our imaging system that only works on windows. We actually store the executables, images and everything else other than the database on Linux and FreeBSD servers. I so wish that I could use MySQL for the backend but that does not seem to be an option at this point.

We periodically try to run the imaging system client side on Wine in linux but never get very far, cant even get the sql client tools installed.

Oh well, we will just have to stick with windows clients and the one MSSQL server for a while longer.

Any suggestions (other than virtualization please post in comments.) We have to have MAPI support from from the imaging app to the native mail client.

Anyway, the Launch event was VERY boring. But I did get free copies of Visual Studio 2008 that a colleague of mine really wanted, as well as SQL 2008, server 2008 and Vista Ultimate.

Surprisingly they seem to have actually given real licenses to at least VS and Vista. We will what kind of license they gave for server and SQL.

I did not stay the whole time, I was really bored and I noticed they were setting up the booth to give out the software (that is really the only reason I went) and started walking up. A girl walked up just before me and asked if she could get her software. The attendant asked if she was going back in the session. She said Yes and the lady explaied that she did not want to give it out and have others in the session see it so she asked her to come back before she left. Hearing this I am thinking all I have to do is leave and I can get my software!!! No problem. When asked if I was leaving I said YES and I did.

Kinda fun seeing all the Microsoft fan boys in their element.

I really cannot see how anyone can deal primarily with closed source software. I think it would take a lot of the satisfaction out of my job.

I Can’t Google!

Ok, I seem to be deficient in the mindset required to be able to google effectively. I am not sure what it is exactly but I can search and search for things and never come up with anything useful and my wife (especially) and my friends can just get the desired results right away.

What’s up with that? I am a programmer, I have a degree, I like to think I am fairly intelligent and logical. Why?

Apple TV

So my wife purchased an Apple TV for me when they first came out for valentines day or something like that, I let it sit in the box for at least six months because I was not really sure what I would do with it. Then I read that it only worked on HD televisions so I was even more discouraged. Eventually I decided I would try to make it work and found out that there is an option for 480i and 480p in the setup menu meaning that it can work with standard def tvs. However my tv is old enough that it does not have component or hdmi in so a coworker of mine found a component to composite/svideo converter that I could use for the Apple TV.(see my post on why he found it instead of me) This worked pretty well and it has been in our living room for the past year or so. (note I have no concept of time so this is probably wrong)

Anyway, Apple finally decided to make this thing useful with Apple TV take 2 which is a firmware/software update that can be done to any existing apple tv. It allows you to do everything the old version did but also rent movies, view podcasts, youtube directly from the tv using the apple remote. Also it now supports AirTunes which means you can use it just like an Airport Express but the music will play through your tv.

Pretty cool.

One last note, when using the Apple TV in 480p mode it is very hard to read the text on the screen. It is super small and looks kinda squished. So even though this is not the perfect setup, it will due until I break down and buy an HD tv.

LinkedIn

Ok, so I just created an account on LinkedIn.com because my wife received an invitation from my brothers girlfriend and she started telling me about it. How it is a social network for business and higher education etc. I thought it might be a good way for me to find a good web designer to hire or some other way to get ahead in my business.

Well after creating an account I half way set up my profile but it is a bit odd, I guess if you are not invited by someone then you are pretty much stuck unless you want to try to link up with some of your old college acquaintances (yea right). I am not a very social person so this does not appeal to me at all. Although one of the reasons for creating the account was to try to force myself to be more social at least online.

Anyway, I did not really get anywhere because I do not know anyone else on there (except for my brothers girlfriend and I am not going to to invite myself into her circle).

Oh well back to google reader, I will continue to be a bystander on this new social internet. At least for a while.

Blog setup

Well, I finally decided to try out the whole blogging thing.

I have been in tech for a long time and keep up with it pretty well.

I never created a blog because I am very private but yesterday I thought why not just follow in the footsteps of “The fake steve jobs” and do it anonymously!