Have you seen a nicer use of Post-It Notes? The deadline is coming.

I did not think so. This was probably quite a job to build, but it’s so nice.

The fashion of drawing fractals is a memory of the past (it was probably linked to the first appearance of computers able to collate the computing power for the needed calculations and the display capacity for complex images). But the pleasure is all mine to find this HD video which sends us into a Mandelbrot set, this fractal structure (which seems to never change whatever the observation scale – a little like the ever finely cut coast of Brittany).

So, here are 10 minutes of total fractal travel:

The zoom is so intense that the original fractal is larger than the known universe, but the last image gives details smaller than the smaller of nuclear physics particle.

Astonishing mathematics via Boing Boing.

Sample chart

When you design a web site, it happens that you need to create graphs or technical charts. But this is quite difficult if you don’t spend a life drawing little charts or if you are not satisfied with the charts out of Excel (or OpenOffice Draw). For this, you need to have a good chart/graph package.

I found two of them that I want to share with you:

• amCharts is a set of Flash charts for your websites and Web-based products. AmCharts can extract data from simple CSV or XML files, or they can read dynamic data generated with PHP, .NET, Java, Ruby on Rails, Perl, ColdFusion, and many other programming languages. I like the final appearance even if they could have more of a designer touch.
• Chartle provides simple and interactive charts, maps, plots and diagrams. It’s still in beta right now (beg of 2010) but the results are quite good.

I already knew that there were fake electronic components of all kinds (don’t ask, but I work in the electronics industry and my own employer has sad stories to tell – but wouldn’t ), but I believed that this was limited to small cheap components. I was wrong.

The US retailer NewEgg indicated this week that they found in their stock what appears to be fake Intel Core i7 920 CPUs. Actually, they would have sold a small number of them before becoming aware of the issue.

What a world!

My preferred Internet browser, Opera, has now reached a new version v10.50. Not only is it still the same nice, friendly and powerful browser, but it packs interesting new features:

• Faster: I did not try the beta versions so I was surprised: It’s fast, very fast. I am not sure if it warrants the “fastest browser on Earth” title that their promoter want to give it, but it is not often that you feel such acceleration from a mere version upgrade.
• Win7-ready, perfectly integrated in Windows 7: Special menus for the integration into the icon bar, a specialized animated icon, optimized window, etc.
• Private, secured navigation windows upon request.
• The widgets can now be dropped onto the desktop.

Since Opera is compatible not only with Windows, but with Apple, Linux and most mobile phones, this is very good news about to spread around.

photo credit: nDevilTV

The Solid State Disk (SSD) is the new tool for computer performance. You no longer can consider yourself a geek if you did not try these Hard Disk Drives without any moving part because they are made of Flash memory. You will earn the semi-god geek achievement only if you trimmed, optimized, finely tuned, measured your SSD.

But, you can trick your way to the near-heavenly award if you go and check the Bit-Tech guide to trimming: “Why You Need TRIM For Your SSD“. This guide will tell you all that is to know about your SSD and Windows 7.

Nuit Blanche from Spy Films on Vimeo.

“Nuit Blanche” by Arev Manoukian (Spy Films).

Really! It will be in strong need to admire this Z-scale model of an N-gauge train. It’s real small (it was used to recreate a small model train going in a shop window inside a Z-scale model train).

Admire the wonderful work of art!

When you are an industrial company intending to launch a new product for a consumer market, you’d better think about everything and make sure that it will sustain all the conditions absolutely improperly hard that customers will submit it to (everything indicates that you and me, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Consumer, are ugly brutes).

In the activities of their new mobile phone, Google and HTC unveiled several videos giving us a peek looking (somewhat simplified but still real) into what is done to produce a modern mobile phone. Admire it and remember what the phone was tested against before bringing back your broken phone to the warranty department and claiming that your younger son just ate the corner of the display when -actually- you drove over it with your car…

See also:

• Nexus One design
• Display and 3D framework
• Nexus One manufacturing (nice shooting of industrial equipment)
• Nexus One: Day One (advertisement)

No! green light does no reduce accident numbers. A generous light helps in improving security. But this uses a lot of electricity and it would be preferable to ensure that it comes from a sustainable source. This is the concept proposed by TAK Studio which uses the atmospheric turbulences produced by vehicles passing on the road to generate the electricity lighting the road.

This is green, this is ecology-oriented, this is beautiful.

We do so much typing that we tend to forget about it. But there are ways to improve the situation (ensuring that you type less to produce more text).one of the best ways is to identify the texts you keep typing on the keyboard. then, you just have to use a utility program to help you setup a shortcut to be used.

The program will recognize the shortcut, then automatically replace it with the correct text. Type “win“, see “Windows” appear. Type “HTML” and see a full block of selected HTML code appear (I use such shortcuts to create blocks of HTML code on this site, reducing typing time and avoiding typos).

For this, you need to be supported by a small program. I found two interesting ones :

• AutoHotkey (for Windows) allows to write very simple scripts (examples are provided); I use it everyday (it works perfectly on a Windows 7 installation, by the way).
• Some people would prefer to explore Texter and TextExpander, too.
• If you are on Linux, you will prefer to have a look at AutoKey which is freely inspired by AutoHokey (copying is a form of flattery)

The excellent office desktop suite, OpenOffice.org (Word, Excel and PowerPoint, in a free form, if you want) just moved to version 3.2 (still free).

New features:

• Faster start-up times
• Compatibility with MS-Office 2007 documents
• Better Compatibility with MS-Office 97, 2000, XP documents, encrypted with a password
• Importation of dynamic tables from Excel
• Comments are now possible in the Impress presentations
• Improvements to the Calc cells handling (cell merging, sorting, etc.)

For Windows, Mac and GNU/Linux.

The TED Talk conferences are often a great moment of technologie accessible to the largest numbers and an opportunity for the démonstration of what could be our future if the great thinkers of our time work on it.

The following conference (from Pranav Mistry) wants to give us a rought idea of perspectives opened by a rather recent technologie named SixthSense willing to put computers in our world rather than forcing us to flow in the computers mould.

It gets real speed and starts getting exhilarating after 6 or 7 minutes. Be patient, it’s worth it.

Thanks Xtian.

By popular demand, I will group here all the posts I made previously about how to improve your Mafia Wars performance (Mafia Wars is the #1 Crime game on Facebook).

• Mafia Wars: Get a large mafia in no time
• Mafia Wars: Maximum loot
• Mafia Wars: How many points?
• Mafia Wars: Combat strategy
• Mafia Wars: Best weapons

All these are grouped under the “Mafia Wars” tag.

We have seen many, but today’s world record is a 26-gigapixel panoramic image of Dresden, Germany. I did not write 26-megapixel. It’s 1000 times what you’d expect from a better-than-high-end digital SLR photo camera.

This impressive photo is made of 1,665 individual shots captured with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II photo camera armed with a 400mm tele-lens, and combined together on a powerful computer.

Web site: http://www.dresden-26-gigapixels.com/

Following our previous post about the evolutions of web browsers, it is interesting to notice that Google just announced that their on-line applications (GMail, Calendar, GDoc, etc.) will no longer support Internet Explorer 6 starting next month. It is time to go to a more recent (and more secure) technology, as mentioned before.

Update: I just learned that Internet Explorer 8 is now becoming the web browser most used in the world. Even if there is a lot of other good competition, Microsoft is still holding its position (from DownloadSquad).

photo credit: Blyzz

When you love whisky, you have to include the Internet in the perimeter where you love is enacted. You need a whisky-coloured social web site to fully satisfy your love (maybe even find a soul mate – but this would probably be a marginal advantage). Connosr is the web site for you.

You will be able to share your taste and appreciation, exchange your knowledge, comment and review your preferred bottles.

And you can keep Connosr with you while bar-hopping by pointing your iPhone to connosr.com/iphone.