Slide, a 65-employee company founded by Max Levchin, 32, the Ukrainian-born co-founder of online payments company PayPal, is the creator of several of the most popular software programs running on Facebook and News Corp.’s MySpace.com. Its Facebook programs include Top Friends, FunWall, and SuperPoke.

In an interview, Levchin declined to name the institutional investors. But sources close to the financing deal said the investors were Fidelity Investments and T Rowe Price.

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DPreview.com recently reviewed the much anticipated Olympus E-3 DSLR and here are some of the main features:

* 10 megapixel sensor
* 2.5-inch 230k pixel live view display
* “World’s fastest autofocus” with 11-point biaxial AF system
* Image stabilization, sonic dust cleaning on sensor, shoots up to ISO 3200

Read Full Review
* 3/4 lens mount, takes CF and xD media

Here’s a list of the top 5 Open Source Image Editors:

Paint

Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.

Project Dogwaffle

Project Dogwaffle 1.2 is a freeware version of the paint & animation program Project Dogwaffle and PD Pro Digital Painter, developed by Dan Ritchie – version 1.2 is based on a subset of version 2.0

Inkscape

An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development.
News.

Picasa by Google
Picasa is a free software download from Google that helps you:

* Locate and organise all the photos on your computer.
* Edit and add effects to your photos with a few simple clicks.
* Share your photos with others through email, prints and on the web: it’s fast, easy and free.

GIMP / GIMPshop

GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.

For those that are familiar with Photoshop the GIMPshop will be a better option,GIMPshop is a modification of the free/open source GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), intended to replicate the feel of Adobe Photoshop. Its primary purpose is to make users of Photoshop feel comfortable using GIMP.

You know there comes a time when playing the old ordinary chess set becomes a bore, sure you could spice it up a little with a crystal chess set or similar product but wouldn’t it be better to enjoy chess and get totally wasted at the same time? Well my answer would be NO, but if you actually said yes than the Shot Glass Chess set is made for you.

Basically the set is made out of glasses instead of the usual counters, these glasses are marked just like real chess-mans,so technically if your winning you get to drink the content of your opponents glass, now the content does have to be Vodka or any other alcoholic drink..but hey where’s the fun in that right?

The more you win, the more you have to drink. While getting drunk and losing concentration, you give more opportunities for your adversary to win.

So i guess this weekend will be a little more exciting for you and your pals.

Another version – Shot Glass Chess

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Ever wanted to copy and paste something on the fly without opening notepad or anything similar?
Now you can with this great tool at cl1p.net

It’s as simple as pie:

1: Enter a URL that starts with http://cl1p.net.
For example i created a test page: http://cl1p.net/etech

2 : Paste in anything you want.
Some text or even a small file. Click ‘Save’ when done.

3 : On the other computer open a browser to the same URL.
You will find the information you entered in step 2.

Check it out!

Ever wanted to create an animated gif but just don’t have the knowledge on how to do it? No problem!, thanks to Gickr.com.

Gickr.com lets you instantly create Animated GIF online, free, right now! Just upload pictures or grab them from your Flickr. Create funny flashy slideshows with you and your friends, cartoons, previews, banners, etc. Post them anywhere you can post pictures: MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, HI5 etc. No need for flash. Show them to people in our Gallery.

Visit: Gickr

The Canon PowerShot A460 is a 5-megapixel digital camera with a marginally larger LCD screen and CCD size. Its 2.0-inch LCD screen has a paltry 86,000 pixels, an in-camera flash, and a 4x optical zoom lens. It comes equipped with a full auto mode, a manual mode, eight preset scene modes and a movie mode with audio capture.The other bad news is that it has very noisy images, awkward zoom rocker and no 30fps VGA movie mode.

As a budget shooter though, the A460 fails to really stand out of the crowd. Its most notable aspect is its 38mm-to-152mm-equivalent 4x lens, slightly more powerful than the 3x lenses found on most snapshot cameras.

click here for a full review.

The new site, due to launch by the end of 2007, will combine human-assisted editing with computer-controlled searches. Earlier this year Wales’ commercial startup company, Wikia, purchased the rights to web crawler platform Grub.

Grub users download a program which makes uses of their computer’s processing power while the machine is left idle. If widely adopted, such an arrangement could reduce the need for Wikia to set up a web crawling network of its own.

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In an interview with Financial Times Deutschland, Lanci spoke his mind about Microsoft’s latest OS and certainly caused some anger at the Redmond HQ:

“The entire industry is disappointed by Windows Vista. And that’s not going to change in the second half of this year.”

Also, Lanci was quick to point out that stability was still a problem with Vista, hinting that it was no surprise customers keep asking manufacturers to deliver them computers featuring Windows XP instead on Microsoft’s latest OS.

Read the Full Article

Internet Security

Optimization And Tweaking Tools

Image and photo manipulation And Viewing software

Burning, Ripping And Encoding Tools

and more, check it out here.

The madness over Apple’s latest gadget continues as the iPhone is released to the public, there was long lines on almost all the places where the iPhone was on sale.

Apple has set a target of selling 10 million units worldwide by 2008 and i think that’s not a hard target to reach.

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Remember that “transformation” sound of the Autobots and Decepticons? well you can now download it here.

source

An excerpt:

It’s time to toss the old tube to the dumpster. Well, not if you have one of those 47” plasma ones, but…you know what we mean. The future of media is the Internet, and television is no exception. Instead of browsing through the channels with your remote, you could be browsing through the free online TV providers on your computer – hell, if you like, you can watch them all at once (in really tiny windows). It’s time to reach out and see how much free online TV we can find.

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One of my favourite features in Gmail is the ability to read Word document or .pdf file online with the “view file” link at the bottom of attachments and now things got better as there’s a “view slideshow” that supports PowerPoint files.

More Features

today announced it has acquired StumbleUpon, an early-stage company that helps people discover and share content online, for an aggregate transaction value of approximately $75 million. This acquisition will provide eBay with in-depth exposure to a fast-growing community-based service with approximately 2.3 million users. StumbleUpon gives people a new way to discover relevant and entertaining content based on personal preferences and community recommendations.

I am one happy SU user and i’ve really “stumbled upon” some great sites along the way, i seriously wonder what eBay’s plans are concerning SU, hopefully they don’t spoil it somehow.

Via Techcrunch

Of course, few mail providers will accept a such a big message, so it’s safe to send messages bigger than 10 MB to other Gmail accounts, to Yahoo Mail Plus or to other premium accounts.

source

The Haier Elegance measuring 9.1 x 3.5 x 1.8cm (3.6 inches long) has been declared as the world’s smallest music phone, the phone also packs in MP3 player (128MB, expandable by 1GB via Micro SD), FM tuner, Stereo Bluetooth, OLED display and Tri-Band GSM. You get three hours of talktime, but a pretty decent 11 hours MP3 playback.

It’s a little bit on the expensive side of the scale with a price tag of $330

source

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Vixy allows you convert a Flash Video / FLV file (YouTube’s videos,etc) to MPEG4 (AVI/MOV/MP4/MP3/3GP) file online. It is using a compressed domain transcoder technology (outline in Japanese). It converts FLV to MPEG4 faster and less lossy than a typical transcoder.

Try Vixy

Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg responded on the DiggBlog that they would now stand for the community:

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Digg on,

Kevin

But that hasn’t been the case at all..

more | Even More..

Researchers used the newer Internet addressing system, called IPv6, to break the records in December. Data started in Tokyo and went to Chicago, Amsterdam and Seattle before returning to Tokyo. The previous high of 6.96 Gbps was set in November 2005.

Speed records under the older addressing system, IPv4, are in a separate category and stand at 8.8 Gbps, set in February 2006.

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In what i believe must be the first of it’s kind, the mayor of Sao Paulo (Brazil) has banned outdoor ads, he imposed the ban 4 months ago and now the city area is almost 100% free of ads.

Regarding the ban, one Sao Paulo columnist told IHT that the law is “a rare victory of the public interest over private, of order over disorder, aesthetics over ugliness, of cleanliness over trash.” However, advertisors and business groups are clearly feeling the pain.

Photos | More

In an article on its Web site, Forbes attributed part of Slim’s “amazing run” to a 15 percent increase in the stock price of Carso Global Telecom, part of a larger rally in Mexican stocks. Slim’s America Movil cell phone company also soared on news of a possible acquisition of Telecom Italia.

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Today Opera announced the stabil released of Opera 9.2 ,it is not only an important update with bug fixes and the new Speed Dial functionality, it’s also a milestone in spreading Opera to new users around the world: Opera 9.2 for Windows ships with 31 languages.

Download

Qualitytrafficsupply.com is one such site where you will be able to get guaranteed traffic to your site.

Some of Qualitytrafficsupply.com clients include:

– Small online businesses

- Large internet based companies

- Affiliates and website promoters

- Websites running Google Adsense

- Anyone looking to gain web traffic

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Internet billiard is a great site to learn some tips and strategy on 8-ball pool, 9-ball pool, snooker and other games that shares a cue sticks a table and a group of balls.

It’s also a good place to brush up on your knowledge, for example the 9-ball pool rules or the One pocket rule

Everything related to billiards can be found here including billiard games rules, strategy and tips; glossary with definitions of terms often used in the different types of billiard games and more.

Customers and friends continue to ask me more and more frequently “is it really that easy to bypass a lock? If it is that easy, should I be concerned and what can I do about it?”

I explain to them that lock bumping has been around for years. This technique was primarily known to people in the security industry and the information was not commonly shared. Criminals or would-be thieves weren’t really aware of this method for breaking into houses or businesses. However, as this technique becomes common knowledge, each individual faces the importance of increasing their security and staying one step ahead of the potential problem.

I have two major concerns regarding lock bumping. First, this technique for bypassing lock systems is becoming common knowledge, which allows a greater probability for the wrong people to use this information. The second concern is that with this method, it is more difficult to discover signs of forced entry into a home. This becomes an insurance issue. Are you covered for burglary or theft if there are no signs of forced entry? This is a vital question, and one most people have not asked, especially before a break in.

One of the most effective ways to protect against lock bumping is to install a high security cylinder lock that is bump proof. BiLock has a high security cylinder with a patented key and locking mechanism. This lock system is one of the most secure locks in the world. Most standard locks have five or six pins which are made up of top and bottom pins, allowing the bump key to bypass it. The Bilock cylinder has 12 bottom pins with no top pins and dual sidebars along with a trigger mechanism within the key, making this lock system virtually pick proof.

Installing a deadbolt with a BiLock cylinder will provide you with great security. A valuable feature is that there is no unauthorized key duplication. All the keys you receive with the locks are numbered. When you hand out a key to someone, you simply make a record of the key number and when it is returned to you, feel confident that no one has made a copy of the key for your house or business. This is extremely important when handing out keys to contractors or house sitters; you do not have to worry about changing the locks as long as you know that you have all of the keys back in your possession.

You might question whether it would be enough to have a BiLock cylinder in the door knob lock. It would give you more key control and security against lock bumping, but the door knob lock does not provide as much security as a deadbolt lock. For the best security, I recommend a deadbolt with a BiLock bump proof lock cylinder. It would also be a good idea to replace your locking door knob with a passage door knob. A passage door knob has no locking function, it simply latches the door like a bedroom or closet door. When you have installed your passage knob, you will be using the deadbolt to lock your door. You will need to have your key to lock the door, so you won’t be able to accidentally lock yourself out of your home.

A very important thing to remember when securing your house is that criminals commonly pick the easiest target. If you make your home tougher to access than your neighbors, chances are they’ll skip your house. After installing your new BiLock cylinders, you and your loved ones will sleep better knowing that somebody can’t break into your house as easily as they show on the Internet and TV.

Dave Jabas has 30 years experience in sales and installation of commercial and residential door hardware, lock boxes, panic bars and BiLock high security lock cylinders.

http://www.wholesalelocks.com

• Call to report the card missing. When I called my card’s 800 customer service number, I found out about the gas station charges that were not made by me or my husband. So I closed the account and requested a new card. Then I immediately canceled the other credit card in my wallet, and my ATM card.

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