gHacks technology news » Daniel Pataki

Do more with your Wordpress using the function reference

Daniel Pataki — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 06:19:54 +0000

If you’ve been developing themes, or taking a go at modifying your own, chances are you’ve run into the Wordpress Template Tags page. This part of the Wordpress Codex lists numerous functions you can use to customize your themes quickly and easily, even if you’re just stepping into the wonderful world of modifying your blog, it’s worth a look.

Among other things, it allows you to add category lists, show comment ID-s, show comment authors, display next image links, add a dropdown box of categories anywhere, useful, and basically “drag and drop”. There is however another great Wordpress reference which is a bit more obscure, but also contains a huge load of functions for some other tasks you might have around your site. The Wordpress Function Reference section of the codex lists at least 250-300 functions for pages, authors, plugin usage, comments, users, etc, in short, encompassing the whole blog platform, as opposed to more blog post oriented functions in the Template Tags section.

The page is chock full of things like “in_category()”, which if passed a post ID and a category, will tell you if that post is in the category or not. Great if you want to display category specific content on your main page for example. It also gives you real power, with functions like “wp_insert_post()”, which you can use to insert posts “manually”, by passing an array of info to the function. Similarly you can use wp_insert_user() to add a user, with the parameters you want. Very useful for creating some custom sign up forms, custom permissions and so on.

What I’ve come to appreciate while using these functions is how very well Wordpress is thought out. I sort of knew this 3 years ago when I started, but when I began to use these functions I realized why. For example, wp_insert_user() will insert a new user, and will return the new user’s ID. It returns 0 if there is an error, but more importantly, if you pass an existing user’s ID, it will update that user, instead of creating a new one. There is a separate wp_update_user() function, but the action they perform is so close, it’s very handy that inserting a user is so flexible.

If you’re just jumping into these functions you’ll find them quite easy to use, while giving you a lot of control. If you’re an experienced PHP programmer you’ll find you’ll program less, and you’ll also appreciate the work going into Wordpress a lot more!

Tags: functions, template tags, wordpress

Read The New York Times with Adobe Air

Daniel Pataki — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:02:36 +0000

In my limited experience with newspapers, I got the sense that they are not the ones leading the technological revolution. Today I found out that The New York Times has just released an Adobe Air application called The New York Times Reader, for reading their famous newspaper on your desktop. Since “real life”, non-tech companies tend to favor technology at least 20 years old this initiative comes as a breath of fresh air (no pun intended), especially since it is really well implemented, it looks and feels great.

Sadly the app is not completely free. I usually only look at headlines because I don’t have a huge amount of time, and for that it is perfect. You can click around in the various sections and read excerpts and titles. You can also read the main page articles and the business articles for free. You will need a subscription though to access the full content on the other pages. There is also a feed reader type “Latest News” section, which you can view freel for all the breaking news.

If you’re already a subscriber the whole app is completely free. If you don’t have a Times subscription yet, you can subscribe for $3.5 a week. I think this is a small price to pay for the NYT, especially if you live anywhere off the US coastline. If you enjoy reading newspapers, but you don’t have the time to grab a copy each day, I think the New York Times reader is a great application.

(via Lifehacker)

Tags: adobe air, new york times, newspaper, nyt

Evernote available for BlackBerry

Daniel Pataki — Tue, 12 May 2009 16:29:06 +0000

Evernote used to be a quite little commercial app which a few people knew about. It wasn’t bad, but then someone thought that there was much more potential in a market dominated mostly by OneNote. So they went free and since then it has been booming for Evernote, their newest release will let you use your favorite notebook app on your BlackBerry!

I am not a huge fan of mobile computing (as in phones), but Evernote is one app I would use myself. Phones basically suck for surfing. I mean the biggest smartphones still have tiny screens, so, at least for me, mobile surfing is a long way away. However, I do frequently have the urge to jot down a few things, which I currently can’t really do. Evernote is a huge help in this, and now that you can take it with you on your BlackBerry everywhere (or you iPhone), taking notes are as easy as… well, taking notes should be.

The best part of the deal is obviously that you can sync fully with your PC version, and this is the selling point for me. I can write notes on the fly, view some in offline mode, take a pic right into the app, or create a quick voice note. This is an especially big help for me, since I usually drive places, which inhibits my texting capabilities.

Anyway, Evernote is a great note taking app weather you use it on your PC, on you Phone, online or offline, so take a look!

Tags: blackberry, note taking, notes

Create your own file extension icons

Daniel Pataki — Fri, 08 May 2009 03:27:18 +0000

I absolutely love all kinds of icons, and not long ago I found a very quick way to make my own simple Adobe-Suite-like icons. All you need is Adobe Air, and an app called Air Icon Generator. The app is from the same people who gave us Bookmarked Generator, and works with the same style, although with quite a bit more efficiency. You can churn out 4 different sized icons for as many formats as you want, I created about 10 in 2 minutes.

All you need to do, is fire up the application, select your style (Adobe style, or Web 2.0 star style), enter your text, up to four letters, select a background color and click generate. The shading is done extremely well, no matter what color you choose your icon will look good. This really is a great way to create file extension icons, especially if you use a lot like php, css, js and so on, you can get much better stuff the the original system ones.

The only thing I don’t like about the app is how it saves icons, more specifically, the naming. It generates four files with the names of “icon_16.png” for example, where “icon” is NOT the name you entered. This way, if you want to save a new icon, you need to get the old ones out of the way because they will be overwritten. I have no idea why the icons are not named after the name you enter, this would make saving and handling of these files much easier. Otherwise a great little app, give it a go!

Tags: adobe air, generator, icon

Ubiquity to be built into Firefox

Daniel Pataki — Tue, 05 May 2009 02:14:08 +0000

If you’re into browsers, browser tech and mashups, chances are you know what Uniquity is. In a nutshell it’s a mashup service which lets you navigate and manipulate the web in more natural ways. It’s quite hard to describe if you haven’t seen it, think of the awesome bar in Firefox and multiply it by 10, but apart from searching and gathering data it allows you to manage task lists, edit webpages locally and so on, tons of cool features.

A version of ubiquity called taskfox, although slightly toned down, will be built right into Firefox (hopefully soon) and will allow for a lot of the power which Ubiquity gives you. There are some awesome things in there, like searching for and starting a youtube video from the awesomebar, in the awesomebar. The path you need to take from inputting something to finding what you want is greatly reduced as a result, especially since everything can be completely controlled by the keyboard too.

Take a look at the video on the site, it looks interesting, I can’t wait for it to get into the Firefox main build. Until then, if you are restless, take a look at Ubiquity, which offers much the same, and then some.

Tags: mashup, Ubiquity

Self-publish for free with Lulu

Daniel Pataki — Mon, 04 May 2009 20:53:40 +0000

If you think you’ve got what it takes, why not write a book? Oh yeah, it’s takes a load of time, a huge load of marketing effort, and even more money to get enough published to start selling. It’s also risky, since you could be throwing money out the window if people don’t buy your book. Lulu gives you extremely good tools to publish your own book, and since they offer printing on demand, you won’t have to pay a dime until someone buys your book, even then, you only pay for printing, plus a little bit. All in all it’s the solution for bloggers, aspiring writers who want to show off their skills in the “real world”.

The model behind Lulu is that you write the book, upload it in a suitable format, select lots of options and then save it as a book. You can create commercial grade hardcover illustrated books, the tech behind it is really flexible, your imagination is the limit. There are no costs involved anywhere. The “catch” is that it will cost you more to print a book than it would if you would take it to a publisher to print 10,000 copies. The reason is purely economic (economies of scale), printing a few copies of a book is relatively more expensive than doing a large amount.

These costs are deducted from the sale of your book, so it’s all good, since you don’t actually see the cost, after one successful sale you still get money. You can set your own price for the book, Lulu will deduct its own costs, and you get the rest. They also offer lots of tutorials on creating the document for the finished version of the book, and for once they really are helpful, even for people who’ve dabbled in this before.

Overall, I love Lulu, I used it to create a book, and I will be sending myself a copy soon. If for nothing else, you can create a really great gift for your friends & family!

Tags: books, diy, publish

Inline Google Search in Gmail

Daniel Pataki — Fri, 01 May 2009 23:02:18 +0000

It seems like I’m the resident Google Labs reporter here at gHacks, but truth be told, they have been rolling out some cool features! Their latest is the ability to search Google inline from Gmail. Enabling the feature ads a Google search bar to the left sidebar in the Gmail interface. If you search from there, the results are presented in a pop up window much like the chat window, and top three results are shown (you can navigate to the others).

You can use this as a jump start for searching, clicking on the result to open it in a new window, but you can easily add it to an email, by selecting “reply with result”. This will paste the whole result you selected into the email. This is a convenient, and pretty fast way of sharing search results. I find that it is fastest if I already know the answer to the question. For research I like big ol’ regular Google, but if I already know what I need I can get it very easily like this.

Another side-feature which is worth noting is that Gmail has a hundred or so more emoticons available in a labs feature called Extra Emoji. I pretty much hate all emoticons, so you won’t see me using this, but if you like the “no-end fun” these bring to your emails you might like to try them out. They have icons for wine, hurricanes, rabbits and whatnot, stuff I mention regularly in all my emails…

Tags: gmail, gmail labs

Use your computer as a phone for free

Daniel Pataki — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 21:53:45 +0000

I recently discovered a really cool feature in Vista (I think it isn’t available quite so readily in XP), which allows you to transform your computer into a phone really easily. Of course you’ll need a bluetooth capable mobile, and a bluetooth capable computer (or an adapter), but once you hook the two together you can import, export, sync and make calls without any external software. Take a look at my screenshot tour of how to do this, basically I am making my laptop a mirror of my phone contacts and using it as a headset for the phone.

1. Enabling bluetooth

The first thing you need to do is enable bluetooth on both devices. You should find bluetooth under connection settings on your phone, or some similar place. I use a Sony w880i, I have it under Settings, Connectivity, Bluetooth. Make sure to set your phone to visible, although this should be the default setting.

On your computer you should have a bluetooth icon in the tray. If you do, right click it, and select “show devices”. If you don’t see the icon there, go into your control panel and double click on “Bluetooth Devices”. This should take you to the same screen. If you don’t see bluetooth settings here, you might not have bluetooth capability, or you might need to install drivers.

2. Adding your device

On the Bluetooth Devices screen you might already see your phone, or you will need to click on “Add Wireless Devices” in the top menu. All devices which can be discovered should be listed after a few moments of searching, if you wait a few more moments, their names, brands, or types should also be visible.

Double click on the device you want to add, and you will be taken through a very simple procedure to add the device to your list. You will need to enter a code into a dialog on your computer, the code for it will be shown on the phone. Once done, your device will be listed on the Bluetooth Devices page.

3. Importing contacts

Double click on your newly listed device and you should see a screen similar to the one below. Select “Backup Contacts and Calendar Information from your Phone”. This will quickly copy all your contacts to the contacts folder in your user directory. You can now sync your contacts between your computer and phone. If supported you might be able to do the same with calendar items, emails and notes.

4. Using your computer as a phone

On the same page, you can see that at the top, you can enter a phone number and call the number. Doing this will work, but it will all be initiated only on the phone. Simply click connect next to the headset option “Use this computer as a headset or speakerphone for calls on your phone”. This will make your computer act like any other wireless headset, so any calls your receive or initiate can be conducted by just talking at your computer. I have a good speaker and a built in mic, so I don’t even have to stop working to talk to people.

The great thing is that you can also initiate a call by right clicking a contact, going to “actions” and clicking on “call this contact”. The call will be initiated from your phone, but since your laptop is your headset, there will be no need to touch your phone, or for it to be anywhere near you.

Tags: bluetooth, headset, mobile, phone

Sharing is easy with Gmail!

Daniel Pataki — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:14:56 +0000

Since the introduction of the Gmail Labs settings to all users sharing in emails has been much easier, and I think somewhat overlooked. There are a few things you can do to tweak your inbox to make your life a bit easier, to enable you to share videos, images and more with your friends and co-workers. Just head on down to your Gmail account, click on settings, go to the labs tab and you’ll find a load of options, here are just a few you can use which are great.

Youtube Preview

This really cool feature puts Youtube videos right inside your email. If you receive any link pointing to a Youtube video the actual video’s thumbnail will be shown in the email (words for multiple links), and clicking the thumbnail will enlarge the player so you can view the video right there. I am always looking for ways to streamline my work (and my fun), and this is a real time saver.

Image Previews

The same system above is implemented for Picasa, and Flickr images, again, making image sharing much less painful. If you receive a wad of links you don’t need to click through each one (especially since many filenames are like dsc11902.jpg), this way you get a small preview right away.

Show everyone where you are

If you have a signature enabled, you can add your map location to the bottom of all your emails. Very handy if you have your own company, or if you want everyone to get to your party on time.

There are a number of other labs features you can try out, let us know which one you use, and which one you like most, I think in terms of usefulness the Youtube one wins my award.

Tags: Email, gmail, sharing

Cartoon shootout with Battlefield Heroes

Daniel Pataki — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 06:40:09 +0000

A new chapter in the Battlefield series is coming out soon, and there are free beta keys being handed out, so go over there this instant and get one for yourself!

The new game brings a huge change, instead of going for realism, they went for a cartoon look, which looks pretty stunning I think. Many will be deterred by this, I suspect especially hardcore gamers, but if I want realism I’ll jump down to a war zone and take a look myself. I think it’s quite unique and it makes the game more accessible to other ages and our friends of the female persuasion (I might be able to get my girlfriend to play a round with me!).

I haven’t played a lot with this series, I spent an hour or two with a newer one, and from what I can tell, the experience is much the same, but obviously very different due to the environment. I’m actually still waiting for my beta key, but to me the screenshots radiate much more of a fun factor than I’ve seen in games for a while.

Let us know if you’ve tried the game, I’ll add a comment as an update as soon as I give it a go, I can’t wait to shoot every one’s cartoon bum out of the sky, woohoo!

Tags: battlefield, battlefield heroes, ea, gaming

Visualize your hard drive consumption with SpaceSniffer

Daniel Pataki — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:20:08 +0000

No matter what hard drive size you have, if you spend a lot of time on your computer, you will fill it up eventually. A lot of times I have 1Gb stuff which I don’t need and can safely throw out, I just never bump into these because they are outside my normal file browsing habits. If you want to save some space by deleting the larges unwanted files, or just want a cool way to visualize your hard drive, give SpaceSniffer a go.

With no install needed, just run it, select a drive and watch as the table structure fills up with folders and sub-folders. You can double click on any folder to bring it into main view (cool animation here), so you can see more detail. If you’ve zoomed in on a folder you can click the name again to zoom back out, or you can use the forward and back buttons like on a browser.

There are options to show unknown space, free space, but apart from that this app is a simple hard drive space analyzer, but a really very well made one. It is beautiful, it is elegant and it gives you the information you need in a form very easily digested by the human mind. I simply love this app, if you can and you like it too, please consider donating to them. (via Freeware Genius)

Tags: hard-drive, system tools

Fon lets you download without your computer

Daniel Pataki — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:14:29 +0000

I don’t know if you guys know about the Fon router, I have personally used one for ages. It is a community based project, the thinking is that a lot of people buy fon routers, and with the router you get a passcode. If you’re anywhere in the world and you find a Fon router, you can use that password to use it for free. People without Fon passwords can also use your Fon router for a small fee, so you can also earn from buying one.

Now, the Fon 2.0 router is out, which allows you to download to a pendrive, external hard drive, upload to Youtube, all that fun stuff, but without having your PC or laptop turned on! Just set up a Youtube upload, add some torrent files, switch off your laptop, and the download/upload goes on. There are tons of cool apps built into the firmware, as the screencast about it says, it’s like a mini linux in there.

The price is EUR 50, which is roughly $65 now. Compared to the price of the old Fon this is pricey, but not compared to other top of the line routers which can’t do half as much. I purchased three routers pooling with my friends for about $10 each, and I have been using it since, it really is a great pieve of hardware, so I can’t wait to get my hands on the new one. Even if you don’t need these functions check it out, you will be helping out a great cause. I don’t travel as much, but one of my friends spends all his time doing so and he finds Fon routers everywhere in the World!

Tags: fon, fonera, router

Add tasks to RTM from Launchy

Daniel Pataki — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 09:40:21 +0000

If you’re a Remember The Milk user (the best online list app) you probably spend some time entering tasks. If you’re like me, and don’t like having tabs for apps open all the time (I can just about live with Gmail), then you also need to go to the website each time. To make things easier though, you can use Launchy, an excellent application launcher, and great script from Lifehacker together for some lightning fast list creation.

The first thing to do is to install Launchy. This will give you awesome application launching skills. Just press alt + space and start typing the app you want to launchy. It remembers stuff, so I can now launch Firefox by just pressing “f” and then enter. You will then have to install the script from Lifehacker which is a bit more complicated than extracting an archive, but nothing you can’t handle, take a look at the site for the instructions.

Once done, you can add items to a list easily, by just typing “rtm”, pressing tab, entering the task name and then enter. This will add that task to your inbox. If you want a bit more control you can add a due date, the list name, priority, tags and notes, in that order, by pressing tab after each one, and enter at the end.

This method is� so great, because it is really quick, and it also enables you to add tasks without having to go to the site. You can just add tasks all day, and maybe take 15 minutes at the end of each day to manage your tasks.

Tags: lists, remember the milk, task management

Do you use a system sidebar?

Daniel Pataki — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 21:58:42 +0000

With the well developed Google Desktop Sidebar and the Vista Sidebar, putting all your gadgets and websites on a sidebar always visible might be quite tempting and can provide loads of information like email, RSS, weather, notes etc., but do you actually use these features? Does the usefulness outweigh the memory usage?

Personally I like sidebars, but for some reason I don’t use them. I have a pretty wide screen and a system which has plenty of memory to eat, but to me the cleaner my screen, the less stuff I have to focus on, the better. I never really liked the Vista sidebar, it’s just too “big”, it looks a bit clunky sometimes, but there are some good widgets you can put in there, so it’s not all bad.

I pretty much like Google’s sidebar, and it also has some good widgets, the best feature is probably the integrated hard drive and email search, which really can be a savior sometimes. It also seems that there are better widgets for the Google Sidebar, but that might be just my perception. In my case I don’t really find the widgets so useful that I would need to see them permanently on a sidebar, what’s your take on all this, do you perhaps use another sidebar?

Tags: Google, google sidebar, sidebar

Using your own Wiki for coding

Daniel Pataki — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:47:41 +0000

The biggest time saver you can implement in your coding practices is some sort of searchable database of all the data you need when you’re working on a project. I mean code snippets, images, data sets, tips & tricks, whatever you use a lot and can be copy pasted. A great way to manage these is a personal Wiki.

TiddlyWiki is one such wiki, which you can download as a single file to your hard drive, or your can host it online using TiddlySpot. I recommend you visit the site and download a copy for yourself, there are easy to follow instructions, and no real set up is required.

To organize your notes you can use tags, and the whole database is easily searchable from the search box at the top. For example, I usually think up my designs as a single HTML page, without any PHP, just laying out the design. Depending on the general structure of the design I have a few templates at the ready, all in my trusty wiki. To get the one I use for a “content on the left, sidebar on the right” layout I just type “template sidebar right”, and the first note will be the one containing this layout, I can just copy paste the code into my file.

There are a number of other uses you can put your Wiki to of course. If you’re learning to code, you can simply copy the snippets you find and you want to study, and tag them by language, for future reference. You can also store some helpful links, ideas, project plans and so on.

You can use this is a regular notebook too, the real use of a Wiki is that it is very unobtrusive. You can use the same file for your personal notes, your diary and your coding organizer. Since you can use tags and search, you can display only the tiddlers (or notes) you want, so your coding stuff doesn’t have to get in the way of your other notes.

The see the power of a Wiki you really have to take a look yourself, so head on over to TiddlyWiki and grab yourself a copy. Wikis are not everyone’s cup of tea though, so you may not like it as much, but it is a bit different than most systems so give it a chance, try forcing yourself to use if for a week or two, you’ll definitely see the benefits.

If you’d like to get some more tips and tricks for web development and specific languages like HTML, CSS, PHP and the rest, head on down to Scriptastique for yumm coding treats!

Tags: snippets, tiddlywiki, wiki

Switch off apps for gaming mode with Gamebooster

Daniel Pataki — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 07:03:24 +0000

Recently I have gotten back into gaming, which means a huge 2 hours a week about, but nevertheless, it is a good way to blow off some steam. If you want to run some very modern games though you might need to squeeze every last bit of memory and CPU power out of your laptop or desktop PC, and Gamebooster is a big help in that.

Essentially it does what you could do manually, it finds the services and apps running that you don’t really need, and switches them all off with the push of a button. It switched off Launchy for me, the Aero theme for Vista, which apparently eats away at the CPU, some tablet services I didn’t even know I had running, etc., so it does quite a good job.

I actually didn’t notice a huge increase in performance, but the difference is there. I tested on GTA 4 which runs away on my system, but not very well. On minimum spec I can play pretty well, with only a few effects added. In very intense areas I noticed some performace issues were less prominent, like less lag and jittery camera, so it definitely did help. The best thing about this app is that it is so easy to use, no need to go through 20 services and shut them down, but even better, they can be restarted with the same one click action. This is also great for trips to prolong battery life!

Tags: gamebooster, gaming, performance

Taking screenshots has never been so fun!

Daniel Pataki — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:30:18 +0000

I think I just found the best screen capture software ever, or at least the best looking one. The aptly named PrtScr is originally intended to fill the void created by the Windows snipping tool which can only be found on tablet Vistas and some other select distributions. It has the same basic functionality, with some added extras and much better looks.

You can invoke the tool by pressing the print screen button (you can bind it to anywhere else), and the tool will pop up. It has a great mechanism because you can draw on your desktop before you create the “snip”, so depending on what you draw you might decide you need a bigger area. You can then use a box or a freehand tool to select the area you need and snip it.

Once that is done the snipped image will sort of hover on your desktop in a very cool way, you really have to see it to appreciate it, take a look on the website above or at youtube directly. You can save it to the clipboard, edit it with Paint or your can save it to your hard drive. My only problem was that the edit option opens up Paint and apparently there is nothing you can do about this. Since you can send to clipboard it’s not that bad, you can open it up in Gimp or Photoshop by simply pasting, but since you can choose saving format, timer option and so much, to me the inclusion of this feature would have been obvious. Great looking app though, give it a go!

Tags: prtscr, screen capture, screenshot, snip

Quote, research and take notes with Quotepad

Daniel Pataki — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 09:33:17 +0000

I sometimes run into an application that’s not hugely new, but it has such great handling, ease of use and functionality that I start to really like it. One such discovery today is Quotepad. Officially it’s positioned more like a copy-paste clipboard tool, but it is much more, offering checklists, reminders, timestamping and more.

You can use a simple key to add a quick note, just select any text and press ctr+shift+q. Your note will be instantly created, which you can then edit, add a subject to and save. This is not so new, a lot of apps offer this functionality, but the little things that Quotepad offers add a lot of extra to the program.

Just as an example, clicking the taskbar icon brings up a note list. Clicking it again (or double clicking) brings up the interface to add a new note. Simple, but very effective and efficient use interface. You can mark notes, have the whole window stay on top, change color schemes, change reading order, use filters to narrow your notes, Quotepad can become a great research tool, not just a copy-paste companion!

I find it very useful when I’m thinking about post ideas. Even with tools like Google Reader, it is sometimes hard to keep track of what I want to write about, and a quick copy paste into Quotepad is a big help, firstly because I can paste the intro paragraph from a blog post, or a description from the app main page. Quotepad shows the source of the text, so I can save the url copy-pasting time. I can then narrow by keyword, making all my blogging work much easier and faster.

Tags: copy paste, notepad, notes, quotepad

Would the try & buy model work for games and movies?

Daniel Pataki — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 22:43:34 +0000

I know you’ve all seen it, naughty people, you download a game for example, and the crack file says something like “Our cracker team does not support piracy, if you like the game, buy it”. So do you? I don’t know about you guys, but while I was “coming of age” I probably wouldn’t have bought stuff like this after I saw it, played it, but now that I am “coming of age” and I have income, this model would work for me.

There are two problems with movies and games alike, the first is that I think both are way overpriced (although games more so), the second, what if you try it and you don’t like it? First of all, it’s difficult to decide if you don’t like a movie until you actually finish it. With games this is a bit easier, but the ending can make or break a flick completely. In this case if you don’t like the film you probably wouldn’t buy it, although you did see it through to the end, so this is a bit unfair for the publisher. However, this would spur movie makers to make better stuff, since their income relies on people liking their stuff, at least more than it does now.

So do you think this business model would work? I think that it could in the long run. The problem is that many customers would consider this to a be a free ride, and wouldn’t think about the future quality they may get from paying now. If combined with a lower price I think the demand would be very high and could be as lucrative, or even more so than the standard model, what do you say?

Tags: economics, Games, movies

Gmail now suggests recipients

Daniel Pataki — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 10:03:46 +0000

It seems that Gmail is set to read your mind, it now suggests recipients to your emails! No, Mr Brin and Page are not inside your head, the application simply monitors groups you frequently send emails to. If you frequently send emails and sometimes there are some “crossovers”, this is a handy feature which can make sure you don’t leave anyone out.

You can enable this is the labs settings in your account, and once you do, you should see some suggestions come up. For me this didn’t work perfectly because I actually rarely email groups, let alone more groups. If you use email mostly for client-to-client work you probably won’t find this too useful, but in an office-like work environment this could be really handy.

For myself I’d rather like a better contact management system instead, something better integrated with the compose screen, maybe once that can read your first line and decide on the recipient. You could tell Gmail that if you begin a letter with “Hi Daniel” you want to send an email to me. Based on names this could be automated to some extent too. Do you have any contact feature suggestions for Gmail you’d love to see?

Tags: contacts, Email, gmail, google-mail, suggest

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