I thought the original Mercedes-Benz McLaren SLR was a nice enough car but its looks just didn’t do it for me. That was until I saw one live – the car looks way better live than in pictures. In an effort to inject more life into the slow-selling supercar, Mercedes has done away with the top and created the Mercedes-Benz McLaren SLR Roadster. I have to admit, it is a mighty fine package.

The new Roadster features a carbon fiber roof. In fact, every body panel, except for two, is made from the exotic material. The loads of carbon haven’t done much to lower the weight of the car – it’s still super heavy. The engine is the standard SLR’s 617 HP unit instead of the 722’s 650HP motor.

The Mercedes-Benz McLaren SLR Roadster is the first convertible Mercedes in recent memory where the top is not fully automatic. The occupants will have to manually unlatch the roof, push upwards, and then let the motor take over. What’s up with that? The most expensive car in Mercedes’ lineup and I have to manually unlatch the roof? Forget it. There’s no way I’m paying £350,000 for that.

Created by “bricklife”, this NXT-powered missile launcher is quite accurate to say the least. See it in action after the break.

Woow! I wish there was a place in Kuwait like this to work at, it would be really fun ! Take a look at the video and you’ll check out this interesting tour of the Googleplex, includes lots of interviews with employees. Employees at Google spend most of their time having fun, which is the senareio to their success. Video after the break.

Source [Youtube]

Ok i found this Mac guide like no other Mac guide, it dosn’t just explains keyboard shortcuts, it actually, well, read it to find out!

Introduction

A lot of people have been moving to the Mac over the past few years, so a while back I thought I’d jot down a few notes about my experience over the last five years or so. The motives for anyone switching are pretty much irrelevant, and will not be discussed here – discussing relative merits of computer platforms is very much like discussing cars, and therefore largely unimportant if you are getting what you want.

Quasi-religious beliefs that any platform is better than another are not just irrelevant, but plain childish and stupid. Before maligning the Mac, Windows or Linux, make sure you know what you are talking about – most people in the IT business have “pet hatreds” towards one platform or another out of sheer ignorance, and more than a decade in the business has shown me that anyone who only has bad things to say about any given platform probably doesn’t know what (s)he’s talking about.

So if you know you want a Mac, you’ve come to the right place for a few basic hints that might just save you a lot of time.

The major “under-the-hood” issue for non-Mac users is the underlying UNIX foundation of Mac OS X – it’s quite different from what you might be used to, and if you used any sort of UNIX before, bookmark Amit Singh’s What Is Mac OS X? now and go read it after you finish this.

The second (and quite frequent) issue is the recent transition to Intel processors. The bottom line on that is: If it’s a Mac, it will work the same way regardless of what chip is inside. There will always be teething issues, but the Rosetta emulator ensures pretty much everything runs on new Intel machines with acceptable performance, and most relevant applications are already available as Universal binaries for both PowerPC and Intel machines.

And yes, you can run Windows (or Linux) on Intel-based Macs. There are at least three good ways to do it. One is doing dual boot using Boot Camp (for which Apple even supplies Windows drivers), and the other two consist of using Virtualization (i.e., running the other operating system in a virtual hardware sandbox). One is called Parallels and has been around since roughly mid-2006, and the other is called Fusion and reached public beta on December 2006.

They will not be discussed here at length, since the main point of this document is to ensure you feel at home in Mac OS X as quickly as possible.

The remainder of this is, therefore, mostly written for non-technical folk. However, I do throw in a few hints for people who are coming to Mac OS X with some computing experience and expect some “best practices”, so don’t worry if some points are a bit too technical.

Buying

Buying a Mac is not a normal experience anywhere. It’s a local thing, best done with local people (pun intended). It’s exactly like this in Portugal, but for entirely the wrong reasons, like the lack of Apple shops, the recurring problems of the local retail chain (we still don’t rate an official Apple shop) and the quasi-underground nature of most user groups.

However, picking which Mac to buy (and when) is pretty straightforward. It’s mostly a matter of visiting the Apple site, reading the Macrumors Buyers’ Guide to figure out how recent each model is relative to the full lineup, and then finding a store that stocks it (some people order theirs – others, like me, want to go out, get it, and come back again without all that waiting around nonsense).

The recent change to Intel may cause some disruption, but any PowerPC machine bought on 2005 (and even early 2006, as Apple cleared stock) will serve people well for a lot of years to come. Just make sure you plan for an upgrade to 1GB of RAM, since the next version of Mac OS X (codenamed Leopard) is likely to be a bit more demanding.

I will not go into warranties, support or suchlike – this is, again, a local affair, invariably dealt with by local people. So far, I’ve been lucky – a problem one of my Macs had (an original 15″ flat panel iMac, which I started out in and since gave to my parents) was fixed within three weeks. It had a power supply failure, and fixing it required shipping a replacement part to Portugal. A similar thing happened to my iBook recently, and the experience was mostly the same.

Three weeks is unacceptable in the rest of the civilized world (again, Apple really should consider improving their presence in Portugal), but a couple of issues in three years (and, incidentally, four Macs) is pretty good.

Unpacking & Testing

• While unpacking, look at the packaging. There are neat graphical hints of how to unpack every Mac printed on the box. Do leaf through the manual, but (here’s the important bit) don’t rush it. There are a few important things to know, even if you’ve had a Mac before.
• If you’re getting a laptop or flatscreen, boot the Hardware Test off the first install CD (insert the CD and hold down Alt – or Option, as it is called in older keyboards – while the machine boots). Amongst other things, it performs a display test – which is fundamental for picking up “dead” pixels before you start installing stuff (I used to use ScreenQuery, which filled the screen with solid colors, but it seems to have vanished). As usual, the smaller the screen, the less likely you are to have dead pixels (there is some controversy as to what amount of dead pixels warrants a replacement – search the Net for more info).

Setting up Mac OS X

• The default behavior these days is for the Mac to prompt you for an installation language the first time it boots from the hard disk and, after installing a few files (a few minutes’ worth) configure your locale settings. If your Mac boots straight to the Finder or to the login panel, then someone else has used it before (sadly, this is a common thing with Portuguese retailers, who like to play around with their customers’ gear). If so, I recommend using the restore CDs/DVDs included with every Mac to restore it to a factory-fresh configuration.
• After setting up your keyboard, language and whatnot, the installer creates the first user account. This is the important bit: it is an administration account – call it “Administrator” or something like that and create another for yourself afterwards (if you’re a UNIXhead, this is not root, which is disabled).

Many people think this is unnecessary until they discover (the hard way) that they threw some important system file into the Trash. Yes, there are warnings, but using the machine as an administrator tends to make people oblivious to them, and years of using all my machines as a “regular” user bestowed upon me painless system updates, zero trouble with the core system and no software instability whatsoever. In the end, it’s your call.

You can create that “regular” user accounts in System Preferences after setup ends. This will not prevent you from making all the silly mistakes people do when using a Mac for the first few months, but it will significantly decrease the odds of you breaking something (you will be asked to authenticate as an administrator before any significant changes are made). Not to mention that it prevents unwanted changes to your system…

(Yes, you can break a Mac OS X install – or files that make subsequent upgrades fail – by mistake when you use the machine every day as an admin user. And yes, I’m repeating the warnings in small print above.)

• Network configuration is usually trivial. Macs use DHCP by default, and visible Wi-Fi access points will show up on the AirPort menu (to connect to a hidden or security-hardened Wi-Fi network, choose the “Other…” option in the AirPort menu). For those having to deal with broadband connections, PPPoE support is built-in, and your card’s physical Ethernet address can be looked up in the Ethernet section of the Network preference pane in System Preferences.
• Firewalling is configured in the Sharing tab in System Preferences. The defaults are usually sensible for most cases (and Mac OS X is very secure), but it’s best to ensure it’s on if you’re directly connected to the Net.

Best Practices

What not to do:

• Don’t use the administration account for anything other than setting up the machine and applications or changing “permanent” settings (if you want to, say, change network settings as a normal user you’ll be prompted for the admin password, and since you’ll do configuration changes less and less often as time progresses, this isn’t a problem).
• Don’t install “toy” applications as the admin user until you’re sure you’re going to use them. Most applications will run just fine from an Applications folder under your user directory.
• Don’t open files or mail attachments that come from unknown sources. This is a basic security measure that is valid for any kind of machine, even for a Mac – no operating system can protect your machine from your mistakes… One way to improve your odds is to open Safari preferences and uncheck the Open "safe" files after downloading option. There is no such thing as a “safe” file, you have to be sure of what you download.
• Never, ever move Apple applications (such as Mail.app) to other folders. Mac OS X updates are not always very clever at updating built-in apps, so you’ll end up with either two copies of your apps or a single broken one.
• If you’re a Windows user: Don’t try moving a folder on top of another with the same name – Mac OS X will replace the entire folder, i.e., it will not merge both folder’s contents and will cause you to lose your data. This is a very significant difference between the Finder and Windows Explorer that catches most people at least once, and is simply a matter of different traditions (plus the UNIX underpinnings of Mac OS X, where things have worked like this from time immemorial). Drag the folder contents, not the folder itself.
• If you’re a UNIX user: Don’t fiddle with the system startup scripts unless you’re sure you know what you’re doing (which includes reading this and a bit more about launchd and the startup files themselves). Mac OS X doesn’t use runlevels in the same way as “classic” UNIX systems, and things like network configuration, system services, and whatnot are not (necessarily) stored under /etc. You’ll figure it out after a while, but don’t go in thinking this is “just like any other UNIX system”. It both is and isn’t like other UNIXes, and like other UNIXes, fiddling under the hood is not to be done lightly until you’ve read the documentation.

Things You should do:

• Did you read the bit above about setting up your own user account? Go back and read it then.
• Disable Safari’s “Open Safe Files After Downloading” preference. There is no such thing as a safe file anymore, and like e-mail attachments, you should only download and open files from trusted sources. Yes, I am repeating this again, just to make sure you get it.
• Tweak Safari preferences to enable tabs. You’ll never go back.
• Create your own Applications folder inside your home directory (Mac OS X will change the icon accordingly) and try out new stuff in there. If it breaks, you won’t break the machine for other people (and if a Mac OS X app breaks while running under an unprivileged account, it’s badly written for sure).
• Put things you want to share among users in the /Users/Shared folder. You may have to tweak file and folder permissions a bit, but it’s the easiest way (see my Address Book, iPhoto and iTunes pages for ways to share these applications’ data).
• Consider using a separate user account for playing around (yes, another one, besides your own and the administration one). Fast User Switching makes it very easy to try out new software like this.
• Set up separate accounts for kids using the Simple Finder or Some Limits option under the Limitations tab.
• Use Exposé. Go on, press F9. Learn how to use F9, F10 and F11 to switch windows and drag-and drop files onto apps – there is nothing quite like it, and it’s a real time-saver.
• Be mentally prepared to reinstall your Mac from scratch after a month or so of heavy fiddling. This is mostly applicable to the UNIXheads that like poking under the hood and will disregard every other warning so far – “Normal” users can disregard this hint, especially if you follow my previous hint and don’t use the administration account for everyday work.
• Get as much RAM as you can possibly afford – 512MB used to be OK for general Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) use, but programmers or graphics-oriented folk will feel 1GB much more comfortable (I have felt little need to go beyond that so far, but G5 users that do a lot of video editing will most certainly disagree with me).
• If your Mac didn’t come with a Mighty Mouse (as late 2005 models do), then get a proper mouse. I’ve said before that Mac OS X with a single button mouse is like rowing with a single oar, and I mean it: Mac OS X supports multiple-button mice, scroll wheels, etc. I use Microsoft wireless mice (the old kind, not the Bluetooth ones), which work perfectly and can be obtained in white (no sense getting a horrible blue and red mouse, now is there?).
• Although all new laptop models now have two-finger scrolling, people picking up a second-hand iBook or PowerBook should look at something like uControl or SideTrack to make better use of the trackpad.
• Drag Terminal.app to your dock as soon as possible (it’s in Applications/Utilities). UNIX won’t bite you, and some things are best done at a terminal.
• Use Microsoft’s great Remote Desktop Client (recently updated to 1.0.3) to access your Windows XP boxes. VNC is good, but RDC is much faster and also allows you to transfer files across by mounting your Mac filesystem on Windows (it will appear as a network drive).

Keyboard Tips

These started piling up a bit, so I decided to group them together in a single section.

• Spend some time getting used to the accelerator and “special” keys. They make sense after a while, but having the extra Command modifier key and a different meaning for Home and End plays havoc with some people’s reflexes. (See below for a way to change this if you really want to, but I recommend opening a text editor and playing around for a while to get used to the way things work on a Mac).
• Windows users will like to know that Alt-Command-Esc will display the “Force Quit Applications” dialog. You can also force quit an application by clicking on its dock icon while holding down Ctrl+Alt.
• The Command-Tab bezel doesn’t just let you switch between applications – you can also select an application and quit it immediately by keeping the Command key down and doing Command-Q.
• Remember that Command-H will “hide” applications (i.e., there’s more to life than minimizing windows)
• The screenshot key combos are mostly well-known, but here’s a brief summary:
  • Command-Shift-3 to snapshot the whole screen (doesn’t work in DVD Player, though). A PNG file will be saved to the desktop (you can change the file format by manipulating a preferences file, but PNG is good enough for most purposes).
  • Command-Shift-4 to get a selection cursor. In this mode:
    • Hit Space to snapshot a specific window.
    • Hold down Control when clicking to save the snapshot to the clipboard (instead of the desktop), ready to paste into any application.
• There is a set of startup key combinations here that you might find useful.
• People using a Mac mini with standard PC keyboards are likely to have trouble with the way keys are mapped (especially non-US layouts, which swap accent and symbol keys), so I strongly recommend getting an Apple keyboard.
• If you’re using a desktop Mac with a non-US keyboard, the screen brightness control is often unmarked – try the function keys above the help key.
• PowerBook and MacBook users will also want to know about Command-F1 to toggle between mirrored and extended desktop modes (a lifesaver when you have a bum LCD screen) and Ctrl-Alt-Command-8 to toggle ‘white on black’ display in low-light situations. (Command-Alt-8 will also toggle zooming). But those who really want to get to know their laptop keyboards will want to look at this 15-inch PowerBook G4 Developer Note, which is still mostly applicable to MacBooks.
• If you use Remote Desktop with a Portuguese keyboard layout at both ends, the Alt Gr key can be emulated by using Ctrl+Alt (so the “@” symbol is on Ctrl+Alt+2, etc.)
• If you use VNC and non-US keyboards, I’ve found VNCThing (2.2 is what I have) to have the most accurate keyboard mappings. Its main website seems to have vanished from the Internet, but it can be found via Google.
• If you’re keyboard-oriented, go into System Preferences | Keyboard and Mouse | Keyboard Preferences and Turn on full keyboard access. Now you can deal with dialog boxes the way you’re used to, as well as accessing menus and toolbars with the keyboard.
• If you hate digging through Applications to find what you want, get Quicksilver. Think of it as a keyboard-based application launcher. It’s much, much more, but it takes a while for its power to sink in.
• Can’t stand the apparently useless extra enter key that Apple put where Alt Gr ought to be on laptops? Try using fKeys to remap it to something more sensible.

Finally, if you’re a Windows user and the Mac’s way of dealing with Home and End really bugs you, here’s a tip from Aaron Adams -

To change the Mac’s home and end keys to behave like Windows, create a text file named /Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict (if the folder doesn’t exist, go ahead and create it) and add these lines:
/* Home/End keys like Windows */

{

"\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLine:"; /*home*/

"\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLine:"; /*end*/

"$\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /*shift + home*/

"$\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /*shift + end*/

}

Logout and login, and the home and end keys will work like Windows.

Windows-centric tips:

As mentioned above, these won’t cover Boot Camp, Parallels or Fusion. Think of this as a list of things that are different in Mac OS X and that you will need to get accustomed to.

• Remember that moving files replaces the whole folder (see above).
• No, there isn’t a Start button. You can drag applications to the Dock for quick access, or even drag the entire Applications folder to the right-hand side of the Dock. Right-click on it, and you’ll get a menu listing the contents. It’s that easy.
• If you really miss Alt-Tab like application switching (on a window basis, like Windows), get Witch. You can bind that to Alt-Tab and leave the standard Mac Command-Tab switching in place.
• Check the Keyboard Tips section for ways to force-quit applications. You won’t use them much, but you’ll feel better knowing they’re there.
• Applications can be started upon login by going to Accounts in System Preferences, clicking Startup Items and adding them to the list.
• File shares can be browsed via the Network icon in the Finder. Mac OS X works a little differently than the standard Windows network browser, but it’s all there.
• File shares are mounted directly by pressing Cmd-K in the Finder and entering a Samba URL like so: smb://server/share (do not even think about using the Windows backslash (“\”), that is not the UNIX way to do things).
• Mac OS X will mount network file shares automatically on most circumstances, although there might be some issues with username and password caching (i.e., some file servers will always ask your Mac for your password, even if you check the “save this password” option).
• Windows DFS shares (the \\domain\path type) are not directly accessible to Mac OS X. You need to either figure out the real pathname to the share (smb://server/share) or spend a good while figuring out how to integrate your Mac with Active Directory.
• Installers don’t work the same way – most applications (including Office) can be installed by just dragging and dropping them into your Applications folder (applications can ultimately reside anywhere on your hard disk, but it pays to be tidy). Installers are mostly used when it’s necessary to set up large volumes of files or application resources (fonts, libraries, etc.).
• Properly written installers will run from a non-administrative account, ask you for the administrative password, and go about their business. If an installer fails in a non-administrative account, contact the developer and have them fix it – their installer is broken and not performing up to specs (Adobe software is a notorious offender).

UNIX-centric Tips:

• All disks (file shares, external hard disks, etc.) are mounted under the /Volumes directory (which is hidden, but accessible via the Terminal).
• Disks with identical names (such as file shares) will be mounted as /Volumes/name, /Volumes/name_1, etc.
• Get SSHKeychain now. It will manage your Mac OS X and SSH keychains, let you define tunnels, etc. It has a small bug (it gets confused with lots of forwarded ports), but you can edit the tunnel configurations directly in ~/Library/Preferences/SSHKeyChain.plist (just double click on it and add your tunnels under the Tunnels array).
• Mail.app does not use the SOCKS proxy settings in System Preferences properly – it still does name resolution wrong, and SMTP over SOCKS doesn’t work. It’s actually improved a bit, earlier versions would not work at all. If you need to access remote mailboxes via a SOCKS/SSH tunnel, get Thunderbird.
• Safari, however, does honor SOCKS settings, and seems to be fully SOCKS5 compliant – which means it will perform hostname lookups remotely through the SOCKS proxy.
• X11 on the Mac might have some issues with your keyboard layout (check my HOWTO section for more hints on that) and X display permissions, but will work perfectly via ssh -X or -Y. And yes, Apple makes X11 a pain to install for some obscure reason.
• If you’re a Debian convert, check out Fink. It’s not really Debian, but your apt-get addiction will get a quick fix. Fink is especially nice since it does not, ever, mess around with your Mac OS X system directories (it hangs off /sw, /sw/bin, etc.), and has the most packages available in binary format. Be prepared, however, for some packages not being the same versions you’re used to in Linux – some Fink packages lag behind quite a bit, even easily ported stuff like ImageMagick.
• Make sure to install X11 (it’s usually in the second or third OS restore/install disk) and get Fink, in this order. Set up the placeholder packages to let Fink use Apple’s X11 stuff, and then install whatever packages you need to feel at home.
• If you’re a BSD guy, MacPorts is your thing. It hangs off /opt by default, and seems to work a bit better on Intel-based Macs. The available packages also seem to be better maintained.
• If you need virtual desktops, you need not go much further than Virtue. It’s free, fast, neatly designed, and the transitions will blow your mind.
• Need PHP and mySQL? Here’s a HOWTO/Enable PHP on Mac OS X. mySQL now publishes an excellent set of installers and management tools, so head on over to their site.

Other Stuff

• Read John Gruber’s piece on Software Update, and his more recent one on why “Repair Permissions” (one of the most common – and stupid – troubleshooting suggestions in Mac forums) is voodoo. Either have a number of good tips, and, more importantly, banish some of the most common misconceptions about either process.
• Resetting a Mac OS X password can be done by rebooting from the install CD and using the “Reset Password” option in the installer (but do note that this will not change your keychain password and you’ll need to change the password again after you login)
• Resetting an Open Firmware password requires zapping the PRAM three times (restart holding Cmd-Alt-P-R three times) – some folk say you should change the Mac’s configuration as well (removing or adding RAM), but I fail to see the logic in that.

Essential Applications

I originally went out and bought a copy of Microsoft Office 2004, since there really isn’t any Mac OS X-native alternative right now (NeoOffice sort of works, but it still doesn’t act or look fully native). Virtual PC was bundled with Office, but I’ve had very little reason to use it after the first year or so, and I’ve since moved on to the Intel platform and started using Parallels. I might switch to Fusion some day, but only time will tell.

Besides those and some of the utilities I mentioned above, my current list of “essentials” is:

• Quicksilver – this is the way to use a Mac via the keyboard, and you’ll wonder why Apple hasn’t integrated it into the OS yet.
• Remote Desktop, available here, together with the RDC Launcher (which lets you run more than one Remote Desktop session at once).
• My very own Citrix Dashboard widget, which I use to work remotely.
• A VNC client. I’ve been using VNCDimension for a while, even if it doesn’t fix international keyboard issues.
• Adium for instant messaging (MSN and Yahoo, plus a lot more). It integrates seamlessly with Address Book, so you’ll never lose your buddies’ contacts.
• Colloquy (if you happen to hate IRC as much as I do, this makes it bearable).
• Skype for the occasional conference call and file transfer (Adium works too, but not across all firewalls).
• Growl for desktop notifications of all sorts (new mail, IM, you name it). It’s now bundled with Adium, and it installs itself if you configure Adium’s “new message” notification to use it.
• Firefox for web development. I use Safari for everything (and it is my default browser), but Firefox’s XUL Extensions make it more useful for debugging web applications, and it is handy for those sites that don’t like Safari for whatever reason – however, if you don’t do web development and just want a fast Mozilla-based browser, Camino might be just the thing.
• Thunderbird for reading my e-mail when traveling (Mail.app doesn’t support SOCKS properly, so I need a mail application that does).
• Virtue for virtual desktops (even with Exposé, I like to keep some windows in view at all times and have separate desktops for mail, coding and remote sessions).
• MenuMeters to keep track of network traffic and CPU usage.
• NetNewsWire Lite for a few RSS feeds – I use newspipe and Mail.app for most of my news reading, but CVS commits, link blogs and machine-related stuff (like logfiles that I convert into RSS) need something with a dock icon.
• Tofu for reading long documents and web pages. Makes for much easier reading when you’re tired, since the column display lessens eye movement.
• VoodooPad Lite for drafting text and making notes (or as your very own XML-based personal Wiki and script archive).
• TextMate as an all-singing, all-dancing text editor with a built-in mini-IDE and Subversion support.
• Flip4Mac’s free plugin to open Windows Media files in QuickTime and Safari (check out Perian as well).
• VideoLAN for opening any sort of media.
• Witch for Windows-style Alt-Tab switching.
• SSHKeychain to manage my SSH keychain and tunnels.
• CyberDuck for FTP and SSH file transfers.
• And, on my iMac G5, Q – a native port of QEMU that will let you emulate a PC on both PowerPC and Intel Macs. It’s much slower than Virtual PC on PowerPC Macs and is still not capable of native speeds on Intel machines, but it will get there…

And there you have it.

Source [the.taoofmac]

Found this amazing little application, cheak it out.

Caffeine is a tiny program that puts an icon in the right side of your menu bar. Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again to go back. Hold down the Command key while clicking to show the menu.

[Download it now]

According to Apple, all of their current machines are compatible with their new 802.11n wireless hardware. The guys at MacBidouille wanted to know if they could get it functioning in their early rev macbook core duo. They ganged a new card from a MacPro and got busy.Things came out ridiculously easily, with a simple hardware swap. Considering that the pci connector is the same, I wonder if any portable with an airport extreme card could be upgraded (with an additional antenna).
Source [Hack a Day]

Tired of giving out free tech support to friends and family? Charge them for it with Skype Prime, a new service that lets you get paid to talk.
Okay, you probably shouldn’t stick it to your circle, but you could set up a neat little phone-support business. Skype Prime lets you charge by the minute or by the call. Actually, all calls start free (both parties must have the latest version of Skype); the provider then initiates a “payment request” for a one-off or per-minute rate. Fees are deducted from the caller’s Skype Credit and sent to you (minus Skype’s 30-percent cut–ouch) via PayPal.Aside from the obvious (and inevitable), um, adult uses for this, what clever ways can you think of to leverage Skype Prime? Share your ideas in the comments. Thanks, Josh! — Rick Broida

Skype Prime Beta – introducing the global expertise marketplace [Skype]

Source [Lifehacker]

Do you have scratched CD’s laying around that just WONT work? Well i came along this and thought i would share it.

” Scratched CD’s? No Problem!

We’ve all been there, bought a pre-owned game, put it excitedly into the console, then shouted “OMFGz0rWTF!?!?” as the console wouldn’t recognize the game. Or perhaps you have a CD which contains important data, and M$ Windoze gives you a “Cyclic Redundancy Check” error (fancy way of saying ‘Your disc is bloody SCRATCHED’).

Whatever your problem is, it’s caused by the same thing: A scratch. A scratched CD or DVD is just annoying!

So I took it upon myself to perform an experiment, to determine the very best way of dealing with a scratched disc. The limit I set myself, though, was that whatever I did it with must be somewhere in my house, and can’t take longer than 5 minutes, including waiting time for things to dry, etc.

I thought of three main ways to cope with scratches:

1. Use an oily substance, or a gel, to fill in the scratch so that the laser goes straight through. This is the easiest option of the three.
2. Use a mild abrasive to round the edges of the scratches so that the laser doesn’t get scattered as much. This is probably the most feasible option of the three.
3. Somehow take off a thin layer of plastic, removing the scratches altogether. This is the hardest, and probably impossible in 5 minutes with household items.

How a CD works:

I burnt 5 CDs with 6 songs on them:

• Kings of Leon – Razz
• Kings of Leon – Soft
• The Libertines – What Katie Did
• Kings of Leon – The Bucket
• Kings of Leon – Velvet Snow
• Kings of Leon – Taper Jean Girl

I then proceeded to scratch a few of the CDs with a pair of scissors, nothing deep, just enough to make the XBox in which I was playing them get annoyed.

The first thing I tried was plain old water, I know, sounds stupid… But the day before, I bought a game, which was scratched (not dirty, scratched). The first thing I tried was water, which I rubbed in gently, so that it stayed in the scratches, it then worked perfectly.

Next I had to rub it. The only way to rub something off a CD, is with a lint free cloth, going out in spokes from the centre.

Ok, so that didn’t work too well on my test discs… Next up was, deodorant. I decided to use this, because it contained something oily (isopropyl myristate) which was dissolved in something volatile (denatured alcohol, propane, butane, isobutane, basically loads of hydrocarbons). So when I sprayed it on, I was hoping for the alcohols to evaporate while the isopropyl myristate separated into isopropyl and myristic acid to become oily and viscous, and stay in the cracks.

I rubbed it in gently, just to get it into the cracks, but not to remove it, and then let it sit for two minutes. It evaporated, and when held against the light, the “rainbows” got scattered less. It looked hopeful. But it didn’t work.

Ok, next up is something I use to clean the fretboard on my guitar, Lem-oil. It’s viscous and oily, and smells of lemon. I sprayed it on and this time had to rub slightly more vigourously, as it wasn’t volatile enough to fit in with my 5 minute limit.

I rubbed it in, and it sort of worked. The XBox loaded the CD, and played it, but it was really crackly and noisy. So it kind of worked, but Caleb sounded pissed off and sort of like a monster.

Next I tried the method that a lot of people talk about: the toothpaste method. Toothpaste is a mild abrasive, and using it you should be able to round off the edges on the scratches. This method looked like it would work if I carried on, as the light was getting less scattered by the scratches, but I set myself a strict 5 minute time limit. To apply the toothpaste take the tiniest bit on the tip of your finger, and without touching the CD with your finger its self, apply the toothpaste to only the scratched area (and just around it). Now put it under the tap and dribble water on it, so that the toothpaste goes sort of mushy. Now tilt the CD over a sink very gently so that the water runs off, but the toothpaste stays. Now, like all the other methods, rub it in with a lint free cloth, but this time you really need to go to town, as you are actually trying to round off the scratches. This is my CD after the toothpaste was applied (the light makes it look really thick, but it isn’t, and the light also makes some of the dripping water look like toothpaste):

That didn’t work either. In a crazy futile attempt, I tried mixing the above four together:

That contained water, deodorant, lem oil and toothpaste. Needless to say it didn’t work.

Next I tried a mixture of 3 parts water to one part olive oil (I know they don’t mix, but shake!) That almost worked. I mean that the light wasn’t scattered when I held it against the light, but my XBox couldn’t read it, probably because it was yellow. This made me think that the oily/gel idea was the best way to go. I looked around the bathroom cupboard for somthing similar, and found this:

Yes, hair gel, and guess what… It worked!

I applied it in much the same way as the toothpaste, except I didn’t dribble water on it. I rubbed it first. Even though I applied it to one area, it ended up evenly spread around the whole disc. I then dribbled water on to loosen it up so I could rub the excess off.

So, the secret to scratch free CDs is……

Hair Gel! “

Source [Om3ga]

According to LiveScience, scientists “have created a cloaking device that can reroute certain wavelengths of light, forcing them around objects like water flowing around boulders in a stream.”

“The microwaves come in and are swept around the cloak and reconstructed on the other side while avoiding the interior region,” said study team member David Smith at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering. “So it looks as if they just passed through free space.”

Who knows maybey in a few years we could go buy one of those cloaks.

Source [Techeblog]

The Arabianist is a new online blog representing the characteristics of the Web 2.0 state of human thinking.