língua/language


25
Aug 10

Toodledo Web App for Google Chrome

Use Toodledo as your to-do list? Are you already using a Google Chrome’s development build with support for Web Apps (if you want to know how to do it read this first)? Now you can add Toodledo Web App for your Google Chrome.

Download it here!


23
Aug 10

15 Facts About Net Neutrality

15 Facts About Net Neutrality [Read Write Web]


11
Aug 10

What does mean loosing Net Neutrality

via reddit


10
Aug 10

Concursos fotográficos, um bom negócio…

Não gosto de concursos fotográficos, e isto alarga-se a muitos outros tipos de concursos criativos; são dos maiores embustes onde quem participa está crente na ilusão de promoção, de uma esperança vã de crédito reconhecido e possivelmente de um prémio (muitas vezes magro); mas na verdade não passam de uma forma fácil para quem os organiza, muitas vezes grandes empresas ou autarquias (ou como no caso abaixo, do novo concurso do Turismo de Lisboa), de obter conteúdos a um custo marginal, até porque muitas das vezes nem existe prémio monetário, tal como neste excerto das regras do novo concurso do Turismo de Lisboa:

(…)

Cada autor deve mencionar especificamente, no respectivo email ou carta, que cede ao Turismo de Lisboa todos os direitos de utilização das imagens que enviar;

O Turismo de Lisboa poderá utilizar todas as imagens recepcionadas, sejam elas premiadas ou não;

(…)

O prémio consiste na publicação de uma fotografia por mês, durante um ano, a partir de Novembro, na Revista Turismo de Lisboa-RTL, no Guia Follow Me e no site do Turismo de Lisboa. Será ainda atribuída uma peça em cerâmica, representativa de Lisboa, a cada um dos 12 vencedores;

via Visit Lisboa

A troco de um potencial destaque nos meios de comunicação da entidade e de uma mão cheia de peças de cerâmica para os vencedores, fica-se com um arquivo mais recheado de conteúdos sem quaisquer restrições ou limitações de utilização, conteúdos aos quais os autores abriram mão de todos os direitos de utilização, ainda por cima porque se tratam de todas as fotos a concurso e não só as doze vencedoras. Não querendo por em causa a má fé este concurso do Turismo de Lisboa, ou tantos outros, a verdade é que se trata de um bom negócio para algumas das partes, mas provavelmente não para todas…


23
Jul 10

Block noise with noise

Noise is a huge issue at workplace, the modern trend of open-space offices too often means you end up having a noisy environment. Some people deal with noise much better than others, but unfortunately I’m not one of them and usually I’ve a fair amount of time, and money, searching for the best way to block, trying several combinations of noise isolating headphones and earplugs with different kinds of music.

Amazingly, at least for me, one of the most effective methods I’ve found was using a white-noise generator, and the theory is simple: our brain can easily filter and ignore flat, constant sounds (like a fan working in the same room or rain pouring outside). I ended up using SimplyNoise, a real simple web-based generator that plays white noise, pink noise and brown noise (more on noise colors here) with a few other tweaks. Usually work better with the more “rain-ish” sound brown noise.


19
Jul 10

Injecting properties in Ninject 2 without “[Inject]” attribute

Dependency Injection is a great way to remove dependencies while having an lightweight container (a “service locator”) wiring up the application’s components and resolving instances and relationships. But Ninject, one of the dependency injection solutions for .Net, adds another unwanted dependency: to the container itself.
A dependency to Ninject is needed when initializing the container and obtaining entities, although the latest can be minimized using the Common Service Locator library to create an abstraction to most of the currently available dependency injection implementations. But Ninject also adds a dependency to the classes that will be initialized by the container, this is not desired and should be avoided at all cost and these classes shouldn’t be aware how they’ll be instantiated.
Ninject defines an attribute (Inject) used as an hint by the Ninject kernel to know where to inject the instantiated objects; although this attribute is optional for Constructor Injection is mandatory for Property Injection and Method Injection.

// My class where Ninject
// will create and inject
// an instance of IWeapon
public class Samurai
{
    //  This is a Ninject attribute,
    //  if we switch to another
    //  DI container the code will break
    [Inject]
    public IWeapon Context { get; set; }
}

Fortunately Ninject is highly customizable and allows to change that behavior, the plan is to create a custom attribute and configure it so that Ninject can use it the same way it uses the Inject attribute. The usage will be similar but all the dependencies will be to local classes, the custom attribute can be something as simple as this:

public class InjectHereAttribute : Attribute
{
}

The class will now look like this:

public class Samurai
{
    //  Now there's no external dependency,
    //
    //
    [InjectHere]
    public IWeapon Context { get; set; }
}

Now Ninject must be configured to use the custom attribute, this can be done by creating an implementation of IInjectionHeuristic that recognizes the custom attribute:

public class CustomInjectionHeuristic : NinjectComponent, IInjectionHeuristic, INinjectComponent, IDisposable
{
    public new bool ShouldInject(MemberInfo member)
    {
        return member.IsDefined(
          typeof(InjectHereAttribute),
          true);
    }
}

And finally add this behavior to the Ninject Kernel using the Components collection, it will run along the existing components, namely the default implementation of IInjectionHeuristic, which means either the default or the custom attribute can be used.


// Add custom inject heuristic
kernel.Components.Add<IInjectionHeuristic, CustomInjectionHeuristic>();

19
Jul 10

Avoid social noise in your timeline

Lately I’ve been growing a “pet hatred” towards applications that automatically post updates to Twitter or Facebook, specially those that do it often, I’m thinking in “I’m in [some place]” kind of posts of location-based services like Gowalla and Foursquare or the “Just listened to [some song]” updates of media players, just to name a few. The problem with these updates is that there’s no added value, nothing really relevant to share; while sometimes generated updates are useful, posting blog updates is the best example, in most cases a automated tool can’t add content, can’t share what’s so cool about that song or place, can’t share the context for that update. This often means a noisy timeline that people want to avoid and that’s why automated update services should be used sparingly, prefer sharing items explicitly and really sharing something rather that dumping stuff the timeline.


6
Jul 10

My current photographic to-buy list

[Update] Only one more to go!

I’m waaay over my budget for photographic gear this year, with a handful of new cameras and lenses bought recently, but I still have some “special needs” I need to take care of.

  1. A light, portable and yet relatively sturdy tripod – I’m not a real nature photographer so I don’t want a “put any kind of lens with any camera, whatever the weight, whatever the weather conditions” tripod, I’m thinking in those neat carbon fiber Induro’s, I keep hearing good things about them. A brand new Induro tripod with an Novoflex head, a light tripod with a very compact and solid ballhead.
  2. A photographic monitor – Nuff said, a bigger monitor that uses an LCD technology with full color reproduction. A new monitor is on its way.
  3. Some kind of centralized storage, other than external hard disks, to have a bullet-proof backup strategy of my photos and the rest of my documents; something with redundant storage and smart enough to automatically back them up to my online storage, and certainly not a Drobo: I tend to avoid solutions using proprietary formats.

30
Jun 10

52 Photographic Projects

Kevin Meredith (a.k.a. lomokev), one of the most original photographers of the flickr universe and a favorite of mine, has a new book about to hit the shelves. It’s called 52 Photographic Projects and it contains, you guessed, 52 techniques to try out with lots of good photos to look at, judging by Kevin’s gallery I bet the book is full of cool ideas (it’s already on my wishlist).

And the best thing is you can browse it below, almost all of it! Although you may not have time to read the small print.

52 Photographic Projects [Kevin Meredith]


28
Jun 10

TweetyMail: It’s Twitter Over Email.

Email still is the communication pipeline for most people, myself included, so I tend to find a way to pull important but  non-email notifications to this medium (usually some RSS feeds). Twitter is no exception and this is a great way to import relevant tweets into your email (like the hashtag of the local photowalk you’re always missing…).

TweetyMail: It’s Twitter Over Email. And It Works [TechCrunch]