organ

Easy photo organizing, editing, sharing

This photo organizer strikes us as the picture of simplicity, a hairy task considering that Picasa 3 stacks on over a dozen more features and refinements to improve the editing, creative, and sharing options onto what has for years been a solid consumer app. Although not the most powerful image manager on the block, Picasa has the distinction of being the most easygoing.

Picasa's editing tools now include a retoucher to cover over blemishes and an improved red-eye corrector that detects and fixes all orbs emitting a magenta glow, with fairly good results.

Picasa really shines when it comes … Read more

Featured Freeware: FreeMind

Like all mind maps, FreeMind for Windows and Mac gives you the flexibility to organize thoughts on a page as they connect to each other and to the larger picture. After all, not all minds reason in subheadings and bullet points. You shape, place, and name that master idea--called the root node in FreeMind--then create child or sibling spokes that relate to it.

FreeMind encompasses a fine range of features, including scads of icons and color formatting options to help you visually organize concepts. It also supports hyperlinks, which allow you to link Web sites and even documents to a … Read more

First Look video: Path Finder

The Mac OS X Finder works great on its own for finding and managing your files and folders, but what if there was something better? Path Finder offers a slew of options for organizing files and folders, giving you more control over your file system. You can use Cover Flow, split-screen, and icon views, and there are several preview options for finding out more about files before you open them. It also allows you to compress and decompress folders from within the program when you need more space on your hard drive.

For a quick overview of Path Finder for … Read more

Brooklyn's mesmerizing sound artists

At the recent Dumbo Art Under The Bridge Festival in Brooklyn, N.Y., I heard two rather amazing sound installations.

OrganicInterfaces is a collective of artists, scientists, engineers, and musicians and their installation, Mocean was a truly enveloping sound experience. Their Web Site describes it this way, Mocean is a site-specific sculptural sound environment. It consists of a large water tank and a forest of antique organ pipes...digital technology translates the (water's) ripple patterns into sounds played by the repurposed organ pipes, establishing a relationship between water and sound. For the DUMBO Art Festival, we used a 12-foot diameter swimming pool and some new technologies, expanding the range of possible interactions and sculptural interventions..."

At the DUMBO show, Mocean was located in a small warehouse garage, open to the street. Flat stones were placed in the pool to serve as a path for people to walk over. The organ pipes hanging from the ceiling were tuned to different pitches and their sounds were complex and surprisingly musical. I listened for quite a while and found the sound absolutely mesmerizing.

Actually, the best part was watching how different people reacted to the sound as they walked over the stones. Some realized their movements changed the sound, and they "played" the organ pipes by swaying their arms and moving about. Little children were the best; they were totally uninhibited about making weird sounds.

Then there was Ted Southern's sidewalk sound show. … Read more

Secunia exploits security suites flaws

A new report (PDF) from Secunia is raising awareness about the need to patch vulnerabilities and block malware from desktops.

The report found that "security vendors do not focus on vulnerabilities." And while Symantec Norton Internet Security 2009 bests the 11 other suites tested, Secunia found that Symantec "detected a mere 64 out of 300 exploits, or less than one-fourth, leaving 236 exploits undetected." Overall the dozen products all received an "F" on the report.

The Secunia test departed from the traditional testing done by organizations such as AV-test.org and AV-comparatives.org, which … Read more

Turn your iPhone into an organ

If you're a fan of retro music instruments, I've got some good news.

The Very Cool Software Company, a U.K.-based Mac OS developer, recently announced its first iPhone application: Dubreq iStylophone.

Dubreq Stylophone is an electronic musical instrument, originally invented by Brian Jarvis in 1968 and manufactured in the U.K. by Dubreq.

The Dubreq Stylophone, also known as "the original pocket electronic organ," was sold by the millions in the early '70s and used by artists including David Bowie, Brett Domino, Erasure, Hexstatic, Krafwerk, Marilyn Manson, Orbital, Pulp, The Raconteurs, and They Might … Read more

Photobucket gets photo organizer, album themes

On Thursday, Photobucket introduced two new features: a way to skin albums and an overhauled organizational tool that lets users drag and drop photos into various folders.

Of the two, the organizer is the biggest enhancement. Users are taken to a dark gray editing environment that lets them make changes without the entire page having to refresh. Everything is drag and drop, which is useful for ferrying photos and videos between albums, and reordering album arrangement. There's also support for batch operations, so you can quickly move, reorder, and rename multiple photos at once.

Compared with Adobe Photoshop Express … Read more

Shoeboxed now tags scanned receipts for you

Receipt-scanning service Shoeboxed just launched a new feature that automatically files scanned receipts into one of 15 expense categories. These include groceries, gas, and travel expenses, which you can view simply by clicking on them. Users can also create their own expense categories, although there's currently no way to have the service auto-tag expenses by keyword.

In addition to new receipts, users will find a good number of their old receipts categorized. Dan Englander, Shoeboxed's VP of Communications says some may not get the tagging treatment if the system can't find a match, but that a "… Read more

RefurbDepot.com has the OZ-290H 1.5 MB Equivalent organizer, Large Touch-screen Display for $15.95, after $54 savings.

RefurbDepot.com has OZ-290H 1.5 MB Equivalent organizer, Large Touch-screen Display for $15.95, after $54 savings. >> Regular price is $69.95 >> Sale price is $15.95 >> Savings $54 (77.20%) >> Click here for deal