How to resize any online comments box

By Mark O’Neill

During one of my many stumbling expeditions, I came across a cool Firefox extension which allows you to resize most text boxes on a webpage. This is useful if you’re in the habit of commenting on a lot of blogs and the blog owner gives you an area the size of a postage stamp upon which to write your comment – present blog excluded of course!

But it isn’t just blogs that this extension would be useful for.  Many online registration forms are tiny and you can use this resizing tool to expand the size of the boxes on them.

You can also use the tool to expand the size of the WordPress blog box when writing a new post (or on any blogging platform for that matter). There’s lots of possibilities out there.

So next time you want to comment on GAS, use the resizing tool to expand that box!



Electric transportation on the cheap

Fully electric transportation is still years off for the modern consumer. Sure, anyone can snag a Segway for about four thousand dollars on eBay, but as far as full sized cars go; don’t bet on it. The closest thing to an electric car right now is the Tesla roadster and that bad-boy will run you about $100,000 when it hits the market in a few months.

The next obvious alternative would be to buy a Hybrid, unless you’re geeky enough to try and build an electric vehicle yourself. Canadians Darin Cosgrove and Ivan Limburg decided to do just that with as little money as possible, the two created their Frankenstein of a vehicle out of a Geo modified with some gadgets from an electric forklift and golf cart. And get this, the whole project clocked in at $672 after the guys sold off spare parts such as the Geo’s engine and fuel tank.

Their EV is said to go up to 40 MPH with a range of around 15 miles, perfect for a suburban commute. The duo claims that both speed and distance could have been increased had they used newer batteries. As per their latest update, it seems that the “ForkenSwift” has been deemed street legal after inspection.

ForkenSwift [EcoModder]

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Seven Ways to Avoid Hidden Workplace Hazards

Seven ways to avoid hidden workplace

By Erica Davidson
Guest Blogger

Most professionals wouldn’t describe a desk job as backbreaking. But for many working men and women, hidden dangers often accompany an outwardly posh nine to five.

Whether it’s typing up a report, surfing the Internet or building servers, you may be putting in long hours in front of your monitor. And although hard work may appear to be the key to career success, it may also be the cause of serious injury, called repetitive stress injury

The cause? Doing the same motion, sitting a certain way or even jamming the phone between shoulder and ear time and time again. These repetitive movements—seemingly innocent on their own—pull the tendons and muscles around your joints. Since you’re doing it constantly, your body doesn’t have time to heal. It becomes irritated, produces fluid, and ultimately—you feel pain.

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The Worst of Digg.com

I’m not sure if I’m the only one bothered about this, but have you seen the publicity that has recently started to air on Digg.com? Acne treatment creams, Anti-Age products, Dating services, and other assorted, spam-like ads.

This really leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. Usually, only sub-par, crappy sites that resort to popups display such commercials, so why would Digg management accept these on their site? Are they assuming (Or the company that serves ads for them) that digg users are lonely, pimple-faced idiots? It seems that about 25% of their ad inventory is filled with those, which in my opinion, is already too much. I know that corporations have to make money in order to prosper, but this is going too far.

Anyone cares to share their thoughts on this?

See a Portugese town in 3D in Google Earth

By Mark O’Neill

I am constantly amazed at how much smaller the world is becoming, due to groundbreaking applications such as Google Earth. The Google Earth blog has reported that the Portugese town of Marvão can now be seen in 3D in Google Earth. This is in addition to being able to see the 3D version of the Irish town of Westport.

Here is the file you need to load in GE to see it for yourself. But here is a screenshot. Truly remarkable and breathtaking. It’s almost like being there in person.

marvao1.gif

Applications such as Google Earth bring the concept of “virtual reality” one step closer. How much longer before entire cities are created in 3D images? How long will it be before you can take entire “Total Recall” vacations to 3D versions of locations? Can’t afford to go to the real Paris or London? How about a trip to their virtual counterparts instead?

On a more sinister note, how long will it be before we enter a Matrix situation where you can’t tell the difference between reality and virtual reality?

Yahoo! CAPTCHA Cracked

By PatB
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

According to experts, one of the strongest implementations of CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart) out there is owned by Yahoo!.  Last week, Russian hackers cracked the CAPTCHA by achieving a 35% recognition rate of CAPTCHA images by an automated system.

According to the Hacker Webzine here,

Let there be no mistake: the CAPTCHA that Yahoo! deploys is believed one of the most difficult CAPTCHA’s to crack. It utilizes bended alpha numeric characters and other features you might expect from a strong CAPTCHA, and still it’s easy to solve by humans. I think this is a great leap in character recognition and the death punch to the CAPTCHA

The hacker said that only a 15% recognition rate is needed to become economically viable to intruders at 100,000 guesses per day, versus the going rate for human CAPTCHA recognition, which is a penny per decode.  At 35% accuracy, automatic locking features designed to prevent guessing at 3 tries is defeated as well.

The hacker claimed to have notified Yahoo! of the issue, but released his cracking code onto filesharing networks anyways.  From Computerworld here:

This week a programmer using the pseudonym “John Wane” and claiming to be a Russian security researcher posted code for a decoder system that he said can attain an accuracy rate of about 35%.

In a statement, Yahoo said it is aware of attempts being made toward automated solutions for CAPTCHA images, and is working on improvements to the system and other defenses.

The obvious impact of this security defeat is that more free email addresses can be automatically registered for phishing, spam, and fraud.   Other online resources are threatened as well, such as blog spam prevention and commenting, online purchases of goods, or even concert booking and ticketing.

Dominos starts online pizza tracking service

By Mark O’Neill

pizzatracker.gifWe don’t have Dominos Pizza over here in Germany (at least not where I live) but I can’t help but admire their new concept to attract more custom.  Dominos is today rolling out an online feature where you can track the status of your pie – from the moment you order it to the moment it leaves the store.

When you feel the need for a double pepperoni with extra cheese, you can go to dominos.com , click on the “Pizza Tracker” link and follow the progress of your pizza masterpiece. You can find out when the pizza is in the oven, when it has been placed in the box and when it finally heads out the door. Unfortunately from then on, you will have to remain in a state of constant paralyzing fear, not knowing its precise status while it makes its way towards your front door.

The new system is aimed at people who spend lots of time online.   Rival Pizza Hut is said to be “unimpressed” with Dominos latest gimmick.  One critic said dismissively “I guess they’ll sell a ton of pizzas to people with no social life who are sitting in front of computers.”

Holy Jumping WordPress Themes Batman!

By Mark O’Neill

After reading Kiltak’s recent post on backing up and restoring a WordPress blog, I thought I would chip in with a WordPress issue of my very own.

For the past few days, my WordPress blog, which is hosted by Yahoo Webhosting, has been “playing silly buggers” (as we Brits like to say). I would get up each morning to check my blog RSS count and upon getting to the page, discover that WordPress has reverted back to the default template.

This was more than a little irritating because plugins that I had installed on my preferred theme would malfunction on the default theme. How many RSS subscribers have I lost because the template was going all Kamikaze on me? I dread to think. Plus if you’re trying to exude an air of professionalism, having your site template jump back and forth isn’t going to help.

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