Archive for the 'Tech' Category

Pac-Man by Google

Gamers of a certain age are sure to get misty-eyed at the mention of the old classic Pac-Man. Gaming has come a long way since then, but some things never lose their charm. Thus, when Pac-Man turned 30 on 22 May, Google didn’t miss the chance to doodle about it.

The Pac-Man doodle’s unprecedented popularity has made Google give it a permanent page: Google.com/Pacman. This is a “working” logo, so you could play it and and you could use it to search. Instead of the “I am feeling lucky” page, you get “Insert coin”, but it works the same way.

Go try it out!

~PD

Posted on Tuesday, 25 May 2010 | in Scratchpad, Tech | No Comments »

Post to blog with Blog2Post

ByteScout Post2Blog is a Windows blog editor supporting WordPress, Typepad, MovableType and more. It lets you compose and directly upload blog posts from your desktop.

It has some interesting features, including a Quick Snippets feature in which "hot keywords" are replaced on the fly by more detailed content. For instance, if I wanted Post2Blog to automatically make the text "Writer’s Log" a link and add a little tagline to it, I just need to specify it in the Tools –> Manage Quick Snippets list.

Apart from that, there are detailed formatting features, as well as options to upload files and images to your blog, to Flickr, ImageShack and via FTP. Post management features are also available. Smilies, code highlighting, spell checker, thesaurus — there’s lots more.

Yes, this post is created using Post2Blog. However, the software was last updated in 2007 and is currently unsupported. The links in the manufacturer’s site lead to a 404 and you must download it from Download.com.

The jury is out on this one. Stay tuned for an update.

~PD

Posted on Sunday, 2 May 2010 | in Scratchpad, Tech, Web design | 2 Comments »

Souls sold

How carefully do you read the small print when buying something online, signing up for a service, or registering for any sort of online forum? For that matter, do you read the tiny text when you fill up forms in hard copy?

Or do you just blindly tick the box that says you have read the privacy policy, terms and conditions, and what have you?

Are you sure you haven’t sold your soul?

This was obviously an April Fool’s gag, but does give you something to think about. Not sure I’ll sleep tonight…

~PD

Posted on Saturday, 17 April 2010 | in Gaming, Scratchpad, Tech | No Comments »