Entries Tagged 'Off Topic' ↓

Now thru 5:00PM EST Friday, June 5, 2009, TechSmith is offering a free license of their screen capturing and image editing program SnagIt.  Now this offer is for an older version (7.2.5) that will not work under Windows Vista, but by taking advantage of this offering and becoming a registered user, you can secure upgrade pricing to the current version, 9.1.  After installation, you can upgrade to version 9.1 for $24.95 USD, half-off the regular price of $49.95 USD.

To take advantage of this offer, please visit this page.  For information on the latest version of SnagIt 9.1, visit their What’s New page.

Via mCADForums.

Daniel Ha, co-founder and CEO of Disqus, and Pete Cashmore, founder of social media guide Mashable, announced today a partnership between Disqus, Mashable, and comment aggregation service uberVU to enable Social Media Comments on the popular Disqus commenting system. Disqus will use uberVU’s technology to scrape the Internet and pull in comments relating to posts.

According to Mashable, the services that will be accessed include Blogger, Digg, Flickr, FriendFeed, Moveable Type, Picasa, Twitter, TypePad, Vimeo, Wordpress, and YouTube, with more added over time.  If a post is discussed on any of the above services, those discussions will show up in the Disqus comments of said post.

Additionally, users can choose to send their comments to Twitter by simply checking a box when commenting on a Disqus-enabled blog post.

The new Disqus service can be previewed exclusively at Mashable for the next two weeks, and the general release will follow soon after.

I can’t wait to see this new functionality in action.  It will certainly help consolidate, and possibly further stimulate, the conversation across the web that blog posts sometimes initiate.

Via Disqus Blog and Mashable.

Alex over at The SolidWorks Geek blog has launched a charity drive campaign called Design For The Future. This fundraiser will benefit the Orangewood Children’s Foundation and the residents of the Orangewood Children’s Home in Orange County, California.

To read more about this charity and to contribute, please visit Design For The Future.

Ktrak Cycle Corp. is the maker of a kit that turns your mountain bike into a human-powered snowmobile.  The rear-drive track system provides about 25 times the traction and flotation of a regular mountain bike wheel.  There is also an optional front ski attachment to allow even more control.

Designed for use in groomed, packed, or fresh snow, the Ktrak system was unveiled at Interbike in September 2006.  The kit is universal to most makes and models of mountain bikes, and fits 26-inch wheels.  The site mentions that 20- and 24-inch wheel flavors will be made available in late 2008, but as of this writing they are still listed as "coming soon".

The Ktrak system is available for purchase directly through their website and approved dealers.

via Been-Seen.com

The I-Ball is a camera designed with new technology that will enable UK soldiers to toss it anywhere into the battlefield to gain insights into what awaits them before putting themselves in harm’s way. The I-Ball camera “…can be fired from a grenade launcher – or thrown into a room – giving troops vital information of who – or what – is on the ground or around the corner.”

The camera houses two sensors and fisheye lenses that capture image data of it’s surroundings, and a transmitter that sends the data back to a processor.  the processor then maps out a real-time 360° view of what the camera is seeing.

The I-Ball is developed by a Scotland-based firm, Dreampact, and was conceived of in the 2007 Competition of Ideas sponsored by the U.K.’s Ministry of Defence.

Found via CrunchGear.