I made this video using Catfood Desktate, rendering a frame for each day of the year at noon GMT. Desktate interpolates NASA's Blue Marble 2 imagery each day - you can see the snow and ice cover changing and if you look closely you'll also notice vegetation growing and dying off as the seasons change.
Catfood WebCamSaver added the following new locations today:
Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands
Kingfield, Maine, USA
Richmond, Virginia, USA
If you use Catfood WebCamSaver these webcams will be added in your next automatic update. They'll also go into rotation in our Google and Vista webcam gadgets. Enjoy!
Updated 2011-04-06: Auto Avatar is no longer supported or available for download. Skype has discontinued their Extras program and so it's no longer possible to fix bugs or add features. If you use Auto Avatar I'd recommend uninstalling. From within Skype go to Tools -> Extras -> Organize Your Extras. Find Auto Avatar and uninstall. Then from Add/Remove Programs (XP) or Programs and Features (Vista/7) find Auto Avatar Prerequisites and uninstall.
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Auto Avatar is a Skype Plugin that sets your Skype Picture (avatar or profile picture) automatically from a webcam whenever your status changes in Skype.
When the plugin is installed and running you'll see an icon like this in the tray area of your taskbar:
You can change your picture by double-clicking the Auto Avatar icon. To configure Auto Avatar right-click the icon and choose Settings. You can pick which video device to use to take snapshots and also control when your picture will be taken automatically (when Auto Avatar starts and/or whenever your status changes in Skype).
Be aware that your Skype status can sometimes change unpredictably and Auto Avatar isn't smart enough to know if it's taking an inappropriate picture.
If you have Skype installed then download the plugin installer (1.05 MB, supports Windows XP and Windows Vista). The download is a 7 day trial after which the full version costs just $1.
For Auto Avatar support send us a message using the Contact Us page.
(Updated 2009-02-06: version 1.10 - corrected a bug that caused Auto Avatar to fail to disconnect from the webcam if the Skype avatar update failed.)
(Updated 2009-02-20: version 1.10.0012 - added a missing DLL to the installer.)
Tracker is a GPS tracking tool for Windows Mobile. You'll need to install the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 SP2 if your device doesn't already have it.
Tracker writes a track log to your My Documents folder while it's running. When you exit Tracker it will generate a Google Earth KML file and some statistics (distance, time taken, total elevation gain and average speed). Both the track log and KML file are saved with the current date in the file name. Tracker will prevent your device from powering off while it's running, so you can just kick if off and then lock your phone while it's running.
You can open the KML file in Google Earth, or upload the KML file and use it in Google Maps (see these instructions). The map below is a walk around Crissy Field in San Francisco that I logged earlier today using Catfood Tracker:
(Updated 2009-01-26: Tracker now has a menu to start and end tracks. This solves a problem reported on SmartPhone editions and means that you can log multiple tracks without restarting the app. Also, if you have any problems with Tracker you can get in touch here.)
(Updated 2009-02-23 to version 1.20.0008: Tracker will now start a log if your GPS doesn't report altitude (this doesn't affect the Google Earth KML). Tracker also now supports phones with regional settings that don't use a full stop for the decimal symbol.)
(Updated 2009-05-02: If you'd like to know the format of the Tracker log file see the comments on the Catfood Tracker 1.10 post.)
(Updated 2009-09-07 to version 1.30.0025: Tracker now includes options to configure the sample interval, switch off the GPS between samples and log altitude data to the KML file. Read more at Catfood Tracker 1.30. Download above or at http://www.catfood.net/m/.)
(Updated 2009-10-09 to version 1.31.0003: Fixed a problem that caused some devices to fail to receive samples from the GPS.)
Winter solstice rendered in Catfood Desktate (click for a larger image):
Here's how - run Catfood Desktate Settings, click the Advanced page then click Save Images (see help). Enter the date and time (Today at 04:04 PST in this case) and save a single image.
A blast from the past... The Utah Education Network links to Scratch and Sniff on the old Catfood Magazine. Unfortunately the technology won't work with LCD monitors ;)
Catfood WebCamSaver added the following new locations today:
Thorntown, Indiana, USA
Topeka, Kansas, USA
Wasilla, Alaska, USA
If you use Catfood WebCamSaver these webcams will be added in your next automatic update. They'll also go into rotation in our Google and Vista webcam gadgets. Enjoy!
Audubon Dougherty got hooked on live webcams via my World Webcams Google gadget:
I have to admit, the 50% awesome factor is winning me over. The other day I watched as a middle aged couple in Japan took photos of the changing orange leaves along a calm street. I saw another couple, some tourists, digging for their sunscreen on the beach in Kona, HI.
Read more at the MIT Center For Future Civic Media blog.
Catfood WebCamSaver added the following new locations today:
Brunswick, Maine, USA
Las Palmas, Canarias, Spain
London, London, City of, United Kingdom
Nagano, Japan
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Toyama, Japan
If you use Catfood WebCamSaver these webcams will be added in your next automatic update. They'll also go into rotation in our Google and Vista webcam gadgets. Enjoy!
I've been trying to cut back on the amount of power we use at home. This is partly virtuous, but mainly because I've started tracking power consumption vs. generation for our solar panels (even though it's December I want to try and have a day of net generation, you can see my progress on this chart).
I bought a couple of smart strips and now have both main computers set to switch all their peripherals off when they go to sleep. This goes from 250-300 watts to 1-2 watts - very cool.
There was a problem though. I run all sorts of overnight processing - backing up databases, processing web stats, updating the webcam list for WebCamSaver - and the computer kept going to sleep in the middle of it.
Task scheduler lets you wake your computer to run a task, but there doesn't seem to be an option to stop it sleeping until the task has finished. I hunted around for a while, but it seemed like one of those times when it's just faster to write something.
Nosleep (source) is a command line tool that disables sleep or hibernate, runs a batch file or program and then enables sleep or hibernate again. It will run on any recent version of Windows - I use it from task scheduler to launch my monster batch file of overnight tasks.
It's a simple little app - it just calls SetThreadExecutionState() before and after launching the target batch file. The trick with SetThreadExecutionState is that the new state doesn't take the first time you call the function. Calling it twice has the desired effect.