typing lessons This is keybr.com, a web application that will help you teach touch typing. Touch typing is typing without using the sense of sight to find the keys. A person possessing touch typing skills will know their location on the keyboard through muscle memory. It can improve any individual's typing speed and accuracy dramatically. This is a short tutorial that will explain how does this application work. You can use the left and right arrow keys to navigate through these slides. This tutorial is based on these few principles: No boring, repetitive exercises. Initially it starts generating words from a small subset of the most frequent letters of the alphabet. When you are typing these words, keybr measures time to type a key for every letter in that subset. Once you familiarize yourself with the current subset of letters, the algorithm expands it, including more and more letters to it. So at any time, you will by typing the letters you are least familiar with. This is the text board. ? ? ? ? ?
Silent Circle's latest app democratizes encryption. Governments won't be happy Courtesy of Silent Circle For the past few months, some of the world’s leading cryptographers have been keeping a closely guarded secret about a pioneering new invention. Today, they’ve decided it’s time to tell all. Ryan Gallagher is a journalist who reports on surveillance, security, and civil liberties. Follow Back in October, the startup tech firm Silent Circle ruffled governments’ feathers with a “surveillance-proof” smartphone app to allow people to make secure phone calls and send texts easily. “This has never been done before,” boasts Mike Janke, Silent Circle’s CEO. True, he’s a businessman with a product to sell—but I think he is right. The technology uses a sophisticated peer-to-peer encryption technique that allows users to send encrypted files of up to 60 megabytes through a “Silent Text” app. By design, Silent Circle’s server infrastructure stores minimal information about its users. The cryptographers behind this innovation may be the only ones who could have pulled it off.
Company Reconstruction Spike puts laser measurement hardware on the back of a smartphone Through the Spike smartphone app, users are able to capture, measure, 3D model and share any object up to 200 yards (183 m) away with what the company says is laser accuracy Image Gallery (10 images) Traditionally, the technology that goes into laser hardware for surveying and 3D modeling has been the plaything of architects, surveyors and engineers. View all Spike builds on the company's established GIS (geographic information systems) tools, which were used by the UN in the wake of natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Users take a photo of the object they wish to measure through the Spike companion app on their smartphone (the team has nearly completed an Android app and has an iOS app in development). Spike is also compatible with 3D modeling software SketchUp. The entire device weighs approximately 100 g (3.5 oz) and measures 90 x 50 x 20 mm (3.5 x 2 x .8 in). You can hear from the team behind Spike in the video below. Source: ikeGPS
Make Your Amateur Photos More Professional With everyone and their grandmother having a digital camera you can make almost anybody look like a professional photographer, well, better-than-amateur at least. You can use this simple process on almost any photo you take. Let’s start with our regular, old, point-and-shoot photo. This one was taken with a little higher-end camera, but it can still use a lot of work. First, we’re going to sharpen our image a bit using the Unsharp Mask [Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask]. Now we’re going to add a Levels Adjustment layer [Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels]. Next step is to add a Brightness/Contrast Adjustment layer [Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Brightness/Contrast]. One more adjustment layer… the Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer [Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation]. Now you can probably already see how much of a difference these few steps make. It’s a subtle change, but it usually makes the photo look nicer. I’m going to start by duplicating my Background Layer [Ctrl + J].
PetMatch on the App Store 100 Things Personality Test - VisualDNA VisualDNA brings a new layer of information to the world of technology that will help bring it closer to the people who use it – making it more enjoyable and relevant. Technology provides businesses with a surfeit of DATA – what and when. However it provides very little in the way of UNDERSTANDING – who did things, and why they did them. We see this effect in all areas of business from marketing to financial services. We have a different approach. In the financial sector this approach has led to a five-fold increase in ROI, in media we have seen 35% improvement in click rates. Watch a short video about VisualDNA. Learn more about our solutions for business: Sproutling smart baby monitor learns and predicts baby behavior Babies don't come with instruction manuals, so the saying goes. But technology is promising to lend new parents a helping hand in the form of Sproutling, a smart baby monitor that keeps parents abreast of baby’s physical status, conditions in the baby’s room, and learns from baby's past behavior to provide specialized suggestions to sleep-deprived parents. View all The Sproutling system consists of three components; a breathable, washable band made from medical-grade, hypoallergenic silicone that the baby wears around his or her ankle; a dish that wirelessly recharges the wearable band and also monitors the room’s environmental conditions; and the Sproutling app, which collates all the data into useable observations and push notifications. According to its creators, the system collects 16 different measurements a second, including baby's heart rate, temperature, position and movement, along with the humidity, noise, and light conditions of the room. Source: Sproutling Share
50 Beautiful Color Palettes for Your Next Web Project Choosing the right color scheme is essential to your website’s success. Your layout and other design choices — including font — should be developed in concert with your color scheme, which can ensure readability, cohesiveness, and beauty in the final product. Unfortunately, making that choice or creating a color palette from scratch can be quite the challenge. That’s why for today’s post I’ve put together a collection of 50 beautiful color palettes that are ready to use for your next web project. If you like these, check out another 24 palettes I’ve recently rounded up. Getting the Most Out of This Post Before diving into the color palettes I’ve collected, I want to mention a few tools that can help you get the most out of this post. Editor’s Note: Want to make your own palettes even better? Remember that Photoshop will display certain colors far more vibrantly than they will look on the web when you use hex codes. That’s all. Pick Your Palette Bonus Resources!