at-the-water-cooler.com

Popularity: 29% [?]

Wikia is being created to be a search engine that is transparent in how it operates. To quote their site.

• 1. Transparency - Openness in how the systems and algorithms operate, both in the form of open source licenses and open content + APIs.
• 2. Community - Everyone is able to contribute in some way (as individuals or entire organizations), strong social and community focus.
• 3. Quality - Significantly improve the relevancy and accuracy of search results and the searching experience.
• 4. Privacy - Must be protected, do not store or transmit any identifying data.

I think this is going to be very interesting and a really good idea; My knowledge of how search engines rate sites helps me in searching for and finding specific information. There is of course a problem that exists in that at least 100,000 webmasters for a term that has 5,000,000 results want to be listed first. That being understood, my personal view is if you allow users to mine the search data differently, each view method giving different results, you end up removing the problem of 100,000 webmasters going after the same word.

Popularity: 42% [?]

Polls for Clinton, Obama and Edwards in Iowa are showing a tenancy to have them within a fell points of each other.

See pollster.com chart. and see spreadsheet of early primaries
.

With only 45 delegates at stack 10 points would only amount to a 4 delegate difference. 4 1/2 if they start pulling the arms and legs of the delegate. New Hampshire has 22 delegates at stack, 10% of 22 (keeping the delegates whole) would be 2 delegates. So based on the polls any victory is going to come from the rhetoric until Michigan.

Popularity: 28% [?]

McCain takes a play out of the Clinton’s Play book.

Hat tip Hot Air

Popularity: 30% [?]

As far as free gadgets go, SUPER is an awesome program for decoding and encoding video … supports all these Video formats:

3gp/3g2 (Nokia,Siemens, Sony, Ericsson) asf, avi (DivX, H263, H263+, H264, XviD, MPEG4, MSmpeg4 etc..) , dat, fli, flc, flv (used in Flash) , mkv, mpg (Mpeg I,Mpeg II), mov (H263, H263+, H264, MPEG4 etc..), mp4 (H263,H263+,H264,MPEG4), ogg, qt, rm, ram, rmvb, str (Play Station), swf (Flash) , ts (HDTV), viv, vob, wmv - Audio format: aac, ac3, amr, mmf, mp2, mp3, mp4, mpc, ogg, ra, wav, wma.

In addition it works with AviSynth Script Files: avs … providing a lot of editing via AviSynth.

It decodes and encodes by using: ffmpeg, Mencoder, ffmpeg2theora, producer and directshow … if you have experience with ffmpeg / Tversity you already know that sometimes these codecs can be complicated but using directshow can simplify things: all the codecs you need are included in the installation.

Yes you can encode Flash FLV files that can be embeded on a page using the same html as is used by you tube — just change the location, URL, for the location of the FLV file. MC Media Player can also be used with FLV files.

AMV is not supported, used by ipods, but you would want to use the software that comes with the ipod to create an optimized file … AMV is a compression that requires less computer power, the software that can with the IPOD should be able to compress one of the formats supported by SUPER into an AMV that is matched to the device.

Popularity: 44% [?]

New Year Extended Weekend Linkfest 12/29/2007-01/01/2008

Popularity: 29% [?]

Wikepedia says:

The term inalienable rights (or unalienable rights) refers to a theoretical  set of human rights that by their nature cannot be transferred from one person to another. They are considered more fundamental than alienable rights, such as rights in a specific piece of property.

Would having a needle stuck into you to draw blood be considered a violation of your inalienable rights? Police Chief Mendoza says no: and at least one DA and judge agree with him.

Hat tip: I was the State FWPD No Refusal Policy- There Will Be Blood

Popularity: 32% [?]

I think some people may have the experience of traveling, and being unliked by people you don’t like; it is well not really important, you likely will never see those people again. “You don’t like me, I don’t like you, bye.”
So what goes through the mind of somebody who starts to develop a criminal record who holds citizenship in another country and is only here to work and put enough money in the bank to later return home?

United for a Sovereign American story: Revolving door for illegal aliens driving without licenses Documents an Illegal Immigrate building a criminal record, After being told not to drive (by a judge), he leaves and gets into his car and drives away. Is he careless with his future? or does he see his future somewhere that what the Judge says is not important?

Popularity: 26% [?]

You have a webcam and a DVD burner, would you like to include youtube video clips into your home movies?

Problem is that youtube is in FLV file format or a flash movie how do you convert it?

Freez Flv to AVI/MPEG/WMV Converter is a free program that will convert FLV into mpeg or WMV … which can be used with winDVD creator or windows media maker.

Downloading FLV (flash movies) can be done using Orbit

Popularity: 26% [?]

Hot Air

Popularity: 19% [?]