HDR Photo Stream

Hi guys, I've uploaded some of my HDR images which I've been working on with lately in my flickr account. You can check them out and tell me how you feel by giving me feedback.



You can download any of them, include them in your collection, distribute them as long as they are in their original form. If you're going to use any of them for the commercial purpose please let me know.

Hope to get your feedback,
UDz

Anatomy of Viral Linking

Have you been thinking about making your blog popular and wished that there was a simpler way to do it other than by implementing complex SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques and painfully analyzing the traffic while hoping it to grow in a rate you originally anticipated?

Well I'll tell you about a sure way to boost the authority of your site in Technorati, and ranking in Alexa - especially if it isn't high already. I want to thank my friend Ice Dragon for this tip which I didn't put into consideration earlier.

One of the ways to promote your blogs is to follow the these four easy steps:

1) Copy the set of links provided by the viral linking project websites. (there are plenty out there on the blogosphere)
2) Put your link to the top of the list.
3) Post it in your blog explaining how works and encourage others to do the same. (The explaining part doesn't have to be as complicated as in this website)
4) Check back from time to time for all those who added your site on their list. If their site isn't already on your list then make sure you add them after you've discovered it via Linkbacks.

And that's about it! Simple, isn't it?

Wondering how this will work??? I'll brief you on the process if you aren't already familiar with it.

This technique is based on what is known as viral-linking or speed-linking. It is termed like that because it spreads like virus once you post it in your blog and encourage your readers to do the same. After they've done what you did earlier, you'll be getting back links to your blog (this is also known as blog reaction in Technorati meaning that other site is pointing a link towards your site). In the end everyone on the list would be referring to everyone else. So your authority goes up.

This is considered to be very useful especially to get higher page rank in search engines like Google, and to increase authority in Technorati, which otherwise would easily take months - even years. What makes it even appealing is that the back links that you get from the sites in your list would most probably be hosted under different Class C IP addresses in a different part of the world, which is given more weight than backlinks coming from those hosted under the same.

For advanced users:
To check if the list of sites fall under different class C addresses use this tool.

One of the ways to check pingback is by visiting Technorati and clicking on the Authority icon of your site. Say, if the authority is displayed to be 3 then upon clicking it you should be able to see all three sources from which you are getting the ping (aka blog reaction).

Just be sure to check the ping of your site time to time and add the link of the new sites to your list that have added you. To make sure your site is added to the list of previous sites you might need to send message to the author if they accidentally forgot to check their backlinks.

I'm sorry that I'm not able to provide you with any link this time. You'd have to go to other websites participating in such project in order to get the list of links. I just wanted to give detail on how viral linking works.

If you found the info useful (or you noticed that I missed something) you can leave your feedback via commenting on this page. I'll gladly get in touch with all my readers ASAP.

Build Your Own 2-Channel Guitar Recording Studio Without Expensive Studio Gears

I'm posting this to follow up on what I promised in my previous article Original Music Composition (Track Name: Perfect Jingle). Originally I thought of telling you guys how I connected my guitar using only my computer and recorded the demo sound I posted in my above post. But with the bit of research I've been able to come up with much useful setup that is equivalent to 2-Channel Audio Studio specialized to record guitar w/effect + vocals simultaneously each in 44.1 KHz frequency, which is equivalent to CD Quality (I haven't gotten a chance to check on other settings. Maybe you can try and tell us about your finding).

I used my P4 2.4GHz desktop for this project that is equipped with 3 sound cards (including 1 built-in SoundMAX sound card). Usually I'd only be using my PRIMARY sound card (Audigy SE) most of the time which I purchased especially to experience EAX sound effects. But this project utilizes all three cards to record sound from two different sources to 2 separate tracks simultaneously. The best part is even if you currently don't have 3 cards right now you can easily find them in the market without burning the holes in your pocket since they are pretty ordinary ones (I'd suggest you to get the ones supporting the latest version of ASIO low latency WDM driver. Hint - most of the non Creative counterparts will support those drivers, even the primitive ones like SoundMax).
One thing you'll have to do though is get your hands on decent multi-track audio editing software, and Guitar Effect Processing software. I currently use Cool Edit Pro 2.1 (which is now acquired by Adobe and is sold under the name Adobe Audition) and Amplitube 2. Both of them are great tools.

Here's the the chart which tells you exactly how my devices are all connected. The configuration should be pretty self explanatory with the presented description. Just click on the image to enlarge.



You can let me know how you felt about it by commenting or writing to me at udz.blogger AT gmail.com

Related Articles:

Original Music Composition (Track Name: Perfect Jingle)
Guns N Roses's Sweet Child O Mine Guitar Tracks

Music Videos Dedicated to Beautiful City, Kathmandu

The following video features photographs of different parts of the city. The background music is performed by one of the legendary Rock musicians - Bob Seger. The song is called "Kathmandu" which appeared in his album titled Beautiful Loser released in 1975.


"What To Do in Kathmandu?" is yet another music video telling a typical Kaliwood/Bollywood style story where the bad guys (guys in black) are after good guys (those in regular clothing running away from the bad guys).


To learn more about my hometown please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathmandu

Guns N Roses's Sweet Child O Mine Guitar Tracks

Here's another guitar mix that I created. But this time its intro of G'n'R 's Sweet Child O' Mine . The program is still bugging me with latency problem when I try to record guitar sound with heavy effects. But with lite effects it tends to work fine.

Related Articles:

Original Music Composition (Track Name: Perfect Jingle)
Build Your Own 2-Channel Guitar Recording Studio Without Expensive Studio Gears

Youtube Launches New Service That Lets You Edit Your Videos Online

I created WebXplorer account on Youtube last week. An hour ago I was fooling around with one of the Nepali music videos, which I finished creating, by adding different soundtrack (Perfect Circle's - The Hollow) as the background music instead of the original. I was thinking of using Youtube Remixer (BETA) tool to do this stuff, but it kept giving me error after error. Therefore I ended up using Microsoft Movie Maker 2.1 which is a free video editing utility that ships with Windows XP service pack. I uploaded the contents, both original as well as remix, to my WebXplorer account on Youtube for you guys to see. Tell me what do you think about it.

Youtube Remixer is actually Adobe Premiere Express Edition. It doesn't have jam packed features. For that you'll probably need Pro tools such as Adobe Premiere Pro Edition. But once it becomes fully operable* it will allow you to create the video like the one I've created using Movie Maker without using any other tool besides your web browser.

Some other sites offering similar kind of video editing service are jaycut.com, jumpcut.com,
motionbox.com, dabble.com, eyespot.com, mojiti.com (Only lets you add annotation to your videos), photobucket.com among dozen others.

Screenshot of Youtube Remixer (The New Feature Available to Youtube Members)

I'm a newbie on video editing so please don't expect much from my video.



*Currently the feature of adding external audio to the video isn't available.

We Feel Fine: An Improvising Digital Art Masterpiece

Talking about our feelings have you ever imagined what would it be like to represent the aggregate feelings of all the human beings on this planet? Neither did I. But a digital programmer/artist Jonathan Harris did that and has accomplished to a certain degree (at least covering those who wrote their feelings online in their personal blogs) by creating a web-based program called “We Feel Fine.”

He considers himself as storyteller. He believes that the people all around the world are similar in many different ways but we all have trouble seeing that because we have gaps. The gap could be due to our language, ethnicity, wealth, religion, age, gender, sexuality, education etc. And we all try to define ourselves by those, despite of things which we have in common.

One of the things that is common to all of us is the very deep need to express ourselves. There’s nothing new about the self expression. We try to rectifying by various means such as creating art, writing poems, singing songs, scripting editorials and sending them into the newspaper, gossiping with friends. What's new about the way it is happening now is that it is happening through our expression on the Internet. People have been leaving behind foot-prints that give their moment of self expression.

He tries to bring those foot prints together via his program that collects the data representing feeling from many different sources across the Internet. Later the program interprets it graphically in the form of beautiful animation or the still photograph that tells the story. One of the cool features of the program is that it lets you view the result based on the feelings of the people falling only in certain demography -Such as the feelings of girls who are in their twenties. The summary of these types of data could be a very useful for different research purposes. Who knows, it might even solve the mystery of leading cause of suicides and will help to device the prevention instead of having many different specialists on this subject aiming in dark without such relevant information collected from the mass.

Here are some of the inspiring photographs that was generated by the program by linking thoughts with the pictures that are found in the same page.

www.flickr.com

You can view his presentation on 'We Feel Fine' at TED.com by clicking on the following link
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/144

To view Jonathan's complete works visit his website http://www.number27.org/.

Note: You need to have JAVA Runtime files installed on your computer in order to run the program 'We Feel Fine'. You can follow this link and click 'Download' button next to 'Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 Update 2' to get the latest version.

Original Music Composition (Track Name: Perfect Jingle)

I've just finished composing multi-channel guitar track using only computer and my Epiphone Les Paul Special II connected via line-in of one of the the sound cards. The purpose if this experiment is to show how you can hook up your guitar to your computer and be able to turn it into a music recording station. This is useful if you are a hobbyist who doesn't want to spend a lot buying expensive hardware that does the purpose - or if you simply want to play your guitar using your favorite guitar effects without needing costly gear. It is possible to eliminate the guitar amplifier if you have decent computer sound system or headphone. I am going to update this post and put more detail about this project later with all the information you might need to set up one of your own.

For now enjoy listening to these short tracks that I composed:
Perfect Jingle.mp3 : Created using RHCP Type clean guitar solo performed in blues scale (my best effort to sound good playing solo). Note that the delay was caused by about .15 - .30 ms latency due to the loopback guitar input through line-in (which is basically slow) and delay due to processing the effects by CPU (making it even more slower) which basically screwed up timing of the lead.
Perfect Jingle - (Without Solo).mp3 : You can add your own guitar or any other instrument solo to this file.

Distribution of theses files as well as modifying the content as long as original composition credit is unaltered is permitted.

The rhythm chords are Am, Dm, G, Cadd9 and (Cadd9/E7 each strummed once towards the end) played in order.

If you've created anything special by using above file(s) then you can upload the content to the web and can share its link with me and other readers of this site. I used http://www.hotlinkfiles.com, which of course lets you hot link the freely hosted multimedia contents (Nice!). If you want to use it just for one time and don't care if the contents will be made available to public, in that case you'll be better off using public uploading feature in the site that lets you skip the entire registration process.

You can contact me regarding any of the issues/suggestions in this or any other article.

Related Articles:

Guns N Roses's Sweet Child O Mine Guitar Tracks
Build Your Own 2-Channel Guitar Recording Studio Without Expensive Studio Gears

Amazing Motion Detecting CG Animation in Flash

Click on any of these images to open the corresponding flash demo which detects the cursor motion and follows it. Pretty impressive!

The company's homepage features an avatar which is even more interactive than this one. For instance, you can tickle her nose and watch her sneeze, or ring the bell to get her attention. Amazing, isn't it? What's even more amazing is that the entire animation was created by using only a single photograph of the subject. The 2D to 3D rendering is done by the software which enables the avatars to be interactive. There's a tremendous possibility of this technology being utilized by all sorts of industries. Imagine a web based tutor that interacts with its students, or the e-commerce sales assistant that makes the buying experience as close to the real life as possible. What about web based interactive games in which the character interacts to your every set of complex cursor moves - just like Wii-motes detecting your hand motion? Due to all these wonderful possibilities I believe that we'll be seeing more of these in the future.

Source: Motionportrait.com .

numbr : Disposable Phone Numbers That You Can Use

Hey, have you ever wanted to get a phone number just for a temporary activity/project? For instance you wanted to sell something in the Craigslist and list your number in which you could be reached, or list your number in the classifieds in the newspaper. What about if you are dedicated to your business but don’t want to give your cell phone number to your partners that is accessible all the time? We all value our privacy and have life so we all wish something of our remains private. Don’t you wish that the number you gave for the above purpose just disappeared so that you won’t have to terminate and reinitiate your contract just because of this kind of costly publicity?

Well if the answer “Yes” to any of the above questions then you should definitely check out the site http://numbr.com which is being increasingly visited day per day for the very purpose. This site lets you secure a randomly generated phone number in your own area code (if you are located in any US city) that you could distribute to your temporary contacts. Instead of calling you directly in your original number your contacts will call the number you got through numbr which will get routed to your original number keeping it secret all the time while you get the job done the way you wanted it to be. Those numbers are disposable. Meaning once the time limit of keeping the number active, ranging from an hour to as long as a month, which you could choose during the setup expires, it will no longer be yours. But you can always sign-up for another one without burning a hole in your pocket since it is available free of cost. The site provides plenty of features to make its service convenient to its users. The service gives features such as blocking all calls from blocked Caller IDs, filtering calls of telemarketers, screening the call before you reply (very useful feature), setting private hours in which you don’t wish to be disturbed by incoming calls, access to your call logs, voicemails and many-many more.

One cool feature that has recently been added is iNumber widget which lets you record a personal greeting that you can embed in your listing, blog or any of your web-page. The reader can then choose to call you after going thru your greeting in your numbr.

The history of the company tells us that its name was originally called Craigsnumber that was developed for the use of users of Craigslist who are trying to post the classified ads to the site. numbr is following the footsteps of its ancestor by providing this unique service for free.

The introduction of services like these would make millions of applications possible that will help to make web a better place.

If there’s any other application that you could think of besides what is mentioned above then let us all know about it by posting comments. If you have any suggestion regarding this article you can reach me at udz.blogger AT gmail.com

		Listing online? Protect your privacy.
		Get your free numbr
		http://www.numbr.com

Pay Only Flat Fee of $6.95 For Using eFax Account for 3 Months

This is helpful especially if you are running a short term project, hunting job, or doing anything in which you require a Fax number that you need to send or receive. For this problem what’s better solution than eFax?

For those of you who are unfamiliar with eFax, it lets you send and receive paperless Fax using your computer (via e-mails and attachments) which is traditionally sent and received by using Fax Machine that runs on paper. This surely isn’t much of a commodity now a days especially since the technology has progressed tremendously.

Ok, lets be clear that, the technique which I’m going to share with you might work in your case but isn’t guaranteed due to the involvement of human factor in the form of Customer Representitive. I’m going to tell you what you must do to make it work like in my case.

First of all eFax lets you sign-up for 1 month free trail easily by only giving your credit card number (which won’t be charged until the beginning of billing cycle if you willingly keep your account open or if you forget to cancel it). BTW most of the authentic trial schemes found on the Internet work in similar fashion. If you step ahead to one more day than your trial termination date then it’ll charge your account with whopping $16.95/Mo subscription fee + $10 one time setup fee. One way to avoid this is REMEMBERING to cancel your account before trial period is over. Or if you aren’t done using your fax number and hope to continue using the same number for some time in the future (say for additional month or two) then you can try doing what worked in my case. If you don’t care about having the same number then you can cancel the previous account by the end of trial period and sign up for new one freely by using different e-mail address and credit card.

In the end of trial period you can go online to their site and go to Chat with customer representative feature. This is the only way you can cancel your eFax account, i.e. by chatting with the customer rep (availability is 24/7).
(Link to the chat page is https://www.efax.com/en/efax/twa/page/chat . This could also be found by following the link http://www.eFax.com/cancel)

This is what you must do after that:
- Talk to the representative in a friendly manner and tell him/her that you wish to cancel your account. You may try this trick even if you do not wish to cancel to give benefit of doubt.
- They may ask you for the reason you want to cancel your account – tell them that it is too costly for you to continue using this account.
- At this point they will make an offer that you could continue using your same number for as less as $6.95 that’ll be valid for entire 90 days period from the day you signed up to eFax. So roughly calculating you’ll still have 60 more days before your account is charged fully.
During this time you can use as much as 30 Pages/Month for sending efax and 130 Pages/Month for receiving faxes without additional charge. If you exceed these limits then you’ll be charged additionally based on how much extra you’ve sent and received.
Note: that the starting day of the offer is the day you signed up for the account – and you’ve already used first 30 days.
- You may want to verify that there’s no more additional charge they are taking from you besides what’s stated just to be on the safe side.

The technique presented in this article is valid as long as the company has the similar backup subscription plan to retain their customer. Or it might also depend on the mood or the reaction of the customer service representative. So be patient and try to be friendly to them – it’ll pay off.

If they didn’t give you an offer instantaneously then you might want to ask them if they have any discounted plan – after all you told them that you’re leaving because it was too costly, right? It tells them that you’ll stay if you are given a discount. By convincing and making you to stay, even at half the price of other regular customers, they are still gaining positive rating. So give them a chance to make a best offer to do that. You’ll never know what’s in the bag for you unless you become patient. I’ve listened to many such cases like these from my friends which have convinced them to continue taking the service from the same company they would otherwise have quit due to the high service charge.

So next time you are in the end of the service contract period you know what to do, Right?

Facebook Code Leakage

Recently there's been a code leakage of the most popular Social Networking websitesite Facebook.
Its written primarily in PHP.

You can get the copy of Source Code of Homepage and Search Page from the following website.
http://facebooksecrets.blogspot.com/

One Stop Lyrics Search Engine

Seekalyric.com is the one stop site for searching lyrics. While listening to the MP3 tracks via Seeqpod.com (featured in the previous post), Seekalyric.com provides an excellent accompaniment to deliver the accurate lyrics. It is very user friendly which displays most of the portion of lyrics in the same window without needing to be scrolled down as in the case of other lyrics search engines.

Listen to Your Favourite Music Online Without Subscription Charge

For those who are looking for free online streaming music, the site capable of searching music like Seeqpod.com might be the ultimate destination. The site is an online music search engine having an integrated player. The cool thing about this site is that you can create a playlist of songs you wish to listen to and be able to access it later by logging on to the site through any other computer having an internet connection. It lets you search the MP3 files hosted by other sites and stream to your desktop. You also have the option to share the playlist either through e-mail or by embedding it on your blog, if you have one However it doesn't let you save the music from its interface. But there a simple trick that will do the task.


Hint:
To save the the track that have been buffered by Seeqpod go through the following steps:
1) As soon as Seeqpod finishes buffering the file go to your browser's cache (Firefox users could type in about:cache into the address bar to reveal the location of browser cache)
2) Look for the file recently added by sorting out according to Date Modified (firefox in this case gives a meaningless filename) Usually a mp3 song will be 2-4MB in size (or could be more depending on the encoded bitrate and length of the song).
3) Or find the suspicious file if under IE temp folders since its unpredictable to tell where would it be among different temp folders by sorting out according to the date modified.
4) Copy the file to another folder... rename it... and enjoy playing it as many times as you like.

Note: Windows users must turn on the option to view hidden files and folders to be able to access the file in the stated location. You can easily do it by dbl. clicking My Computer, click menu item Tools > Folder Options... , on the popup window click View tab, and search for Hidden Files and Folders option. Finally select Show Hidden Files and Folders > OK to enable viewing hidden files on the system you're working on.

Using Firefox to retrieve this is easiest since there is only once browser cache location unlike multiple folders utilized by IE. Hence, making the recently added file easier to find .

The site also has the video feature which I personally didn't find as attractive as its audio player. The search result is also not as extensive as what you'll get while searching audio.

Other notable features are share feature which will let you share your playlist with your friends via e-mail. The "Discovery" button which will let you listen to recently discovered music that SeeqPod has found on the Web. It is helpful if you aren't sure what you want to listen to.

By looking at how the songs are added in the discovery window we can guess that the site uses some sort of webcrawler that indexes the media files (particularly MP3 and AVI) inside the site which will be retrieved later when someone searches using the particular parameter reflecting the file.

Here's a sample playlist that I created earlier. Sample Playlist.

Another site that lets you do the similar stuff is B3ta.cr3ation . Whichever you choose to visit enjoy the free music that these sites provide as long as they last because I'm pretty sure that RIAA is going to get on their tail pretty soon.