The Catling Mindswipe

Full Circle Podcast Episode 22, Mad Max Meets Ben Hur is available now from the Full circle Site. In this episode, all things Chrome. Full Circle Podcast is also a proud member of the Tech Podcasts Network . Feeds for both MP3 and OGG: RSS feed, MP3: http://fullcirclemagazine.org/category/podcast/feed RSS feed, OGG: http://fullcirclemagazine.org/category/podcast/feed/atom Your Hosts: Robin Catling (blog at http://catlingmindswipe.blogspot.com/ , @robincatling on Twitter) Ed Hewitt (blog at http://www.edhewitt.co.uk/ , @edhewitt on Twitter) Dave Wilkins (...had to go cook the dinner. @davidawilkins on Twitter) Additional audio by Victoria Pritchard Show Notes 01:42 | WELCOME and INTRO 02:32 | SINCE LAST TIME Ed: moved house, started work as IT Administrations New Hope and bought a Chromebook Dave: graduated university and went on military exercises Robin: - Produced Sidepod 9 with Les Pounder - many thanks to Les for the field reports - Wrote 2 articl

In Digital Watermarks Part One , we looked at the need for digital watermarks and the simple steps to impose a visible watermark onto a digital image. As we found last time, a visible watermark placed in the center of the image is really difficult to erase and will remain even if someone crops the image, but it spoils a good composition. Time to go invisible. A true digital watermark is a digital signature, a pattern of bits impressed into an image file that can be read by a viewing utility. A person viewing the file normally won’t see the it, but the hidden watermark stays intact even if the file is cut, cropped or otherwise manipulated. This is a very secure and unobtrusive method of watermarking an image… With the right algorithms and tools you can embed an entire library of information inside a high resolution photo and not alter the visible image. At the high-end, digital watermarking involves cryptography and complex algorithms that are way above my pay grade.

At the beginning of the month, eagle-eyed readers of my Blogger site will have noticed up to three "Recent Posts" widgets on trial in my layout. This is purely down to the fact that all of the Recent Posts, Recent Posts Advanced widget and another custom feed method all broke down in the updated version of the Blogspot platform and nobody seems interested in fixing them! Yes, each would appear to work at first, but then blank out and no amount of refreshing would bring back my beloved content. So I tried some other methods of achieving what should be straightforward on Blogger... One is to create a simple feed for recent posts; from the Blogger Dashboard, Add a Page Element, add a Feed (click “add to blog” under the page element Feed), configure the feed by adding the blog feed URL in the box: http://catlingmindswipe.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss. Click Continue, change the title, save it, done! You can also choose to show the item dates and author. My se

I got my paws briefly on a Galaxy Tab 7-inch recently. It belongs to a friend in the construction industry (Alan, not to be confused with Allan) who initially raved over it and in two weeks began fault-finding. This is one of the tablet devices released in response to Apple's iPad. It was a fine alternative to the iPad-I in terms of it's market pitch, but since the iPad-II came out, it looks like an expensive me-too with a smaller screen. The question is, has Samsung compromised too far in the attempt to be distinctive...?

You know watermarks; they are the authentication marks that appear on bank notes, branded stationary, company documents and education certificates. Those are the visible watermarks we see everyday. Hold up a bank-note to the light and there it is, molded and imprinted into the paper. You will also see watermarks on reproductions of photographs and other artworks, a visible assertion of copyright, usually the copyright-holder’s name and logo. This adds a third utility to the watermark: a sign of authenticity to combat fraudulent use and unauthorized copying, an assertion of rights by the rights-holder and a permanent branding or advertising… Digital watermarking is the extension of this utility into the digital world. It is easy to reproduce and distribute identical copies of digital information, be it images, text or audio. There is no shortage of data bits, as the entertainment industry has discovered – or anyone who shares images from their digital camera. You might

Full Circle Side-Pod Episode Nine: A Mish-mash of Technologies is available from the main site. In this episode, Social innovation, open data and FOSSbox.

Confusion persists over what you can and can't do on Wordpress.com , that's the free service for Wordpress blogs hosted by the Wordpress folks themselves out of the goodness of their hearts. They run the advertising, they get the revenue. It should all be very straightforward but the rules don't seem to be encapsulated neatly in one place where we can all see them. Run your Wordpress (.org) blog on a self-hosted domain and you can do anything you like. You're the one responsible for maintaining it on whatever server you've paid for, knock yourself out. The .com blogs are a different matter... Wordpress.com runs ads on our blogs and has done since 2006. User-generated advertising is not allowed on free hosted WordPress.com blogs. The only exceptions are for high traffic blogs that qualify for and are accepted into the Ad Control program, and very high traffic blogs that qualify and are accepted into the paid VIP hosting program. More information can be fou

Humour. Remember that? Yes, it's desperately close to the LOL Cats of 'I can has cheezeburger,' but I was given a copy of the 2011 Bad Cat Calendar from Workman Publishing and I happen to like July 23rd's cat.   "Normal service will be resumed just as soon as we've worked out what's normal anyway." RC