noemi

Recipe-Finder: The Easy Way to Search for Recipes

July 3, 2023 by noemi

Looking for something to spice up your Christmas dinner? Here’s a cool new site which just might help you find that dish that will give that extra oomph to your Christmas meal: Recipe-Finder.

You can, of course, simply go to Google and look for a recipe. After all, Google knows everything, right? Then again, what if you do not know exactly what you are looking for? What if you only have certain ingredients in mind? What if you are thinking more about the prep time involved? Or maybe your guests are all health conscious, and you want to limit your dishes to healthy ones.

That’s where Recipe-Finder comes into the picture. This new recipe search engine makes everything easy for users to find recipes without having a very specific idea in mind. When you visit the homepage, you’ll see the mandatory search box, but more than that, you’ll receive a helping hand from links that can point you in the right direction. See the image below and you’ll know what I mean.

If, at the beginning, you don’t know exactly what you are searching for, the categories and the links will give you a start.

In addition, the Advanced Search feature makes your search even more customized.

As you can see, you can specify the calorie content, the cooking time, and the number of servings. These parameters certainly gives you more relevant results for your search!

You can also do an image search to check out the most enticing images of dishes. More than simply getting the images, though, if you hover on one, you will see a preview of the recipe, which is clickable and will also give you a quickview version.

Recipe-Finder is perhaps the largest recipe search engine in existence today, and it is developed by IOIX, a privately funded company that has contributors from Japan, Ukraine, Europe, and the Philippines. The team built this search engine from scratch, with currently 650,000 recipes indexed. That should be enough to give you an idea of what to cook for all those Christmas parties, shouldn’t it? 😉

A Guide to the Open Internet: What You Need to Know About Net Neutrality

July 3, 2023 by noemi

You’ve probably been reading/hearing about net neutrality in the recent months. Left and right, people are talking about it – either trying to push for the concept or trying to take it down. What is net neutrality anyway, and why should you bother about it?

Simply put, net neutrality is a concept which places ALL web sites and services on the same level; that is, they ought to be treated as being the same by Internet service providers (ISPs) and mobile phone/cable/phone companies. You may think that this sounds logical, but telecommunications companies are leaning towards the other end of the spectrum. They think that web sites and services ought to be grouped into different categories so that they can apply various charging schemes. You getting my drift?

To make the whole concept easier to understand, some guys have created an excellent web site which explains the “open Internet” and what ISPs want to happen: The Open Internet.

Here’s a screen shot of what a free and open Internet brings.

Get the word out – share the web site and help keep the Internet free and open for all of us!

Meet the Human Drum Machine

July 2, 2023 by noemi

What happens when you have a talented guy with a lot of time on his hands? A lot of things can happen, actually; and if you are Daito Manabe, you just might come up with a first – a human drum machine.

Manabe has been making waves with his work as a DJ cum artist cum programmer. Music + technology + art = some pretty weird/awesome stuff?

Here’s a short video of how his ~~unfortunate~~ friend got to be the subject of an experiment involving a drum machine and myoelectric sensors. How does the setup work? Manabe wires both of them up and starts tapping on his friend’s face and body – wherever. These actions trigger sensors, which in turn sends electrical signals to – well, you guessed it – the “friend’s” face. The result is quite hilarious as you can see his face twitching all over the place. Don’t worry, though – it is not supposed to be painful at all. (READ: No humans have been harmed in the making of this video.)

Don’t you just love how they maintained straight faces for as long as they could?

Google: The Body Is a Wonderland

July 2, 2023 by noemi

John Mayer may have become popular thanks to his bubblegum tongue-filled lyrics (I still don’t get what that’s supposed to mean, by the way), but Google is stepping things up a notch in this wonderland-body thingamajig. Google’s Body Browser was launched last week and is slated to be another of those Google creations that will keep you playing around for hours – well, maybe minutes, depending on the intensity of your interest in the human anatomy.

First thing you ought to know – you need a web browser with WebGL support. Google will try to make it easy for you and give you a link to download the new Google Chrome Beta (you have to admire the plugging). I didn’t have any problems making the application work on the first try, but it seems that in the early hours of its release, some people were not able to make it work.

Once you have the new Chrome Beta, just visit the Body Browser page, and you will see something like this.

The default 3D image is a fully clad female, which you can manipulate to learn more about the human body. You can peel layer after layer off – not clothing but skin, muscles, and so on. You can also rotate the body and make it smaller or larger, depending on your preferences.

I think it’s a pretty cool education tool, but squeamish person that I am, I didn’t last 10 minutes playing around with the 3D model. I am pretty sure lots of other people will find more use for the product, though.

Wikipedia a la Cubana

July 1, 2023 by noemi

Here’s another wiki that has made the news in the recent days. While WikiLeaks has definitely garnered a large following around the world, there are other wiki sites that are worth talking about as well. Just the other night, my friends and I were talking about Cuba – the way of life there, tourism, etc. I didn’t think I would be writing about a Wikipedia-style web site focusing on this Caribbean island.

The web site is called EcuRed, and can be accessed at http://www.ecured.cu/.

It is basically an online encyclopedia which aims to “spread knowledge from a decolonizing, objective, and truthful point of view.” Unsurprisingly, the site received a massive amount of traffic, and due to this, it went down earlier this week. It’s been up since then, though, and visitors can read the articles – all 19,752 of them.

The whole site is in Spanish and is dependent on a government-run network. There are about 600 computer centers involved in the project as well as more than 1000 content developers. I do not speak or read Spanish, but thanks to Google Chrome’s translation feature, I was able to browse the web site.

If you are Cuban or have a love for this Caribbean isle, here are things you ought to know before joining the wiki fray:

Écuras is optimized for best viewing in the browser Mozilla Firefox , you can download by clicking here . We also put at your disposal a spell checker that integrates with Firefox to verify your spelling, install it by clicking here .
If you have connectivity problems downloading the offline editor .
It is imperative that before you begin, read What is Écuras .
Learn to appoint either an article with the title Conventions .
You can ask questions and provide knowledge on the corner of the FAQ .
There are models of articles that offer guidance on the structure of a particular item.
Look at this list of recommended templates .

That list was translated automatically so there might be some grammatical inconsistencies, but you get the picture. What’s important, I think, is that it is a huge step towards Cuba’s opening up to the world. Something to be excited about, don’t you think?