Cranking out news for the geeks, music buffs and gossip junkies, my way. -Greg

By Jason Fitzpatrick, 12:00 PM on Mon Oct 12 2009

If you want to check out a neighborhood you’re planning on moving to or just want to see how things are looking in your corner of Sunnyvale, CrimeReports mashes up local police reports with a map of the area.

CrimeReports will display, when data is available, a variety of crimes including homicide, breaking and entering, robbery, theft, theft of/from a vehicle, assault, and sexual offenses by default. You can also add in other crimes like kidnapping, arson, alarm responses, and proactive police activity like community policing and vehicles stops.

All of the above have color coded flags that can be easily read on the map. The flags are identified in the left hand column or by mouse click—both give you the type of crime and the location. You can also adjust the range of dates displayed to the last few days, last week, two weeks, month, or a custom date range via calendar. CrimeReports is a free service and requires no login.

CrimeReports

For those who aren’t Photoshop savy, or want a quick way to add some filtering to a photo, check FotoSketcher 1.9 out. It’s for Windows and its free.

FotoSketcher is a 100% free program which can help you convert your digital photos into art, automatically. If you want to turn a portrait, the photograph of your house or a beautiful landscape into a painting, a sketch or a drawing then look no further, FotoSketcher will do the job in just a few seconds.

Thanks to FotoSketcher you can create stunning images to make original gifts for your friends or relatives. Create birthday cards, season’s greetings stationary or simply print your work of art and hang it on the wall.

Different styles are available: pencil sketch, pen and ink drawing, various painting renderings. You can also improve your original photo with simple tools (enhance contrast, sharpen, simplify image, increase luminosity, color saturation etc…).

FotoSketcher is completely free and does not contain any adware, spyware or virus. It runs on any version of Microsoft Windows (sorry, no Mac version available).

If you enjoyed this program, or have any suggestions to make, you can drop me a quick line at contact@fotosketcher.com.

Best Regards,

David THOIRON
Author of FotoSketcher

Go to download page

Go to download page:

This has to be one of the neatest apps I now have for my Blackberry. Developed by Karl von Randow, www.xk72.com, MidpSSH is a free open source SSH / Telnet client that can be installed on you Blackberry, iPhone, and many other Java enabled mobile devices, check the site for more details. Downloaded it to my phone, add a session profile, and after a few settings changes to make the text a little larger, then changing the default emulation, it was smooth sailing. All said I had about 15 minutes involved before I was SSH’d into 1 of my FreeBSD machines at home.

Here are the features as listed from their website:

• SSH1 and Telnet support, and now SSH2 support
• Saved session profiles
• Macros for entering frequently typed commands
• Interactive input mode including typing special keys and control key combinations
• Cursor movement using keypad or game control
• VT320 terminal emulation
• Traffic usage reporting
• Free and Open Source (GPL)

For complete information and to get your own copy head over to their website
http://www.xk72.com/midpssh/

If you like it as much as I do, please make sure to donate and help the development!

This is a very smooth and handy app for any tech, I have to say it quickly became my favorite app. Nice job Karl! -Greg

Size and weight seem to be unaffected by this second screen, I’ll have to see one, but I likes so far! -Greg

By Erica Ogg CNET News
Posted on ZDNet News: Oct 07, 2009 5:14:28 AM

Kohjinsha's transforming dual-display notebook. (Credit: Scott Ard/CNET)

CHIBA, Japan–This otherwise run-of-the-mill laptop from local PC purveyor Kohjinsha has not one, but two widescreen displays.

One of the 10.1-inch screens actually slides behind the other, so it’s able to be closed like a normal laptop. When they slideout they form an admittedly odd-looking, but useful dual display setup.

Also inside the laptop: a 1.6 Ghz AMD Athlon Neo-MV40, 4GB of memory, Bluetooth, a TV tuner, and a biometric fingerprint reader. The OS will be Windows 7 Home Premium, graphics are DirectX 10 compatible, and the whole thing weighs about 4 pounds.

Read more of “Kohjinsha’s doublewide laptop display” on CNET News.

By Danny Allen, 8:39 AM on Tue Oct 6 2009

Verizon has some of the crappiest phones available, so there’s been no shortage of leaks about it getting an Android phone. Now the Verizon/Google love-affair is official: Big Red will introduce two Android-based handsets “within the next few weeks”.

Verizon plans to support Google Voice, saying you either have an open device or you don’t, and theirs will be open. Hopefully that means VoIP calls over 3G will be possible. No word if one of the two Android phones will be the Verizon Motorola Sholes/Droid, but we’ll fill you in when we know more. [PR Newswire]

Do you know what this means? This means I can finally start streaming noshoesradios.com on my Blackberry! THANK YOU Adobe, its like I was reading about 1 of my own Chrismas presents! Yes I’m excited and you should be too.. -Greg

By Kevin Purdy, 7:00 AM on Mon Oct 5 2009

Adobe has promised betas of a mobile-ready Flash 10.1 for Windows Mobile and Palm Pre late this year, and early next year for Android, Symbian, and BlackBerry phones, as well as NVIDIA-powered netbooks. The only hold-out? The iPhone, of course.

Adobe describes Apple as “closed device” and continues to offer a fig leaf, but given Apple’s general stance on opening up new development platforms on their device, it seems a tad unlikely. As Gizmodo points out, though, that might become a selling feature for those annoyed by memory-hungry Flash apps and advertisements.

More notable than even the ability to watch YouTube and Hulu clips on your phone, though, is that Flash 10.1 will support graphic chip acceleration on systems with NVIDIA graphics cards, allowing full-screen viewing on netbooks whose processors might otherwise choke, and giving laptop and desktop users perhaps a bit more performance from low-quality clips. Adobe AIR, the cross-platform app engine that powers apps like TweetDeck, will also see improvements with the release of Flash 10.1.

Promises of multi-platform support “by the end of this year” might not be bank-able, but it’s reassuring to hear Adobe’s firm expectations on all but one platform. Tell us what you’d like Flash to do, or stay away from, on your own smartphone or netbook in the comments.

I am so jealous! This guys has an awesome setup and I want it. I just need a couple monitors, another video card, and then I’ll weld me some metal together, piece of cake! haha, wonder how I could justify this setup for my office to the boss? -Greg

By Jason Fitzpatrick, 4:00 PM on Sun Oct 4 2009

Today’s featured workspace is full of surprises like monitors that seem to float in the air on a cloud of ambient lighting, cords hidden behind faux walls, and peripherals hidden in hollowed out shelves.

Lifehacker reader acflynn knows how to put together a home office with functionality and style if his contributions to the Lifehacker Workspaces Show and Tell pool are any indicator. He included such copious notes on each photo that we’ve opted to put those notes within the gallery below. Click on the first image to get started reading about all the nifty touches he’s included in his workspace. If the notes here aren’t clear enough, check out the original images with picture-based annotations at the Flickr link below.