Vector Magic originated as a free online service hosted at Stanford University. You could upload a raster image, such as clip art or a photo, and use the service to generate a vector-based image. You could then export the image in a format such as SVG. The service was simple to use and did an […]
Author: Shelley Powers
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Game over?
Recovered from the Wayback Machine. From GigaOM: There are other participants, some that are well known, like HP with its HP MediaSmart Connect, or TiVo. And some are upstarts, like Vudu, Zv, Verismo and Sezmi. But the future belongs to Amazon, Netflix or Apple. It’s still too early to tell which one will win the race […]
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Amazon S3 and Kindle
It’s not just SmugMug and other client applications that aren’t working because of Amazon’s S3 failure. You can purchase a book on Amazon, and it shows among your books in Content Manager, but the book won’t download. The same holds for any subscriptions you try to download. You don’t get an error or a message. You just don’t […]
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The life of a tech book writer
I read Baron Schwartz’s recounting of his experience authoring O’Reilly’s High Performance MySQL with interest, and no little fascination. Having authored 17 computer books (or so, I begin to lose count), I can both empathize with some of the challenges he’s faced, while also wondering if I shouldn’t have been more demanding, at times. Wait a sec: I have […]
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Wikipedia: less wiki more pedia
Recovered from the Wayback Machine. Interesting. Wikipedia may be instituting an approval system. If the current experiment detailed in the Times article expands to all of Wikipedia, any change made to an article by a person who hasn’t made 300 or more previous edits will be held in moderation until approved. Contrary to the juicy exclamations of delight, […]