Put on your thinking cap when you visit CITB - here you'll find Concepts, Ideas, Thoughts and "Outside The Box" thinking, plus we call Bullsh!t for what it is. Enjoy the ride, and if we stimulate your brain, please tell others about us!
xkcd is a webcomic created by Randall Munroe, a former contractor for NASA It calls itself "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." The site states there is no particular meaning to the name that it is simply a "treasured and carefully-guarded point in the space of four-character strings."
The subjects of the comics themselves vary. Some are statements on life and love (some love strips are simply art with poetry), and some are mathematical or scientific in-jokes. Some strips feature simple humor or pop-culture references. Although known for its crudely drawn cast of oddball stick figures,[7][2] the comic occasionally features landscapes, intricate mathematical patterns such as fractals (for example, strip #17 "What If" shows an Apollonian gasket), or imitations of the style of other cartoonists (as during "parody week"). Occasionally, realism is featured.
CITB Quote of the day: "That which does not kill me, only makes me stronger." - Frederich Nietzche
Posted by Thom Byxbe | Under Opinion, Review
Thursday Mar 20, 2008
I have been looking for a site that would send reminders to my cell phone as text messages. My search was originally a MAJOR disappointment, because none of the sites really worked. Then I found BitBomb.com.
This site WORKS! Setting up an account was about the easiest I have ever experienced. Adding a reminder was even easier than getting an account.
It is seldom that it takes so few words to describe a site. The strengths of this site are simplicity, and that it works! I can think of no better reason to give a site our HIGHEST recommendation. Try It, You'll Like It!
CITB Quote of the day: "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible." - Albert Einstein
Posted by Thom Byxbe | Under Concept, Idea, Review
Saturday May 31, 2008
Ficlets are shorter than short stories. Actually, they are short stories, but they're just really, really short stories. I mean really short - so short there's not a maximum word count - there's a maximum character count (1,024). There is also a minimum character count of 64.
If you have a small amount of writers block Ficlets will provide you with inspiration (photos, themes, suggested beginnings and endings), but you're completely free to blaze your own literary path. Now, here's where the real fun comes in: Each and every Ficlet is modular in that, though you may have written a stand-alone story with a beginning, middle, and ending, your fellow Ficleteers may choose to write a prequel or sequel to your story. In this respect, you can think of Ficlets as literary Legos.
All Ficlets are covered under Creative Commons, which means that if you wrote it, you own it... Period!
At CITB we have a real love for sites that encourage imagination and creativity (and encouraging creative writing is something we really love!). Ficlets does just that. We give Ficlet our HIGHEST recommendation! To give you an idea of what you can do with 64 and 1,024 characters - 1024 characters is the exact length of "A What? A Ficlet?"
CITB Quote of the day: "That which does not kill me, only makes me stronger." - Frederich Nietzche
This is a SPECIAL "Wee Winks - Writing Edition". These are hand picked links to help with career, school, blogging and other wordy expressive endeavors. These are the sites we use here at CITB and ALL of the sites come with our HIGHEST Recommendation! We hope that this list will help you improve your craft as much as it has helped us!
SearchWarp.com Is On A Mission!
SearchWarp.com's mission is to foster intelligent discussion from diverse viewpoints while providing useful information to the World. Their vision is to be a platform for common people to be heard while airing sometimes uncommon points of view. They pledge to do what they can to use their small corner of the World Wide Web to make the Internet a better place!
Internet-Resources.com is THE authority for Writing Links for Writers. It is the greatest maintained source of Writers' Resources on The Web. It was declared "One of the 101 Best Websites For Writers" (Writer's Digest 2006). CITB gives the our HIGHEST recommendation as a resource site.
You will find here all the text tools you need - everything from sorting lines to advanced encryption and hashing! Letter Case Conversions like - All Uppercase - All Lowercase - Title Case. In addition it can do special text conversions like Shuffle Letters, Clean Text, Reverse Text, Strip Tags, Compress and Statistics. This website was created to help you do operations on text. You can use these tools for fun or work(commercial usage allowed!)
Not even a native speaker knows all the words of his own language. Technical vocabulary is used only by specialists and so is not generally known by non-specialists. Here you will find dictionaries and glossaries of specialized words in the English language. New specialties and dictionaries are constantly being added to YourDictionary.com's Specialty Dictionary Department.
These are the CURRENT Specialty Dictionaries available:
Do you want to be inspired. Do you need to write because that is how you improve - BY WRITING! Here is a concept that will be both fun and helpful. It is very simple. When you press the "GO" button you will see one word at the top of the new page. Then you have sixty seconds to write about it. Again it is very simple - as soon as you click "go" the page will load with the cursor in place and ready. Don't Think. Just Write.
CITB Quote of the day: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover" - Mark Twain
One popular subscriber has put his Twitter account up for sale on eBay, prompting a fiery debate over ethics and commerce online.
[ http://snipurl.com/friendsfors ]
STEAL THIS
An entrepreneur looks for a gap in the market; pirates look for a gap outside the market. (Microsoft is worried that Vista isn't being pirated very much.)
[ http://snipurl.com/steal
In a study that hasn't been described as a complete waste of time and money, tennis scientists have found line judges usually get their calls right.
[ http://snipurl.com/24yl1
We are pleased to announce that our newest project/blog has launched.
Thursday, April 10 2008 - 05:40 AM CrabApple Forest
Is Now Open For Business! Please Visit Often!
Here is an excerpt from one of our inaugural posts:
Does the world need another Macintosh Blog? I suppose that depends on who you ask. What we have found is that their are two rather indistinct groups of Macintosh users. The first is the long-time Mac user, who’s been using a Mac since before the days of OS X. That user is probably a Mac devotee, the type that thinks that the Mac is the greatest computer ever. That user is the type to try and convince all their friends and relatives to switch to the Mac. They are, in short, the convincers - if it weren’t for them, there would be far fewer Mac users today.
Then there is the other group - the “switchers”, a.k.a. the “recently convinced.” They’ve never known anything other than OS X on a Mac, but they may have struggled with several versions of Windows prior to finally getting a Mac. Now, some of them may be wondering if they made the right choice. For the first month or so after switching from Windows, they will probably experience much wonder and doubt - wondering what they’ve gotten themselves into, and occasionally doubting that the “convincer” friend or family member steered them on the right track.
There is a bunch of great stuff in between and then...
Personally, I think that the biggest reason the world may need another Mac-related blog is because of this: We didn’t drink the hard Apple Cider - what I mean is, you’ll never catch us standing outside an Apple store in the chilly night air so we can be among the first to get our hands on some new Apple product. We want to put our Macs to use, not dress them up in expensive accessories and brag about them to our friends that still use Windows (well, maybe just a little, but only when the Mac really does do something better than Windows).
So if you are looking for a hard-nosed blog that’s not written by a bunch of Mac fanboys, maybe you’ve found it! When there’s something about the Mac we don’t like, we’ll crab about it. But when we find some delightful new freeware program, or some helpful hint or tip that makes it more of a joy to use a Mac, we’ll pass that along.
Please visit http;//www.CrabAppleForest.com and share in the excitement of our newest product launch! Where you will always be greeted with "Welcome To CrabApple Forest!"
CITB Quote of the day: "The individual desires judgment. Without that desire, the cohesion of groups is impossible, and so is civilization." - Morpheus
Posted by Thom Byxbe | Under Idea, Review, Video
Monday Mar 31, 2008
I’ve read about and played with remote control cars, robots, planes, helicopters and even a UFO. Never have I seen an infra-red remote control bird - until NOW! This is a new product from toy manufacturer SilverLit and is called the "I-Bird". I visited their web site and found no mention of it there. That leads me to believe it is currently not available in the U.S., or is still under development. Check out this video and watch it fly by flapping its wings.
I don't think this will cut it as a cat toy. They claim it is durable, but it doesn't look like it to me. I guess anything is possible. This toy gives "A New Meaning To Birdbrain!"
CITB Quote of the day: "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds!" - Prophet Mohamed (c. 570 Mecca - June 8, 632 Medina)
Posted by | Under Bullshit, Review
Thursday Mar 20, 2008
I have found our second candidate in the "Bullsh!t" category. The site is called Glittericio.us and just about the only positive thing I can say is the name is appropriate, and perfect from a marketing perspective.
Now you may say, "But it's cute!" and to that I reply, "Cute doesn't pay the bills". Especially when you realize that this site ALSO serves or hosts each of the individual images, each time someone views a site they are on. That is a lot of bandwidth. In this story alone there are 46 individual images served from Glittericio.us.
The answer to this question is found in the images below:
This site is ad sponsored. An advertising sponsored site in its self is not an issue to us. CITB is an advertising sponsored site. Our issue with Glittericio.us is the TYPE of products that make up the MAJORITY of their advertisements. Most of the advertisements on this site are for products which on their face do not seem harmful to the average user. BUT, THEY CAN BE!
This site is targeted to teens and pre-teens with MySpace.com and other "Social Networking" site pages. They find this site and think "How Kewl Dude! My page will look so sweet with this!" Then they see an ad like the one highlighted above. When this link is followed, it offers a "free" add-on to your browser that will allow you to add 3-D and other types of effects to text for your website or social networking page. It seems like a great thing - a FREE tool for my web browser. But, often these add-ons contain spyware known as "ad-ware".
Advertisements and Spyware
Many spyware programs display advertisements. Some programs simply display pop-up ads on a regular basis; for instance, one every several minutes, or one when the user opens a new browser window. Others display ads in response to specific sites that the user visits. Spyware operators present this feature as desirable to advertisers, who may buy ad placement in pop-ups displayed when the user visits a particular site. Also, one of the purposes of some spyware programs is to gather information on user behavior.
A further issue in the case of some spyware programs has to do with the replacement of banner ads on viewed web sites. Spyware that acts as a web proxy or a Browser Helper Object can replace references to a site's own advertisements (which fund the site) with advertisements that instead fund the spyware operator. This cuts into the margins of advertising-funded Web sites.
A large number of toolbars, some added by spyware
overwhelm Internet Explorer running on Windows XP
Effects and Behaviors
Users frequently notice unwanted behavior and a degrading of their system performance. These types of "FREE" add-ons often create significant unwanted CPU activity, disk usage, and network traffic, all of which slow the computer down. Stability issues with your browser and system-wide crashes are also common.
Often spyware is not even evident. Users assume in those situations that the issues are hardware related, Windows installation problems, or a virus. Some owners of badly infected systems resort to buying a new computer because their existing system "has become too slow".
Only rarely does a single piece of software render a computer unusable. Rather, a computer is likely to have multiple infections. A 2004 AOL study noted that if a computer has any spyware at all, it typically has dozens of different pieces installed. The cumulative effect, and the interactions between spyware components, causes the symptoms commonly reported by users: a computer, which slows to a crawl, overwhelmed by the many parasitic processes running on it.
Save Yourself With Knowledge!
Here are several links we recommend to help you diagnose and resolve issues related to spyware and system performance:
CITB EDITORS NOTE: We recommend that ALL Windows users run BOTH of these free software programs at least once a month or if they notice any of the behaviors noted in this story.
There is an old adage that goes, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!" The REAL cost of the types of sites like Glittericio.us, which in reality prey on the naivety of teenagers, cause us to put this site and all others like it in the BULLSH!T category. RUN don't walk from this site NOW! Save Yourself With Knowledge! Remember "All That Glitters Is Not Gold!"
CITB Quote of the day: "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible." - Albert Einstein
We use Backpack here at CITB everyday. After trying a LOT of software solutions to manage the multitude of tasks necessary to plan, schedule, and coordinate the day to day operations of our 3 blogs we chose Backpack.
Please click below and take advantage of the FREE version of Backpack.
Thomas Byxbe is the Publisher and Editor of Concepts, Ideas, Thoughts & Bullsh!t.
Thom has been a respected Internet author for over 12 years. He has written extensively on the Internet, Technology and Lifestyle topics. Concepts, Ideas, Thoughts & Bullsh!t is one of 3 current blog projects he writes and manages.
Mr. Byxbe is President and Chief Internet Visionary of Metamorphosis Idea Lab located in Madison Heights, Michigan.
In addition, Thom is an Ordained Minister focused on pastoral counseling. He has been a certified Neuro-Linguistic Practitioner for over 20 years. In his current counseling practice he utilizes a blend of talk based counseling with NLP programming techniques.
If you have suggestions, comments or would like to submit recommendations for articles to appear in Concepts, Ideas, Thoughts Bullsh!t, please feel free to contact him at:
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