Adobe Photoshop is often used for removing backgrounds and other unwanted objects from a photograph but this new "content aware" technology not only improves that process but makes it easy for Photoshop newbies as well.
You just have to paint the object that you want to remove using the Spot Healing Brush and the program will automatically fill that area with a surrounding pattern.
While Adobe is not talking dates, we could see this feature live in Photoshop CS5.
You get an email notification from Facebook every time someone adds you as a friend on Facebook or confirms your existing friendship request. You also get emails when people post something on your wall or comment on photos that you have shared on Facebook.
If you are connected with only a limited number of people on Facebook, these notifications are probably not an issue but if you have a few hundred friends on Facebook, these "not so urgent" notifications might well be choking your mailbox.
Dealing with Facebook Email Overload
You can do a search for from:facebookmail.com inside Gmail to find the number of emails that you are getting just because of that Facebook account.
If you like to reduce that number, here’s a quick tip that will help you turn these multiple notifications into a single daily email digest.
Open your Facebook Account and clear the Email option for every action except the one that says "Sends me a message". You may also want to turn off email notifications for all third-party applications that are attached to your Facebook profile.
Next, open the Facebook Notifications page and deselect notifications from all Facebook applications except the official apps which include Friends, Wall, Links and Gifts.
Now copy the address of the RSS Feed that says "Your Notifications" and copy-paste that link into FeedBlitz to receive a daily email digest of all activity happening around your Facebook profile.
Alternatively, you can use an RSS reader like Google Reader or FeedDemon to subscribe to your Facebook Notifications feed.
The only problem is that these will make your Facebook Notifications feed public. It that makes you a bit uncomfortable, you can either use the Live Bookmarks feature in Firefox to subscribe to the Facebook feed in private or simply bookmark the Facebook Notifications page in your browser and check it maybe once in a day.
While completing my TED profile, I came across a very interesting presentation by environmentalist Kamal Meattle who talks about how you can grow your fresh air at home and office using some commonly available indoor plants.
Best Indoor Plants for “Cleaning” Air
The three indoor plants that Kamal mentioned in his TED talk include:
1. Areca Palm- You need at least four shoulder-height plants per person in the building and, if you are living in a polluted city, make sure you wipe the Palm leaves every single day for the plant to effectively convert Carbon dioxide into Oxygen.
You should in fact grow two sets of Areca Palm’s -- keep the other set outdoors and rotate that set with the indoor one every 3-4 months.
2. Snake Plant -- Unlike most plants which release Carbon-dioxide at night, Snake Plant (also known as Mother-in-law’s Tongue) does the reverse as it converts CO2 into Oxygen at night so you can safely keep it inside the bedroom.
You need at least 6 to 8 waist height plants per person to improve the indoor air quality to a healthy level.
3. Money Plant -- Other than releasing oxygen in the air, money plant can also eliminate formaldehyde from the air that is commonly released by cigarette smoke and adhesives (used with wood furnishings).
Money Plant is therefore especially useful in office buildings as they generally have lot of wooden furniture.
NASA Study on Indoor Plants
If you have some space in your home or office premises, it probably makes lots of sense to grow these plants because research says that there is a 42% probability of increasing blood oxygen by 1% if one stays inside a building housing these plants for 10 hours.
And Kamal isn’t the only person saying this. Earlier, a study conducted by NASA also suggested that certain houseplants (including Bamboo Palm and Snake Plant) can remove as much as 87% of indoor air pollutants within 24 hours.
If you were wondering how long will global reserves of some important metals that are used in electronic devices last, here’s a clue.
Tantalum is a rare metal that is used in the manufacture of cell phones and camera lenses but you’ll be surprised to know that if every human on the planet were to consume this metal at the same rate an average US resident today, the metal supplies won’t last for more than 20 years.
Similarly, we won’t be left with any stock of Indium, another rare metal used in LCDs and touch-screen displays, after 4 years if the world consumes this metal at the same rate as US today.
This report, which roughly demonstrates how quickly time is running out for some rare and important metals, was original published in New Scientist in 2007.
Armin Reller, a materials chemist, estimates that we have, at best, 10 years before we run out of Indium. Its impending scarcity could already be reflected in its price: in January 2003 the metal sold for around $60 per kilogram; by August 2006 the price had shot up to over $1000 per kilogram.
Situation: You are working on something important and don’t want your office colleagues to interrupt you during that time. How do you achieve this?
Solution: The first option is that you hang a huge “do not disturb” sign outside your cubicle and pay no attention to the co-worker who just dropped in for a quick chat.
OK, since that may sound a bit rude, here’s a better alternative – wear a pair of headphones (even if you are no fan of music) and this should alone discourage your co-workers from interrupting you.
The idea is that if you are wearing a single headphone, it should convey the impression that you are open for chat as long as its brief but if you are wearing both the headphones, the other person should not bother distracting you.
Another advantage of wearing headphones at work is that you are less likely to get distracted by surrounding noises like that ringing phone or the coffee dispenser.
The video tip was original published on Facebook by Blank Spaces. But please don’t play this at work as the video uses slightly NSFW language somewhere around 00:25.
If you have a blog that is on WordPress, here’s another good reason why you should use Windows Live Writer as your blog editor.
Moderate WordPress Comments from Live Writer
The Windows Live Writer team has developed a plug-in that lets you manage / moderate comments on your WordPress blog from inside of Windows Live Writer.
This plugin adds a "Comment Management" link in your Live Writer dashboard from where you can not only read comments posted by other users but can also approve comments, delete comments (reject) or mark them as spam. There’s no option to edit comments though.
To install the Wordpress Comments Plugin in Live Writer, download the WordpressPlugin.dll to your desktop and then copy it to the plug-ins folder in your Live Writer installation directory:
C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer\Plugins
You may use the plug-in for moderating comments on self-hosted blogs and also on blogs that are hosted on wordpress.com.
Other than comments moderation, the Live Writer Plug-in for WordPress will also enable support for Custom Fields in your Windows Live Writer. That means you can associate custom fields with your blog posts at the time of publishing right from the Live Writer dashboard.
This will be handy if you use Carousel (featured posts) or even SEO related plugins on your WordPress blog (like the All-In-One-SEO).
Situation: You are working on something important and don’t want your office colleagues to interrupt you during that time. How do you achieve this?
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