6 am to 9 pm, California time, today

From Evernote Blog:

The new Evernote closed beta is about two months old and we’ve just passed an important milestone: our first one million notes! During this time, we’ve made lots of improvements to the service and we’ll be announcing a few more big things in the next couple of weeks.  Stay tuned.

To celebrate (and to do some stress testing on our registration servers), we’re giving away instant beta accounts to everyone who clicks on this secret url (http://preview.evernote.com/Registration.action?code=1MN0tes) from 6 am to 9 pm, California time, today.  If you miss the time window but want an account, just sign up using the normal beta application and we’ll send you an invitation soon.

If you have tried to view the hidden folders on your iPod touch or iPhone, you’ve probably realized that it is a pretty difficult task to accomplish. After jailbreaking my iTouch, I found myself needing to see the hidden files, so that I could copy things into those directories. I tried several methods and after much trial and error, I’ve found what I believe to be, the easiest way to view the hidden directories.

1. You must first have a jail broken iPod Touch or iPhone and you must be connected to a wireless network. The easiest application, I’ve found to jail break your device is iLibertyX.

2. Install BSD Subsystem. Installer>>System>>BSD Subsystem.

3. You must have SSH installed on your iPod or iPhone to enable FTP. To download this, run the installer app, navigate to System and scroll down to find OpenSSH.

4. Find your device’s IP address. Do this by opening Settings>>Wi-Fi. Click on the blue arrow next to your wireless network’s name.

5. Open your favorite FTP application. Mine happens to be Transmit. Your FTP client must support the SFTP protocol. Use the aforementioned IP address as your server address. Set the port to 22 if your client doesn’t default to that automatically. Set your user id to root and the password will be alpine.

6. Now you’re ready to connect. Please be advised that the first SFTP connection will take about to 30 to 40 seconds to establish. When finally connected you’ll see your devices hidden files.

It’s as simple as that!

When VectorMagic was originally released, I couldn’t believe it was free. I was vectorizing logos and artwork constantly. Then one day, everything changed. As they say; all good things must come to an end.

VectorMagic moved from the Stanford servers to their own dedicated domain. Shortly thereafter the free service ended and VectorMagic converted to a pay service. I was appalled at the prices, so I haven’t used the service since.

Tonight I received an Email from the guys at VectorMagic stating that they have restructured their pricing program and now for only $4.95 per month, you can vectorize and download an unlimited number of files. It seems like their former token-based pricing structure wasn’t working so well for them.

E-Mail From VectorMagic

Vector Magic Unlimited is now available – it’s a new subscription plan featuring unlimited downloads, giving you full tracing freedom without having to pick and choose which results to download.

Sign up now to lock in a price of only $4.95 per month:

There are no signup or termination fees and you can cancel at any time. If you have already purchased tokens, no problem: any remaining tokens in your account are fully creditable towards a subscription.

At roughly the price of a meal at the local fast food restaurant, this plan is a great deal for anyone who would like to trace as few as 2 images or more per month.

We’re very excited to be offering this new worry-free plan and hope that you will find it a great option.

What is Vectorizing?

It is the art of converting raster images to line art images format. Line art images are size independent. That means it can be scaled up and down without losing any quality.

The image will be of same quality no matter what size it is being scaled. To explain it better is to differentiate it to the raster image (bitmap image). Bitmap artwork is comprised of dots (pixels) that represent a graphic image, with each bit or group of bits corresponding to a pixel in the image. When Bitmap image is enlarged, it produces jagged edge and graininess, which is not print friendly. The bitmap file is comprised of a series of dots per inch (dpi) and when you enlarge a bitmap, rather than more dots being added, the existing dots are simply enlarged. The larger the dots get, the blurrier the image will be. Examples of Bitmap images are JPG, TIF, BMP and GIF.

While Vector artwork is simply comprised of lines (wireframe) that represent the objects. Vector images are usually created with the drawing program such as CorelDraw, Adobe Illustrator or Freehand. Increase or reduction in size will produce no pixelization . The combination of one of these programs with an expert digital artist can create a beautiful artwork that can be used on print articles.

• TwitterFox: I have finally settled on a Twitter client. A few days ago I came across a Firefox add-on called TwitterFox. TwitterFox, formerly known as TwitterNotifier, places a small icon on the bottom right status bar of Firefox. Tweets are updated at intervals of your choosing. When new tweets are received, a small popup displays the latest tweet received. You can also choose how long the popup stays visible before disappearing. When you click the “T” icon, you’re presented with a window that displays the latest tweets, and you’ll also get an entry box for updating your own status. View screenshot here.

• TweetDumpr: TweetDumpr is a self-proclaimed “hideous tool” that allows you to export your entire Twitter timeline to a CSV file. This file would be readable by any spreadsheet application. You simply enter your Twitter login, password*, and e-mail address into the TweetDumpr site and soon you’ll receive an email notifying you that your file is ready. I have just tested this service and my notification e-mail & link arrived promptly. I don’t really know what I’ll do with it, but at least I’ll have it for my own record keeping purposes. If you’re worried that your tweets will be deleted, don’t be - nothing will be deleted from your Twitter feed. Also, keep in mind that after you dump your tweets the first time, only the tweets created after that point will be dumped if you use the tool again. * Note: You are supplying your password, so if you’re worried about anything, you’ll want to login to Twitter and change it. I’m not particularly worried about it myself. If someone wants to pretend they’re me, more power to ‘em.