Recently in technology Category

Max Gladwell dives into social media technologies such as Twitter, Facebook Apps, widgets, Ning and more, and shows how they can be harnessed for the greater good.

Although Southern California looks to escape the brunt of a huge storm moving through the northwest, homeland security expert David Stephenson offers some valuable next-generation communication tips useful during a disaster response situation.  

Setting up mesh networks, using camera phones to establish "situational awareness" and innovative applications of Twitter are part of his entry.

Personal media continues to saturate every niche of our culture; when grandma is managing the digital photos of her grandkids, you know we're reaching a saturation point. 

Regarding editing photos, there is a wide spectrum of solutions, from high-end software like Photoshop and its highly capable little cousin, Elements, to the software that gets included with the little point-and-shoot camera that grandma uses.  There are also a number of web-based photo-editing sites.

Picnik appears to be one of the very best out there, and Flickr concurs.  It's very easy to use, has a number of useful features, such as rotate, crop, resize, color exposure and more, and you can try it for free without signing up for an account. 

When a client of mine has the occasional need to put a photo on their website, and needs to resize it first, I am now recommending Picnik, because it's interface is highly intuitive for even the least tech-literate of the bunch.

The above photo is from stock.xchng (another one of my favorite sites), and is royalty-free.  I found the photo I wanted (original here), and inputted the URL into Picnik, which grabbed the photo for me.  I then played with the color, cropped it, added rounded edges, faded the edges and added a semi-transparent big blue paw print.  Then I saved it to my computer and uploaded it to this site.  It was all easy and free.  Sweet.

The Drupal community is tasked with, in part, creating visibility, use cases and marketing collateral that make the case for Drupal as a framework for architecting new websites, particularly those that involve community and content management.  Michael F., aka "birdmanx35," took a stab at creating elevator pitches for three distinct types of decision makers, and the community helped evolve it.

Developers
(looking for a flexible platform on which to build their websites)
Drupal is an open source content management system that provides for your needs as a web developer. By using Drupal, you save time that you would otherwise be using to start from scratch- and because Drupal is used by so many people, it includes good APIs that tailor to realistic needs. Its abundant repository of additional features is frequently updated, so instead of maintaining code, you can concentrate on development. Drupal has lots of volunteers on hand who are willing to provide you with the information you need to get the job done. Overall, Drupal is a good choice for today's web developers because it provides a quality solution that can fit efficiently into any number of needs.

Managers
(looking for a low-cost and powerful solution to build their next major project)
Drupal is a completely free, open source content management system that many intelligent companies are using today to provide for their needs. Drupal's many features and add-ons allows it to be used for a variety of website needs; perhaps for marketing, internal communications, informational websites, or for social networking purposes. If a needed feature is not currently available, it has a proven community of developers who can be paid to do the work for you. Drupal's access control system means that it can be easily applied to your organizational structure. Overall, Drupal is a good choice for today's companies of any size because it is free, easy, and incredibly flexible.

Web administrators
(looking for an easy way to deliver their content of any type)
Drupal is an open source content management system that is a viable solution for today's web admins. Drupal's easy user interface and abundant feature list means it takes little effort to get lots done efficiently. Drupal provides for all your content needs, including information, images, podcasts, blogs, video, events and calendars, polls, collaborative work, forums, etc. It's extendable nature allows you to quickly add new content types, functionality improvements, and themes. Drupal's extensive features and capability to manage almost any type of content makes it the best solution for the modern website.

Stanford researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to produce 10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion batteries.  A laptop that now runs on battery power for two hours could operate for 20 hours.

Daily Kos diarist jimbo92107 writes: "Even the relatively efficient Li-Ion batteries in the Tesla Roadster weigh almost a third of the car's 2400 pound total weight, and the time for a full recharge is three and a half hours. But just imagine what a full extra magnitude of battery capacity does to that equation. Suddenly, from a battery pack that would weigh around 150 pounds (same as a gas tank!) you could get 500-mile range or better."

Lead researcher Yi Cui, Stanford assistant professor of materials science and engineering, says that the nanowire batteries would require "one or two different steps, but the process can certainly be scaled up.  It's a well understood process."

Way too much yellow for my taste, but Amnesty International relaunched their website, using open-source content management system Drupal.  Of particular note, the site employs language translation features, in this case, English, Spanish, French and Arabic. (hat tip Buytaert)

What is Drupal?  "Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website." 

There are a lot of content management systems (or CMS) out there, some commercial, some free.  Drupal is a powerful freely-available open-source CMS, where the "C" could also stand for community, in that it enables many people to log in, post their own media such as blogs and photos, connect as friends and generally build an online community from the bottom up.

While the software is free, it still takes a fair amount of time and/or money to get a website to do just what you want it to.  Hiring a programmer or team or "Drupal House," you might spend anywhere from $3,000 on up to $20,000+, depending on the complexity of the project.

While this personal website is running on Movable Type, which is a really great CMS that is ideal for blogging, you'll see me talk a lot about Drupal, as I have a number of projects in development right now.