POSTS BY FRANCESCO PRETELLI

  • EBAY SEARCH SCHEDULER 0.1.1 NOW AVAILABLE

    AUTHOR: // CATEGORY: News

    New update available for Ebay Search Scheduler that fixes small bugs.

     

    Download Ebay Search Scheduler

    Report a bug in Ebay Search Scheduler

  • EBAY SEARCH SCHEDULER 0.1.0 NOW AVAILABLE

    AUTHOR: // CATEGORY: News

    After “only” two and half years I’ve updated Ebay Search Scheduler.

    Changelog:

    - Fixed bug with USD currency
    - New Icons
    - Job layout is only one page
    - Various bug fixes

    Download Ebay Search Scheduler

    Report a bug in Ebay Search Scheduler

  • GOODBYE OLD PHONE CALLS, I AM MOVING ON

    AUTHOR: // CATEGORY: Blog

    The time has come.

    From the 1st of July I will communicate only via internet. No more SMS text and more voice calls using the old (and reliable) GSM network. There is no need to use them anymore. We are all connected 24/7, so why should I keep paying for services that I barely use?

    Luckily where I live, it’s possible to subscribe for a internet only package for the price of 99 dollars for 6 months and 12gb of data. This basically means I can use 2gb per month at the price of 16.5 dollars. And 2gb are more than what I need. At the moment I have a plan which include 500mb per month and I barely use 300, since I am always under wifi coverage at home and work.

    Not very expensive in my honest opinion.

    It will not be a big step actually. Text messages are long gone thanks to apps like iMessage, whatsapp, viber, Facebook, etc. And for the calls, well, that’s even easier. I barely make two calls every week. Now I will make then with viber, skype or facetime.

    But what about the people who are not on internet or don’t own a smartphone?

    Wait, who? I am sorry, the 90s are long gone, it’s time to move on. You can communicate with me from your computer or call me directly. Yes because I can still receive text and calls, my phone number will remain the same and nothing will change for you.

    The downside is the reliability and coverage of 3G/4G networks. But I live in a big city where I’ve never encountered any problem at all. And when I will travel I am pretty sure I can find wireless in basically every cafe’.

    I can only hope that more and more people will start doing like me, we are all tired of the unbelievable expensive rates the mobile carriers are always charging to us.

    Because, let me ask you, when was last time you couldn’t use internet to communicate?

  • THE BEST EXPLANATION OF THE BIG BANG THEORY (YET)

    AUTHOR: // CATEGORY: Blog

    Taken from the book “The ant and the Ferrari” written by Kevin Spackman:

    You’ve probably seen the very popular TV series MythBusters, where Jamie and Adam test popular myths to decide if they are ‘Confirmed, Busted or Plausible’. It’s a fun and easy format to follow, so let’s use their approach to begin our investigation.
    In typical MythBusters’ fashion we’ll start by blowing up a car. (They love their explosions!)
    Like Jamie and Adam, we’ll replay the car explosion in ultra-slow motion. When we do we see thousands of fragments flying in all directions: a bit of a door going this way, a wheel going that way. But rather than just observing the overall carnage, we’re going to analyse what happens to each of these pieces, one at a time.

    The best way to do this is to pause the video and follow each fragment as we advance the video frame by frame. Doing this allows us to calculate the speed and direction of motion of every individual piece using the following technique:

    1. We determine the speed of each fragment by seeing how far it moves between successive frames. For example, a door might move 3 metres between two frames while a wheel might move 6 metres. If that happens the wheel must be going twice   as fast because it has travelled twice as far as the door in the same time.
    2. We determine the direction each object is moving in by drawing a line that joins its position as it moves from one frame to the next.

    When we overlay these speeds and directions directly onto the video footage we notice something very interesting. No matter which frame we look at, the fragments furthest away from the car are going the fastest and the items closest to where the explosion began are going the slowest. But it’s even more precise than that. An object twice as far away is going twice as fast. An object 3.24 times as far away is going exactly 3.24 times as fast.

    We also notice that each particle is moving in a direction pointing directly away from one single point. And what’s so special about that point? It’s exactly where the car used to be.

    If we rewind our video and play it back in reverse we find all the fragments fly back together into a single place, at exactly the same time, to form a car. It’s like going back in time. But if any of the directions are misaligned, the objects won’t all meet back at the same place. Similarly, if some of the speeds are too fast those objects will arrive too early and carry on past the central point before the other fragments arrive. Again, we won’t get everything back together in one nice car.

    The only way we can get everything back together in one piece is if:

    - All objects move directly towards a single point. Their angles must be perfectly aligned.
    - The speed of every object is perfectly matched with how far away it is from the central point.
    - Items twice as far away must be going twice as fast. Items 2.41 times as far away must be going 2.41 times as fast. The match of speed and distance must be exact — otherwise they won’t arrive at the same time.

    Now supposing we hadn’t seen the whole video of our car explosion, but were only given a single frame recorded halfway through the explosion. If all the speeds and directions of every fragment were marked on that frame, and they all perfectly matched our requirement of speed and direction, we could reasonably conclude all the fragments must have been in the same place at the same time in the past. That is, they came from a single explosion.

    This brings us to a most surprising and unexpected discovery.

    In the 1930s, astronomer Edwin Hubble decided to measure the speed of the stars and galaxies using the same technology the police use when they check your car’s speed with a radar gun. Hubble was gobsmacked to discover exactly the same pattern with the stars as we’ve just seen with our exploding car: stars that were twice as far away were going twice as fast and galaxies that were 127 times as far away were going 127 times as fast. This was a total shock to him, because at the time everyone expected all the stars to be fixed nicely in their own place in a static Universe.

    Since then, thousands of people have checked literally billions of stars and galaxies using a variety of different speed-measuring techniques — and they always find the match of distance and speed is exact. We can be as confident of the stars’ speed as the police can be of your car’s speed. If we don’t doubt the police radar guns then we shouldn’t doubt the speed of the stars.

    What was even more surprising was to find that all the stars were moving away from a single point, just as the fragments in our car explosion were. They’re all perfectly aligned. This can’t possibly be a coincidence. The only sensible conclusion we can come to is that at some time in the past everything in the Universe was squashed together in one place

    We can easily calculate how long ago that was, by dividing the distances to each star by their speeds. It’s the same technique we use when calculating how long a journey is going to take. We divide the distance of the journey by how fast we’re going to drive. If it’s 300 km and we’re going to drive at an average of 60 km/h then it will take us 300/60 = 5 hours. When we do this calculation for the stars we find the entire Universe — every star and every galaxy — was squashed together into a single point 13.7 billion years ago.

    It’s looking suspiciously like some sort of big explosion took place.

  • TWEET TIME MACHINE 1.3.0 AVAILABLE IN THE APPSTORE

    AUTHOR: // CATEGORY: News

    It is finally available on the appstore the universal version of Tweet Time Machine, compatible with iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

    Changelog:
    - Universal version
    - Bug fixes

    Please let me know if you find some bugs.

  • HOW TO IMPORT YOUR COMPLETE TWITTER TIMELINE WITH TWEET TIME MACHINE

    AUTHOR: // CATEGORY: Blog

    Follow this step-by-step tutorial to import all your tweets inside Tweet Time Machine for iOS:

     

    1. On your computer, go to twitter.com, click the gear icon in the top-right corner and select Settings

    tutorial1

     

    2. Scroll down till the end and press the Request your archive button

    tutorial2

     

    3. Open the email from Twitter and save the tweets.zip file on a folder on your computer

    4. Unzip the previously saved file

    5. Connect your iPhone to the computer and open iTunes

    6. Enter the Apps screen in iTunes, scroll down and select TimeMachine

    7. Click Add…

    tutorial4

     

    8. Browse to the folder where you unzipped the file and select the file tweets.csv

    tutorial3

     

    9. Open Tweet Time Machine on your iOS device, click on the gear icon and press the Import Timeline button

    NB: You need to do this only once, Tweet Time Machine will automatically download the new tweets at startup

  • TWEET TIME MACHINE 1.2.0 AVAILABLE IN THE APPSTORE

    AUTHOR: // CATEGORY: News

    The new version of Tweet Time Machine is ready to be downloaded from Appstore.
    What’s new in this version:

    - It’s now possible to import your complete twitter timeline downloaded from twitter.com
    - Twitter API update
    - Bug fixes

    Tweet Time Machine in Appstore: http://goo.gl/txW9f
    How to import your complete twitter timeline: https://bitbucket.org/fpretelli/twitter-time-machine-ios/wiki/Home
    Submit a bug, feature request: https://bitbucket.org/fpretelli/twitter-time-machine-ios/issues

  • TWEET TIME MACHINE 0.4.0 NOW AVAILABLE

    AUTHOR: // CATEGORY: News

    As promised, I’ve released a new update for Tweet Time Machine for Windows.
    Is now possible to import your complete Twitter timeline downloaded from Twitter website.
    Simply click on the import button, change file type to Twitter Timeline (csv) and select the tweets.csv file included in the zip package downloaded from the website.

    Download Tweet Time Machine 0.4.0

  • TWEET TIME MACHINE IOS PULLED FROM APPSTORE

    AUTHOR: // CATEGORY: News

    I’ve temporary pulled Tweet Time Machine from the Appstore because the current version doesn’t support Twitter API 1.1, the update has already been sent to Apple and I hope it will be approved before the end of this week.

    Tweet Time Machine for Windows will probably be available tomorrow or the day after with the Twitter API 1.1 support and the ability to load your entire twitter timeline.

     

  • STATUS UPDATE – MARCH 2013

    AUTHOR: // CATEGORY: News

    A few updates about the apps and the website:

    As you can see, the website is redesigned, I’m using a very cool vintage theme and I’ve switched to WordPress

    Tweet Time Machine is available in the appstore, here is the link: http://goo.gl/txW9f , I’ve already submitted and update to make it compatible with the new Twitter API and with the ability to load your complete twitter timeline downloaded from twitter. It should be available for download at the end of this week.

    Tweet Time Machine for windows will be updated in the next days to support the new Twitter API and the ability to load your complete timeline.

    For any issue or suggestion please contact me.

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