cinnamon thoughts.

Sir Patrick Stewart talking euphoric about the internet, Twitter, iPhone and games. This man is awesome.

GeoMapLookup, the web app to geolocate IP adresses and domain names, got a new icon and custom map marker. Furthermore GeoMapLookup is now on Twitter with an open ear for feature requests and feedback. The latest tweet will be displayed below the info box on geomaplookup.net.

To update the icon of your iPhone home screen link go to http://geomaplookup.net on your device and add the site to your home screen again. (“+” icon in mobile Safari.)

Follow the latest Apple news and keynote live coverage on your iPhone. The link collection at http://next.cinnamonthoughts.org/ provides access to iPhone formatted news and rumor sites and will be updated with links to live coverage once they become available.

Please leave link requests to iPhone friendly Apple news sites (i.e. formatted to display nicely on the iPhone’s size-limited screen) in the comments of this page.

GeoMapLookup now uses the new Google Maps API in version 3.

The iPhone version includes a zoomable and pannable mini map while the desktop version benefits from the new technology and a clean and modern looking map.

Try GeoMapLookup at http://geomaplookup.net

Alex Roman created this wonderful, completely animated film named The Third & The Seventh. This is truly a piece of art.
After watching this I wonder when an average computer will be able to render pictures and animations as realistic as these in real time.

Watch the film in HD or take a look at some stills below.

All images are © Alex Roman and from his animated film The Third & The Seventh

The geolocation app to identify the geographical source of an IP address or host name GeoMapLookup got a new mini map for its iPhone version. It is zoomable and cycles through the most important zoom levels (with a nice CSS animation) by simply tapping on the map. The button to open iPhone’s integrated Google Maps app is still available.

Visit http://geomaplookup.net on your iPhone or iPod touch to enjoy the new feature and several other loading speed improvements and GUI tweaks.

To view the iPhone version in your desktop browser (may not work at all) got to http://geomaplookup.net/?iphone=true.

While moderating (mostly spam) comments on this blog (cinnamonthoughts.org) today, I came across a pingback that looked a bit strange so I followed the link and discovered this:

The blog reposted several of my posts including the one on Reeder and my latest Emojinator update without linking to my blog or giving credit. It looks like they are the original authors of those posts. There’s also reposted content from other websites. The only thing they change is adding ads (which my ad blocker removed in the screenshots above).

So this blog is stealing content and pinging the original blog (this is how I discovered them) and the best thing: the images are hotlinked. The stolen blog posts on their sever still point to the images on my server. This was a great opportunity to fiddle in my .htaccess a bit:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(.*\.)?HOTLINKINGDOMAIN\.com
RewriteRule [^(hotlink)]\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$ wp-content/misc/hotlink.png [NC,R,L]
</IfModule>

With this lines added to the .htaccess file in my blog’s root directory I’m redirecting every included image which is viewed through one of the stolen posts to this image.

I’m curious to see whether this post will be stolen, too. Good thing the images will clearly state where the post is from.

A cool video on YouTube showing the launch of a Saturn V model rocket. Scale 1:10 might sound small but it’s freaking huge for a model rocket!

As a small gift for christmas, I’ve updated Emojinator with some nice changes:

• Added fullscreen mode. To use it, add Emojinator to your home screen: tap “+” in MobileSafari and select “add to Home Screen”.
• Replaced “Send to” buttons with text explaining copy and paste.
• Removed confirm dialog on Emoji selection to speed things up.
• Removed text input field. Displaying Emojis directly in the page for convenient copy and paste.
• My favorite: the title bar uses a WebKit gradient on iPhone/iPod touch instead of an image. Speeds up loading time.
• General GUI improvements.

Check out the new version at http://emojinator.cinnamonthoughts.org from your iPhone or iPod touch!

At space.com you can take a tour of our corner of the cosmos. Like the famous National Geographic poster it gives you a good sense of how small our solar system (and every other) really is. Truly fascinating.

Every Safari user on Mac OS X should take a look at ClickToFlash which makes your browsing through the Flash infested World Wide Web pleasant again.

Using ClickToFlash, all of those icky Flash bits that have infected most webpages on the internets are replaced with a nice, smooth gradient and the word “Flash” set in a nice, pleasing font. When you want to view the Flash, just click on it!

Besides blocking Flash (with an option to whitelist certain sites) ClickToFlash has the very nice feature of displaying YouTube videos in the higher quality H.264 format. It even loads videos with a larger resolution than normal. Be sure to enable this in the preferences right after installing: Safari » ClickToFlash » Preferences.

While you’re in the preferences window you should disable the automatic loading of “Invisible” Flash. Find out why on the developer’s blog.