Supernifty - nifty stuff

I’m pleased to announce the release of Audio Tuner for Java enabled mobiles, version 0.3. If you have a Java enabled mobile, e.g. Nokia or Sony, or most other recent mobiles, this means you. Now you can tune your musical instrument wherever you are.

OK, so this is an alpha release. And unfortunately, Supernifty doesn’t have a Java enabled phone to test against. If you try it out, please provide feedback.

Alternatively, if anyone has a mobile they’d like to donate or sell to Supernifty for testing purposes, please get in touch. There are apparently zillions of unused mobiles lying useless in drawers, awaiting such an opportunity.

If you like the idea of testing for money, check out Test Army. It’s a new Supernifty project, and it’s nearing beta. There’ll be tests available, and money to be earnt, in the near future.

But, in the meantime, try out the new audio tuner, and let Supernifty know if it works.

Well, the 2008 Beijing Olympics are over. However, there’s still so much scope for distraction with this new Google Mashup from Supernifty.

The page shows where in the world all the medal winners come from. See which athletes are from your home town.

This will help you know who to look out for down at your local shopping centre.

It’s also an opportunity to learn more about your favorite athlete, where they got started, and how they got to be at the top of their game.

And of course it’s an opportunity to stick it to your neighbouring state/city/county by checking to see who won the most medals.

Check out the Supernifty Olympic Medallist Google Maps Mashup today!

We’ve added a simple new tool to the Supernifty health range - a pulse calculator.

Your pulse rate gives you an indication of your heart’s health - if it is very high, very low or suddenly changes, there may be something wrong.

This simple tool gives you a quick and easy way to determine your pulse, and provides an evaluation of your health, based on your pulse rate.

If you are engaged in a fitness program, consider taking your pulse regularly to see if your pulse improves over time.

Of course, this does not constitute medical advice - consult your friendly Doctor if you have any concerns.

Try it out! Find out what your pulse says about you - are you ultrafit, normal or unfit?

Supernifty has released a new product: Crossword Puzzle Solver.

If you need help solving those last few crossword clues, like solving other word puzzles such as anagrams, or just want a fast offline dictionary, then Crossword Puzzle Solver is just the ticket.

The software contains a complete dictionary, enabling you to

• search for words with missing letters,
• search out anagrams,
• look up word definitions, and
• search the word definitions.

Here’s a sample screenshot:

Crossword Puzzle Solver is a fast, powerful and free addition to your computer’s toolkit. You need never leave a puzzle in disgust again - Try it out!

For all the details regarding the software, please check out the Crossword Puzzle Solver Main Page

I’m pleased to announce the release of Audio Tuner version 0.9.

I’ve added a few new ukulele tunings - namely D tuning, D tuning with low A, and G tuning. This brings the list of instruments in line with Audio Tuner Mobile.

It also seems there was a bug with the upgrade window. I only ever saw this occur on Windows Vista, but maybe it applied to other platforms as well. Anyway, it’s fixed.

If you’ve not upgraded in a while, possibly due to the above upgrade issue, please do so. There have been many improvements, and you will be notified when new and improved versions become available.

As usual, any feedback is welcomed.

I regularly hear of the big wave of excitement surrounding the power of positive thinking, and the practically unbounded benefits such enthusiastic self-praise can bring to its practitioner.

I’ve always been somewhat sceptical, likening it to wearing rose-tinted glasses to convince yourself that your life is in fact awesome.

For instance, if you were stuck at the bottom of an erupting volcano, or had just been jettisoned into space, telling yourself that everything is going swimmingly is surely an exercise in self-deception.

However, perhaps there is something in it.

An experiment involved two groups of victims solving crosswords. For one group, the solution contained aggressive and impolite words, e.g. “obnoxious”, while the other group had nice, polite words in its solution.

On finishing, the subjects would return to the experimenter, only to find him busy in conversation. The true purpose of the experiment was to see which subjects would interrupt the experimenter.

Guess what? 6 out of 7 the polite group didn’t interrupt at all, and on average the one that did interrupt waited 9 minutes, whereas most of the rude group interrupted, typically in under 6 minutes.

And just from doing a crossword containing selected words.

It seems clear that the state of your mind, even if you’re unaware of it, has a big impact on how you act. And state of mind can make the difference between going for a once in a lifetime opportunity, and not taking that chance, and missing it forever.

So, I would suggest making a list of positive phrases and reading them before you start your day. Possibly reading them at the top of your lungs on the morning train.

Example lines:

I am a positive, confident person.
I live my life the best that I possibly can.
I like to visit Supernifty, it makes me glad and smiley.
I welcome today with a happy and open attitude.

Of course, other than no. 3, feel free to adapt to your own particular situation. Wow, I am feeling so madly positive from writing that I think I might go sing some opera on my roof.

There’s so little to lose, and potentially great gain. Try it every day for a week, and see what happens. You don’t even have to buy one of those crazy positive thinking books.

That’s right kemosabe, you can get everything you need, here at Supernifty.

I’m pleased to announce the release of Audio Tuner Mobile 0.8.

Audio Tuner Mobile is a musical instrument tuner that runs on most Windows Mobile devices, including Pocket PCs and Smartphones.

The software actively tunes your instrument by providing feedback as you play the notes, and many instruments are covered: guitar, ukulele, violin, piano, bass guitar, banjo, mandolin, cello and autoharp.

This release fixes a number of important issues related to landscape mobile phones, and adds a number of new tunings for the ukulele.

A summary of the main changes:

• Instrument and note boxes now stretch across the entire screen.
• The application no longer exits unexpectedly, in particular when the full instrument list or note list is opened.

The new ukulele tunings:

• D tuning: A D F# B
• D tuning with low A
• G tuning: D G B E

Feedback is welcomed.

For further details, including downloads, phone compatibility and tutorials, visit the Audio Tuner Mobile Homepage

Alexa is a company that provides a world ranking for all websites on the Internet.

I love this idea.

When I played a lot of tennis I often wished that I could have a world tennis ranking, so I would know how many tennis players I still needed to overtake in my quest for glory.

I imagined a weekly notice from the tennis officials, telling me, Congratulations, your ranking has increased 143,643 places and you are now ranked 8,200,505th in the world.

Unfortunately, world tennis rankings don’t go past 2,000 so my dream of a world tennis ranking remains a dream. Not so, however, the almost as exciting dream of a world website ranking.

Alexa provides toolbars for popular web browsers. Install one, and Alexa will start telling you the ranking of every website you visit, while also adding your browsing habits to its statistics.

There are, of course, many problems with this method of ranking web sites, in particular, webmaster oriented sites get a huge advantage, but I prefer to ignore these trivial weaknesses, and instead concentrate on watching my website climb the rankings, pushing aside less awesome sites.

I’m not sure if visiting your own website yourself adds to your Alexa stats, but just to be sure I tend to visit Supernifty at least 1,000 times daily.

You should do the same. Visit Supernifty that is, not your own undeserving site.

The main problem with the Alexa ranking is knowing what a ranking really means. To help out on this, Supernifty has put together a simple table for evaluating your website, based on its Alexa ranking.

Simply look up your ranking, then check it against the table below.

So now you know how good your site is, and by extension, how good you are.

* Supernifty certified. Stickers available on request.

Supernifty is pleased to announce the release of the BMI Calculator.

Find out if you are considered a healthy weight, and see which celebrity is shaped most like you!

BMI (Body Mass Index) is a simple method used to classify underweight, healthy and overweight adults.

Use our BMI Calculator to dynamically calculate your own BMI, and see a BMI chart showing your BMI status.

We’ve added a bunch of celebrity BMIs, so you can compare your shape to your favourite celebrity, and see which celebrity you are most like. It’s so much fun.

Happily, I am most like Orlando Bloom. Now just to acquire his other physical attributes, and his wealth and success…

Which celebrity are you?

Note that BMI is a very general method of assessing if you are a healthy weight; you can easily be outside the healthy BMI range and still be very healthy.

Supernifty has just had some significant unscheduled downtime. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.

No data has been lost, although some parts of the website may not be working perfectly as everything comes back online.

The data centre hosting the Supernifty servers had a serious fire and explosion, which took out three walls and involved the fire brigade. Fortunately, nobody was hurt.

However, all 9500 servers in the data centre were taken offline as a result of the explosion. Supernifty was unavailable for around 24 hours. Bummer.

Good news: we’re back in action. And some thought to failover options will now be given.