Techlife TV gets submissions from readers all the time, send yours in. Allan sent in the Christmas bonus level, but while checking it out, we came upon the coolest 8 Bit Nintendo video we have seen in a while. How many games can you name? Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Tetris…

[youtube]TSBIAGCulDw[/youtube]

8-bit Awesome

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The12 Days of Christmas

by: Straight No Chaser – Indiana University

1+1+1 = 2008.  This first month of the year 2008, the first Techlife column of the year, and “one” of the most unique people to ever walk the earth.  Looks like 2008 will have some uniqueness right off the bat.  In the online edition of Techlife we covered the newest Google toy and tool, as well as a very unique news organization in Minnesota that is really picking up steam.  Visit the site to see these and other interesting articles.  For now let’s meet Leonardo da Digital.
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One of our print readers, Andy K., suggested making the links easier for each print column. It was a great idea! Starting in this column we will be implementing that idea. Do you have ideas? Not sure how to make them happen? Techlife can do a lot. Just ask us. Hit me via email at: techlife [ at ] dkworldwide [dot] com. Do you subscribe to the RSS feed for Techlife? Visit the TechLife weblog where all you need to do is point and click.

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The holidays are over, time for your New Year’s resolutions for your company to come true.  It’s 2008!  One of my resolutions is to meet more readers.  As a marketing and technology proven “venture strategist” I want to meet businesses and organizations that are looking for a way to break out, all it takes is an invitation. Contact me, it’s easy: techlife [at] dkworldwide [dot] com.

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Leonardo da Vinci was a master of hidden messages and code. The label of genius could be applied easily. But how would Leonardo cope in today’s world of the interconnected web? Techlife has uncovered a few gems that would make Leonardo da Vinci drool.First one of Leonardo’s favorite things is codes and hidden messages. And what better way to show that off than this:

Ë™sʃıɐɯǝ ʍǝɟ ɐ ɥʇıʍ Êžsɐʇ-ıʇʃnɯ oʇ pǝǝu I ‘ɐsı⅂ ɐuoW ǝɥʇ ʇuıɐd puɐ ʇıs I s∀

BoingBoing was clever when they brought Leonardo this trick, originally from here. But another idea Leonardo would like is the collaborative nature of people improving on other people’s work. This developer took it one step farther and added capitalization, to allow upside down or flipped text that looks nearly 100% accurate based on unicode.

da Vinci would also love the organic search of the internet, and while researching his upside down text, he might have found Local Font List from the same programmer who added capitalization to the flip text. This unique utility can show all the fonts on your computer using your browser and flash. It works for Windows, Mac and Linux.

The screen shot is a great help to understanding this. Those are some of the fonts on one of the Techlife machines. Local Font List even includes a “print” button to get a useful list of all of the available fonts.

Finally da Vinici was a master linguist. He loved wordplay and using words in code and creatively. Friend of Techlife TV, Chirag Mehta, a modern day Renaissance Man himself, would probably have loved to show off Tip of My Tongue to da Vinci.

This online web application can help decipher partial words that begin or end with letters, help unscramble a word, find synonyms all in real time. Try it today and see the cool, way it starts filtering based on what you type.

My request would be to see Chirag develop this same interface for Wikipedia.

Do you have any cool Leonardo da Vinci web tools? Tell us in the comments.

As a weary web traveler, Techlife’s journey is to uncover the small stuff and review the larger stuff, but how about the things in between. MinnPost is rare gem, a non-profit web startup with a local focus that is ready to expand past their roots. I recently had a chance to sit down with Joel Kramer, editor and founder of MinnPost.com. Joel and his band of writers, akin to Robin Hood and his band of merry men, are forming the next wave of journalism. No filters, they are the company. They believe in bringing good journalism to the reader without corporate oversight.

This unfiltered experience has the feel of a well written newspaper but the flavor Techlife readers will enjoy. Their roster of experienced writers might not be globally known, or even nationally known, but their local flavor of delivering quality reporting to Minnesotans gives them credibility in their local community. As a syndicated columnist who covers technology and life, maybe Joel will consider adding another budding journalist to his crew. Joel’s balance of digitizing the newspaper is something many publishers around the country are watching closely.

Techlife: What is MinnPost.com?

Joel Kramer: MinnPost.com is a high-quality news site for news-intensive people who care about Minnesota . We publish ambitious stories and shorter posts five days a week. The work is done by top-notch professional journalists, many of them with decades of experience.

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