tech-logg

tech-logg Bookmark Roundup, 4/9/2011

2011-09-15T13:37:00.000+01:00

A free, online audio and video converter. Takes URLs or files up to 200Mb. and supports videos from YouTube, Metacafe, Break, Dailymotion, Devour, Google Video, TeacherTube, SevenLoad, CollegeHumor and Vimeo. As for file file formats, it'll handle iPhone, iPod touch, iPod, iPad, Blackberry, PSP, Android, Windows Phone 7, Zune, 3GP, AAC, DICOM, MPEG4, AVI, FLV, MKV, MP3, MP4, Smartphone, MXF, WMV, ASF, WMA, VP8, OGG, H.263, H.264, and more!

tags: web utility free video audio conversion

Notes.io

A seriously simple online note taking and sharing application. Just write stuff down and then just grab a shortened link to it. With attachments and e-mail facilities in the pipeline, this is worth checking out.

tags: web free note application sharing

coolendar

A nice, simple and free, online calendar, to-do list and planner. As well as a web application, it's supported on Android, iOS, Kindle and even by e-mail and it does it all via a simple list. Definitely one to try out.

tags: web application calendar list gtd free productivity ios android kindle

MiMedia

An online storage and backup service offering 7Gb space for free. You can upload and share files, stream music and video and backup your digital devices. Windows, iPhone and iPad clients are available with Mac OS X support coming soon.

tags: free service web storage security

Bitdefender Safego

Free, anti-scam, anti-phishing and anti-malware protection for you and your friends on Facebook and Twitter.

For Twitter, it scans for and detects fake profiles set up to flood your account with spam. It also filters your Twitter timeline for tweets that may contain malicious links to phishing or malware pages. It can protect your Facebook account from all sorts of e-trouble: scams, spam, malware and private data exposure.

tags: free service web privacy facebook twitter

What do you love?

Get all your relevent Google searches on one page. Just enter a search term and get links to everything Google does - web, images, videos, blogs, map, books, news, translations, trends, etc.

tags: search web blog image video portal map

Graphity Diagram Editor

A free, full-featured, online diagram and flowchart designer/editor application.

tags: editor application graphic free web design

HTML Tidy

An online tool for checking and cleaning up HTML source files. It's especially useful for finding and correcting errors in deeply nested HTML or for making very messy code legible once more.

tags: web development utility free

Subtle Patterns

A collection of 80 high quality web design patterns and textures for you to use freely. New patterns added weekly.

tags: design web texture library free

Bleeping Computer

An online community devoted to providing free original content, consisting of Windows computer help and tutorials, in such a way that the beginning computer user can understand.

tags: windows support security forum software freeware utility

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

tech-logg Weekly Bookmark Roundup, 28/8/2011

2011-08-29T23:44:00.000+01:00

Should have posted this yesterday but here it is anyway. Definitely a mixed bag this week - online storage, Office file and PDF converters, a couple of productivity tools and a DVD ripper.

Online Storage Services

Splarchive

Upload Once. Save Forever! A useful, free service that converts document files to PDFs and stores them in your own private "cloud". You can then search and display your files from any device.

The only limitation I can see is that you have to e-mail your files to them, which probably keeps their storage requirements down a bit.

tags: free web service conversion utility file pdf e-mail

ZenOK

An online backup storage service, offering 21Gb of free storage with the emphasis on backups.

If this one ever gets off the ground, it should be worth trying as that free capacity blows the alternatives out of the water but, a week after registering, I still have no account so can't say much more about it. We wait in hope...

tags: free storage service file security web

File Converters

Adobe CreatePDF

A free, online PDF file utility that can create PDFs, convert PDFs to Word or Excel and even combine PDFs.

PDF to Word Online

A free, online utility to convert PDF files to Word documents.

tags: conversion file office utility free web pdf

Investintech DOCX to DOC

If you don't have Microsoft Word 2007 or later and receive a file with a .docx extension, then this free, online utility will let you convert those files back to the earlier .doc format.

DOCX to DOC Converter Online

A simple, online .docx to .doc conversion utility that opens the way to a reasonably wide suite of free Office document conversion utilities.

tags: conversion file office utility free web

Productivity Tools

2-plan Desktop

What looks like a pretty comprehensive and free project management application for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Well worth checking out if you don;t want to shell out for a commercial solution.

tags: application software freeware productivity gtd Linux macintosh windows

Sandglaz

A free, online and very free-form to-do/task manager application. There are loads of these out there but I think I'll give this one a try - it looks much more usable than some I've seen.

tags: web application free productivity gtd

The rest...

AdBlockVideo

A free plug-in/extension for Mozilla Firefox that can block video ads on popular sites.

tags: software web video utility freeware macintosh windows Linux

BDlot DVD ISO Master

Free Windows software to decrypt and backup regular and encrypted DVDs as ISO files. Looks like a decent alternative to DVDFab HD Decrypter. should that application ever vanish.

tags: freeware windows utility dvd video

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my collected links are here.

tech-logg Bookmark Roundup, 21/8/11

2011-08-22T00:18:00.000+01:00

Another mixed bag this week - online file sharing, a couple of Android utilities, developer tools, news aggregators, Google goodies and more...

Diglo

A online file sharing service offering unlimited downloads. Upload and download photos, movies, music, documents and many other file types. Free users may see some limitations as regards bandwidth and capacity and any files not accessed for 90 days may be deleted!

tags: web free service file storage sharing twitter

Lookmobileon.net

Left your Android phone at home? This really useful utility gives you secure web access to your SMS messages, calls log, contacts and more. Also, instant web notifications inform you in real-time about calls and texts.

tags: android freeware software service web sms mobile

Lookout Security and Antivirus

Protect your Android phone or tablet with this free, award-winning anti-malware and security utility. It protects against malware and viruses, can backup your data and even locate your phone if it's lost or stolen.

* CNET ‘Must-have app!’, PCWorld ‘5 out of 5 Stars!’, TechCrunch ‘Top 10 Best Free Apps’ *

tags: utility security android software freeware

BT:Engage

Want to design your own theme for Firefox or Internet Explorer? Well, this (currently) free, online application will let you do just that. Give your browser a makeover or impose your own branding on it.

tags: web utility free design

QipLi

If you know a bit of HTML and need a single web page published quickly, then this free service will let you do just that. It's pretty bare-bones but fills the niche nicely.

tags: web design free development service

Mac|Life

A well-updated Apple-oriented magazine site with news, reviews, how-tos and features on Mac, iPhone, iPod, iPad and Apps.

tags: iphone ipad macintosh ios ipod news review guide

Thoora

A free, customizable news aggregator. Thoora explores the entire blogosphere, Twittosphere, other social media sites and thousands of traditional media sources and then uses over 100 signals to filter, rank, and deliver that content to you for your refinement into whatever topics you want.

tags: web media news social free service

Find People on Google+

A Google+ directory - find new friends or apps and get yourself a Google+ widget for inclusion on web sites, blogs, profiles, etc.

tags: social directory free web google+

PC.DE Icons

10 sets of 1000 high-quality, free (Creative Commons) PNG icons in sizes 16x16 and 32x32 for bloggers and web designers to use in private and commercial projects.

tags: icon design free library

File Repair

A useful, freeware Windows file repair utility. It can repair corrupted MS Office documents, PDFs, archives, graphics, videos and audio files.

tags: windows freeware software support utility file

Google Takeout

Heaven forbid that the mighty Google should ever fall...but, just in case, you can now download an archive of your Google data - your profile, Buzz, contacts, Picasa Web Albums and Google+ stream, circles and +1s.

tags: web service google+ free photography storage security

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Joining Video File Segments Without Re-encoding

2011-08-16T22:54:00.001+01:00

Have you ever downloaded a video in multiple segments or converted a double sided or dual-disc DVD, which leaves you with two video files? Ever wondered if you could simply join these files together for seamless playback?

If you're still reading, then I assume you do. Well, same here and I wanted a tool to do the job that didn't require a degree in video production techniques and of course, if it was free, then all the better.

After much searching and experimentation, I found a few free utilities available to do just that. There are also loads that either don't work as they say they will, are just too complicated or insist on re-encoding the video, which almost always results in some loss in quality.

There are a few provisos to attaining that no re-encoding goal in that all segments to be joined must be encoded in the same way, have the same bit-rate, same resolution, etc.

So, here are my recommendations for joining/concatenating the more common video file types…

Hint: before joining files, make sure they're all in the same folder and that each file is numbered in joining sequence. e.g. video1.avi, video2.avi, etc.

ASF, WMV

For ASF and WMV files, there's AsfBinWin. a Windows utility for cutting out fragments, joining, editing and repairing ASF files. It can operate on any ASF, WMA and WMV files and it does it all without re-encoding.

Joining ASF or WMV files with it is easy…

Use the Select files from: … button on the right to locate the folder containing the desired file segments.
Highlight the desired files in the order you want to join them in and click on the ←←← button to move the files to the List of input files: pane on the left. The program will check all is okay and number the files in colour-coded order.
Under Destination: select a destination and file name for the joined file. The program will default to out.asf.
Click on the Cut / Copy / Join button.

AVI

For AVI files, there's VirtualDub, a video capture/processing utility for Windows. Joining video segments isn't really what this program was designed for but it does it so simply and, with the right settings, without re-encoding…

Select the Direct stream copy option from the Video menu.
Select the Direct stream copy option from the Audio menu.
Use the Open video file… option from the File menu to open the first file in the sequence.
Use the Append AVI segment… option from the File menu to add additional segments in order. If the program warns you that the audio bit-rates don't match, then use the Full processing mode option from the Audio menu. It'll take a wee bit longer to process but not that much.
Use the Save as AVI… option from the File menu to choose a file name and destination and to begin the joining process.

If you're running Mac OS X, then try AVITools. The interface isn't exactly intuitive and the unregistered version is a bit annoying to use but it will join identically encoded files. If it works for you, then paying the really cheap registration would be worth it.

FLV

For joining FLV (Flash Video) you can try FLV Joiner or SUPER but to achieve lossless joining, the video file formats must be identical.

MKV

Get yourself MKVToolnix, a set of tools to create, alter and inspect Matroska files under Linux, Unix and Windows and it can also handle MP4 files but the output will be saved as MKV.

Open the first file in the sequence.
Click on the Append button to add the next file. Repeat until all segments have been added.
Click on the Mux Now button.
Save the file.

Regardless of the site's statement that the Mac OS X version of MKVToolnix requires MacPorts, there's a native version for Mac OS X 10.5 and above available from http://jonthn.free.fr/MKVtoolnix/

Another option is MKVTools for Mac OS X. Again, like AVITools, the interface is a bit confusing but it'll do the job. It's worth noting that, at the time of writing, the developer was working on a new version and only the old one is available for download.

MP4, M4V

MP4Box for Windows should be able to do the trick for MP4 and M4V files here but it's a command-line tool (life's too short) but, even with attempts using both popular GUI front-ends My MP4BoxGUI and Yamb, I just couldn't get it to work with any of the video files I had.

However, I did have some success with MP4Tools, a sister application to AVITools and MKVTools for Mac OS X.

MOV

If you have a QuickTime Pro registration, then you can easily join MOV files using QuickTime Player…

Open the first file in the sequence.
Move the insertion point to the end of the movie.
Open the next file in the sequence.
Select the entire movie using the Select All option from the Edit menu.
Select the Copy option from the Edit menu.
Activate the original/first file movie window and select the Paste option from the Edit menu.
If you have more segments to add, then repeat steps 3 to 6 until done.
Select the Save As… option from the File menu and save the new, concatenated movie.

You can use this method for any format that Quicktime supports but it'll always want to save as a .mov file.

It should be noted that SUPER claims to be able to join identically encoded files of any input format it supports so it'd be worth trying on any of the above formats.

PS Just to be clear, I've tried AoA Video Joiner, Yamb/MP4Box, Avidemux, All Free Video Joiner and a few others but all of them failed in the task for various reasons.

PPS Some very useful sources of information are the guides and tutorials from VideoHelp.com, AfterDawn, and Doom9.net.

I'd always be happy to hear of any other similar tools or better methods of joining video files.

tech-logg Weekly Bookmark Roundup, 15/8/11

2011-08-14T15:30:00.012+01:00

A bit of a mixed bunch of techie stuff this week.

Display Calibrator
tags: web free utility hardware support video

This web based tool is designed to help you calibrate your monitor, mobile screen or hand-held device display. The on-screen calibration pattern will automatically switch appropriately according to the screen size of your mobile, monitor or your hand-held device.

iClarified
tags: macintosh ipad ios ipod iPhone news guide

An Apple-oriented news site with Apple news and a selection of tutorials for Apple hardware and software.

Hide My Ass!
tags: web service free privacy e-mail file storage sharing

A free web proxy service to let you surf anonymously on-line, hide your IP address, secure your internet connection, hide your internet history and protect your on-line identity.

Comes with a very useful real-time database of free, working, public web and IP:PORT proxies and free, anonymous e-mail and file uploads.

DropIt
tags: utility freeware windows file software

A useful little Windows freeware utility to automate the sorting and filing of files and folders. Drop a group of assorted files and/or folders onto the floating DropIt image and it can sort them to defined destination folders, eventually compress or extract them, open them with associated programs or do other preconfigured actions.

You can configure DropIt to do nine different actions on files and folders dropped on it...Move, Copy, Compress, Extract, Rename, Open With, List, Delete and Ignore and it can filter by name, extension, location, size and/or date. You can even save sets of patterns in profiles and associate a profile to each desired folder, to scan monitored folders at a defined time interval.

Unicodinator
tags: web development writing reference

A web utility that lets you visually navigate through Unicode blocks and codepoints 0000 through DFFF. It can be used to identify a particular character, understand the various Unicode blocks, find shapes to use in non-image icons, or simply to enjoy the beauty of human writing forms.

All above posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Weekly Bookmark Roundup - 7/8/2011

2011-08-07T15:31:00.005+01:00

Primadesk
Free web portal to give a single sign-on for all your online content. Supports Facebook, Flickr, Yahoo, DropBox, Google & much more.
tags: free web service facebook google+ dropbox
Wiibeez Multiple Search Engines
Directory of web, film, music and file search engines.
tags: web search directory file film music
Minus
Web service to make sharing pictures, documents, music, videos and files simple, instant, and free.
tags: free service web storage file sharing photo video audio
Cloud Experience
Secure, online file syncing, storage and sharing service. 10Gb for free.
tags: web service free security storage sharing file dropbox
Encode
Online video converter. DropBox compatible, can extract audio & has a free option.
tags: video audio conversion web utility dropbox
VectorStock
Royaly-free vector graphics, icons and clipart.
tags: stock design art clipart icon
TunnelBear
Easy, fast and free VPN access to US & UK restricted content.
tags: free internet networking security usa uk service macintosh windows
mınutes.io
Free, online minute taking application. Really handy for meetings.
tags: free web application writing gtd productivity
FileStork
Free web service to allow DropBox users to request files from anyone.
tags: free storage sharing service web file dropbox
Amahi Home Server
Open-source software to run your own cloud storage, streaming and applications server.
tags: web freeware opensource storage application networking windows server
boxify.me
Free web service that allows you to upload files you'd like to share with others. No sign-up needed.
tags: free storage sharing service web file
UploaderBOX
Free, online service to upload and share files up to 1GB in size.
tags: storage sharing service web free file

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Recovering Windows Software Keys

2010-07-07T13:01:00.003+01:00

If you ever need to recover a Windows-related CD installation key, these wee portable (no install needed) and free utilities could be useful…

SoftKey Revealer

Recover Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP/2003/Vista/7 32-bit(x86) product keys.
Recover Microsoft Office XP/2003/2007 product keys.
Recover over 700 software product keys.

If you want to recover a key for a game, then use GameKey Revealer.

Nirsoft ProduKey

ProduKey is a small utility that displays the ProductID and the CD-Key of Microsoft Office (Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Office 2007), Windows (Including Windows 7 and Windows Vista), Exchange Server, and SQL Server installed on your computer.

You can view this information for your current running operating system, or for another operating system/computer - by using command-line options.

The Nirsoft site has a wealth of free and extremely useful Windows-related utilities and is well worth exploring if you like that kind of thing.

Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder

The Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder is a freeware utility that retrieves your Product Key (CD key) used to install windows from your registry. It also has a community-updated configuration file that retrieves product keys for many other applications. Another feature is the ability to retrieve product keys from unbootable Windows installations.

If the free utilities above can't recover the key you need, then you may want to look at the shareware Recover Keys utility, which can check for over 1,100 product keys.

Digitally Framing Photographs

2009-07-26T19:40:00.011+01:00

I've been experimenting with adding coloured frames to some of my photographs on Flickr. What colour or style of frame and matte to use is very subjective and what suits me might not suit anyone else but I thought I'd give it a go to try and enhance the on-screen display of some of my pics.

After some trial and error I've decided on a formula to work out the size of the frame and matte. The frame width is calculated as the width of the narrowest axis (in pixels) * 0.032. I've no real scientific or artistic reason for the choice but it works for me. So, for example, a photograph measuring 4000 * 2000 would produce a frame width of 64 pixels with the matte width being twice that at 128. If I wanted to use a double matte for an edge highlight, then I'd calculate that width using a factor of 0.004.

Bearing in mind that I'm just trying to enhance the on-screen display a bit, I decided to go for a plain-coloured frame, no wood-grain or textured finishes, just a flat colour. After a bit of research that seemed to suggest that the best colour to use would be one that complements the colours in the photograph, I decided to use a site I'd mentioned a few years ago to calculate the best colours - Whats Its Color.

Whats Its Color is an image-color processing utility that'll give you an image's primary and complementary dominant colours, how many visually unique colours there are in it and the top ten visually unique colours used. All very useful when trying to choose frame, matte and highlight colours around an image.

Choosing which colours to use is also quite simple. The frame gets the complimentary colour and I pick a highlight colour from the image for the matte, lightening it a bit if necessary. For a highlight edge, I'd pick the colour closest to the main subject of the image or one of the top-ten colours. As I said before, it's all a matter of personal taste so whatever works, works.

If you're just interested in experimenting with framing without actually editing your photographs, then have a look at the BigHugeLabs Mat tool. It'll let you add a matte and frame border as a percentage of your choice of the original image and has a few extra bells and whistles like bevelled edges and credits.. It's also compatible with Flickr, Photobucket and Facebook.

Of course, if anyone knows of a recognised way to calculate all of the above, I'd be grateful to hear it. Also happy to take comments on any of those that I've framed on my photostream as well.

Related Posts: Whats Its Color

myPod Apps

2009-04-03T17:40:00.001+01:00

myPod Apps offers a few, very useful freeware utilities if you happen to own an iPod or iPhone…

Pod to PC is a freeware utility that lets you copy and recover music, videos and playlists from any iPod, iPhone or iPod touch to a Windows PC and iTunes.

Use it to…

copy any music or video files from any iPod onto your computer.
recover your music into iTunes after a computer crash,.
preview music and movies on any iPod before transferring into your iTunes library.
easily copy a whole or partial playlist from any iPod into iTunes.

Comes with an Automatic Transfer button to instantly select, then transfer all songs on an iPod that are not already in your iTunes Music Library and you can prevent duplicate transfers as tracks already in iTunes are indicated with a blue check.

Pod to Mac is a freeware utility that lets you copy and recover music, videos and playlists from any iPod, iPhone or iPod touch to an Apple Macintosh and iTunes.

See Pod to PC above for a list of capabilities.

Pod Photo Transfer is a freeware utility that lets you transfer photos from an iPod photo or iPod video to a Windows PC.

I suspect that it's been superceded by the two utilities above as both can transfer photos and videos from any iPod that supports them.

Related Posts: DiskAid - Disk Enable Your iPhone And iPod Touch, iPod -> Folder, Access Your iPod!

iPaper, A Mulit-platform Web Document Viewer

2009-03-13T12:32:00.005Z

iPaper is a rich document format built for the web. Built with Adobe Flash, iPaper will display documents in the same way regardless of whether you're using Windows, MacOS, or Linux. Your readers no longer have to download files or extra software to view your documents.

You can convert just about any major document format into iPaper, including Word docs, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs,OpenOffice documents, and PostScript files. Supported formats include:

Adobe PDF (.pdf)
Adobe PostScript (.ps)
Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx)
Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps, .pptx)
Microsoft Excel (.xls, xlsx)
OpenOffice Text Document (.odt, .sxw)
OpenOffice Presentation Document (.odp, .sxi)
OpenOffice Spreadsheet (.ods, .sxc)
All OpenDocument formats
Plain text (.txt)
Rich text format (.rtf)

Once you've uploaded your documents and converted them to iPaper, you can publish them to Scribd, a huge online library of user-generated documents. Scribd documents are indexed by major search engines, so you can broaden your audience and share your creative works with the world.

Scribd's iPaper document viewer is embeddable in any website or blog. Whether you have a few documents or a million, Scribd has tools to help you convert, publish and manage them better than ever before.

You can even send documents as attachements to Scribd via email and have them deliver links to the converted files to your recipients via iPaper@Scribd. That way, the recipients can view the documents in their browser without downloading the file. Of course, they can opt to download the original if they want to as well.

All of this is very nice but the limitaton of having to use the Scribd servers to convert and host your documents will limit the spread of iPaper as a web-wide tool. Fine for personal and small website use but corporates and goverment sites won't look at it until they can utilise the technology inside their own networks.

Picasa For Mac Looking Closer

2008-12-31T17:10:00.005Z

The Googling Google blog is touting some news that should have most Mac fans sit up - "Google to launch Picasa Mac at Macworld 2009?"

Sure it's only another rumour in a long line of rumours about Picasa for Macintosh but we're ever hopeful that one of these will eventually bear fruit. Not that Apple's iPhoto is bad, it's actually pretty good, but it isn't free like Picasa. You have to pay for upgrades to iLife and frankly that sucks if, like me, it's the only application in that suite you use.

So, maybe very soon now, we'll be able to compare iPhoto and Picasa directly on the Mac!

More Book Stuff

2008-12-29T14:33:00.010Z

Having already posted an article of what to do with books other than read them,
Books And What To Do With Them!, I thought that it was time to add a few more options for book-lovers to that list…

Book Suggestions

Several sites have emerged that attempt to offer the avid reader suggestions for what to read next, based on various formulae. Whether they're any good at doing it or are just trying to push books they can sell you will depend on trying them out. Here are a few worth checking out…

Whichbook - This site presents the reader with a list of paired criteria like happy or sad, funny or serious, safe or disturbing, short or long, etc. You can then use a slider to choose the level between each pair that suits what kind of book you want to read next. If that scenario doesn't suit, then you can try choosing the character, plot and setting. For example, you get to choose your main character's race, age, sexuality and gender and you can even make him or her an alien. There are seven plot types to pick from and you can choose to set the story anywhere in the world.

What Should I Read Next - This uses a much simpler system in that you enter a book you like and the site will analyse its favourites database of over 47,000 books to suggest what you could read next. It produces the recommendations based purely on collective taste of its registered readers. When books are entered into the same favourites list, they become associated with each other and the more often particular books appear on different lists, the stronger that association becomes. Over time the recommendations should get better and better as the database grows.

BookLamp - This site suggests books through an analysis of writing styles similar to the way that Pandora.com matches its listeners to new music. BookLamp allows you to find books with a similar level of tone, tense, perspective, action, description, and dialog - while at the same time allowing you to specify details like… half the length. It’s supposedly impervious to outside influences, like advertising, that impact most socially driven recommendation systems, and isn’t reliant on a large user base to work. It's still in private beta but looks promising (and my name's down).

More Cataloguing

BookHuddle is another free book cataloguing site but with a more social networking slant to help you discover, organize, and share book information. It also includes reviews, discussion forums and you can even set up or join book clubs in there.

Shelfari titles itself as a free social network for book lovers. It lets you create a virtual shelf to show off your books. You can then see what your friends are reading and discover new books or at least that's the general idea. It also has groups that you can join to keep the social aspect going.

If you want to catalogue more than just books, then there are more general collection list sites like Listology and iTrackmine.

More Swapping

BookHopper - a free, swap-by-post book service. It is international but only allows swapping within your own national boundaries to keep postage costs down. Like similar services, you can request a book when you meet certain criteria. Here you need to offer at least 10 books and leave up-to-date feedback. There are also limits on how many books you can request in a given time period.

WhatsOnMyBookShelf - a book trading community that allows members to exchange their books using a simple credit system. Users maintain their own profile page with friends, book inventory and wishlists. For every 5 books registered you will receive one credit as a promotion and each book registered is designated a credit value based upon its new book price. Users request a book by redeeming some of their credits to order the book from the current holder, who then gets those credits.

Well, that's enough on books for the moment. I was going to add a bit on book price comparison engines but maybe later.

Related Posts: Books And What To Do With Them!

XMind - Mind Mapping And Brainstorming For Free

2008-11-14T12:28:00.006Z

XMind, a provider of visual thinking and collaborative software solutions and services for brainstorming, idea capture, content sharing, and project management, has released an open-source version of their award-winning mind-mapping application.

With the goal of making XMind more accessible to a broader audience and more powerful for professional users, XMind is making available both a royalty-free open source edition, XMind 3, and a subscription-based professional edition, XMind Pro 3. Both editions are enabled for online sharing and collaboration via Share.XMind.Net, a new web service that allows XMind users to share their mind maps and other visual thinking content with a Web 2.0 style online community.

XMind is available for Windows, Mac OS X and also has a Java-based, portable version that can run under both of those and Linux. There is a alos a Pro version XMind Pro subscribers have full access to all updates, online support, all pro features including privately sharing, inline presentation, exporting to PDF/Word/Powerpoint, Gantt charts with task topics and more.

Related Posts: PersonalBrain MindMapping, Online Mind-Mapping

Clocking IT - Free, Web-based Project Management

2008-11-12T17:59:00.005Z

Long have I searched for a free, web-based project management solution that offers no limits and team collaboration facilities but, up till now, that search has been fruitless. Yes I've checked out activeColab but it isn't really free and then there's Project2Manage but I didn't find it rich enough in features.

Clocking IT does all of the above and for free as well. It offers unlimited online project storage and with it you can plan your projects, see your schedule, know if you're slipping behind and why and it can send out notifications via email, RSS & iCal. It also includes time tracking and extensive reports to help you show your clients exactly what you've done and for how long.

The main iterface is the dashboard, which is fully customizable for whatever information you need and it automatically updates. You can even add Google Gadgets to it as well. You can visualize your project plans with intercative GANTT chart too.

It's available in English, French, Spanish, Basque, Italian, German, Dutch, Polish, Hebrew, Brazilian Portuguese, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish.

OCR Terminal - Free, Online OCR Scanning

2008-11-11T17:45:00.001Z

Thanks to blogger Sarab who commented on my erroneous article for Qipit, we now know that there is a true, online OCR scanning service available…

OCR Terminal is a free online Optical Character Recognition (OCR) service that allows you to convert scanned images and PDF documents into editable and searchable text documents. It accurately preserves formatting and layout of documents. It was built to provide the user with a free and easy way of performing OCR without having to install new software or having to pay for it. Automatic layout extraction and segmentation of image areas ensure that the page layout and formatting of the document is preserved accurately.

OCR Terminal supports all popular document image formats including PDF and multi-page TIFF captured as scanned images, photographs, or even screenshots. Extracted text can be downloaded in TXT, DOC, XML or RTF formats or directly e-mailed with a thumbnail of the uploaded image.

The site currently allows for text extraction only from English language documents, but they are working on extending this functionality across other languages as well. They are also currently working on a desktop client that will allow users to upload the document by dragging and dropping all the TIFF and PDF files into the client and get back perfectly formatted Word files.

Microsoft Image Composite Editor

2008-09-24T10:30:00.001+01:00

Microsoft Research are usually worth keeping an eye on as they're known for producing some very nifty bits of Windows software and this time their Interactive Visual Media Group has rolled out the Image Composite Editor or ICE to shorten the name a bit. ICE is an advanced panoramic image stitcher and, like most of the amazingly cool stuff that emerges from Microsoft Research, it's free.

Okay, you can already create panoramic images for free in Windows Live Photo Gallery, and it's very good at it too, but if you're looking for that bit more functionality and control and don't really want to have to shell out for a commercial panorama tool or delve into the free but complex Hugin, then ICE is looking very nice indeed.

ICE has state-of-the-art stitching and exposure blending algorithms and allows advanced camera orientation adjustment. It can also output to more formats and with more control over compression levels than Windows Live Photo Gallery but it's still so easy to use.

All you need to do is drop in a set of overlapping photographs of a scene from a single location and ICE creates a high-resolution panorama, incorporating all of your images at full resolution. You can choose from several algorithms for camera motion or let it choose automatically. Once the images have been stitched, you can automatically crop off the uneven edges or do it manually to suit your own image preferences.

Once you're happy with the stitch and crop, then you can then save your panorama in a wide variety of formats, from common ones like JPEG, PNG, Windows BMP and TIFF to the new-ish HD Photo format and multi-resolution tiled formats like HD View and Silverlight Deep Zoom. You can even choose to scale the exported image if you want to.

Versions of ICE are available for both x86 and x64 Windows systems with .NET 2.0 or above.

Windows Live Lives

2008-09-23T23:28:00.002+01:00

When Microsoft released their free Windows Live suite of applications and services, I was in there pretty quickly and started writing this blog post but it never got done as other stuff cropped up that kept my focus off of it.

Still, it's definitely worth a mention now that they've released a set of beta updates for new versions of most of the suite, which provides a single sign-in access to the following web services…

Hotmail: Stay connected anywhere with your web-based e-mail account.
Spaces: Share your world online on your own web space.
SkyDrive: 1Gb of free storage to host or share your files online.
Events: Plan your event. Send invitations. Share photos.

…and on top of that they give you the following suite of applications…

Mail: Access your multiple e-mail accounts in one place.
Messenger: Connect, share, and chat online.
Toolbar: Easy access to Windows Live services from any web page.
Photo Gallery: Get creative and share your photos and videos.
Writer: Easily publish pictures, videos, and other rich content to your blog.

One more thing on offer is Windows Live OneCare, an all-in-one PC security and support suite to provide protection against viruses, spyware, intrusions, hackers, etc., optimize your system and hard drive and provide scheduled backup facilities. However, it isn't free but you can try it for 90 days before they'll want some wonga. It costs £37.99 a year to support up to three PCs on OneCare.

A few of the services like Hotmail and Messenger are already well known but what drew my attention was the new stuff like Photo Gallery and Writer…

Windows Live Photo Gallery

Windows Live Photo Gallery is essentially Microsoft's answer to Google's Picasa and, having had a play with it, I'm pretty impressed so far. Like Picasa, you can use it to organize and store your photos as well as adjust settings like exposure, brightness, shadows, redeye, colour, detail and crop the image, etc. Not a lot different here but I actually found the shadow and highlight adjustments more flexible than in Picasa. You can also publish your images to your Spaces photos and Flickr or e-mail images in a choice of sizes or burn images to CD/DVD directly.

What really got my interest in this application was the fact that I'd read a while back that Microsoft would be including the capability of creating panoramic images. So, they have indeed and all you do is select the source images and choose a menu command. Nothing else is required as the application analyses the images and builds the panorama with no further input from you; no selecting matching anchor points or anything like that; it just works. The following panorama was made from three images taken hand held from our hotel balcony in Portugal last year…

The only complaint I have about it is the fact that there's no option to adjust the default JPEG file save compression settings and those must be set at about 50% as any edited file seems to be much smaller than the original. The workaround here is to save the panorama as a TIFF and then use something else to convert it to JPEG if desired.

Windows Live Writer

Windows Live Writer is a desktop application that makes it easy to publish rich content to your blog. It can publish to most major blog services including Windows Live Spaces, SharePoint, Wordpress, Blogger and many others. Even if you don't yet have a blog (where have you been?), Writer can help you set one up.

With Writer, you can easily create a compelling blog post and insert photos and videos, maps, tags and lots of other cool content. I comes with powerful editing features including tables, spell checker, and quick hyperlinks. You can even compose your posts offline and publish them later once you get connected again.

Some of the above services and applications are still in development so I expect that the feature set may grow a bit and some of the inconsistencies will be ironed out. One other thing to mention is the fact that you don't need to sign up for a Hotmail account to get access to the rest of the stuff. I quite easily got signed up using my own, non-Microsoft mail account.

The latest set of betas has updates for Messenger, Mail, Photo Gallery, Writer, Toolbar and Family Safety and now includes Movie Maker, which lets you create and share movies with just a few clicks of your mouse. You can arrange photos and video clips by dragging and dropping, add a soundtrack and preview your changes instantly before publishing to any of several popular video sharing sites.

Can You Run It?

2008-09-11T12:45:00.000+01:00

Can You Run It? is a that site provides a simple solution for PC video game fans that looks at your computer hardware and software to determine whether or not your current system can run a particular Windows PC game. So, if you fancy playing newly released games like Mercenaries 2 or Spore, then it might be very useful to try this before shelling out for the games.

Each of your computer's components is evaluated to see how well it meets the minimum and recommended requirements against a database of specific games. If you can run it, then whoop-dee-doo, Instant happiness If not, then recommendations are made on how to update or upgrade each component that doesn't meet the listed requirements. Sometimes all you need is a simple, free software download to sort things out.

The service works with Windows 98, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP, 2003, Media Center and Vista and either Internet Explorer 4.xx and higher or a Mozilla based browser (Firefox, Netscape, etc.) with Java 1.3.1 and higher. At the moment the database contains only games but there's no reason why they couldn't expand that to include other software packages. Might need a bit of redesign on the site to accommodate that though as all you get to select from is one, very long menu.

Oosah - Too Good to Be True?

2008-09-01T18:30:00.003+01:00

Online storage provider Oosah has just blown the free storage goalposts away by offering one terabyte, a whole terabyte, free to registered individual users and they have an iPhone compatible site. Now that just blows the competition away and you can either believe that the offer is real or you can be a wee bit sceptical (like me) and dig a bit deeper.

Okay, they're banking on no-one actually filling up their terabyte allocation anytime soon so time may be on their side and, as long as storage advancements continue and they upgrade often enough, then they could very well keep on top of it. However, my concerns weren't really about them being able to provide the technology…

Where things get decidedly dodgy is in their Terms and Conditions. Firstly, they make it perfectly clear that you, as the owner of the contents, are responsible for it and not them so that's them off the hook for hosting anything that you upload that could be considered illegal or prohibited. Secondly, and this is the killer, by posting content to Oosah, you automatically grant to Oosah (and its successors) an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, assignable, royalty free, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, distribute and to prepare derivative works of such content in connection with the Site and any current and future services offered by Oosah, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

That's a serious mouthful to digest but what it means is that, while they've limited their liability for anything dodgy you might upload, they can do whatever they want with your files, data, videos, pictures, etc. forever! Nothing you upload to Oosah can be considered private so be very wary of that.

It's a pity as the service looks really useful; you can upload and stream your music collection, create photo galleries and slideshows, embed content for blog and web site postings, etc. All useful stuff but think about this scenario. You've uploaded your music collection, mostly ripped from legally purchased CDs, and can happily stream this to anywhere you are on the web. However, you've also granted Oosah the same privileges and they can stream your music to anyone they deem fit. Trouble is neither Oosah nor you have a license to do that and you're the one that would cop the blame should the authorities get wind of it.

Okay, a terabyte is a terabye and if you think it could be useful, then go ahead but be very, very careful about what you're uploading.

Related Posts: Drop.io - Useful Temporary Online Space, ADrive - 50Gbs Of Online Storage For Free, Windows Live SkyDrive, Unlimited Online File Storage, Free Online File Storage.

Toodledo - A To-do List To Organize You (Or Even Me)!

2008-08-31T21:36:00.008+01:00

I discovered web-based to-do list Toodledo last week and, having tried quite a few similar tools and services over the last few years, I think I'll give this one a serious test. Why? Well mostly because it's an online application; no software to install and I can check my list from anywhere that I can access the web. There's even a mobile device optimized web page, a Firefox extension, a Mac OS X widget and a Google Gadget just to make it even easier to add to or edit items on your list. Oh, and it's free for basic use.

To-do lists are one of those things most of us have tried to maintain at one point or another. If you're one of those really organized people that can handle such a list in your head or have a really neat wee book with everything needing done in it, then my hat comes off to you. Me, I'm getting on a bit and, besides being a tad on the lazy side, I can forget where I put my pen down five minutes ago far less remember what I have to do over the next few weeks. What usually happens is that I end up with a mix of post-it notes on my desk, notes scrawled on any spare bit of paper and stuffed in my pocket or text notes on my mobile phone so the idea of being able to collate all of these into one, very accessible place is really appealing.

Maybe you're familiar with the GTD or "Getting Things Done" principle, a methodology developed by productivity consultant David Allen. The basic premise of GTD is that recording your tasks in a reliable way, using a system you trust, will free your mind from trying to remember and prioritize stuff. Basically GTD devolves down to using an organized to-do/task list so Toodledo can handle that too.

With Toodledo, you add tasks to a list and these tasks can be categorized and organized in various ways. Tasks can be prioritized, scheduled in a calendar and given a deadline, They can be organized into folders, tagged, given a context and become part of attaining a goal. You can also set up repeating tasks for those things you need to do every week, month, etc. If you upgrade to a paying version, then you can organize tasks into projects or sub-tasks although you can emulate projects using the goals and folders functionality.

You can also share your to-do lists with the world or, if you upgrade to a pro account, you have complete control over who has permission to read or modify your to-do list. You can add as many collaborators as you want. Collaborators can view your entire to-do list (unless you've marked some folders as private) and you can give individual collaborators permission to add tasks to your list.

If you already use a task manager, then Toodledo can import tasks from many sources, including your Palm OS PDA, Microsoft Outlook, Apple iCal, Excel, RememberTheMilk.com and anything that can produce an iCal, XML, CSV or text file.

Toodledo can also send out reminders for tasks that are due soon. You can specify up to 5 different email addresses or SMS devices that will receive a reminder about any task due in the next few hours. You can even link Toodledo with microblogging service Twitter, which will allow you to use that service's IM and SMS features to add tasks and receive reminders. You can also choose to receive a copy of your hotlist in your inbox each morning. Toodledo can also be easily integrated with many Calendar applications, including Google Calendar and Apple iCal.

So far, I've been using Toodledo to keep track of stuff I need to do at work and things I want to blog about on this or my other blog as well as stuff I need to do for just me and it seems to be able to handle all of of these things pretty well. The payable upgrade adds more functionality to the mix - statistics, an auto-scheduler, sub-tasks (projects), collaboration features and more but the free version may well have enough bells and whistles for most people so it's definitely worth checking out.

Speak To Me - Online Text-To-Speech Services

2008-08-06T23:19:00.000+01:00

If you've ever discovered an online book, manuscript or manual that you'd really like to read but can't be bothered with doing it on a computer screen, then the following services might be worth taking a look at. All of them are free to use and offer text-to-speech translation with the option of saving the output to an audio file, which could then be uploaded to a portable audio player, etc.

SpokenText

SpokenText allows you to record PDF, Word, plain text, PowerPoint, RSS news feeds, emails and web pages and converts them to speech automatically and you can download your recording as an iPod book or MP3 file. Every registered member also gets a personal podcast URL which they can use to download recordings to iTunes or to their iPod and you can easily share your recordings on a web site or blog using SpokenText Badges or individual recording players.

There's even an extension for Firefox that allows you to easily record any text content you find while surfing the Internet or using your school's electronic library. Just select the text and click the Record Selected Text button from the SpokenText tool bar and you are done. You can also record any public web page you find while surfing the Internet by clicking the Record Web Page button in the tool bar.

YAKIToMe!

Listen to work documents, homework, PowerPoint presentations, emails, RSS feeds, blogs and novels while you relax, commute or exercise. Proof-read, learn a new language, multi-task, and use YAKiToMe! for entertainment. YAKiToMe! speaks multiple languages (English, Spanish, French and German) with a choice of 10 voices in a mix of US and UK, male and female, using high-quality text-to-speech synthesis technologies.

It supports conversion of text, which you can paste in, file formats of .doc, pdf or .txt formats, an RSS feed URL and directly from a POP3 mail account. You can also choose to vary the voice speed and save the recording as either WAV or MP3 format.

HearWho

This service provides a text box into which you can currently drop up to 3,000 characters of text to be translated and the developrs are indicating that this limit will be increased when a new server comes online. It offers the choice of male of female voices and can handle English or Spanish. You can also choose the quality of the recording if you want to.

It's not a particularly pretty site but no registration is needed and all you do is drop in the text you want converted, hit Start Conversion and, when the next page appears, you can either listen to the audio online or download it as an MP3 file.

FilePhile - Send Unlimited Files Directly, Machine to Machine

2008-08-05T22:51:00.006+01:00

FilePhile is a cross-platform utility that allows you to send files directly to another person's computer, regardless of size or any intervening network firewalls.

It's a free service and it offers secure, unlimited file transfers between any computer. Any file, any size, anywhere and with professional grade encryption. Transfers also automatically resume when temporary problems occur. FilePhile recovers from crashes, reboots, sleep/wake, and even changes in network location. You can start a transfer at home, pack up your laptop, go somewhere else and the transfer will resume when your system gets back online!

The basic FilePhile client is free and it runs on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux/Unix. It's written in Java so that means that you can use it to transfer files with almost anyone, regardless of what operating system or computer they're are using.

Of course you could do this using a BitTorrent client but that involves building a torrent file and then getting your recipient to download it. You could even do it using one of the free, large-file transfer services like Streamfile, drop.io, DropSend or senduit, etc. but these have size limitations and again, the recipient has to go and download the file. FilePhile is a much easier way to do it.

Windows Live Live Mesh

2008-07-23T18:49:00.002+01:00

Having just recently posted an article on online file sychronization services Dropbox and OpenDrive and mentioned similar services SpiderOak and Syncplicity, the one most eagerly awaited has arrived - Windows Live Live Mesh.

Part of the excellent Windows Live service, Live Mesh allows you to synchronize files and folders across different machines, share those folders or collaborate with others on them and even access remote machines directly. As part of the service you get 5Gb of online storage for free and that is presented to you as your Live Mesh Desktop, which is accessible from any web browser. As for the synchronization part, Microsoft currently only have client software for Windows XP and Vista but they are working on clients for Mac OS X and Windows Mobile. Currently, if you have a Windows Mobile device, or any phone that supports file system access, then you can upload files to your Live Mesh storage over the web via m.mesh.com.

Live Mesh is a bit more configurable than the others in that you can choose which files and folders are synchronized with which device so you can be a bit more choosy as to who gets access to what files. Like the others you can allow other people to access and even modify the contents of a Live Mesh folder so you can publish or collaborate with ease. You're also not tied down to a single folder from which to sync or share things out from. All you do is right-click on any file or folder and select the Add to Live Mesh option to get started.

An added bonus is the capability of connecting to any other remote machine on your Live Mesh network. However, at the moment this requires ActiveX so can only be done from a Windows PC running Internet Explorer and, since you can only currently attach Windows systems to the network, you can only connect to PCs as well. This was a nice feature in FolderShare but the Mac client for that was/is very unstable and I never really had much luck with it. Maybe now it's been sucked into Windows Live we'll see some development on that or maybe Live Mesh will take over from it with a stable Mac client. Here's hoping...

PS That 5Gb of space doesn't seem to be a part of the 5Gb you get Windows Live SkyDrive so enjoy the extra free storage, courtesy of Microsoft.

Related Posts: Dropbox and OpenDrive - Online File Synchronization Services, FolderShare Updated

Dropbox and OpenDrive - Online File Synchronization Services

2008-07-16T01:30:00.001+01:00

A couple of online file synchronization services have just popped up into my field of vision. One, called Dropbox, is in private beta at the moment and I've only just managed to get an invite after months of waiting and the other is called OpenDrive, which is in public beta.

Dropbox

Once you sign up to Dropbox, you can download the client software for both Mac OS X and Windows. This application run fairly unobtrusively in the system tray on Windows and on the menu bar on the Mac and it creates a folder on the user account space where you can drop files and folders you want to share with other systems or access online.

Obviously the keyword here is synchronization so when you make a change to any of these files, it gets synchronized across all of the systems registered with your account as soon as they connect to the Internet. You can also upload files from your web browser so your space is accessible and updatable from anywhere you happen to be.

Added to all this is the ability to share a folder with others and even invite them to collaborate with you so they can edit your files as well. When a file gets updated, you'll get a little notification about it too so you can keep up to date with what's in your Dropbox folder contents. The system also keeps a track of when files were updated, deleted or moved so you can keep track of revisions and history if need be and, if necessary, revert to an earlier revision.

The beta accounts are getting up to 2Gbs of free storage and the developers are looking to implement paid-for extra storage plans once the system goes live.

OpenDrive

OpenDrive is is similar in that, once you sign up, you get to download the client software. Windows only though at the moment though but a Mac OS X version and even a mobile device version is in the pipeline.

OpenDrive works by installing a drive image under the My Computer area of your PC and any file or folder you drop in there, edit, delete or move gets synchronized with your online account. It all happens automatically and you don't need to schedule an update. Like Dropbox, synchronization works both ways so any changes are reflected on all systems attached to the same Opendrive account.

Files and folders in your OpenDrive can be made public, private or even hidden to anyone but yourself and sharing them out is easy. Right-click on a file in the Opendrive and you'll get a URL you can give out to share the item.

Opendrive is a product the people behind online storage service BOXSTr and if you're already a BOXSTr member, then you don't need to sign up for Opendrive again. Indeed, web access to your OpenDrive storage is via the BOXSTr interface for the moment although that may change in the future.

Free accounts have been allocated only 1Gb of storage for OpenDrive, which is strange considering BOXSTr offers 5Gb for free. Maybe they'll get these services inline once further down the development trail but it's worth keeping an eye on.

Partition Find And Mount

2008-07-15T18:23:00.001+01:00

If you've ever seen the "Disk boot failure" message on a PC, then you'll realize how horrible that feeling is. Okay, it might just be that the drive cable has loosened somehow but it's more likely that the drive has failed or lost the partition information. If it's just the cable that's an easy fix but if not...then a more serious line of enquiry needs to be engaged.

Whatever the cause, you'll almost certainly have to remove the drive and either send it off to a specialist recovery firm or attach it to another computer and try it yourself. Before you shell out for the professional recovery option you could try using a free utility like Partition Find And Mount.

Partition Find & Mount implements a new method of deleted or lost partition recovery. It works simply by locating and mounting partitions into the system, thus making those lost partitions available to you like any generic disk volume. Partition Find & Mount will also work where any Boot Record (including the Master Boot Record) is missing, damaged or overwritten.

It's almost certainly worth a try if you do have a serious problem with a hard drive and, since it's free, you have nothing to lose but a little time and you could save yourself a lot of money.

DiskAid - Disk Enable Your iPhone And iPod Touch

2008-07-08T18:30:00.001+01:00

If your one of those "lucky" people with an iPhone or iPod touch, then you'll know that Apple have removed the facility for disk enabling the device that was standard with earlier iPod versions. Okay I know not a lot of us actually used that extra facility but it was necessary for some of the earlier iPod utilities to be able to access the hidden music folder.

Enter DiskAid, a free utility for the iPhone and iPod touch that lets you access all of the device drive, not just the music stuff. There are versions for both Mac OS X and Windows and it'll autodetect the device - just plug it in. Once connected, you get a file browser window, which will let you drag and drop files or folders in or out of the device. It'll also let you manage those files and folders - create, rename, delete, etc.

No jailbreaking is required and it currently supports firmware versions 1.1.1 to 1.1.4. Of course there are other similar tools out there like Floola, Senuti and YamiPod but none of those can access the iPhone or iPod touch yet.

Related Posts: iPod -> Folder, Access Your iPod!

Format Factory

2008-07-07T17:40:00.001+01:00

Ever on the lookout for useful and free utilities, I came across Format Factory, which is a multimedia file converter for Windows that support converting all popular video, audio and picture formats to others.

It'll convert…

Video to MP4/3GP/MPG/AVI/WMV/FLV/SWF.
Audio to MP3/OGG/WMA/M4A/WAV/AAC.
Picture to JPG/BMP/PNG/TIF/ICO/GIF/PCX/TGA with resize and rotation if required.

For the mobile device user. it'll convert…

All mobile video formats to 3GP, MeiZu MiniPlayer AVI or compatible MP4.
All mobile video formats to PSP MP4.
All mobile video formats to iPhone MP4.

It'll even rip DVDs to Video, DVD/CD to ISO/CSO and convert between ISO and CSO. It may not be the most polished looking application out there but it's free and it handlers a really useful set of convertions.

ScribeFire

2008-06-18T18:00:00.001+01:00

This is a test post using ScribeFire from Firefox 3.0

ScribeFire is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser that integrates with your browser to let you easily post to your blog. It allows you to drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, and post to your blog directly using ScribeFire.

ScribeFire currently supports the following services:

In addition to the hosted services mentioned above, ScribeFire also supports custom blogging platforms which are usually blogging software hosted on your own server.

The currently supported blogging platforms are:

WordPress
Movable Type
Drupal
Textpattern
Roller
Blogger
MetaWeblog API (Any blogging software that implements this API)

As mentioned above, any blogging software or blogging platform that implements the MetaWeblog API is implicitly supported by ScribeFire.

It's certainly very simple to use and could be very useful for composing technology related blog posts where a lot of the information is gleaned off of the web.

Google Docs Gets PDF Support

2008-06-17T17:57:00.001+01:00

You can now upload, preview and share PDFs in Google Docs. You can't edit them yet but you can copy text from them for use in other apps. Hardly a huge innovation but useful for sharing PDF documents with others.

Maybe it won't be long before we can edit PDFs on there or even just search through them.

Buzzword Gets Integrated Into Acrobat.com

2008-06-02T18:38:00.004+01:00

Buzzword, Adobe's online word processor application, has evolved into part of their new Acrobat.com web service, which is still in beta development. It joins Adobe ConnectNow, their online meeting/sharing service, as well as a tool to create PDF files and the ability to store and share files. Basically, Acrobat.com is a set of online services such as file sharing and storage, PDF converter, online word processor and web conferencing that you can use to create and share documents, communicate in real time and hopefull simplify working with others.

For existing Buzzword users the only real change is the requirement to access the service using an Adobe account so you'll need to either use an exisiting Adobe account or create one. They'll even move any existing Buzzword documents over to the new account if you want as well. Adobe ConnectNow, if you've never heard of it before it used be called Adobe BRIO, is a Flash-based web-conferencing application that will allow you meet with others online, share ideas, screens and files and even collaborate on a shared whiteboard.

Another very useful addition is the Adobe AIR, runtime version of Acrobat.com, which provides an easy way of interacting with Acrobat.com to allow dragging and dropping files and folders from your local computer directly into your Acrobat.com account, and browsing, previewing, sharing or publishing files easily from your computer. The interface is exactly like the web browser version so there's no need to learn two applications and it can be minimized to a widget to save screen space.

Google Sites Open Doors To All

2008-06-01T17:46:00.003+01:00

When Google bought Jotspot last year, I assumed they'd be using that technology to enhance their own web-site creation service Google Page Creator. But no, what emerged was a new product called Google Sites but access was restricted to Google Apps users. Bit of a bummer as that meant you had to be signed up to their paying service to get this.

However, they've relented and opened up Google Sites to all Google account holders. So, if you're looking for a service that lets you create and customize web pages with no knowledge of HTML, then it's definitely worth a look. Okay, there are loads of free, web design and hosting services out there already so why choose Google Sites? Well, it's aimed at groups or "teams" and not just individuals.

Your "team" can quickly gather a variety of information like videos, calendars, presentations, attachments, and text, etc. in one place and easily share it for viewing or editing and you can open it up to your entire organization or the world if you want to. It's kind of like a wiki but Google don't mention that word at all and I'm happy about that as I'm not really a fan of wikis. It's ideal for families, interest groups, project teams, clubs, play-groups or even small business intranets.

Sites is a bit more structured than a wiki and that will probably suit the less technical people they're aiming it at. As well as being able to customize the interface to suit the group theme, you can choose from a growing list of page types like web page, announcements, dashboard, list and file cabinet. You can also embed rich content like video, Google Docs documents, spreadsheets, presentations, Picasa photo slide shows and iGoogle gadgets into any page and you can upload file attachments. However, while Apps Premier users get 10GB of storage space, I can't see anywhere what the limits are for normal Google account holders. The wording or their blog says you can securely host your own website and add as many pages as you like for free but I suppose, now that it's open to the world, we'll soon find out what the limits are.

As stated, Google will host your content for free and your site gets published online, if you allow it, to sites.google.com/yoursitename but if you want to use your own domain name, then you need to upgrade to a Premier account. I'm pretty sure this is Google's answer to Microsoft SharePoint for the masses and closer to what Windows Live Spaces should have been so I think we'll see that service evolve along the same lines as well.

Gizmo's Tech Support Alert Goes Wiki

2008-05-19T12:48:00.001+01:00

Ian "Gizmo" Richards, the author of the really well respected Gizmo's Tech Support Alert newsletter has gone and made all of the stuff on there available online. Better still is the fact that his The Best-ever Freeware Utilities List is now available to the public and can even be modified and added to by the site users. It's a kind of Wikipedia for freeware and it's available to all users and not just subscribers.

There is now only one freeware list, because his original "46 Best-ever Freeware" list and "Extended list" have been combined into one big list of 120+ software categories, which is indexed by broad software class for easier searching and drilling down into. You can still casually browse that long, single page if you want though!

Better still, you can read users comments and suggestions in addition to the reviews and you can access the site forums where you can seek help on freeware installation problems or ask about a freeware program you are seeking.

Back issues of the newsletter, a veritable mine of information of PC and Windows support topics, can also be viewed on the site and, since the site is now wiki-based, users can submit their own articles and lists. I've been a subscriber to the newsletter for several years now and it's an invaluable source of tips, reviews, help, etc.

If "best freeware" lists is something you're interested in, then also have a look at this article by Scott Dunn over at Windows Secrets…

Nine must-have freeware apps rise to the top

Google Adds More Power To It's Translator

2008-05-16T13:17:00.001+01:00

Google have recently added translation capabilities for 10 new languages to Google Translate, bringing the total to 23 languages. The newly featured languages include Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Swedish. In addition, you can now translate text and web pages as well as perform cross-language searches between any two of the supported languages, including non-Roman languages like Arabic, Chinese, Greek, Hindi, Japanese and Russian.

Even more useful for some is the new Detect Language option that helps you automatically identify the language of the text you're trying to translate. Keep in mind that the longer the text, the more accurate it will be so try it out with as much text as you can.

Also of note to developers and site designers who have embedded the Google Translate My Page gadget in your website to give it global reach, then these new languages will automatically be available to your visitors. Developers can also take advantage of these new languages in the AJAX language API.

Still no Scottish Gaelic though - sigh!

flauntR - A Different Kind Of Image Editor

2008-05-13T22:40:00.008+01:00

flauntR is a new, still in alpha development, web-based image editor. I know, I can hear you saying "what, another one?" but it's a bit different from the rest of them and does offer some added value to the image editor arena. flauntR is organized around several modules or applications that allow you to do different things to an image.

stylR provides a variety of options to have loads of fun with your photographs. With an abundance of frames, overlays, textures, etc, it helps in adding that extra edge to a photograph. For example, add an occasion based frame, a material based texture or add your image to a magazine cover mock-up and more.

editR is a comprehensive image editing package, which covers a variety of effects that could be applied on an image like sepia tone, grayscale, specialised effects like nightvision, infrared and also, basic options like crop, resize, straighten, rotate and colour manipulation.

textR allows the addition of customized text and a range of basic and novel shapes to the image. Both the text and the shapes can be modified in size, shape and colour as required.

picasR makes images resemble classical paintings in colour tone and feel. The essence of age old paintings is introduced into your images to create that vintage aura.

profilR lets you create the perfect profile picture or avatar for your social networking site. The image is adjusted as per the profile picture dimensions required for over 30 social networking sites and communities.

mobilR lets the you create the perfect wallpaper for your mobile phone or device. With support for over 200 phone models, it can create wallpapers as per the exact dimension of your mobile screen.

You can import images from your hard disk, a web site as well as from Flickr, Bebo, Facebook and Picasa Web Albums. One you've edited an image it can be saved to your flauntR storage, back to the source service or downloaded. The flauntR slideshow option lets you view the photos in your albums and services and you can choose the transitions with which you view these photos. You can also save a slideshow or share/embed it in another online service or blog, etc.

flauntR is still a growing application and new things are being added to it so it may well be worth adding to your arsenal of online image editing services along with the likes of Photoshop Express, Aviary, FotoFlexer, Splashup and Picnik.

Related Posts: Photoshop Express - A First Look!, FotoFlexer, Improve Your Images, More Online Image And Photo Editors, Image Resizing Grows Up (or Down), Online Image Editing With Wiredness, Phixr: Another Online Image Editor, PikiFx, Online Image Editors

Super Screenshot - Grab A Shot Of A Web Page

2008-04-22T00:38:00.005+01:00

The rather unimaginatively titled Super Screenshot is a free web service for grabbing a screen capture of a web page. All you need to do is give it the URL of the page you want captured and it'll go off and do the business, capturing the entire page, regardless of length.

Once it's done it's work, it presents you with a thumbnail view of the image and a set of options for viewing it. You get to choose to refresh the image or view either the top page or the full page. You also get to choose the display size, ranging from X-small to Full resolution and you pick whether to display the image as a JPEG or PNG. Of course, once you've got the image displayed in the size and format you want, it's a easy task to save it to your hard disk.

There are a few caveats to be aware of…

Flash elements are rendered but only at time of loading the page so if they start as blank images, that's what you'll see.
Super Screenshot uses the Safari browser to render pages so anything that can't handle will cause you problems.
It won't follow redirects so if the URL you give it tries to redirect you, then the capture will fail.

Still, it seems to work pretty well and gives you another web-based screen capture option from similar services like thumbalizer and WebSnapr.

Related Posts: Skitch Screen Capture Goes Public Beta, Clip It!, How To Grab Web Page Screenshots, Screencasts - The Jing Project, Screen Capture Tools

Upload And Share Presentations Online

2008-04-21T17:45:00.001+01:00

If you've ever wanted to share a presentation with anyone, regardless of them having PowerPoint, OpenOffice, etc., then there are a couple of ways of doing that…

SlideShare will let you upload both Powerpoint, OpenOffice and PDF based presentations and share them for free. You can tag your presentation for easy searching/categorization and you can also embed them in blogs, web sites etc. It's designed along the lines of YouTube so it should be fairly easy to use and the interface should be familiar to most web users by now.

Once you've uploaded your presentation, you can view the small version or go to full-screen, which works pretty well. Looks pretty useful a service and Keynote users can use by saving their presentqtions as PDF. Maximum presentation file upload size is 30Mb

authorStream is fairly similar to SlideShare in that it allows you to upload, tag and share presentations but it only deals with PowerPoint files. However, it does have the advantage of allowing you to download a presentation as an MP4 video file and, once you have it in that format, it opens up possibilities for transferring it onto PDAs, PS3, PSP, mobile phones, DVDs, etc. The only condition of being able to download the presentation as a video is that you must set up 'Rehearsed Timings' or have recorded audio 'Narrations' in your PowerPoint file.

They also offer a free utility for Windows to batch upload PowerPoint files to authorSTREAM and also convert presentations to Flash video files. Again, presentation file size is limited to 30Mb.

Online office applications like Google Docs, Zoho Show and ThinkFree Online offer another way to upload and share presentations. All can import PowerPoint files and Zoho Show can take OpenOffice ones as well. Once imported, you can then edit the presentation directly or collaborate with others to produce a final work. Once published, the presentation can be shared with others or embedded into a web site or blog.

MJM Free Photo Recovery

2008-04-19T09:17:00.003+01:00

Data recovery specialists MjM Data Recovery have decided to release their Photo Recovery software for Windows to the general public for free. Photo recovery software tools are something I've covered a few times already and there are several free offerings available (see Related Posts below) but there's never any harm in having another one to hand.

The software will recover lost or deleted JPG photographs from formatted or corrupt memory cards. Unfortunately, it can't handle memory cards that are not recognised by Windows so it probably won't work with badly damaged cards. Of course, if that happens and you're desperate to get your precious pics back, then MJN offer a full commercial recovery service.

It's a pity they've limited it to recovering only JPEGs as more and more people are moving to dSLRs and using the more detailed RAW or TIFF formats for photo storage.

NB: The software is still in beta stage so there may be a few bugs in there yet.

Related Posts: Another Camera Card Blues Recovery Assistant, Data and Photo Recovery, Recovering Lost or Corrupt Camera Images

Picasa Web Albums Goes Mobile

2008-04-04T00:20:00.004+01:00

Picasa Web Albums has now been optimized for access via Windows Mobile 6 devices. Similar to the version recently released for the iPhone, this includes slideshows, searching and full image views.

This version also makes use of the recently released Google Gears for Mobile for Internet Explorer on Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices to enable offline viewing of your web albums. You'll see a "make photos available offline" link on the picasweb page and it'll prompt you to download and install Google Gears for the feature to work.

In order to access the new Picasa Web Albums mobile interface, just visit picasaweb.google.com using the mobile version of Internet Explorer on any touchscreen-capable Windows Mobile 6 device.

Photoshop Express - A First Look!

2008-03-31T00:10:00.012+01:00

Well, Adobe Photoshop Express, the much-hyped online version of the mighty Adobe Photoshop has finally made it to the beta stage. My initial response is that I'm a bit disappointed in the lack of functionality but all the basics are there. You can rotate, crop, straighten, auto-correct, remove red-eye, adjust exposure and saturation values and do a bit of basic touching-up. Every action is non-destructive and you can step forward or back through your actions or reset to the original at any time.

As well as the usual slider bars for adjusting settings, what you also get for most tools is an array of six adjusted previews to choose from. It's a nice idea as it lets you see how an adjustment will progress a bit. An image can also be fine-tuned by allowing you to adjust white balance, sharpness, softness focus, shadows and highlights and, if you want to add effects, you can change hue, add a tint, convert to black and white, distort the image, change a specific colour in the image or even make it look like a sketch.

You can upload photographs to your own library space and you can also add them into albums. On top of that, you can choose to make an album publicly accessible for sharing your images out or hosting them on blogs, websites, etc.. On the integration with other photo services front, then it'll talk to Facebook, Photobucket and Picasa.

Unfortunately, that's all there is so far, There's no multi-layer functionality, which is Photoshop's killer tool, and no fancy stuff like exposure blending, panorama building or HDR processing, which would really set it above the other services.

As for limitations - it'll work with Windows XP, Windows Vista or Mac OS X 10.4 or above. It runs under Internet Explorer 6 or 7 on a Windows machine, Safari 3.0.4 or later on a Mac, or Firefox 2 or later on either platform. You also need Flash Player 9 (version 9.0.0.115 or later). Also, you can only upload JPEG photos. Other formats such as raw, TIFF and PSD files are too large to comfortably upload. On top of that photos larger than 10M and 4000 pixels in height and width cannot be uploaded and photos larger than 2880 x 2880 pixels will be shrunk after editing.

Adobe have got the basics done and got the service out for testing, which is good but they'll really need to add more powerful features to attract people away from some of the free services, some of which offer as much or more than this already. Frankly, whatever Photoshop can do, then Photoshop Express should be able to do it as well or I can't see the point. They'll also need to add integration with more photo services like Flickr or Windows Live as well but I expect those will come eventually.

Not bad for a first outing! I know testing was supposed to be restricted to the US but I couldn't resist a quick look around so, if you're outside the US and are thinking of using it seriously, then bear in kind that all the data has to flow between you and a US based server for the moment.

Related Posts: More Online Image And Photo Editors, Image Resizing Grows Up (or Down), Online Image Editing With Wiredness, Phixr: Another Online Image Editor, PikiFx, Online Image Editors

Walk Score - Find Services In Your Area!

2008-03-26T18:05:00.002Z

Walk Score, while not the kind of site I'd usually post about here, seems useful enough to warrant a mention. It was designed to help homebuyers, renters and estate agents find properties in great neighbourhoods but it's also really useful to anyone searching for shops and services in a particular area, especially if you're mobile or just visiting an unfamiliar spot. The site name is also related to the fact that they score properties based on the number of services nearby that you can walk to.

All you do is enter an address and Walk Score shows you a map of what's nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property. The hook being that buying or renting a house in a walkable neighbourhood is good for your health and also good for the environment. They currently only support addresses in the U.K., U.S.A. and Canada but are working on adding more.

It uses the Google Maps API to display a map of the area, superimposed with icons representing shops, restaurants, cinemas, parks, etc. On the left of that is a list of these services with the relative distance to them. Those distances are measured "as the crow flies" rather than actual walking directions so don't take into account impassible objects like lakes and rivers but they are investigating using Google Driving Directions to calculate the distances.

They freely admit that their walkability scoring system takes no account of factors like topography, public transport, crime figures, traffic safety, etc. It's also dependent on the data available via the Google Maps API so there's always a chance an entry is incorrect or out of date, which is probably why it listed Glasgow as being in England :-(

FairUse Wizard - Convert DVDs to DivX

2008-03-18T22:22:00.002Z

The full version of FairUse Wizard 2, a useful utility for converting DVDs to DivX or Xvid format files, is currently being offered as a free download. DivX compression will allow you to store more than one DVD on a single disc and Fairuse Wizard provides a viable means of backing up your expensive DVD collection.

FairUse Wizard allows you to easily create movies that will play on your standalone player or computer with the DivX and XviD codecs as well as using H264 (iPod video) or the ffVFW codec suites. You can also encode up to two audio tracks so you can choose between original and dubbed versions at playback and you can preview subtitles on the preview screen during the encoding setup.

The full edition is optimised to fully exploit Dual-Core, SMP, and Hyper-Threading CPU architectures, resulting in much faster encoding and has an auto-update feature not available in the light edition. Not sure why version 2 is being offered for free but I wouldn't be surprised to see version 3 pop its head up sometime soon so grab this one while you can.

If You Like Stickies - Try Metanotes

2008-03-17T13:00:00.001Z

If you're a fan of Post-It notes or Stickies, then take a look at Metanotes. Metanotes gives you a (very large) sheet of online graph paper, to which you can attach an endless list of text notes, images, video clips, audio clips, etc.

You use it like a visual mapping/think-tank of ideas, a place to drop notes or useful chunks of data as you work. Grab a YouTube video, an MP3, a web-page clipping or just leave yourself a reminder. It's basically an online scrapbook but one where others can participate in your mind's maeanderings as all spaces are public (for now).

If you need another space, then that's not a problem as you can add more spaces to your metaspace and to make it fit into your online lifestyle, it'll integrate with Twitter, Gmail, Facebook, Photobucket and Pownce and there’s also a Time Log feature that acts as a personal and private Twitter stream.

So, if you like to work in a free-form, mind-mappy kind of environment and you've run out of screen real estate for those little yellow notes, then Metanotes might be for you.

Evernote - Remember Everything!

2008-03-14T17:26:00.002Z

I've just been trying out the beta of Evernote, a note-taking service that allows you to capture and find anything from your real and digital lives using a PC, Mac, mobile phone and the web. That could be typed notes, to-dos, brainstorms, reminders, photos, web pages or parts of web pages, handwritten notes, audio clips and memos and e-mails or MMS notes.

It's based around an online service for storing and searching your notes along with browser bookmarklets for Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox and stand-alone applications for Windows, Windows Mobile and Mac OS X (Leopard). You can also e-mail notes directly into your account and they're working on iPhone and SmartPhone versions.

Every note added to Evernote goes through powerful recognition and indexing servers, which make it possible to find everything. For example, you can search and filter on tags, titles, text, dates and even text in images or attributes like does the note contain a web clipping, an image, audio, handwriting, etc.

Evernote is in private beta at the moment but I've got a few invites to dish out if anyone wants one and you can request one from their home page. There will be free accounts available once the service is launched but online storage will be limited at 1Gb for these. Not a serious limitation for most small or personal research projects so it's definitely worth checking out.

There are alternative note-taking systems out there such as SpringNote, Google Notebook, notesake, Jjot, Scrapbook and Clipmarks but Evernote seems to cover a wider range of functionality and devices and the search and text recognition facilities seriously gives it the edge over anything else.

Related Posts: Capture The Web While You Surf!

The Polaroid Effect!

2008-03-13T15:26:00.005Z

With Polaroid recently announcing that it would no longer be producing its trademark photographic film, the days of the instant snap have finally gone fully digital. However, for anyone that fell in love with the Polaroid format, there's instantizer.com, a free web service that allows you to create a "Polaroid effect" with any image in just seconds.

Simply select an original image, write a short description, rotate to add a specific camera angle, and then hit "Upload Picture". It's that simple, no sign-up or registration required.

There are a few other online services that can do this, such as Wiredness and the excellent Picnik, so it isn't unique but if you want a quick and simple, one-stop shop, then it'll do the job.

FolderShare Updated

2008-03-11T23:25:00.001Z

Microsoft have updated FolderShare, their online, file synchronization service and look to be making it a part of the Windows Live service.

FolderShare allows you to register one or more computers with the service and you can then set up personal and/or shared file libraries and also remotely access your computer's hard drive(s). I tried it out some time ago and it did seem to work okay to a point. I could access my work computer drive from home and vice versa but it did tend to time out quite a bit and lose connection. Hopefully this update may have improved the system although I noticed that they've updated the Windows version but there been no change in the Mac OS X client.

The improvemenets listed are a new website for easier library and computer management, improved performance on Windows Vista, better setup and improved system tray integration as well as backend improvements to keep FolderShare running more reliably. There are other ways to synchronize files over a network but FolderShare is free so it's definitely worth checking out.

Microsoft Password Checker

2008-03-11T13:38:00.003Z

So you think your password's secure? Now you can check that with with the Microsoft Password Checker, a free web tool to help you to gauge the strength of your password.

Microsoft recommends that passwords should be at least eight or more characters in length with 14 or longer being much better. They also recommend using a pass phrase, if the systems support spaces, and/or a mix of letter, numbers and symbols.

It's a useful little web page and it comes with a lot of advice on creating secure passwords.

Related Posts: Easy Password Generation

AnyClient - FTP On The Move

2008-03-10T23:32:00.003Z

If you ever find yourself in the need of an FTP client and simply don't have one installed, then AnyClient might be a site you'll want to bookmark for future use…

AnyClient is a free, platform-independent, file transfer application that supports all major file transfer protocols including FTPS, SFTP and WebDAV/S. AnyClient is available both as a Java web-based service requiring no software installation and as a downloadable application for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows that you can install locally. The Java-based version looks very similar to most stand-alone FTP clients and can even save your FTP server settings via cookies if you wish.

Extracting Text from PDF Files

2008-03-04T18:04:00.000Z

Ever had the need to extract the text from a PDF file?

At the simplest end, it's often possible to extract text and graphics just by using the standard copy and paste functions in Adobe Reader and it may allow you to save the file as Text but if you want to do something more, then you have another couple of options…

Adobe Online Conversion Tools

This conversion service will convert Adobe PDF files that are in English and most West European languages to text. If the PDF file(s) you need converted are on your local disk, then you can simply mail your files as attachments to them and they'll send them back converted for you. For plain text, mail the attached PDF to pdf2txt@adobe.com and for HTML, mail the attached PDF to pdf2html@adobe.com. Alternatively, if you can access the PDF document via URL, then use the form on the main Online Conversion Tools page.

NB: The conversion technology was developed to allow blind and visually impaired users to read Adobe PDF documents with speech synthesis software. For this reason, graphic elements are stripped from the file and text is reformatted during conversion.

PDFTextOnline is another online conversion service. Basically, you upload a PDF document and they pass it over to their PDFTextStream service, which extracts the first 10 pages and passes it back to you in your browser. If your PDF is larger than 10 pages, then you can browse to the next 10 pages for conversion and so on.

Their selling point, even if it is free, is the fact that they claim that PDFTextStream is the only PDF text extraction API that uses its own OCR-like process to properly order text extracts. The result is that PDFTextStream produces the most accurate PDF text extracts available today. Of course, if you have a need to do some serious or long-term PDF conversions, then you can buy PDFTextStream.

Other free, online conversion services include PDFConverter, which can convert PDF documents to Word, Excel or Rich Text format and you'll find Zamzar and Media-Convert can convert PDFs to text and lots of other formats too.

Related Posts: PDF Hammer - An Online PDF Editor, Free PDF Creation, More Online File Conversion Services, Free PDF Creation, Free Online Media File Converter

Unstick Those Stuck Pixels

2008-02-26T17:06:00.005Z

If you've got an LCD monitor, then you're probably aware of the dreaded stuck pixel condition. If this is news to you, then a stuck pixel is one that simply won't change colour so can be appear red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, or yellow, although stuck red, green, or blue pixels are most common. These are usually the result of a manufacturing defect that leaves one or more of the three sub-pixels (red, green and blue) permanently turned on or off.

Unfortunately some manufacturers won't reject a screen with only a few stuck pixels and some screens come with a leaflet stating how many dead pixels they are allowed to have before you can send them back to the manufacturer. Bit of a bummer if you've just shelled out for a new screen for it to have a colour defect and the makers don't want to know about it.

However, there are a couple of options available to try and unstick a stuck pixel (say that quickly)…

JScreenFix is a Java applet solution that can fix stuck pixels, reduce screen burn-in and improve the quality of images displayed on a screen. It runs in your web browser under Mac OS X, Linux and Windows and can fix most stuck pixels on LCD screens. It can also remove image persistence effects on LCD screens and reduce burn-in on plasma screens.

killdeadpixel.com is another online utility that displays a constantly shifting graphic to try and unstick stuck pixels. The graphic will try to massage the dead pixel back alive again by getting it to change rapidly. They also offer full-screen versions (800x600 and 1024x768) for a more intensive attempt at a fix.

Neither of the above solutions will fix all dead pixels but they're certainly worth trying if you've been unlucky enough to have been saddled with a defective screen.

There are also some utilities available that will allow you to check a monitor for dead or stuck pixels. Very useful if you're thinking of buying a second-hand monitor.

LCDTest - a small application for Mac OS X and Windows that can aid in detecting dead or stuck pixels. It won't help fix them but it could be useful if you want to check a monitor out.
PixelFix - a Mac OS X Dashboard widget that colour-cycles a small rectangle that you can move over a stuck pixel to try and cure it. They also provide a browser-based version that does the same thing using a small movie.
Dead Pixel Tester - a small Windows utility that will display various colour and pattern tests to try and help detect bad pixels.

Windows Live Skydrive Out Of Beta And Upgraded

2008-02-22T17:30:00.002Z

Microsoft's online file storage service, Window Live Skydrive , is now out of beta and has been upgraded to a much more useful 5GB of storage space.

There are still other options for free and larger online storage services out there but it'll be worth keeping an eye on Microsoft's baby to see what happens when Google's much rumoured GDrive ever materializes. Well, Google say it will but they've been saying that for a while now.

Related Posts: ADrive - 50Gbs Of Online Storage For Free, Windows Live SkyDrive, Unlimited Online File Storage, Free Online File Storage

doubleTwist Desktop Launches

2008-02-19T23:50:00.005Z

doubletwist desktop, a free application to simplify the flow of media across devices and social networks, has been launched. doubleTwist desktop enables you to sync iTunes playlists with your Nokia N Series phones, Sony Ericsson Walkman & Cybershot phones, LG Viewty phones, phones using the Windows Mobile 5.0/6.0 platform (e.g. Treo, HTC, Palm), the Sony PSP, and the Amazon Kindle. You can also share media files directly from your device with your friends when you connect it via USB and the developers are working to add more devices and formats as well as integration with other media playing applications.

doubleTwist was setup by Monique Farantzos and the notorious DVD Jon, the man behind the cracking of DVD encryption and Apple's FairPlay DRM. It currently supports the following media formats:

Video: 3gp (used by most cell phones), MPEG4 (.mp4, .m4v), wmv, avi and MPEG2 (.mpg, .mpv, .mpeg)
Audio: mp3, aac/m4a, wma, wav
Images: jpg, gif, png, bmp

To give an example: say you shot a video with your Nokia N95 cellphone. How do you send that video to your friend and make sure he’ll be able to play it on his iPod or Sony PSP? With doubleTwist, you’ll be able to share and sync digital media without worrying about codecs and bitrates.

There's no Mac version yet but hopefully coming soon.

PdfMeNot - Online PDF Display

2008-02-19T17:35:00.002Z

PdfMeNot is an online PDF document display service that claims to do do away with the need for a stand-alone PDF viewer. You can either enter the URL of a PDF to view or upload it from your hard drive and PdfMeNot will render and display it in your browser.

They do offer a few added bonuses such as a browser bookmarklet and a Firefox extension and web developers can use the service to link to and display an existing PDF file. On the downside, there's no way to search through a PDF displayed this way, you can only do it page by page in the browser. Saying that, it's still in beta so they may add search facilities later on.

Related Posts: PDF Hammer - An Online PDF Editor, Free PDF Creation

iNetWord - Online Word Processing

2008-02-17T10:40:00.006Z

iNetWord is a free web-based word processor that will allow you to format and compose documents in a very similar way to how you would in Microsoft Word. Word does have a few things that iNetWord can't do yet like a built-in grammar checker and custom character styles but then Word can't do online folder sharing and instant web publishing. Of course, Office Live should offer some of that functionality but iNetWord is free.

But iNetWord isn't the only free, online word processor, far from it. There are lots of them out there such as Google Docs , Zoho, Ajax13 and ThinkFree. All of these have word processing applications and then there's Adobe's BuzzWord, which is still in beta but it's looking pretty good too.

FotoFlexer

2008-02-15T19:52:00.004Z

I've been playing around with FotoFlexer, yet another in what seems to be a growing raft of free online image editors but definitely one worth checking out.

Basic tools include Auto-Fix, Fix Red-Eye, Duplicate, Crop, Resize, Rotate and Flip. On top of that there are an amazing 22 customizable effects such as blueprint, color sketch, fresco. invert, etc. These really have to be seen in action and each has variable parameters you can adjust. The images on the right were created in seconds using these built-in effects.

FotoFlexer not only has effects but an array of tools to distort and beautify your image - Smooth, Sharpen, Fix Blemishes, Smooth Wrinkles, Twirl, Bulge, Pinch, Stretch and Twist. Then you can also decorate the image by adding text and shapes and you can draw, erase, fill, add a face or even a border.

FotoFlexer is also a multi-layer tool so you can add images in separate layers and then move these up or down and even merge or group them. Then there's their pièce de résistance, the Geek Tools. These allow you to do things like smart resizing using seam-carving, smart recolouring, do smart cutouts and use smart scissors or apply modifications to the colour curves. They also let you modify hue, saturation and brightness, lightness and contrast. There's even a tool to morph multiple images.

FotoFlexer works seamlessly with most of the more popular photo sharing sites and social networks. e.g. you can import and export photos directly to and from Facebook, MySpace, Photobucket, Flickr and Picasa. You can even search for clipart with Yahoo! image search or just grab an image directly from the web. Hard drive users aren't left out though and you can batch upload and download your photos with one click from Mac or PC.

FotoFlexer is up there with the best of these kinds of image editing service and one with some fairly unique functionality so it's worth adding to anyones list of online tools. Now all I need is a time machine to allow me to play with all this stuff.

Related Posts: More Online Image And Photo Editors, Image Resizing Grows Up (or Down), Online Image Editing With Wiredness, Phixr: Another Online Image Editor, PikiFx, Online Image Editors

Where's Chuck Norris?

2008-02-12T17:55:00.000Z

If you do a search for "find chuck norris" on Google and then select the I'm Feeling Lucky button you'll get a humourous spoof answer. I thought it was quite funny anyway.

For anyone that doesn't already know, then Chuck Norris is a well-known actor and martial-arts expert who's movie heyday was probably back in the mid-eighties and nineties.

Unfortunately doing a similar search for Steven Seagal doesn't produce anything close but then, who on earth would want to search for Steven Seagal?

Easy Password Generation

2008-02-06T13:30:00.000Z

If, like me, you use a large number of online services such as email, banking, shopping, photo sharing, social sites, etc., then you might be interested in a few easier and free ways to generate random but secure passwords.

PassPub is a free, online service that generates unique passwords to give individuals increased security. As well as basic 6, 8, 10 and 12-character passwords, it offers ar range of themes to help generate the passwords - keyboard combinations, postcodes, map references, mnemonics, vehicle registrations, WEP keys and chemical elements.

PC Tools Random Password Generator lets you specify a password length from 4 to 64 characters and lets you choose wheter to include letters, mixed case, numbers or punctuation and whether or not to block similar characters like i, l, o, 1, 0 and I.

The Online Password Generator creates random pass phrases consisting of 3-character, 4-character and 5-character words and you can choose to include or even require numbers, include or even require special characters. It also lets you set the minimum password length and you can opt to randomly capitalize letters.

That's just a few to highlight what's possible but there are lot of these out there. Here are a few more…

It's always so difficult to think of system and account passwords when deploying desktops and laptops or creating user accounts so these sites are also useful if you manage an estate of networked computers.

Scotsys Closes Glasgow Store

2008-02-05T18:00:00.000Z

As predicted way back in November 2006, long-established Apple reseller Scotsys have announced that they are to close their Glasgow store. To quote their site…

We are disappointed to inform you that, as from close of business on Saturday 9th February, Scotsys will no longer trade from our location at 164 Great Western Road, Glasgow.

By taking the difficult decision to close our Glasgow retail location, Scotsys can use the resources released to focus on providing services and solutions to businesses, public sector clients and the creative industries, through our operations centres in Bellshill and Edinburgh.

However much of a brave face they may be putting on it, Apple opening up their store in Buchanan Street must have hit Scotsys's consumer sales pretty hard. The Apple Store is much more conveniently located for us average purchasers and it's well sited for so much more passing trade.

I've had a pretty good relationship with Scotsys dating way back to the mid eighties when I worked for Glasgow University. I even had a short stint at working for an Apple dealer myself so I know how difficult it can be to make a living selling computer hardware. They've always been reliable dealers with me over the years so I hope they continue in the Apple business.

Find Out How With Apple!

2008-02-04T18:00:00.000Z

Apple have posted a new set of online tutorials covering Mac OS X and all their standard applications for working with Photos, Movies, Web, Music and Documents. Obviously these videos only cover working with Mac OS X 10.5, iLife '08 and iWork '08 but you can also download online manuals for these and some of the earlier versions and there's Switch 101 for those fancying moving to Mac.

If you're new to Mac OS X or thinking of changing over from Windows or even Linux, then this is a useful resource. The videos can also be downloaded straight into iTunes for viewing offline if required.

Who Is Hosting This?

2008-02-04T17:15:00.000Z

If you've ever wondered who is hosting a particular web site, then have a look at Who Is Hosting This?

Who Is Hosting This is a simple web utility that enables you to find out who is hosting any web site. Simply type in any domain name, and you'll get a link to the company that's hosting that particular domain.

It might not be a lot of use for the general public but us nerdy geeks sometimes need that kind of information.

Another Camera Card Blues Recovery Assistant

2008-01-30T23:30:00.000Z

With digital cameras now so popular and the numbers of photo storage cards that everyone needs to use them getting to astronomical levels, probability must dictate that instances of users deleting images or corrupting the cards must also be on the rise.

So, if you're in that boat or want to arm yourself should the inevitable happen, there are a few free card file recovery utilities available. I've already mentioned PC Inspector Smart Recovery, Exif Untrasher, Zero Assumption Digital Image Recovery and PhotoRec but I've found another one for Windows that looks worth adding to the armoury.

Digital Photo Recovery 3

The free Art Plus Digital Photo Recovery tool can help you recover lost images from corrupted or accidentally formatted digital camera memory cards.

It works with all types of memory cards.
It can recover images from formatted cards.
It reads corrupted cards (even if they're not recognized by Windows).
It recovers JPG, TIF and most RAW files (DNG, Canon CR2, Konica-Minolta MRW, Nikon NEF, Olympus ORF, Pentax PEF, Sony ARW, SRF and SR2).
Runs on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP and Vista.

The publishers state that the program should be able to read all memory cards currently available on the market and recover lost JPG, TIF and most of popular RAW file formats and, while it's not optimized for that task, it also reads damaged floppys, CDs and DVDs.

All you have to do now is hope you never need to use any of them.

Related Posts: Data and Photo Recovery, Recovering Lost or Corrupt Camera Images

Gickr - Animated GIFs Made Easy

2008-01-28T17:47:00.000Z

Gickr is a simple web utility for creating animated GIF images. Gickr lets you upload up to 10 images from either a Flickr account or your hard drive and turn them into a simple, frame-animated slide show. Animated GIFs are widely used across the web, mostly for animating small profile images or avatars but they can be used to make more complex mini-movies or even game sprites. Earlier web pages used them a lot before the emergence of Adobe Flash as the default web animation medium.

Animated GIFs aren't new by any means as they were intoduced in 1989 with the GIF89a standard but making one was always a bit on the tricky/techy side for the average user. Gickr makes this easy so it's an ideal tool for those that just want to make an animation quickly. Gickr lets you choose the final image size from a choice of four options (100, 120, 300 and 450 pixels wide) and frame change delay speeds of fast, slow, normal or 3 seconds. It'll even host the animation for you if you wish with the option to tag it for inclusion in a gallery.

On the downside, Gickr burns in a watermark at the top left of the image of the two larger sizes. The site is also fairly heavily ad supported but it's free so, if you don't have the luxury of owning Adobe Photoshop or Flash and need a wee animation, then this is worth trying out.

OWA GAL Search

2008-01-25T19:12:00.000Z

Found a useful wee add-on for Microsoft Entourage called OWA GAL Search, which allows you to search a Microsoft Exchange Server's Global Address List (GAL) via Outlook Web Access (OWA). Well it is useful, assuming you use Entourage in an Exchange environment.

When Entourage is configured to connect to an Exchange account, it uses LDAP to talk to the directory server. Generally if you're outside the office network, then you can't connect to the GAL without first making a VPN connection into the network. OWA GAL Search allows Entourage to search the GAL via OWA. As long as you have Entourage configured correctly and can connect to your email account using the web, then Entourage can lookup email addresses for you

As anyone unfortunate enough to have to rely on using Entourage knows, it sucks at mostly everything and is a really poor substitute for Outlook 2003/2007 on Windows. OWA GAL Search makes living with it a little more tolerable.

It's compatible with Office 2004 and Office 2008 for Macintosh, although I haven't got hold of the latter one yet to try to it out. I'm hoping the Entourage application has improved over the 2004 version, but wouldn't be difficult.

General Electric Cameras - Don't Shoot Till You See The Whites Of Their Eyes!

2008-01-25T17:35:00.000Z

Just spotted an article by Matthew Sparkes in PC Pro stating that General Electric (GE) are trying to break into the digital camera market over here in Europe with seven models to choose from.

It's expected that GE will offer models from the A-series (7-8 megapixels), the G-series (8 megapixels) and the E-series (8-12megapixels) digital cameras, which feature Smile and Blink detection, built-in panorama stitching and, the now expected, image stabilization. All models have the same user interface and software so there's only one user manual.

Prices will range from around £60 for the entry-level models A735, A835 and the A840s, about £120 for the G2, about £150 for the E1035 and about £180 for the E1235. The 10-megapixel E1050 is expected later in the year and will feature a 3-inch touchscreen and dockless high definition TV playback. There'll also be a E1050 variant with a built-in GPS receiver. The E1050 models are expected to start from £200.

I quite like the idea of blink and smile detection and built-in panorama stitching could be useful for those large landscape shots. GE isn't really a name associated with photography kit so they'll have an uphill run against the already well-established players such as Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Sony and Panasonic. I can't see any official European GE web site with camera technical specs yet but I'll be interested in seeing the first reviews when these hit the streets.

globalPandora Down!

2008-01-23T23:41:00.000Z

It looks like globalPandora has been closed down :-(

The rumour mill has it that Pandora have blocked their IP addresses so no more access for us in the UK. Can't really blame Pandora as they're just covering their backs and obviously don't want to be targetted for legal action by the UK music publishers.

In the end both Pandora and the UK music publishers are losing out as well as us now non-listeners. Pandora is (or was) a great service for discovering new music and artists. globalPandora are treating this as a technical outage for the moment but they are also listing links to a number of alternative music radio sites.

The FranticIndustries blog has some more suggestions on using other proxies to access Pandora from outside the US so I'll maybe investigate that or maybe just make the move to last.fm.

Related Posts: Pandora No More (Or Maybe Not)

Twitter - Is It Useful?

2008-01-23T17:35:00.000Z

I've been seeing loads of references to social networking/microblogging site Twitter for ages and finally signed up this lunchtime to see what it had to offer.

I'm not entirely sure how much use I'll get out of it (or it out of me) as it seems to focus on individuals with lots of friends. It also requires a lot of input to get the best out of it, assuming anyone's actually following your twittering, and do you really want to microblog your life?

Where it seems to fail, in my opinion, is the lack of any search facilities. I mean how can you use it to meet new people or reply to topics of interest if you can't actually find any of them? You can add people to your ring of friends by letting it search for existing users from your e-mail account contacts or you can just send someone an invite if you already know their address but that's it unless you choose to "follow" someone.

There's a Public Timeline so you can follow public posts for a bit but you need to subscribe to the RSS feed to get much more than a few entries and those whizz by very rapidly. Searching can be accomplished, in a fairly restrictive way if you ask me, using Twitter's new tracking feature, where you can track any word or concept on Twitter, and have the updates sent to your phone or IM. Why not on your web account? I don't use IM services and have no desire to give them my mobile number so they can fire lots of texts at me at my expense.

If I can't find anyone or anything on Twitter, then how would anyone find me or my posts? I'll give it a few weeks to see if it's any use so, if you're a Twitter user, then you can follow me on http://twitter.com/macindog

Skitch Screen Capture Goes Public Beta

2008-01-17T23:41:00.000Z

Skitch.com is a web service that works hand in hand with an application to give you simple but powerful screen capture facilities on a Macintosh, the results of which you can then upload and share on the web.

Most Mac users are aware that the ability to capture the full screen, a portion of it or even a window can be done with a few key presses but Skitch goes a step or two further in functionality. With Skitch you can capture a web page, a chat moment, an application, an iSight image or even open up an existing image from your iPhoto library, hard drive or Skitch history. You can even just sketch an idea. Once you've got an image into Skitch, then you can edit it like you would with most other image editors.

You can flip, resize, crop or rotate the image. You can add stuff like circles, rectangles, lines, arrows, text or just scribbles if you want to. Skitch automatically smooths hand-drawn lines as well. On top of that, all of the elements you can add to an image - shapes, arrows, text, etc. can be grabbed and moved, edited, resized, recoloured, etc.

Sharing the result is easy too. Upload your image to Skitch.com or use your own FTP, SFTP, Flickr or .Mac account and paste your Skitch.com link into any web-page, blog, forum or chat. The Skitch application is very easy to use and, even though it's still in beta, it's a very polished looking piece of coding with loads of options and lots of built-in help and online tutorials.

The only other free solution that comes close at the moment is The Jing Project, which works on both Macs and Windows although it does screencasts as well as sceen captures. Unfortunately, there's no indication that Skitch will remain free once out of beta but I suspect not as the developers, plasq.com, sell a few other graphics products like Comic Life and Doozla. That said, they are pretty inexpensive so Skitch may not burn too deep a hole in your pocket if you get too attached to it now.

Related Posts: Clip It!, How To Grab Web Page Screenshots, Screencasts - The Jing Project, Screen Capture Tools

Picasa For Macintosh In 2008!

2008-01-17T23:10:00.000Z

Just spotted this little gem on TechCrunch…

At this year's Macworld, TechCrunch's Duncan Riley asked Google if Picasa for the Mac was coming and was told "Picasa for Mac is under-development and will be launched later this year."

However, other Google representatives wouldn't confirm or deny this for a fact but they were smiling a lot at the time. Now, regardless of the fact that Duncan asked someone who obviously blurted out something that they shouldn't have, the horse has indeed bolted and it looks like we could well be seeing Google's excellent photo management software on our Macs sometime this year.

Given that they've already released Picasa for Linux, it shouldn't take a huge amount of work to make it Mac compatible. I really hope they don't resort to making us use Apple's horrendous X11 environment to get it running.

Fixit Guides - DIY Mac, iPod and iPhone Upgrades And Repairs

2008-01-15T17:45:00.000Z

If you have an Apple Mac, iPod or iPhone, then you'll know just how unfriendly they are to the average DIY repair or upgrade enthusiast. Sure the Apple Support site has manuals and some basic upgrading instructions but they're usually limited to how to change your laptop battery or upgrade the memory.

However, US-based Mac parts site iFixit have an excellent set of step-by-step tutorials on how to upgrade or replace just about anything on a portable Mac, iPod or iPhone. They even have a useful knowledgebase for help with troubleshooting problems.

The Fixit Guide Series covers Mac laptops, Mac Mini, Airport Extreme and iPods, etc. Each Fixit Guide has detailed disassembly instructions that walk you through the process of easily accessing and replacing batteries, hard drives, screens, and more so it's a valuable resource for anyone wanting to support or upgrade Apple kit. Also, if you're lost when sites mention things like Lombard, Pismo, 2nd Generation or 3rd Generation models, then don't worry as they also provide a very good set of resources to help identify which device you have.

Related Posts: How To Change An iPod Battery

Qipit - Online OCR Scanning For Free

2008-01-14T22:57:00.000Z

If you've ever come across a piece of written text and thought "I'd like a copy of that" but the thought of having to copy it by hand is a real put off. Now, if you have a mobile phone with a camera or a portable digital camera, then all you have to do is take a shot of whatever it is you want copied and then send it via e-mail or MMS to Qipit.

Qipit will take your photograph, whatever it may be, and scan it to PDF for you. Just think of it, hand-written notes, the contents of whiteboards, text documents, lecture notes, etc. and all transferred to text for you for free.

Qipit will then e-mail or fax the resultant PDF to your desired recipients so it could be a useful means of sharing with others. They'll even store your scanned docs online and you can then publish those on your web site or blog. You don't even have to send the image to them as you can just log-in on the site and upload images directly.

With the proliferation of mobile phones with built-in cameras and the ever-dropping price of digital cameras bringing mobile photography further into the reach of most people's pockets, then this could prove to be a very useful service.

Pandora No More (Or Maybe Not)

2008-01-13T23:47:00.000Z

If you're a fan of streaming radio site Pandora and live in the UK, then you'll probably have been dismayed to learn that, after a year of trying to negotiate realistic royalty rates with the UK music publishers and record labels, they've been forced to block access from the UK from the 15^th of January.

I for one will be really disappointed in losing the service. It's been a great medium for finding new music based on bands and artists that I like and I've bought several CDs based on some of what I've heard on Pandora. I can't understand how the music industry can't see the potential in such a service and are only interested in how much they can make directly. How we music fans are buying music is changing and they have to start moving with that change or they'll face some hard times ahead. The recent online sale of Radiohead's In Rainbows album as a digital download shows how even the artists want to change the selling model and, going by the estimated sales they made, they may tempt others along the same path and cut out the middle men.

However, there may be a ray or two of hope. Firstly, there's an petition on the go on the government's E-Petitions site to Save Internet Radio so, if you feel strongly enough, then get over there and sign it.

Secondly, some nice soul has set up a means by which those outside the US can still access Pandora. It's called globalPandora and it works for me at the moment. I suppose the acid test will come on the 15th but other users from countries already blocked say it works for them. I'm not sure how long it'll last because, this way, no one outside the US is getting any royalty fees so I imagine the UK music industry will do their best to kill this off and hammer yet another nail into their own coffin.

Related Posts: Music Recommendation Sites and Tools, Pandora: Discover New Music

PDF Hammer - An Online PDF Editor

2008-01-11T18:02:00.000Z

PDF Hammer is a free web utility that allows you to do some basic edits to PDF files online. You can upload an individual file or multiple files and then easily rearrange the pages, delete pages you don't want or even combine files. You can then export your project as a new PDF file.

PDF Hammer is still currently in beta and currently has the following features…

Reorder pages
Delete pages
Append PDF to another PDF

The developers are working on adding functionality to allow you to rotate pages and apply watermarks and stamps to pages.

It'll never take the place of a dedicated desktop application for the serious PDF creators out there but for the rest of us, it's an ideal tool and it's free.

NetNewsWire And FeedDemon Are Now Free

2008-01-10T13:21:00.000Z

Macintosh and Windows software publisher NewsGator have just announced that their award-winning RSS reader products FeedDemon and NetNewsWire are now both free. On top of this, they've also freed up their (Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Java based) mobile device RSS reader NewsGator Go! and NewsGator Inbox, which works with Microsoft Outlook.

This means that, should you need the faster speed, desktop integration, smart lists and syncing capabilities of these products, then you can get it all for absolutely nothing. I used to use NetNewsWire Lite, before moving on to online news aggregator service Blogines, and it was pretty good for a free news reader.

One of the benefits I wanted when moving to an online aggregator was that I could get my feeds from any machine (work, home, mobile, etc.) and they'd always be in sync but NewsGator offers this service for its readers as well as long as you register with them.

Related Posts: Free RSS Readers

PicMarkr - Watermark Your Images

2008-01-09T21:35:00.000Z

PicMarkr is a free web utility that lets you to add a custom watermark to your images. Very useful if your image editor application doesn't have that functionality and you want to protect your photographic copyright.

With PicMarkr, you can upload up to five images at a time from your hard drive or up to 10 if you let it grab them from your Flickr account. You can even resize them by width when uploading to either 500, 800 or 1024 pixels wide.

You can then choose to apply a text watermark or use a logo image of your own. If you choose to use text, then there are a few options available regarding colour and opacity. All of the watermarks can be aligned against a nine-position grid on the image and you can even choose to use a tiled text or image watermark. Once you've applied the watermark, you can download the new image(s) or upload them to Flickr.

I have to admit I'm not a fan of watermarking original photographs as I feel it corrupts the image and detracts from the look of it but it could be useful for editions used on web sites or for marketing the image through a stock agency. My only gripe with the system itself is that the sample image provided as you choose your options isn't any of the images you've uploaded and it doesn't reflect your chosen text or alignment options, etc.

Whats Its Color

2008-01-05T09:30:00.001Z

Whats its color is a web application/utility that will evaluate an uploaded image and give you the image's primary and complementary dominant colours, the number of visually unique colours in it and the top ten visually unique colours used.

Sounds simple but it's extremely useful when trying to find the best suited colours for borders, card mounts and frames. Results will display your image on the best suited background for the submitted image and they suggest that the more colourful the image, the better the results.

You can upload an image from your own system or provide a URL for the site to work on. The image is resized for display purposes but the calculations use the full resolution supplied. You can also choose to discard the image background as the calculations will be skewed by any overtly white or black backgrounds.

The only limitation I can see at the moment is that the supplied image can't be larger than 1Mb, which is a bit tight given current digital camera resolutions so you'll probably have to resize your images before uploading.

All images are deleted off the server 10 minutes after uploading and they are renamed during the upload process so no other user can view them. Whats Its Color does not retain any copies or image information.

Keybr.com - Touch-typing practice

2008-01-04T12:40:00.000Z

If you're like me and probably the majority of computer users, then your keyboard typing skills aren't quite what you'd call "professional". I get away with using two or three fingers at a time but I've always wanted to learn to type a bit faster and more accurately.

So, enter free web application keybr.com, a simple touch-typing practice tool that gives you a few escalating exercises in touch-typing that show you how fast and error-free your typing is. You can choose from a range of languages (English (US/US Dvorak/UK), French (France/Canadian), German, Spanish and Russian) and keyboard types where relevent.

If you are adept at touch-typing, then I suppose it could be useful if you're looking to change to another language or a Dvorak layout but for the rest of us it's a pretty useful practice tool. The only negative factor I found with it was that the text used in the lessons was pretty random and often bore no relation to actual words and that added another level of difficulty that may have been better to leave till a later exercise.

R.I.P. Netscape

2007-12-28T19:17:00.000Z

AOL have today indicated that they are to discontinue development and support for the Netscape Navigator browser as of 1^st February 2008. From that date, there will be no more active product support for Navigator 9, or any previous Netscape Navigator browser. This includes Netscape v1-v4.x, Netscape v6, Netscape v7 Suite, Netscape Browser v8, and Netscape Navigator/Messenger 9. While AOL will still provide download links to old versions of Netscape, they are now actively recommending that existing users download Mozilla Firefox.

In its heyday back in the 1990s, Netscape Navigator was probably the best web browser available and, as a mainly Mac user, I used to prefer Netscape Navigator and Communicator over the alternative Microsoft Internet Explorer before we were introduced to the likes of Safari, Mozilla and Camino, etc. It'll be sad to see it die off completely but it had been pretty awful as a browser since the diabolically bad version 6 and had only recently been rebuilt using the Firefox source code.

It's gone kind of full circle really since it gave birth to the Mozilla foundation when the Netscape code was released to the Open Source community. I suppose you could Firefox and Thunderbird are its progeny and with those as successfull as they are, it can now pass away quietly into history - R.I.P. Netscape!

SpokenText - Record and speak just about anything

2007-12-26T13:28:00.000Z

SpokenText is a free web service that allows you to automatically convert (English, French or German) PDF, Word, plain text and PowerPoint files as well as RSS news feeds, e-mails and web pages to spoken audio files.

You can download your recording as an iPod-compatible audio book or MP3 file and every registered member of SpokenText gets a personal podcast URL, which they can use to download recordings to iTunes or their iPod or even to share the feed with the world. You can also easily share your recordings on your web site or blog using SpokenText Badges or individual recording players. There's also a Firefox extension that allows you to easily record any text content you find while surfing the Internet or electronic library. It provides the means to record selected text or any web page using simple commands within the browser.

You could easily use it to download and listen to blog feeds, the news, your e-mails, lecture notes, tutorials and even e-texts or online books - ideal for uploading to your MP3 player or iPod. Also, each month, they publish an audio book for you to download or subscribe to by podcast so you get it automatically.

Improve Your Images

2007-12-20T23:59:00.000Z

With the emergence of more and more online image editing services, improveyourimages.com adds another useful tool to the arsenal.

Me and a big fish I caught on holiday

Basically, it's like an online version of Apple iPhoto's Enhance tool or Google Picasa's I'm Feeling Lucky button but essentially better than both of those. All you do is upload an image from your system or give it a URL to get it from and it automatically restores true original colours, corrects colour temperature and adjusts for poor lighting. There's nothing else to do and all you get is the option to download the improved image.

I tried it out with a couple of my images and the results are subtle but that's probably because I'd already tweaked them a bit. The next time I get a few fresh off the camera I'll see what this site can do for them. Anyway, if you're unhappy with the results you're getting while trying to tweak a problem pic with your image editor or just don't have the time to play with the likes of Photoshop or the GIMP, then this is definitely worth trying out.

Related Posts: More Online Image And Photo Editors, VectorMagic, Image Resizing Grows Up (or Down), Online Image Editing With Wiredness, Phixr: Another Online Image Editor, PikiFx, Online Image Editors

BBC Launches iPlayer For Macs

2007-12-13T23:59:00.000Z

The BBC have launched a beta version of their streaming iPlayer for Mac users and it looks not too bad if you're happy watching programmes in a very small window.

This launch is in response to being told that it must make its iPlayer platform neutral, though it continues to argue that finding a DRM solution will be difficult, as it utilises Microsoft's copy protection technology, that is only available on Windows. Hence the streaming only version for Macs, which doesn't support downloading programmes to watch at any time within 30 days like the Windows version does.

The service streams programmes broadcast over the past seven days to your browser and you have the choice of selecting television programmes from the last seven days, by category (children's, entertainment & comedy, drama, factual, music, news & weather and religion & ethics) or by alphabetical list. You can also narrow the selection to one of their nine channels if required.

They've also just announced that the iPlayer will come out of beta on Christmas Day, which has raised some concerns regarding the support cover over the holiday period should the technology prove less than reliable.

The Online/Offline Office Gets Closer

2007-12-12T13:30:00.000Z

With the uptake of office application suites like Live Documents, Google Docs , Zoho, Ajax13 and ThinkFree on the rise, there's an opening for a middle ground solution where you can work both offline and online.

Live Documents, Office Live and technologies like Google Gears and the Microsoft Sync Framework are moving some way towards that goal but there are a few other options available or coming soon…

DocSyncer is looking to allow you to synchronize your Microsoft Office documents with your Google Docs account but it's in private beta at the moment. Once you install the docsyncer application on your computer, it automatically finds and syncs your document files to Google Docs and your DocSyncer account. It even monitors the changes to your documents and syncs updated files as well.

Ulteo Online Desktop allows you to run OpenOffice in a web browser. Its primary function is to allow people to collaborate on OpenOffice documents without having to download and install the application.

Windows Mobile Screen Capture

2007-12-11T17:35:00.000Z

Having recently had a need to do a bit of user documentation on how to do something on a Windows Mobile device, I needed a method of capturing the screen and, of course, didn't want to pay anything for it. So, after a bit of a trawl around the net, I reckon Ilium Software Screen Capture is the best around at the moment.

It works by mapping its capture function to one of the special application keys and you can change this if it conflicts with one you need while capturing. You can choose to take an instant copy of the screen or you can set a delay. The All you do is run the program, change the application key and/or set a delay if necessary, and just and get on with whatever it is you need to capture. Once the screen looks the way the want it, and that includes menus, hit the appropriate application button and the image is saved as a BMP file. Once you're done capturing, exit the screen capture application and the application key reverts back to its original mapping. That's all there is and transferring the screen capture files over to your main machine and converting them to more friendly formats such as JPEG or PNG or editing them is fairly straightforward.

There are a few others out there worth checking out if the Ilium one doesn't suit you and freewarepocketpc.net lists all of the ones I could find for Pocket PC and Windows Mobile.

Keyboard Shortcuts

2007-12-07T23:58:00.000Z

Becoming familiar with an application or operating systems' keyboard shorcuts can make life in front of your computer much easier and you can get things done so much quicker than by using a mouse alone so, if you're one of those people that prefers to use keyboard shortcuts instead of a mouse or if you're just a newbie to the finger tapping culture, then you'll like ShortcutGuide.com.

It has a very useful list of keyboard shortcuts for most popular applications such as Adobe (Captivate 2, Reader 7), Apple (iDVD, iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes), BitTorrent, BlogLines, Gaim, Google (Calendar, Desktop Search, Docs, Gmail, Maps, Picasa, Reader, Spreadsheets, Video), Microsoft (Internet Explorer 7, Windows XP, Windows Live Mail, Windows Media Player 11), Mozilla Firefox 2, Opera 9, RealPlayer 10, Red Hat Linux 9, VMWare Workstation 5, WinSCP, WinShell and Yahoo! Mail

Okay, it's missing a few things like Mac OS X and Microsoft Office and Vista shortcuts but it is still a useful resource and it even has an interactive keyboard map, where you can hover over a key and see any related shorcuts.

Another excellent site is All Hotkeys, which has a huge list of keyboard shortcuts for browsers Microsoft systems and applications, Mac OS X and Apple applications, Google applications, Unix and Linux systems and applications, video games and a range of popular third-party applications.

Other useful sources of keyboard shortcuts are Mac OS X (Startup, Finder, keystrokes, etc.), Microsoft Products (Windows Vista, Windows XP, Office 2007, Office 2003, etc.), Windows ALT Keycodes and a Table of Keyboard Shorcuts (Mac OS X, Windows XP, Windows Vista, KDE, Gnome)

Related Posts: Handy Reference For Every Key On A Macintosh

iPod -> Folder

2007-12-07T17:50:00.000Z

iPod -> Folder is a useful little free, Mac OS X and Windows utility to have should you ever lose your iTunes music library. Basically, it'll let you copy the contents of your iPod music to a folder on your Mac or PC or any external drive attached to them.

It'll automatically detect the iPod music structure, calculate the iPod music file size, count folders and display folder sizes and copy all songs into a folder (on any accessible volume). It also comes with options to overwrite existing files, include iPod folder structure and copy MP3 files only.

Just bear in mind that you can't do a selective copy so you'll get the whole lot at once, and you'll need the space available to copy the files into and it's a one-way deal only. Those little iPods can hold a lot of data these days.

There are other tools out there that can do a similar job, such as Floola, Yamipod and Senuti, but iPod -> Folder is a very simple and easy to use option.

Related Posts: Access Your iPod!

Flickr Goes On A Picnik

2007-12-05T18:10:00.000Z

Flickr users can now edit their photos online directly from within the Flickr environment. Flickr has added an Edit Photo icon to the photo page that launches the Picnik editor and allows you to edit and adjust the photo without leaving Flickr.

Just click the button and, after a bit of whirring and clanking, you can crop, resize, rotate and adjust the photo directly.

Related Posts: More Online Image And Photo Editors

Books And What To Do With Them!

2007-11-28T17:35:00.000Z

Like most people, we've accumulated a fair number of books over the years and, being at a loose end for a few weeks recently while my broken elbow mended, I got to wondering what could be done with them in a technological sort of way, other than buying more of them that is.

The most obvious answer is to investigate e-books but I don't think the technology is there for that yet. Sure, there are loads of e-books out there and loads of them are freely available but I simply don't think very many of us would be happy reading an entire book on a computer or PDA screen. Unless you're trying to learn something, reading is a leisure activity best done in a relaxing setting so until we can get a slim, paperback-sized, low-priced, portable reader with a screen that adjusts for ambient light, I don't think e-books will achieve any great impetus. Electronic paper seems the way to go for the hardware but there are precious few products available as yet and none of them cheap. Amazon's Kindle has just appeared on the US scene but at almost $400, it'll take some serious marketing or a large price drop to make any inroads into the casual reader market.

So, with reading books electronically realistically out of the picture for the moment, that really only leaves a few other options…

Cataloguing

I know, making lists of stuff is sad but we've got hundreds of books piling up and it would be useful to know exactly what we've got as it wouldn't be the first time I've bought a book, only to find out that I already had a copy. So, being a fan of Macs and free software, I've been trying out Books, a free, open-source book cataloguing application for Mac OS X.

Books

Books is fairly simple: it lets you catalogue your books into a search-able database and you can easily add books manually, by quick look up on Amazon (by title, author or ISBN), by scanning the ISBN if you have a camera attached or by importing from tab-delimited text file or various other book application formats. Once you've got some data in there, you can add it into the Spotlight index so you can search for a book without having to open the application first.

I quite like Books and, while adding books by letting it fill the data in from Amazon fills in a lot of useful data, the Genres field ends up with useless subject data and the book cover can be missing on older books. That said, it's easy enough to clear the genre and enter something useful and I've managed to find most of the missing book covers with a bit of searching the net.

The export facilities are also pretty useful You can export the book covers to iPhoto, the booklist to your iPod or a tab-delimited text file and the database to PDF or even a web site. Importing and exporting is done via plug-ins so it's a very flexible system. I really liked the idea of being able to export the book list to an iPod or PDA as it'd be handy to be able to check if I already had a book before buying it. You can also keep track of reviews, multiple copies and lending history as well.

On the Windows front, there's Libra, which is free for non-commercial use and can catalogue audio CDs, movies, & games as well as books. Hook up a webcam, and Libra can use it as a barcode scanner too.

Libra

You can also use it to track items you've loaned as it'll let you keep a detailed record of each loan and remind you when it's due back. Printing looks pretty good as well and you export your library to web pages, and upload them to a web host to share with friends & family.

The next step up was to an online cataloguing system and I ended using Goodreads as it was free and very easy to use. There are quite a few others out there, LibraryThing being probably the largest and most-established but it's only free for the first 200 books. BookBumps is another free, web-based service and it's fairly new but presents a more iTunes-like interface to manage your library. Then there's sites like Listal and Listphile, which are really more comprehensive online listing engines anot designed specifically for books alone.

You can also build collections in Amazon wish-lists or in Google Book Search but they are far from ideal.

Goodreads

Goodreads is really nice to use. You can add books manually or by searching for it in Goodreads or any of the various Amazon databases by title, author or ISBN. You can also optionally add a rating, a review, the date you read the book, if you have a copy to sell or swap, and which shelves (categories/genres) to put it on. You can also flag the book you're currently reading and those you have still to read, which is useful as I seem to have over 20 still to be read and I've still a load to go through and add.

Members may also be granted librarian status and those can edit the book database to correct errors, add cover images and combine editions, etc. You have to ask for the privilege and I managed to get it so have done a bit of tidying up and correcting as I've been adding. Combining editions is useful for the whole community as it aggregates reviews and statistics into one place.

Goodreads also promotes a social aspect to reading in that you choose to let others see your book collection and profile. You can also add friends by using your Yahoo!, Hotmail, or Gmail address books to invite friends and see which friends are already Goodreads members. You can invite them by e-mail or just search the site to see if they're already on it. Of course, if you're the unfriendly sort, you can keep your profile and bookshelves private.

Selling and Swapping

You could always turn to selling or swapping your books once you've read them. I had a look at selling books on Amazon and ebay a while ago and, while it's easy to do it, it's just not very profitable as postage charges are quite high for books. I've sold loads of DVDs through Amazon as they're relatively cheap to post and hold their price for a while but secondhand books just don't command a very good resale price and there are loads of them listed for 0.01p. The only way to make any money selling at that level is to skimp on the postage but even that's difficult as they are usually classed as packets rather than letters. In my opinion, it's just not worth the bother of time spent packaging and posting.

BookMooch

I'm tempted by the swapping angle as there are a few sites out there promoting the free swapping of books. The only costs are the postage but I think the benefits outweigh even those. The best site I can see for this with a decent number of books listed and reasonable UK presence is BookMooch, which is run by John Buckman, who also designed and wrote Lyris ListManager, a well-respected commercial list server suite.

What you do is publish a list of titles you'd be willing to swap and, for each one listed, you get 0.1 points. Requesting a book costs 1 point (2 if it's not from your own country) and each book you send gets you 1 point (3 if you have to post it overseas). All of that means that you need to list at least 10 books to be able to start the ball rolling. You even get 0.1 point for acknowledging receipt of a mooched book.

If you want a particular book, then you add it to your wishlist and the system automatically sends out requests to matching bookholders if you have enough points to cover the transaction. Like other social sites, users can leave feedback on book senders so the better your feedback, the more likely you are to receive your books of choice. If you amass a surplus of points, then you can donate them to charity so they can benefit from getting free books too, although they only list US based ones at the moment.

I'm not entirely sure if the economics are sound as you may well be cheaper just buying second-hand books from ebay or Amazon, etc. but you'll still end up with a house full of books and won't have that warm-hearted feeling of having given something away and made someone else happy. I think I'll give it a try and see how it goes. I've got a box full of books I no longer want so maybe someone else will.

BookCrossing

This one's a strange concept! Basically you leave (release) your unwanted book in a public place. Leave it on a park bench, at a coffee shop or at a hotel on vacation. Share it with a friend or tuck it onto a bookshelf at the gym -- anywhere it might find a new reader!

With over 600,000 members worldwide, the BookCrossing web site proves that this isn't a passing fad and some take it fairly seriously. Once a book is released, the member logs the details on the web site so others can track it down. Your also encouraged to label the book as being a BookCrossing release to try and increase the membership and so pass the book on once it's been read again. Of course, they'll sell you some very fancy sticky labels to do just that and they're not cheap either but that's clubs for you.

That only leaves giving them away to charity, jumble sales or burning them but the society envisaged in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 isn't with us yet, thank goodness.

Drop.io - Useful Temporary Online Space

2007-11-27T18:25:00.000Z

If you've ever needed a bit of online space in order to temporarily store, move or share some files, then take a look at Drop.io.

Drop.io offers you a private place for storing and sharing photos, video, audio, notes, docs, etc. Each space, or drop as they call them, has a 100Mb limit and is accessible only to those whom you tell exactly where to look and you can secure it with a password. When you make a drop you also automatically get an email address of the same name @drop.io – so you can email in notes and attach files you want to put into a drop if you don't have access to a full web browser.

There's no registration required and they don't even ask for your email. You can create as many drops as you want, and access each at: drop.io/thedropname. When you create a drop, all you need to do is give it a name, an optional password and an expiry limit from a choice of 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 6 months or 1 year. Then you can choose whether others can view only, view and add notes or view and add notes and files.

On top of this, it has some useful features like taking the most common formats and converting them to be web friendly. If you send them a photo it will make thumbnails and put them in a gallery; if you send them videos they'll convert them so you can view them online; if you send them audio they'll stream it; if you send them PDFs they'll convert them too and so on. Even that expiry limit can be renewed before the dread date arrives.

Drops aren't indexed so can't be searched and that even includes blocking out web spiders so there's no chance of certain large and overly inquisitive search engines sniffing out your files. If 100Mb seems a bit low remember that you can create as many drops as you want and the developers plan on introducing paid upgrades for anyone wanting more than 100Mb in a single drop.

Related Posts: ADrive - 50Gbs Of Online Storage For Free, Windows Live SkyDrive, Unlimited Online File Storage, Free Online File Storage

Live Documents

2007-11-27T13:40:00.000Z

Yet another online contender for the online office application crown has emerged in the form of Live Documents. Like Google Docs , Zoho, Ajax13 and ThinkFree it offers online word processing document, spreadsheet and presentation applications.

Live Documents is a free alternative to Microsoft Office, with Flash/Flex based alternatives to Word, Excel and PowerPoint, for those who wish to escape the chains of expensive, corporate software. Live Documents also offers embeddable collaborative tools, and synchronization with your current Office documents and will also work with Open Office for those who have already jumped off the Redmond bandwagon.

If you're already running Microsoft Office 2000, XP or 2003, then there's an optional Live Documents Plug-in/Desktop Client for Windows, which converts Microsoft Office into a web-enabled smart client and provides collaborative capabilities within the context of familiar desktop applications. The desktop client also facilitates offline access to your documents - any changes that you make to a Live Document in offline mode is cached locally and automatically synchronized to the server the next time you go online.

The system is still in private beta testing and logins are, for the moment, by invitation only so you have to register to get an invite.

Related Posts: Xcellery - An Online Spreadsheet Editor, Online Office Tools

Round Those Corners

2007-11-27T00:10:00.000Z

If you've ever wanted to clip those harsh, righty-angled corners off of your photographs, then RoundPic will do it for you for free.

All you do is upload your image, or give it a URL to get it from, and then choose your size of corner from the 12 possible sizes and the colour of the background (the holes left when the corners are removed). It'll also let you resize the image as well and you can preview your results before downloading.

No registration required, just download the resulting image and you're done. It's a pretty simple, one-horse site but it does what it says it does.

Camtasia Studio and SnagIt For Free

2007-11-26T17:30:00.000Z

If you're in the market for a screen to movie recorder for Windows and have been looking at such things as Adobe Captivate or Camtasia Studio, then you might not be aware that Techsmith are offering Camtasia Studio 3, an older version, for free.

All you have to do is download the free version and request a registration key. Okay, version 3 doesn't have features such as Auto Pan and Zoom, but it'll do all the stuff the majority of users will ever want and it includes support for PowerPoint presentations. Upgrades to version 5 are being offered at half retail price.

On top of Camtasia Studio, the're also giving away SnagIt, their Windows screen capture utility. Again, it's an older version (7.2.5) and there are a few free Windows screen capture utilities out there already like Gadwin PrintScreen and ScreenHunter but SnagIt has some extra bells and whistles that might appeal to some.

In order to get the free version of SnagIt, just download the demo of version 7.2.5 and request a registration key. Again, upgrades to version 8 are being offered at half retail price.

I really like the idea of these big companies giving away older versions of their products. Most folk can get by with a less feature-rich version but this si a great way to let people try out commercial software for real and they just might upgrade if they have a use for those extras.

Related Posts: Screencasts - The Jing Project, How To Grab Web Page Screenshots, Screen Capture Tools

ADrive - 50Gbs Of Online Storage For Free

2007-11-20T12:30:00.000Z

New online storage provider ADrive is offering 50Gbs of free space. It may not be an unlimited service like divShare but 50Gbs is larger than all of the other free space offerings I could find.

Uploading and downloading is restricted to a web-based interface at the moment but the company is planning to offer a desktop client for more controlled and flexible file transfers, backups, etc. They're also gearing up to offer premium accounts and disaster recovery plans for those that need more than 50Gbs or better backup options.

The web-based system won't allow you to select a folder for uploading or downloading so it can be a bit tedious moving lots of content but hopefully, the upcoming desktop client will resolve that issue.

Related Posts: Windows Live SkyDrive, MediaMax Adds Automatic Windows Backup, Unlimited Online File Storage, Free Online File Storage

Fauxto Evolves Into Splashup

2007-11-19T18:13:00.001Z

Online image editing application Fauxto has been relaunched under a new name - Splashup

Fauxto is or was one of the better online editors and, when I tried it out back in February, I found it pretty easy to use and also quite powerful in functionality. I can't see any reason why the name was changed other than the fact that it might have been a bit confusing for some as Fauxto was supposed to be pronounced "photo". I guess Splashup is a fairly simple and unconfusing alternative.

If you're looking for an online image editor, then Splashup is really worth checking out.

Related Posts: More Online Image And Photo Editors

Adobe Buzzword Goes Open Beta

2007-11-18T14:44:00.000Z

If you're looking for an alternative to the likes of Zoho Writer, Google Docs or ThinkFree online word processors, then Adobe have opened up their Buzzword application to public beta.

Buzzword is a Flash-based word processor with all the usual functionality of a word processor. On top of that, it has sharing, collaboration and versioning features and you can import and export documents to and from from Microsoft Word (.doc or Word 2003 XML) and Rich Text Format (.rtf) files.

As with most beta-level products, there are some issues but it's looking pretty useful and hopefully the developers will get those bugs ironed out and some extra features like embedding links or URLs in there too before long.

Free Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2008

2007-11-16T21:29:00.000Z

Microsoft have updated their Office Accounting application to version 2008 and it comes in both Professional "paid for" and an Express "free" version.

The free version has core accounting functions like general ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable, invoicing, bill payment and online banking as well as integration with Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook so it should do the job for those with basic accounting needs, if you're self-employed or even running a small business.

What it doesn't have are things like inventory, sales and purchase ordering, forecasting, job costing, etc. If you want anything more than basic accounting, then you'll need to ante up some money for the Professional version.

VectorMagic

2007-11-12T22:43:00.000Z

VectorMagic is a free, online service from the Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory that can convert bitmap or rasterized images to vector images. Since vector images are represented by geometric shapes such as lines, circles and curves, scaling these images to smaller or even larger sizes can be achieved without the usual blurring or pixelation associated with bitmap images.

The sample comparison above shows the original raster image on the left and the vectorized result on the right. This technology isn't new and both Adobe and Corel have commercial products available to do the job but the Vector Magic team say that their solution is better than either of those.

As you might expect, it works best on somewhat flat images like logos, fonts, scanned cartoon art, etc. but it will work with photographs as well, you just won't get as rounded a result. Still those results do produce useful effects that you might actually like the look of.

It'll convert images in JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP and TIFF formats and you can save the converted images in EPS, SVG or PNG formats.

Windows Application Software Updaters

2007-10-12T18:00:00.000+01:00

If you want to keep your Windows operating system and Microsoft Office applications up to date, then visit Microsoft Update regularly or configure your system to update automatically. That's easy but making sure all those non-Microsoft applications and little utilities installed on your PC are up date can be a seriously time-consuming chore, especially with those that seem to release updates on a weekly basis.

I've already mentioned the File Hippo Update Checker but a few others have appeared recently that do a bit more for you and may well be worth checking out…

AppSnap

AppSnap scans your PC and compares your installed applications against its database of latest version numbers. It'll then display all of your applications in a list, allowing you to download and re-install, upgrade or even uninstall them.

You can ask it to display a list of any applications that can be upgraded with both the current and possible version numbers. Just select those you want upgraded and click on the Upgrade button. AppSnap will then download them, uninstall the old version if required and install the new one for you.

The versions database is stored locally but it has a facility to allow you to download and update to the current version. You can even list those applications from its database that you don't have installed and install them if you want.

UpdateStar

UpdateStar is a utility that lets you stay up-to-date with all of your personal software. With a database of over 80,000 freeware, shareware and commercial applications it covers a fair number of the applications that you're likely to have lurking around your hard drive.

UpdateStar can be set to do an automatic update search daily, weekly or monthly and will notify you when an update for one of your programs is available, offering you information and download options as well as licensing links in the case of a commercial product or update. it'll also let you modify or uninstall applications as well.

Both of the above utilities have their good and bad points and I found myself using both of them. I really like the way AppSnap lets you install multiple updates and it seemed the much faster of the two but it's less configurable and UpdateStar recognised far more of my installed applications. However, with UpdateStar you have to download and then install the updates manually so more ineraction is required.

In short, neither will do the full job for you as there will always be something you have that they don't have in their databases but they do help keep you up date, which will save you some time in the long run.

Related Posts: Software Update Checkers

Clip It!

2007-10-09T18:10:00.000+01:00

Typical! Having only just posted about capturing a web page as an image yesterday, I've spotted another free Mac OS X utility for this today.

Clip It! quickly captures and saves web pages into images for easy preview and presentation. No more browser scrolling and image stitching, it keeps the whole web page in a single image no matter how big it is. Images can be saved as JPEG, PNG or TIFF formats.

It opens the URL in its own Webkit mini-browser window, which you can choose from a range of standard sizes to match VGA, SVGA, XGA, SXGA, UXGA, HD 720, HD 1080, WSXGA+, WUXGA and WQXGA resolutions. There's also a menu to select the browser language if that's a requirement and it has a useful drawer for collecting images as you go.

Related Posts: How To Grab Web Page Screenshots

How To Grab Web Page Screenshots

2007-10-08T18:20:00.000+01:00

There are loads of utilities available to help you capture screen shots of whatever is currently on your display but capturing shots of web pages isn't quite so simple. As soon as you notice those vertical or horizontal scroll bars, then you know that most screen capture utilities won't do the job in one go.

I've already covered free utilities like Gadwin PrintScreen, ScreenHunter, for Windows and SnapNDrag for Mac OS X but there are a few more and some of them are aimed specifically at capturing web pages. Not so long ago, you'd have to take multiple shots and try to stitch them together but not any more…

thumbalizer - thumbalizer is an excellent and free web-based, web page capture service. You enter a URL, select whether you want to capture the screen or the full page, hit the thumb it button and it does the rest.

Once it's done it'll preview the captured image and give you links to download it at various resolutions - 320, 640, 800, 1024 or 1280 pixels wide or even custom. It even comes with a Bookmarklet link to make it easy to use. The only downside I can see is that you can only save as JPEG but apart from that it's a seriously useful site.

Pearl Crescent Page Saver - Page Saver is a Firefox extension that lets you capture images of web pages. These images can be saved in PNG or JPEG formats. Options let you control whether images are captured at full size (which is the default) or scaled down to a smaller size. There's a Pro version available with a few extra bits of functionality but the basic version is free.

Paparazzi - Paparazzi is a small utility for Mac OS X that makes screenshots of webpages. This very simple tool takes screenshots of websites which do not fit on one screen. You specify the desired width, minimal size, a delay if required and the URL. The program displays a preview and you can save the screenshot to PNG, JPEG, TIFF, or PDF. I've used it a couple of times and it seems to work fine.

WebShot - WebShot allows you to take screenshots of web pages and save them as full sized images or thumbnails. Captured images can be whole or part page and can be saved in JPG, GIF, PNG, or BMP formats.

The freeware version comes with a demo of the command line interface, which can be purchased, and used to streamline the screenshot process on whole websites. The server edition of WebShot comes with a DLL that will allow you to embed WebShot technology in your own applications.

WebSnapr - WebSnapr is another web-based screenshot service. However, it only handles certain sizes and can't capture the entire page if it's bigger than can be viewed on screen. Another downside is that it adds a "POWERED BY WEBSNAPPER.COM" line at the bottom of each image. That said, it's a fairly simple-to-use screen shot service that could easily do the job of some stand-alone tools.

PS Apologies for the lack of individual screenshots here but all of these tools take shots of other web sites so there's really not much to show. The one I did include was taken with thumbalizer and downloaded at a custom width of 200 pixels.

iPod Death Predictor

2007-10-03T18:27:00.000+01:00

Ever wanted to create a "Dead Pool" for iPods or just fancy finding out how long your precious little music player has left to live?

Well, take a visit to the iPod Deathclock, where you can enter your iPod serial number, answer a few simple questions like "how often do you use it and where?", "how many times have you dropped it?" or "has it ever got wet?" and then you'll get a nice big countdown timer to when it's likely to die on you and some advice on battery life.

Zoho Adds Database And Reporting Tools

2007-10-03T17:55:00.000+01:00

Online application suite Zoho has added database management and reporting to its range of tools. Zoho DB & Reports is a web-based relational database manager and reporting tool. With this you can…

Create, edit and access your databases from anywhere.
Convert spreadsheet files (.xls) to online databases.
Import .csv, .tsv files and manage your data and reports over the web.
Build reports using a Drag and Drop interface.
Create charts, pivot table, summary and other wide-range of reports.
Query your database using any known SQL dialect to create powerful and flexible reports.
Share databases and reports for collaboration with others.
Embed reports and queries into websites or blogs.

Since they already have Zoho Creator for online database creation, I'm not sure what extra benefits this brings other than a much more user-friendly or at least less geek-oriented interface but it is fairly nice to use.

Zoho certainly seems to be shaping up to give Microsoft and Google some decent competition in the office tools market and is well worth investigating.

Image Resizing Grows Up (or Down)

2007-10-02T23:00:00.000+01:00

Rsizr is a new, Flash based image processing site that does just one thing - it resizes an image. However, as well as allowing you to select the standard, lossy resizing algorythm it also offers the ability to use a new one called “seam carving”. Seam carving analyses the image content and divides it into slices of interesting and uninteresting bits. If you're reducing the size, it can remove uninteresting sections and keep the detailed bits intact and. vice versa, if enlarging, then it can insert slices that match the colour and texture of the surrounding area. For example, the follwoing image is followed by one I reduced vertically using the new algorythm…

Before

After

It's pretty obvious that the process used above has removed a lot of the flat areas from the background and left the detail. Another nice touch is the ability to paint over an area and either preserve or remove it during the operation, which means you get to decide what is and what isn't interesting.

Rsizr can process JPEG, GIF or PNG images and save as JPEG or PNG. It doesn't allow you to load images from photo sharing sites like a lot of the other image manipulation tools do but it does what it does pretty well and maybe that functionality will follow in time.