Web today has come a long way, beyond the limits of static web pages that defined internet in the early ages. It has evolved into a fully loaded, interactive application suite which now can give stand alone desktop applications a run for their existence. Here is such a list of online tools to do jobs which once required us to download and install a software but, now can be done from the comfort of a browser window. No installation, no platform or compatibility issues and of course free .

Photo Editors:

• http://pixlr.com/editor/ – One of the best and feature rich photo editor complete with layers, history and more.It presents you a workspace similar to Photoshop but inside a browser. It also works very smoothly once the entire app is loaded.
• If you need to play around and try various effects on a photo without any complexity then,http://pixlr.com/express/ and http://pixlr.com/o-matic/ are for you. Experiment with lots of pre-set effects on you photos or make your own.

File Format Converters:

• http://www.freefileconvert.com – Whether it’s a word document that you need in pdf or a tar file you need in zip or rar format. This site supports all popular formats for documents, images, audio, video, compressed files and e-book files. you can check the list of supported formats here.
• http://www.online-convert.com/ – This is another free service that supports almost all popular file types.

OCR Services:

If you ever wanted to copy the text from an image in a machine with no OCR software installed, then these online services would come handy.

• http://www.onlineocr.net/ – It has a maximum file size limit of 4 MB and allows 15 images per hour in guest mode. You can register to increase the limit.
• http://www.free-ocr.com/ – This one has 2MB limit in file size and allows 10 images per hour
• http://www.newocr.com/ -  This site allows unlimited uploads, supports 58 languages and also supports multipage pdfs or multiple images in a zipped archive.

Text-to-Speech

Too lazy to read it? Then listen to it. These text-to-speech utilities would speak what you write (or paste) in. These also allow you to download the audio file and listen to it at your convenience on your favourite device. Also useful when you want to know the pronunciation but using a dictionary is too much work for you.

• http://imtranslator.net/translate-and-speak/ – This website can translate your input text before speaking. With a support for 10 most used languages, you wont need any other service.
• http://ctrlq.org/listen/ – It supports 100 characters, has a responsive design and is HTML 5 ready.

Speech recognition:

Want your computer to take dictations? Then use a speech recognition service.

• http://ctrlq.org/dictation/ – Click on the microphone and speak into your microphone. Works only in Chrome
• http://talktyper.com/ – This one too works in chrome, but provides more options to fine tune settings and get a better result.

Torrent Client:

• http://www.bitlet.org/ – This is essentially a torrent client in a browser. It’s an applet hence it requires java support in your browser.
• http://www.zbigz.com/ – This one acts as a proxy client for you. Upload the torrent file and it will download the file for you and you can download the file later from zbigz.com when download completes. Provides convenience and anonymity.

Zip Utilities:

• http://www.ezyzip.com/ – zip and unzip your files without installing any software. This is an applet that runs in your browser locally so it’s fast compared to conventional online tools which need you to upload your files. Requires Java enabled in your browser to run.
• http://crackersite.xtgem.com/layanan/archiver – If you do not have Java installed, use this to compress or decompress your files. Supports all popular compression formats.
• http://b1.org/online – This is an online extension of its full featured zip utility. The online version supports only extraction.
• http://onlineziptool.com/ – This one supports all popular formats but can only compress files.

This is all that I currently know of. I’ve avoided tools commonly used like email clients, instant messengers, VoIP tools etc. I’ve also provided only a few examples, if you need more just Google it.

Please let me know if you have some that are not listed here. And of course I’d be glad to know if this list helped.

A nice video by Nokia Research centre and Cambridge Nanoscience centre. This shows the application of nano technology to mobile phones, a few from the endless possibilities. Though it’s still a concept looks promising.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX-gTobCJHs

We all know the importance of protecting our privacy and confidentiality. Here are a few innovative ways to do this.

Conceal whatever you are typing, from prying eyes and stay secure.

Hide what you are typing and what websites you visit.

And the ultimate way to be anonymous….

One more…

I laughed all day remembering this advertisement and telling others to watch it. Though a bit old I found it refreshingly funny.

Engineers and scientists will never make as much money as business executives. Now a rigorous mathematical proof has been developed that explains why this is true:

Postulate 1: Knowledge is Power.
Postulate 2: Time is Money.

As every engineer knows,
Work = Power * Time

Since Knowledge = Power, and Time = Money, we have:
Work = Knowledge * Money

Solving for Money, we get:
Money = Work / Knowledge

Thus, as Knowledge decreases, Money increases, regardless of how much Work is done.

Conclusion: The Less you Know, the More Money you Make.

Note: It has been speculated that the reason why Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard’s math program was because he stumbled upon this proof as an undergraduate, and dedicated the rest of his career to the pursuit of ignorance

Once upon a time, there was a software engineer who used to develop programs on his Pentium machine, sitting under a tree on the banks of a river. He used to earn his bread by selling those programs in the Sunday market.

One day, while he was working, his machine tumbled off the table and fell in the river. Encouraged by the Panchatantra story of his childhood (the woodcutter and the axe), he started praying to the River Goddess.

The River Goddess wanted to test him and so appeared only after one month of rigorous prayers. The engineer told her that he had lost his computer in the river.
As usual, the Goddess wanted to test his honesty. She showed him a match box and asked, “Is this your computer ?” Disappointed by the Goddess’ lack of computer awareness, the engineer replied, “No.”

She next showed him a pocket-sized calculator and asked if that was his. Annoyed, the engineer said “No, not at all!!”

Finally, she came up with his own Pentium machine and asked if it was his. The engineer, left with no option, sighed and said “Yes.”

The River Goddess was happy with his honesty. She was about to give him all three items, but before she could make the offer, the engineer asked her, “Don’t you know that you’re supposed to show me some better computers before bringing up my own ?”

The River Goddess, angered at this, replied, “I know that, you stupid donkey! The first two things I showed you were the Trillennium and the Billennium, the latest computers from IBM!”. So saying, she disappeared with the Pentium!!

Moral: If you’re not up-to-date with technology trends, it’s better keep
your mouth shut and let people think you’re a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt . . .

SOURCE : NOT KNOWN

This is an excellent video on effects of spreading rumours by Films Division India. Nice animation with a nice lesson.

IP Messenger is a feather light application of about 150 KB. You can download it from here. It’s a zip file containing setup and other support files, but the fact that you can straight away use it by double-clicking on the ‘ipmsg.exe’ file without even setting up in most computers(Windows XP and above), makes it even nicer. It automatically detects all the systems that run IP Messenger inside your network. Now all that left is click the user, write a message, click the send button and whoa…..you are done.

Here is what you can do with it.

• Send files and folders to others at an amazingly fast speed, no need to share your folders to let others use your files.
• By selecting more than one user you can multicast your messages/files/directories.
• Seal your messages so that you get an acknowledgement when the recipient opens the message.
• Lock the message so that only the intended person gets the message.
• Set status or absence mode.
• Can view the IP address, login user, machine name of the other users.
• Messages can be logged for future reference or in case you accidentally close your message box.

There are other features to it too.

• It is open source and free. You can download the source from its homepage www.ipmsg.org.
• It is multi-platform. Download available for Windows, MacOS and Unix/Linux.
• You can send messages from command prompt.

ipmsg.exe [port] /MSG [/LOG][/SEAL] <hostname or IPaddr> <message>
ex) C:\> ipmsg.exe /MSG localhost Hello Me.

In case your LAN is partitioned into multiple sub-networks that use multiple default gateways to connect, then IP Messenger will detect only the systems having IP Messenger using one default gateway. There is a trick or hack to make the nodes outside the subnet visible. There is a post on How To do this to make this hack work.