Daily Web Dose

Picnik online photo editing

2007-02-15T07:55:00.000-04:00

Online photo editing can be both easy and fun. With Picnik - a neat and fast web application - you can quickly edit all your online photos from one place. It's the easiest way on the Web to fix underexposed photos, remove red-eye, or apply effects to your photos.

You can fixing your photos with just one-click or do even more tweaking. Picnik manages your pics with several functions like: crop, rotate, and resize - all in in real-time!
You can also add many special effects.
Picnik runs on Windows, Mac and Linux and supports and works directly with many photo sharing sites, and you do not need to download and install anything!

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Gaim encrypts your IM conversations

2007-02-14T08:39:00.000-04:00

If you want to encrypt your IM conversations you can install and use Gaim. This open source application uses public/private key pairs to scramble each message that it sends to your recipient, as well as it will then de-scrambles that message and display it for you. If the recipient does not have the Gaim plugin installed, he/she will receive a message explaining that the text is encrypted.

Naturally all these routines work in background and do not require any kind of effort on your part - save of course the initial encrypting (just click on the lock icon).
Gaim works on Windows/Mac/Linux/OS portable, its latest stable version is 1.5. Be warned that Gaim IM security is not 100% foolproof, albeit it is certainly an easy way to obscure your sensitive conversations.

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Easily create Photo Album with J Album 7

2007-02-13T13:33:00.000-04:00

JAlbum is a fantastic gallery software that produces a web-album directly from your own digital pictures. J stands for Java as JAlbum runs on both Windows and Mac.It is fast and easy to use and supports up to 30 languages - and it is free!

JAlbum features a personalization, so that you can choose each look of each album you creat. For instance you can have several combinations of themes, layouts, picture, thumbnail, background music, etc.
JAlbum allows you to share your photo albums anywhere, this because your pictures are not linked to one site: so you can publish your albums on any web page as well as you can share directly from your computer.

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Mozilla SeaMonkey 1.1 Suite

2007-02-12T08:46:00.000-04:00

Mozilla SeaMonkey 1.1 is a suite derived from the application formerly known as "Mozilla Application Suite".

SeaMonkey 1.1 includes:

Navigator

Tabbed browsing gives you a better way to surf the net. You no longer have to open one page at a time. With tabbed browsing, open several pages at once with one click. Plus, your homepage can be multiple pages, in tabs.
Popup blocker lets you surf the web without interruption from annoying ads.
Image Manager lets you block images to remove offensive images or speed up the rendering of web sites.
Find as you type gives you another way to navigate a page. Just start typing to jump from link to link or to find a word or phrase within a page.
Plus all the features a modern browser should have including: Advanced security settings; Password, Download, and Cookie managers; Themes; multi-language and multi-platform support; and, the latest in Web Standards.

Mail & Newsgroups

Junk mail controls helps you take back control of your e-mail from spammers. SeaMonkey's adaptive junk mail control gets smarter with use and is personalized to the e-mail that you receive. Manage your mail with customizable Labels and Mail Views. Color code your e-mail to help you prioritize. Sort your mail with views to help you through your e-mail much faster.
Multiple Accounts support helps you manage all your mail through one interface.
SeaMonkey Messenger includes Enterprise ready features such as S/MIME, return receipts, Address Books, LDAP support, and digital signing.

Composer

SeaMonkey's powerful yet simple HTML editor keeps getting better with dynamic image and table resizing, quick insert and delete of table cells, improved CSS support, and support for positioned layers.

SeaMonkey 1.1 is powered by the same engine as Firefox 2 and the upcoming Thunderbird 2, and includes numerous enhancements including more visible security indicators in the browser and enhanced phishing detection for e-mail, a new tagging system for e-mail that supersedes labels, support for multi-line tooltips in web pages, and previews images in tab tooltips. Other changes include inline spell checking in the browser, an updated version of ChatZilla, and a significantly improved startup script on Linux.

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Newest release from Zoho: Notebook

2007-02-11T07:54:00.000-04:00

People at Zoho have in preparation a new release; Notebook! This online application is already successful, With Notebook you can gather and create multiple types of content that can easily be shared (You will be able to opt for sharing an a part or the whole notebook) with others.

As usual its interface is very simple, and Zoho Notebook will solve all your problems in managing multiple sources of information (desktop, e-mail, websites, applications etc.).
Thanks to Zoho Notebook you will only have one single environment in order to access and share all those information that are important for you. You can quickly use “add” buttons in order to add any text, graphics, photos, audio, video, RSS feeds and documents
Zoho Notebook is a sort of midway between Google Notebook and Microsoft OneNote enriched with web 2.0 collaborative approach. Clearly you can import/export Notebook pages from other applications such as Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheet.
Zoho Notebook is perfectly Skype-integrated for instant chat and IP telephony and has a Firefox and IE plug-in.

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LAN chatting made easy with BORGChat

2007-02-10T08:45:00.000-04:00

BORGChat is a very interesting application that allows you to chat within your LAN Network. This is a time and cost saving software that, by setting a room and channel based chat (private and/or open) on a LAN, simplifies communication among colleagues and coworkers within different cubicle, floor and building locations.

Other features include message board and picture and/or file sending. You can also view the status of other computers (here, busy or away) and share files within your network. As to safety it also has functionality like "Ignore private messages/ all messages" and "Add to block list" (filtered messaging).
BORGChat is free and supports almost any language.

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Optimise your desktop with Win Tabber

2007-02-09T12:52:00.000-04:00

Win Tabber is probably the swiftest way to make space on your Taskbar. This tiny and neat application allows you to identify and single out some of your open windows and put them into a simple tabbed interface.

You can multi-tab your windows in a few seconds, besides a shell with tabs works better and faster. When you start using Win Tabber multiple tabs will take place of windows and you will get a better view of your windows tasks. Win Tabber is free to download.

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Share your pics with Pikeo

2007-02-08T09:51:00.000-04:00

Pikeo is a fast and reliable Flex photo sharing website. Pikeo also has a fast uploading function that does not require any desktop application. One you sign up you can upload even whole folders directly from the site working in the background. This means that the application continues uploading while you keep browsing your pictures.

Pikeo grants you full mobility as no matter where you are you can send photos from your camera phone to Pikeo. Plus, another tiny feature allows you to keep track of your travels by pinning your photos to an online map.
Pikeo is free and gives you up to 1 Gigabyte storage!

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Check your Web designs with Web Accessibility Toolbar

2007-02-07T08:30:00.000-04:00

Web Accessibility Toolbar is a neat application provided by the Accessible Information Solutions (AIS) team of Vision Australia developed to aid manual examination of web pages for a variety of aspects of accessibility. This application installs as an Internet Explorer toolbar and helps web designers and developers to examine the structure, components and accessibility features of any given web page. and offers several integrated tools to inspect style sheets, tables, frames, images and more. System requirements are:

Microsoft Windows - Tested on Windows 98 & 2000, NT & XP
Internet Explorer 5+ with Javascript enabled (for most functions except IE Options)

Web Accessibility Toolbar consists of a range of functions that:

identify components of a web page
facilitate the use of 3rd party online applications
simulate user experiences
provide links to references and additional resources

You can also carry out several tests like link checks, HTML validation, page download speed, color simulations, page resolutions and much more. There are other languages supported than English (French, Portuguese, Korean etc.). Toolbar functionality is an ongoing development process. However Toolbar has an update function the tools/references available, so that it can be updated without any user intervention: some toolbar functionality are based on Javascript and CSS files that are hosted on the Vision Australia server. These files may can undergo modifications and change in the way the associated Toolbar function works.
You should download it and give it a try it!

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Create personalised menus with FileMenu Tools

2007-02-06T07:56:00.000-04:00

FileMenu Tools a new application allows you to customise your shortcut Windows right-click menu. Context menus are normally very useful especially when you have your current archive organised in several thematic folders. Additionally you can also set numerous custom shortcut/context menus.

FileMenu Tools includes a lot of built-in functionality such as run Command Line From Here, Move To, Copy To, Copy Path, and a whole lot more. An interesting feature is the Synchronisation of two folders: it is possible configure the synchronization type (unidirectional, bidirectional, etc.) and the file types which must be synchronized. Moreover you can also deletes recursively specific file types from a folder, and these file types can be specified with wild cards, for example: *.txt, *.t??
FileMenu Tools is free to download and use.

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Blog and News with Gobits Reader

2007-02-05T08:24:00.000-04:00

Gobits Reader is a free and fastweb-based news reader. Based on advanced Ajax interface, it makes easy to find and organise feeds Gobits Reader tracks your favorite news, websites, blogs and allows you to be updated, create your blog and share your blogroll.

Publishing is very easy, drag and drop features allow you to annotate contents of your favorite articles and broadcasting of your own RSS feeds so that the world can subscribe to your news. Gobits Reader also has a built-in email service (including a free email account) so that you can send articles and news sources to your network members.

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Master all your videos with Any Video Converter

2007-02-04T13:53:00.000-04:00

Any Video Converter! 1.21 was released Thursday. This great free all-in-one video converting application performs every format video conversion with a friendly graphic interface.

Any Video Converter can manage and convert video files from various formats fast and with good video quality Formats supported include DivX, XviD, MOV, rm, rmvb, MPEG, VOB, DVD, WMV, AVI to MPEG-4 for iPod/PSP/portable video device, MP4 player/smart phone.
Thanks to Any Video Converter even beginners can arrange their files in any format video and watch them with iPod, PSP, mobile phone or MP4 player.
Any Video Converter can also perform batch file conversion, by simply creating a batch list of file of any format and convert them all to a single selected format.

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Restore stuck LCD pixels with JScreenFix

2007-02-03T17:13:00.000-04:00

JScreenFix is a useful application that can fix your PC, PDA and Mobile Phone LCD screen stuck pixels. Stuck pixels - brilliant point of colour (green, red, etc.)visible while the whole display is black – sometimes happen on LCD screens and they may function again. In case they look black on a white background, they are considered instead dead pixels.

JScreenFix acts on each colour component independently and un-coordinatedly, by random on-off cycles at up to 60/tps, so pixels are repaired via resonance and reiteration. The process takes less than 20 minutes, is very much effective and not too demanding on the screen's power supply circuitry. The final outcome is an increase in contrast and normalisation of colour levels in plasma and LCD screens.
JScreenFix has several different versions available for LCD, TV and more, but it does not work on CRT screens. JScreenFix is free, and by the by viewing the screen while running JScreenFix is not recommended.

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Draw and produce mechanical parts with eMachineShop

2007-02-02T08:16:00.000-04:00

I was very much impressed by eMachineShop an e-business where at the click of a mouse you can order custom machine parts! This is a extraordinary new web-service that allows users to create mechanical custom parts. eMachineShop solves the problem of getting mechanical parts by providing free CAD downloadable software so that the customers can draw or import from an existing file from their CAD program and also budget the price and order the part they have designed via the Internet.

Ordered parts can be for cars, bikes, aircraft, musical instruments, watercraft, optical devices, sensors, models, nameplates, electronic devices, enclosures, clocks, machinery, engines, furniture, games, jewellery, jigs, telecom, lighting, medical devices, photographic devices, robots, sculptures, sound equipment, sporting equipment, tooling, toys, and more.
eMachineShop is an online alternative to a machine shop: your parts will be machined and delivered from 1 to 1 million units.
At eMachineShop they do not review designs; however they encourage users to download their free software in order to determine whether eMachineShop can meet their needs. A list of productable machines is available and users can also specify special requirements using "Comments to the Machinist", and in case they are unsure about the feasibility of the required job eMachineShop will not accept a job we can't properly manufactured and/or require the customer authorization for a price adjustment.

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Animated presentations with Pie & Donut charts

2007-02-01T09:40:00.001-04:00

Statistics charts are widely used in any presentation, memo and report. Whatever is your profession or trade, most likely you will have to arrange figures and statements and make them accessible and understandable. Pie & Donut charts is very interesting and useful fully configurable Adobe Flash Player charting application. It will allow you to produce professional looking 3D or 2D animated pies charts on your blog and web page/site.

Building the chart with Pie & Donut is easy since you can import data from Excel (XML or CSV fromat are supported) and the charts will not slow down your web page upload as the files seldom reach 20 Kb. Plus you can dynamicly generate data file with PHP, ASP, .NET or other programming language.
Obviously you can configure every detail of your Pie & Donut chart such as all colours, size of a flash movie, pie radius and lean angle, put labels and legenda. You can also insert a background image in JPG or an animated flash (SWF format).
You can download and use Pie & Donut chart for free. The only limitation of free version is that a small link to this web site will be displayed in top left corner of your pies.

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Hey!Watch converts on line your videos

2007-01-31T11:19:00.000-04:00

Hey!Watch produced by a French software house is a new free fully web based video converter application rich in tools that can allow developers via a REST API to integrate it into their web functionality.

With Hey!Watch you can upload video files to the service from a hard drive or just writing their URL, as well as using a RSS feed. Hey!Watch has also produced several bookmarklets and includes a Firefox plugin so that you can import a video directly from the web page you are reading.
The uploaded files can be converted to numerous video formats, so that when ready you can downloaded them on your PC. An interesting feature consists in a smart-RSS use: whenever you watch an online video you wish to store you just bookmarklet it and afterwards you will collect the file from the RSS feed (MPEG, iPod, or DVD format).
Definitely a must try!

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Stop Spam and Phishing with SPAMfighter

2007-01-30T08:16:00.000-04:00

SPAMfighter is a free application that works with Outlook and Outlook Express and that immediately filters spam and phishing messages.

It works in a very simple way: anytime a e-mail reaches you, SPAMfighter will automatically test it and should the message be considered spam, this be instantly moved to your spam folder. In case you receive a non detected spam message that you will have to tag it and the application will remove it from your "in Box" and from any other SPAMfighter user. Considering that over 2,5 million users have already installed SPAMfighter, thank to this community report system the software learns continuously and enhances this united spam-fighting...

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Re-installing Operating System made easy with Driver Collector

2007-01-29T09:19:00.000-04:00

Driver Collector is an incredibly useful tool that searches and collects all currently installed drivers on your computer. This means that whatever hardware you have installed on your machine its driver will be copied into a folder which will be of capital importance if and when you want/need/must reinstall windows.

I hope you will never have to re-install an operating systems as this is a very delicate and painstaking process that also implies you searching through all those old floppys, CDs and DVDs that were in the box of each piece of hardware you initially and from time to time bought. Video card, mother-board, sound-card, modem etc. - you will have to search for them all and consequently you will have to browse through the internet for their newest version. Ultimately Driver Collector will help you to re-install Windows on your computer and even though I usually make a copy of each latest drivers I install, I feel safer with this application; you never know...

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On Net decadence

2007-01-28T08:11:00.000-04:00

Sunday Editorial

Two weeks ago, an Australian young man has created a breakthrough in this century shopping and lifestyle when put his life for sale on e-Bay. Yes his entire life is auctioned, including:

Name
Phone number
All my possessions which includes the following
Clothes,
Roughly 300 CDs
Surfboard
Laptop (minus certain information with my discretion),
Pushbike (Has wonky handlebars, may need some work)
Books,
Bed
CD player
Backpack
Tennis racquets
Golf Clubs (which you will have no idea how to use)
Childhood photos
Skateboard
Nice lamp which your ex-girlfriend bought you.

In addition the winner will get instructions and training in order to get this new identity including Surfing, Climbing, Skateboarding etc. and 2 more months of assistance after the actual transfer will take place.

What is amazing is that the he has obtained 48 bids reaching 7,500 AUS$! The winner is some “ridderstrade” who is now entitled to collect in Wollongong, New South Wales Nicael’s life package – which includes two enemies and some credits to be collected.

According to Nicael he is carrying out a social experiment. Nicael promises do donate 30% of the revenues to ARAFMI, an Australian association assisting mental disorders victims, and is planning to make a documentary on his experiment.

“I did this because i was a little intrigued as to what exactly constitutes a life, a little intrigued as to what people want that they aren't receiving from their current life, a little bit because I’m a socialist and was hoping to make a point that the amount and type of things that are for sale in this world is insane and wasteful, a bit because I was a little intrigued as to what makes me who I am and at exactly what point in this experiment will I lose it, if ever. Finally I think I did it because I think it will be such a strange, interesting, unprecedented, quirky and hilarious social experiment. How random is this, it's ruling! Everyone who's got behind it is ruling!”

Frankly I deem this is just a provocation, or worse probably a cheap way to reach notoriety. As a matter of fact this is another confirmation of the actual decadence of our Western culture in these days which is perfectly reflected – if not amplified – by the Internet community: side effects of a major phenomenon probably unstoppable.

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Self extracting PDF files with PDF2EXE

2007-01-27T08:40:00.000-04:00

PDF2EXE is an incredibly useful application recently developed by a Spanish company. PDF2EXE swiftly converts PDF to EXE, making PDF documents readable even on PCs that have neither Adobe Reader nor Adobe Acrobat software installed. This means that using PDF2EXE you can share/send Adobe PDF files with/to anyone and not worry as whether they can read it or not.

The transition from PDF to EXE keeps all the features and characteristics of the original document.You can also compress and/or encrypt PDF documents by inserting a password for the converted EXE file. You can also prevent any changes on the EXE generated file and disable conversion from PDF to TXT, EXE to TXT.
The same company has also issued Cool PDF Reader a very tiny and immediately running (just 685 kb) PDF viewer/reader to view, print, and convert PDF files to TXT, BMP, JPG, GIF, PNG, WMF, EMF, EPS. This application can be useful too, considering the weight and slowness of Acrobat 7 and 8...

Both software are free to download and use

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Stickies: the best Post it reminder

2007-01-26T08:04:00.000-04:00

Stickies is a very useful free PC utility that will eliminate your Post-It notes you usually leave everywhere on your desk and monitor, being actually their a computer version.
You write it, you stick it on your desktop and they stay there until you erase them. When a Stickies comes up, if you wish to have a reminder, you can associate it to a sound as a reminder. Stickies is tiny and easy and will not interfere with your system and running programs. No fancy: just yellow little windows where you can write down your text notes. Of course if you wish you can customise their size, fonts, colours and buttons.

A good Stickies feature is the possibility to attach a message to a document or a web site or a folder and the message will come out when this is open. Once more interesting feature is the possibility to move the Stickies over a TCP/IP network connection or SMTP mail server or MAPI client (groups and mailing lists are supported) as well as to and from your Palm or PPC PDA.
The last version of Stickies (release 6.0a) can be downloaded for free, I would give it a try if I were you!

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Zoho and Omnidrive enhance your mobility and freedom

2007-01-25T09:51:00.000-04:00

I wrote already a glowing repor t on web based office suite Zoho, and my favour towards this application is growing not only because of Zoho’s newly updated API, but chiefly since they have recently announced a very interesting partnership with the online storage company Omnidrive. This is another initiative carried out by Zoho after a 2006 dense of events.

The two companies, thanks to this intelligent move will expand their functionality and success. The main idea is based on the consideration that if your documents are stored online, you have to firstly download them and then you can view and/or edit them. This is in plain contrast with mobility work and confines online storage simply to a backup utility. This new solution corresponds to an enlargement of your HD and archives as users can store all of their Zoho Office suite files within Omnidrive - i.e. a safe and huge virtual storeroom - from which they will be able to easily retrieve any document by simply clicking it. Actually Omnidrive will immediately open the document with Zoho for editing.
Sharing and collaborative Zoho use is another feature which will be provided by the sharing features of Omnidrive. Moreover Omnidrive - that has recently released its new API - will offer a complete set of tools as to making and editing files both offline and online with perfect synchronisation feature you will be able to perform updates between desktop and/or Zoho and/or other locations - which is amazingly useful for mobile and team workers.
I compliment this partnership project - as many others in course at Zoho - as I deem any step towards mobility and portability very much welcomed, because it means more freedom and ability to follow your inspiration and creativity.

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More screen space with WinArranger

2007-01-24T09:16:00.000-04:00

Space on PCscreens is never enough, no matter how large is your monitor: I possess a 19" LCD, keep many windows open and regardless I always wish for more space...
WinArranger is a interesting application that allows you to optimise your screen space by rearranging your open windows in accordance with your needs. Its modest system requirements allow its use practically on every PC. Furthermore, it has neat and easy-to-use interface, customisable hotkeys and features several peculiar screen layouts which can not be normally satisfied.

WinArranger can work also on a multi-monitor basis, and can customise several windows and their layout per each monitor. This re-arrangement can be performed following three ordering modes: manual, by process, by title. WinArranger is endowed with shortcuts keys and can be set in order to flexibly follow your instructions by “Arranging” and/or “Re-arranging” and/or delete one or more of the windows from the screen.
WinArranger allows you to use your workspace in a more efficient way by arranging windows on your PC monitor in optimal way; you can download ad use it for free

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Revive your deleted files with Recuva

2007-01-23T08:21:00.000-04:00

A new piece of software that restores deleted documents has been recently issued, I am talking about Recuva (slang transliteration for "recover") a free utility able to restore files that have been unwillingly erased from your PC. I already have lately written on a little application able to recover files accidentally deleted; however Recuva has favourably impressed me.

I addition to those files erased when you normally empty your Recycle Bin you can restore with Recuva images as well as other files that have been mistakenly deleted from digital music players (MP3), pen drives and digital cameras SD, XD, Compact Flash and other removable media. Recuva is powerful as it allows you to revive files and documents deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses.

At the moment Recuva is in Beta release, runs in Win 2000 and XP and can be freely downloaded.

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Habari: the newest blogging platform

2007-01-22T08:31:00.000-04:00

Habari embodies a bright opening to the world of blogs. Its structure is swift, simple and customisable so more expert users will enjoy tuning Habari, as well as beginners will easily be introduced to the world of blogging. Habari – it means news in Swahili - is developed in PHP5 completely object oriented (with PHP Data Objects - PDO), full ATOM protocol and AJAX support. You can choose your SQL database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite).

Habari allows users to produce plug-ins in order to perform any routine. From the graphic standpoint Habari is endowed with a versatile theme management system that allows compatibility with the most diffused template options.
If you want to deepen your knowledge about Habari I suggest you to join its discussion group, you will also be able receive assistance and to follow up its development and make suggestions. #habari on irc.freenode.net is an open channel for general Habari discussions. In case you wish to participate in the development process, you will be welcomed at the development group as Habari is a community-driven project inspired at the Apache Software Foundation's meritocratic approach based on quality i.e. contribution is compensated by amplifying your opportunities within the project.

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