It is that time of the year where every news source out there gets so lax in creating content, they can only muster up the strength to put together a year in review for this, that or the other.  Never to be one to disappoint, I thought now would be the perfect time to join the masses and share with you your favorite things I have posted.

Here are the ten most popular stories, tips, articles and tutorials I published in 2009 on Mitchelaneous.com.

#10 – Instant Drama Sound Effect

My new favorite web site, when you need that instant sound effect action is DramaButton.com.  Once pushed, you get that duh duh DUHHHH that has always been a favorite for the old dramatic moments on your favorite old TV shows and movies.

• More Sound Effect Fun: Six and a Half Instant Sound Effect Sites to Keep Handy

#9 – Top 10 Horror Movie Villains

Since it is October, time to look at even more things that go bump in the night.  Growing up in the 80s to early 90s era, I had a lot of great horror villains to fighting me.  We might not have had Dracula or Frankenstein, but we did have Freddy and Jason.  So, to keep with the holiday spirit of the month, I decided to take a look at my top 10 horror villains of all time.

• More Top 10 – Top 10 Favorite Red Dwarf Moments

#8 – 10 Free Ways to Search for Files Online

Need to find a file fast?  Over the years, I have collected some of the best (and maybe not so best) free file search web sites out there.  Here are the ten best resources to search for a file online.

• More Free Stuff – Hundreds of Free Online Tools I’ve Reviewed

#7 – Ninja Entry Traffic Sign Rocks

When is a No Entry sign not a No Entry sign?  When it has dropped the smoke bomb and turned into a Ninja Entry traffic sign.

• More Oddness: The Green Ranger Morphed into a MMA Fighter

#6 – Need a Wiki? Top Alternatives to MediaWiki!

Looking to setup a new wiki, but don’t know which script you should pick up to do the dirty work?  Many might say that MediaWiki is the best and the most popular, since it is what is used to run Wikipedia.  However, there are some great alternative wiki scripts you might have (or might not have) even seen before.

• More CMS Help – 9 WordPress Alternatives

#5 – EMFF – Easily the Best Audio Player via Flash

The Easy Musicplayer For Flash, or otherwise known as EMFF, is in my opinion easily the best free audio player, built in flash.  I have been using it to provide a player on up to six of my latest shows on webhostingshow.com.

• More Web Dev Help – Best of the Blogging Scripts

#4 – Down Right Creepy Mario Wallpaper

Why is it that we are all kind of amused by making Nintendo’s favorite plumber, Mario, so darn creepy looking?  There have been some real oddities posted out there in the past that have put a new light on the overall wearing hero,  but this one might take the cake on being the creepiest thus far.

• More Desktop Decoration – All My Favorite Wallpapers I’ve Blogged About!

#3 – Decorate Your Desktop with Mushroom Icons!

Time to do another free desktop icon release!  This time around, I figured I would focus on Mario’s favorite treat, the mushrooms of the Mushroom kingdom.  It always kind of freaked me out that a power up was a decapitated head of one of the Mushroom Kingdom citizens.  What do you think Toad would say if he saw Mario eat a mushroom?  Would he be shocked?  Could be they are all cannibals anyways.

• Level Up! – Free Mega Man Desktop Icons!

#2 – Charge PS3 Controller on Your PC

As I shared with you yesterday, I purchased myself a PlayStation 3.  One of the first questions I had after taking it out of the box was, “How do I charge the controllers?”.  With my Wii, it uses rechargeable batteries, so that solution was a ‘bit easier.  it looks like the PS3 controllers though have no option to do that.

• More Video Game Fun – Free Video Game Based Desktop Icons!

#1 – Best of the Free Zombie Flash Games

Nothing can get better than beating up a few mindless zombies, right?  Put that together with some of the creative and cool flash games out there, and you my friend have a good time.  Here is my collection of some of the best free “zombie-related” flash games.

• More Flash Games – Best of the Free Ninja Flash Games

I hope you have enjoyed this year of Mitchelaneous fun, and hope 2010 brings in even more readers, visits, fun stories and more.  Happy New Year to you all!

EXTRA – Best Firefox Facts Posts of 2009!

Having some free time on my hands over the holiday weekend, I decided to clean the finger smudges, dirt and grime from my Wii remotes.  To make sure I didn’t screw anything up, I figured it would be a good idea to check Nintendo’s web site for some pointers.  The advice was good, but one thing really stuck out.

Here is how Nintendo says you should clean your Wiimote:

Try cleaning the buttons of the Wii Remote using the cleaning instructions below, being sure to follow the directions carefully.

What you will need:

• 1 clean toothbrush (no toothpaste on it)
• 1 cup of warm tap water
• 1 paper towel

Instructions:

1. Remove the batteries from the Wii Remote.
2. Get a clean toothbrush (no toothpaste) and a cup of warm tap water (not too hot). Do NOT pour or submerge the Wii Remote in any type of liquid.
3. Slightly dip the toothbrush in the water (the toothbrush should not be dripping wet) and scrub the area of the Wii Remote around the buttons.
4. Work the bristles down around the sides of the buttons.
5. After cleaning the Wii Remote, dry it off with a paper towel.
6. Let the Wii Remote air dry with the buttons facing down for at least a couple of hours.
7. Test the Wii Remote for proper response.
8. Repeat the steps if necessary.

Wait a minute, do they have to really point out the fact you should not use toothpaste to clean your Wii Remote? Not only do they do this once, oh no – they think it is important enough to bring up twice.  I will testify to the fact that the cleaning steps mentioned do work – however find it really funny somebody might try to brush their Wiimote as they would brush their teeth.

How can you do the same?

How to Create a Google Docs Form

First step, would be to go to the Google Docs web site.  Now click on the button labeled, “Create new” and select Form.

That should take you to the Google Docs form builder, where you can easily create a web site form to use.  You can add any number of:

• text boxes (single line and paragraph sized)
• multiple choice
• check boxes
• choose from a list

There are a lot of ways you can customize your form to fit your needs.  Now once your form has been created, and you are happy with the results – you will want to embed it onto your web site.

How to Embed a Google Docs Form

Click on the button labeled, “More actions” and then choose Embed.

Once you do this, a window will pop up with the code you need to copy and paste into your own web site to make your form work.

What does the final result look like?  You can see it in action here:

• Web Hosts on Twitter
• Submit a Question to the Web Hosting Show Podcast!

When somebody sends you a result, it saves it into a spreadsheet you can check out from the Google Docs interface.  A pretty neat way to save yourself on some e-mail and save your hosting account on system resources a hosted script might take.

Well, you could spend a lot of money for a program like Photoshop, take hours learning how to create custom banners, fonts and designs, or you could just go to magcover.com.  I’ll let you pick how you would like to spend your Christmas week.

How does it work? With this web site, you can easily create your own unique magazine cover.  All you do is pick your photo, edit your headlines and you are ready to go.  There are over 100 magazine templates to choose from – so the only thing limiting you is your imagination.

You can also get your custom magazine covers printed, framed or put on a shirt.  Might be too late to create one for Christmas this year – but might come in handy for your egotistical friend’s birthday.  To create your own magazine cover, go visit magcover.com.

Being a ‘bit of an organizational nut myself, I really like any service that can give me a unique way of getting my links, text, videos and more organized.  Spaaze is a new online service that acts as an infinite corkboard to use in any number of different ways.

Rather than making you stick to the more conventional lists, Spaaze really gives you a canvas to use for just about any project out there.  It could be used for:

• Keeping a To List Handy
• Saving Videos to Watch Later
• Organize a Series of Links for a Project

The possibilities really could go on and on.  I like that.

Why was Spaaze created? Here is what the authors of the online application have to say:

We wanted to solve one of our problems: organize pieces of information in a visual way. We were not happy with having all our things scattered around the web, some to-do lists here, some bookmarks there, favorite videos somewhere else and so on.

Here is a good demonstration video of the Spaaze service in action:

I like anything that helps you stay organized, so Spaaze is a winner in that regard. 

Not sure if I like the fact they are pitching it as “free during the beta stage” as I didn’t really see any features that were worth paying too much for – but who knows.  They have impressed me thus far, and I hope they keep impressing me here on out.

You can check out the infinite virtual corkboard for yourself at Spaaze.com.

Looking for a wiki script for your next great web site project? 

As somebody who’s built one from the ground up – I can tell you picking the right script for the job, is not an easy task to do.  With a surprising amount of flexibility and power, BoltWire might be one of the easiest to use wikis out there. 

It takes the cake when it comes to mixing the strengths of various script categories together.  Is it a CMS? Is it a wiki?  It is a little ‘bit of both.

The install process is simple.  All you do is download, unzip, upload and install.  It runs on just about any server with PHP4 (although PHP5 is recommended) and has a simple upgrade process too. The entire download is less than 100k, so should just take a couple of seconds to get started.

What about the Features?

Here are some of the best features about BoltWire:

• Easy to install and upgrade
• Run multiple sites off one installation
• Built in member and group management
• Easy to use wiki markup system
• Powerful search engine capabilities
• In-browser editing of skins & CSS
• Standards compliant
• UTF-8 and multi-lingual support
• One click installation of plugins

If you are new to the script, or you get it installed and start to wonder, “What’s Next?!” I would suggest checking out the documentation.  They also have a nice selection of tutorials to help you out too.

Customization?  Yes, you can customize BoltWire in many different ways.  It comes with both plugin and skin support so you are able to make it do the job you want it to do, and get it looking the way you need it to look. 

All in all, I would highly suggest checking BoltWire out, if you have a web site project that needs just a little ‘bit of wiki and a little bit of a content management system rolled into one. 

Ever wonder how much your web site empire is worth? Well, mind is worth $9,530.88.  How can somebody find that out?  Just check out cubestat.com.  Plug your URL into the lookup tool and they will analyze your web site to see how much you could ask for it, financially speaking.

They will provide you with your web site worth, your daily page views and your daily estimated ad revenue. Other than that, you get basic stats about your domain and how it is doing on services like Compete, Alexa, and more. 

On the negative side of things, it missed my Google and Yahoo stats (not sure why, I double checked myself) so actually your value might be a ‘bit higher than what they say. 

Cubestat.com provides a unique, although be it not perfect, way to measure a web site’s worth.

Tired of using your classic search engines?  InstaFound claims to be able to remove the search from the search engines out there.  How is this done?  It helps you avoid the time wasting you do now with regular searching by taking you to the page you are looking for right off the bat.

So how does it work? The InstaFound web site works by taking content from sites like Google, Yahoo, Bing and more and combines each result to give it a site score.  It then uses the best score to decide which page they should show you. 

Sounds a lot like Google’s I’m Feeling Lucky search right?  Well, they thought you would say that – and have an answer for you right off the front page:

No! Google relies on their system working and nothing else. Insta is all about removing the luck and replacing it with knowledge. Our system uses advanced algorithms to detect what site to send you to. We take data from 10 sources and combine it.

Want to learn more?  Watch the video:

You can get started finding things quicker via your searches at InstaFound.com.  It is a unique idea, that is worth trying out if you are tired of searching in the more traditional sense of the word.

Ninja Rinseout – Secretly attack Chinese ninjas at the dawn of night, run up walls and make sure they don’t see you first!

Ninja Game – Simple name for a simple game.  Use your ninja skills to jump around collecting all the yellow squares while escaping danger.

Ninja Man – Play as a small ninja and fight off incoming enemies with your sword skills.  Very fun platforming game that will help you show off your ninja skills!

Bloody Blades – Kill as many of the Ninjas coming your way while running through the forest, jumping through the trees.

Ninja Guiji – Use your sneak attacks to eliminate unsuspecting ninjas. Fight others in turn based attacks.

Ninjotic Mayhem – Zombies + Ninjas = Fun (that is all the needs to be said)

Ninja Rampage – Another sneaky ninja game.  Creep up behind your enemies before proceeding with a silent assassination.

Have another one that should be on the ninja loving list?  Be sure to leave your suggestions in the comments!  What better escape from your boring office work than jumping on your computer and pretending your an online ninja assassin? Just keep the ninja stars away from your boss.

3 Simple Ways to Market Your Business, Project or Web Site

Over the years, I have become a ‘bit of a marketing junkie.  I am always checking out the latest trends, following successful marketing techniques and trying to figure out how each works. For those not as familiar with the idea, marketing is the process associated with promoting the sale of a good or service you provide.

Successful marketing can be the saving grace for a failing business.  Here are three simple marketing ideas you can use to help your business, web site or project.

Be sure to drop in, leave a comment and let me know if you would like to see more “poor boy” marketing suggestions anybody can use.