Today, I have discovered a free utility for Torrent lovers that lets you search torrents right from your desktop. It helps you get rid of all the unwanted porn serving ads you don’t want to see along with the content.  TorrentFetcher is a handy utility program for making searching for torrents just a bit easier.

With TorrentFetcher you can easily search through multiple pages of torrents at once and automatically move downloaded torrents to a specified output directory.  It works pretty well with torrent clients that automatically monitor a directory for torrents and begin downloading the files automatically after finding a new torrent file in that directory.

Key features include

• Automatically launch downloaded torrents.
• Know which torrent files you already have in your downloaded folder through automatic highlighting.
• Results highlighting lets you know if a torrent is well or poorly seeded or if it has negative comments left about it.
• Automatic detection and removal of “denis stalker” trackers using the MonoTorrent library.
• Minimize-to-tray option to keep the utility handy at all times.

Download TorrentFetcher

And G2peer is one of those rare utilities that’s gaming to be a big player in a relatively small market!

In a nutshell,  G2Peers uses Gmail addresses as a file sharing host. Setting up the software to share your files is a breeze. You don’t need to upload your files to any servers either. All you have to do is just click on share, add a new user (email address) and type in a gmail address along with the folder you want to share (from your local harddisk) and that’s it!

In order to download, Of course, you’ll need to know the addresses of valid gmail accounts that are being shared by g2peer. Assuming that you do, downloading is an even simpler task! IF the person downloading has g2peer installed they just need to type in a g2peer gmail address in the address bar, wait for the list to update, and they’re done!

From the list you can choose the files you want and just right click and download. It’s as simple as that.

If you’re really lazy to get the software but you know of a g2peer Gmail address that host files, you can just send an email from your Gmail account to the filehosting email with the following subject lines: ?_list or ?_download.

The ?_list subject line will email back to you a list of all the shared files on g2peer gmail address (along with the size of each file)

While the ?_download will reply back to you with a zip file containing the files you chose to download when you send an email with the ?_download subject line you need to specify the name(s) of the files you want in the email body.

Hopefully G2peer will soon have a strong community of members, if so who knows, maybe Bittorrent might find its first real contender.

On the other hand, for any page when there is a change or say the user has edited the page you will receive a report which indicates what has been added or removed from the page.

You can also set your preferences by applying filters and track only a certain block of a webpage or text that contains your mentioned keywords.FollowthePage has the ability to check each page up to 100 times per day and lets you track multiple webpages at the same time. Simple enter the url of the page you want to monitor, enter your email address and click “Next” to proceed.

Key features of FollowThatPage includes

• Free and Easy to use
• Lets you track multiple webpages
• Track changes on a page up to 100 times per day
• Alerts you whenever there is a change on the web page

This service comes totally free of charge so sign up for a free account. Monitor webpages and receive alerts by email when they change.

To get started, you need to find a good guide to learn how to play poker games.  Pacific Poker from 888.com, have a set of nice video (and funny) video tutorials that teach the basics of games such as online texas hold em.  There are several sections to the poker video tutorials, including:

• Getting Started
• New To poker
• Experienced Players
• Poker Tournaments

After watching the poker tutorials, you should be ready to play a real game.  To make it even easier Pacific Poker are even offering to 100% match your first deposit.  Finding a game is simple as you can see in this video:

If you’re feeling bold enough, there are daily poker tournaments 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  In the tournaments 2-40 players battle it out for big prizes.  These range from $5-20k during the week and $80k on Sundays, to an amazing $3m prize for the World Poker Crown Tournament!

To get started now then click here.

So one of the things I absolutely hate is when my internet connection starts acting erratic or sluggish and I just don’t know why – a call to technical support will usually just give me the usual “oh we’re facing some technical difficulties , don’t worry it’ll be fixed hopefully soon!” and so I’m left in the dark again.

Well not anymore! Netalyzr is a web based application that checks your network connections, runs a bunch of test to try to figure out why you net is working weird, and then compiles a report of those test results along with a color coded `importance chart’ . For example, items in red are critical problems, while items with a green check mark have passed the tests with ease etc.

The fun part is all you really have to do to get a report of your net connection is click on the “Start Analysis” button and NetAnalyzr will do the rest!

After a few minutes you’ll be pin pointing or even learning about what could be ailing your internet connection – while at the same time stunning those folk at customer support/IT into wondering “how did he get to know that before we did?”

Above are the details I got for my internet connection. Check yours at Netalyzr

I soon learnt about OCR (optical character recognition) which is a way to extract text from an image and convert it into an editable text document. I did try it out but for all its advantages it also had an equal number of disadvantages : expensive software, undesirable results , and in some cases additional hardware.

The benefits of course are: articles and excerpts don’t need to be retyped by hand, OCR-ed text can be reused anywhere. For instant, college course papers to displaying excerpts in a party banner etc.

FreeOCR aims to give you all of that for free! about the only thing you have to invest is a little of your time and scanning your documents (if needed). Once you have your images just go to the website open upload it using the provided space and within a minute you’ll should have a editable version of your text!

There are are some limitations such as not being able to convert more than 10 images per hour and that images should not be more than 2MB but all things considered its a great service!

A real problem is that Malware usually is considered different from a virus and the other problem lies in the fact that its usually a hassle to run (ever tried installing an antivirus software on your server? Not time effective at all!) an Antivirus scan plus it tends to  bog down the whole server causing a lot of inconvenience to you and your users.

Anti virus software can only do so much, so the great folk at Dasient decided to provide a service that specifically took care of eliminating web based malware. They dubbed their effors `Web Anti-Malware’ (in effect an online Anti-Malware app!)  To quote the good people at Dasient “Dasient WAM monitors, automatically identifies, and quarantines malware on websites, before those sites suffer significant losses in traffic, revenue, and reputation.”

Although the full service is being offered for a fee Dasient have also put up a free limited version of the service that allows you to experience the service firsthand. The free version requires you to enter the URL over and over on the Dasient website to check for potential malware that may have already blacklisted your site, while the paid version automatically scans and makes sure that your site avoids getting blacklisted at all!

Log on to Dasient home page and enter url

Results

Check out Dasient Web Anti-Malware

DropRecord uploads your file to a dozen sites including all the famous online file hosting services such as Rapidshare, Megaupload, MediaFire, SendSpace and more. What makes it a little different from the rest of the websites is that it offers 500mb upload limit, but a lot of individual mirror sites impose similar caps.

To upload a file on DropRecord all you have to do is choose a file from your computer and click Upload.

Once done it will upload your file to multiple file hosting services and provide you a link to share with your friends.

Upload your files to multiple file hosting services with DropRecord

Coming from an unashamedly design-rich company, the app sparkles into life, flips to reveal the settings screen and generally looks like a 21st century computer program should. With variable transparency, it can be as prominent or as faded into the background as you like. As you can drag and scroll through the list of tweets, hopefully, if you have a suitable PC, you could use touch controls to browse messages.

Perhaps the best feature is that blu will link together tweets to form a proper IM-like conversation, rather than just getting replies to comments you have long-since forgotten about.

Use blu for a modern-looking desktop

Another neat feature is that web links you enter are automatically converted to tinyurl. Although, it doesn’t support other URL shrinkers. Also, it automatically loads new tweets as you scroll down, reducing the number of clicks still further.

So, you get a lot of streamlined features with blu and a fantastic-looking desktop app into the bargain. Okay, it doesn’t have the columns of topics that you get with something like TweetDeck, but it doesn’t look like a spreadsheet either.

Although Windows 7 won’t be available to Buy Windows 7 until October 22nd, you can now Pre-order Windows 7 and save money at the same time.  From tomorrow you will be able to pre-order Windows 7 in certain stores and save up to $100.  To find which stores are taking Windows 7 Pre-orders then head on over to Windows 7 News, where you’ll also find the latest news about Windows 7.

More: Windows 7 News

Today, I’m going to share a Firefox Extension that I use the most. Since I’m writing articles all the time I like to capture images of the entire application or a webpage. This is where FireShot comes in handy.

It is a wonderful addon for Firefox that allows you to take a screenshot of the entire webpage using your keyboard. This plugin provides a set of editing and annotation tools so that users can easily modify web captures and insert text and graphical annotations.

The captures can be:

• uploaded to FREE public screenshot hosting
• saved to disk (PNG, GIF, JPEG, BMP)
• printed
• copied to clipboard
• emailed
• sent to configurable external editor for further processing.

To assign your hot key, simply download the add-on, go to FireShot prefrences and choose the desired options. Here I have chosen CTRL + ALT + Z to take my screenshots.

Fireshot adds the ability to capture the entire web pages screenshot of entire of visible part, edit it, add annotations and upload to free screenshot hosting, save (PNG, GIF, JPEG, BMP), print (NEW!) copy to clipboard, send to external editor or e-mail it.

This is how a complete screenshot is suppose to look like for this website.

Install FireShot now

On the iPhone you won’t be able to gamble away any real money, but there are several good time-wasting poker apps that you can play for fun on your iPhone. Even Apple itself has developed an iPhone poker app, plainly named “Texas Hold’em.”  This one is pretty good and offers a nice playing experience over Wi-Fi, but there’s no real online mode.

For those who want something more reminiscent of the ordinary online poker experience, then “Live Poker” by the gaming network/developer Zynga is one of the best alternatives, if not the only. In Live Poker you get to play Texas holdem with well over a million other players from Zynga’s gaming network, although the most interesting feature of the game is that it’s integrated with Facebook – letting you log in via your iPhone and play against people from your friend list.

If you have prior experience with online poker, the interface in Live Poker offers few surprises, which might be a good thing as you can essentially get started right away and skip the learning curve altogether. For the most part Zynga Live Poker looks and behaves like an poker room, with the added benefit of having it on your iPhone and with touch functionality.

Pros and Cons

Although not specific for Zynga, the major problem with play-money poker is that most people don’t play their best when there’s no real money at stake. Poker is based on careful decision making and the fact that you stand to win or lose real money depending on which way you go. This element is often lost in fun-money games, which then tend to become more of a lottery.

That being said, Zynga Live Poker is still a highly enjoyable game – and the possibility to connect with your Facebook friends is quite ingenious. Although there are several other good poker apps for the iPhone, see more here, there are really none that come close to this one in the multiplayer department.

Omnistar Mailer helps you maintain the list of your customers and create surveys to get feedbacks from them. The entire system is very easy to use. In fact, if you still have some confusion about how to use a particular feature, you can take advantage of their audio-video tutorials. If you are maintaining the list of subscribers yourself, you will have a very tough time doing an analysis manually. On the other hand, this PHP/MySQL software program automates the process for you by generating analytical reports so that you could easily tweak and test different campaigns and optimize their performances by working on the areas of improvement.

Omnistar Interactive is offering our readers a fantastic 10% discount to One Tip A Day readers by entering the promo code: onetip at their order form.

I earlier reviewed TweetMyPC, a free application for Twitter that allows you to shutdown, log off and restart computer directly from Twitter Board.

The same team of developers have recently introduced yet another helpful utility for Gtalk users that allows account owners to use the “Auto Reply” feature on Gtalk while they are checking their emails. It lets you focus on what is more important to you and informing friends at the same time about your activity.

To get started with Gtalk Autoreply, simply login to Gmail with your username and password. This application is responsible for sending an automated messages when any one pings you. You can easily start Gtalk Autoreply from Windows start up menu and type in your own auto reply message.

From here whoever sends you a message will get an auto-reply.

To install Gtalk Auto Reply download Gtalk Autoreply and run setup.exe. Run Gtalk Autoreply and enter your Username, Password and Message and active.

Download Gtalk Auto Reply

As part of the Kindle service there’s a list of blogs that Kindle users can subscribe to for a fee, typically $1.99 per month.  To be listed, blog owners have to register and setup their blogs and if your blog is subscribed to you get 30% of the revenues.

Now I’m not saying this is going to pay off your mortgage, but given that it only takes 2 mins to do it’s definitely worthwhile.

Register with Amazon Kindle here.

Like most up and coming web dictionaries Wordnik has all the basics down which provide definition of word, list a few synonyms (i.e. equivalent words)  list a few antonyms (i.e. opposites words) and that as far as most simple dictionaries go but Worknik breaks those boundaries!

Not only does it provide the basic functions mentioned above but it also contains a unique dictionary with examples of the word used in sentences. It then leaps ahead with an original function. It actually will go through Twitter conversation and pick out sentences with the word you were looking up to give you an idea on how its used.

It doesnt stop there it also will show comb through Flickr to find images that actually relate to the word! If that doesn’t embody unique I dont know what does!

The features then just keep adding from there

• Audio pronunciations.
• Statistical data (how popular or rare is the word you’re looking up)
• The origin of the word (i.e. Etymology)
• Anagrams
• Even points that you get if you used the word in a game of scrabble!

To get start visit Wordnik and enter the world you want to search e.g I’ve searched for “Transportation” here.

Once done it will come up with the definition of the word along with examples (used in sentences)

Unlike conventional dictionaries though Wordnik welcomes ALL kinds of word that means colloquial and/or slang terms are featured just as much as textbook words are. To look up a word there’s no need to sign up – however registering is free and useful if you’d like to add a word.

However, every now and then the spammers come up with a new technique that fools the gmail spam filters.  One method that can tip up gmail is spam not in English.  Even though you can’t read it, it’s still annoying, so here’s how to stop it.

1. Click on ‘Create A Filter’ next to the Gmail search engine
2. In the ‘Matches’ field enter ‘( lang:af OR lang:am OR lang:ar OR lang:az OR lang:be OR lang:bg OR lang:bh OR lang:bn OR lang:bo OR lang:ca OR lang:chr OR lang:cs OR lang:da OR lang:de OR lang:dv OR lang:el OR lang:en OR lang:eo OR lang:es OR lang:et OR lang:eu OR lang:fa OR lang:fi OR lang:fr OR lang:gl OR lang:gn OR lang:gu OR lang:hi OR lang:hr OR lang:hu OR lang:hy OR lang:id OR lang:is OR lang:it OR lang:iu OR lang:iw OR lang:ja OR lang:ka OR lang:kk OR lang:km OR lang:kn OR lang:ko OR lang:ku OR lang:ky OR lang:lo OR lang:lt OR lang:lv OR lang:mk OR lang:ml OR lang:mn OR lang:mr OR lang:ms OR lang:mt OR lang:my OR lang:ne OR lang:nl OR lang:no OR lang:or OR lang:pa OR lang:pl OR lang:ps OR lang:pt-PT OR lang:ro OR lang:ru OR lang:sa OR lang:sd OR lang:si OR lang:sk OR lang:sl OR lang:sq OR lang:sr OR lang:sv OR lang:sw OR lang:ta OR lang:te OR lang:tg OR lang:th OR lang:tl OR lang:tl OR lang:tr OR lang:ug OR lang:uk OR lang:ur OR lang:uz OR lang:vi OR lang:zh OR lang:zh-CN OR lang:zh-TW)
3. Choose ‘Skip Inbox’
4. Create a new label, say ‘Foreign Spam’.
5. Choose ‘Delete’ so all the messages are deleted automatically.  If you are worred that you might delete a genuine email, don’t worry as it will stay on the gmail servers for 30 days.

Thanks to Digital Inspiration for the tip.

With a few tweaks you can actually get to the settings.  The Windows 7 News team have produced a guide showing how to access the hidden screensaver options, that you can follow here.

Unfortunately this little blessing has turned into a menace of its own. The simple reason being that since you can’t seen the whole URL string (which is hiding behind the shortened URL that you actually can see) you don’t really know what you’re clicking on. Once internet mass marketers got hold of the technology they started hiding links to their products, affiliate links or unwanted pop-ups etc.

To avoid any such surprises, affiliate links, or other deceptive uses of TinyURLs, you can install a Greasemonkey script called TinyURL Decoder. It is a small script that lets you go back to old days when you could see exactly what you were clicking on so that you can make an educated guess on whether its worthwhile or not.

All you need to do is place `TinyURL decoder’ script in the appropriate directory of your browser and thats it. It should start working instantly. Also, the service is just not limited to TinyURL. In fact there is a huge list of other URL shortening services that it supports.

The reality is, a large chunk of the professionals time is spent not on how to present his ideas, services or product – but in playing secretary to him/herself! Calling clients, setting meetings and getting things done. Sure, it looks easy when reading about it – but no one ever tells you about the countless numbers of rescheduling that usually occurs, or constantly hearing about `oh I never received an email about that meeting’. Soon your calendar starts looking more like a football playbook than an organized sales persons planner!

Today appointment scheduling has shifted to Outlook, Google calendar or Apple iCal, but that doesn’t mean the mess has gone away. If one important client decides to change an appointment you will end up calling all your clients for that day just to accommodate them. The question is – is there a way to handle this without hiring a separate secretary!

Well now there is! TimeBridge is a San Francisco-based startup focused on making it easy to schedule meetings and appointments. With the ability to sync with Apple iCal as well as with established calendar apps such as Google and Outlook. TimeBridge’s main pull is in the simplicity with which it gives its participants optional times and dates for each appointment.

Let say you want to schedule something with a certain person doing a specific work you asked, TimeBridge will send an email to him/her which will have 5 different time frames – he/she will be requested to choose which time suits them by selecting between “Yes,” “no,” and “Best” for each time option. Once the choices have been made, an email will be sent back to the original sender with their preferred time. Timebridge will then automatically check the original senders schedule and if that person’s `Best’ time matches up with the theirs — then TimeBridge will automatically set the appointment and send out confirmation emails! If there’s a clash in timings (e.g. the original sender will not be available during the specified time) then he/she will be notified by TimeBridge of the conflict.

TimeBridge can do this not for one client but ALL the clients you have on your calendar, at the same time! Regardless of how many appointment mails are sent back TimeBridge will juggle them around and set the appointments automatically until it hits a situation where there is absolutely no time combination within your schedule that will work with your client.

The amazing thing is that this part of TimeBridge’s service is absolutely free! Once you have set up a successful appointment, you may also use TimeBridges online screen-sharing and phone meeting services for a really low fee ($8.95 p/m) compare that to approximately $40 p/m using WebEx or GoToMeeting.com. This is especially useful for a conference call with multiple clients (eg, when showcasing your service/product).

In these hard times it pays to be smart and effective, TimeBridge is just the tool to tip the scales in your favor!

Recently, I have stumbled upon an easy to use sidebar for FireFox extension that simplifies your online social life by connecting you to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, AIM and more all in one place.

Yoono is a power tool for social media promoters as it provide you the easiest way to share stuff with all your social networks, share links, images and video from the page you’re viewing across all your networks simultaneously.

It features a “Directory Widget” that lets you discover great new websites, products, and video. You can also share these stories later with your friends with a click of a button via IM or Social Media Networks.

Key features of Yoono includes

• Easily share links, images, and video from the page you are viewing with all your social networks at the same time.
• Share in your IM conversations by dragging and dropping links, images and video from the page you are viewing
• It’s a single, dead simple way to share anything from anywhere you are on the web.

Download Yoono and get all your friend updates, update your status and share stuff easily across Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and more  all at once. Simplify your online social life.

Install Yoono

To get started with AllTextPaper all you have to do is

1. Register for a free account. Simply enter a user name or your email address to login.

2. Drag provided bookmarklet onto your browser toolbar

From here simply click the “Read in text” link from your toolbar and get a simple text version of page without all the images, ads and flash videos. In addition to the “Read in text” bookmarklet AllTextPaper also offers another bookmarklet that allows you to instantly save articles while browsing web in case you would like to read them later.

After logging on the page you will be able to add both add-ons to your browser’s toolbar

Here is the result of one of the posts at OneTipAday.com

Before

After

You can easily see the different and notice that Alltextpaper has eliminated maximum number of ads and images of the page.

Check out AllTextPaper

There are so many great iPhone apps.  The latest I want to get my hands on is ComicZeal.  This app lets you read comics on your iPhone by converting comic file formats (.cbr and .cbz) to a format the iPhone can read.  Comics can be read in both portrait and landscape mode.  It even remembers where you got to the last time you read a title!

Source: Connected Internet

Personally, I have been using services like Clipmark to save content for future. Since I’m blogging full time I need to keep my eye on everything that matter to my readers and sometimes it becomes quiet hard to bookmark and remember everything. My reason for using ClipMark is the Firefox Extension which lets me save everything that looks interesting to me.

Today, I have discovered another useful web tool similar to Clipmark known as “Ibrii”. It is a new web service that lets you create notes by clipping web pages. It allows you to easily cut and paste things like text, pictures, videos and other objects from a site on the net and save it in your Ibrii account. You can always log on at a later time to view your saved content.In addition to that Ibrii lets you share content with other social media networks including Facebook and Twitter. Alternatively you can always send an IM or email to share what you like.

I think Ibrii provides an excellent way for you to save content you will need at a later time.  It can prove to be something really useful for Bloggers like me. It is simple, fast and promises to help you save a lot of time.

Noticeable features include

1. Allows you to write personal notes into your Ibrii online account. You can always view them later at anytime, anywhere by simply logging on to your account.
2. Doesn’t require any third part application to get things done
3. Lets you cut and paste everything within a matter of seconds

What is ibrii ? (English) from ibrii on Vimeo.

To remember things, you will not have to create tons of text files on your desktop. Just write everything into Ibrii and make your life easier.Saved item can be directly viewed on Ibrii without going to the original site.

Register now

Today, I’ve stumbled upon Navify, a free web service that allows you to search Wikipedia articles along with  related images and videos at the same time. Some articles can be hard to understand by just reading the text description but when you have the option to see related images or video things become quiet exciting and easy to understand.

Navify is a new web service that does nothing but makes Wikipedia look much better. Similarly to Wikipedia you can anonymously contribute to content by adding more images and videos. You can also leave comments and add related images, videos for each article.

To get started enter your keyword in the search bar in the content box.

After processing your query it will come up with the original Wikipedia article and related videos from Youtube and images from Flickr. Here’s how it looks

Text

Images

Videos

Check out Navify

Nature HD Wallpapers

[View with PicLens]

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[View with PicLens]

More: How To Geek

Page Speed provides a lot of information on why your pages are loading slowing, and will even optimize images for you.  It also highlights any Javascript and CSS loaded by your pages that isn’t needed, which can be removed for faster load times.

More: Page Speed

Don’t believe me?  Then just watch this video which I can assure you fairly represents Skyfire’s speed:

Other than its speed, what also makes Skyfire stand out is that it can handle rich media content.  This means that it can display rich media content like Flash 10, Quicktime, Silverlight and audio and video players.  So, you can watch Hulu, Youtube, BBC iPlayer and other videos directly in your phone browser.

More: Skyfire

To read more about FacePad and how to use it click here.

Prey is a simple and lightweight program that will help you track and find your laptop if it ever gets stolen. It comes totally free of charge and works on almost all the major operating systems including Windows, Linux and Macintosh operating system. According to Ghacks, the Linux and Mac version are more advanced and come with a bi-lingual interface, automatic connection to the first open Wi-Fi network.

To get started with Prey, simply download and install the software. Once you’re done with that set up an email address and optionally a URL. It runs at a specified interval and checks the URL you previously defined. If the URL exists, Prey will gather the information and send it to the email address you set up. You can also not define a URL and in that case the program will send the data every time it runs.

It sends data such as

• General status of the computer
• All the running programs
• Active connections
• Fully detailed network
• Wifi Information
• Desktop screenshot

If you’re laptop comes with an integrated webcam it will also send you a picture of the theif. How cool is that?

Prey will only work if it is able to access an active internet connection to send the required information to the specified email address. If the computer isn’t connected it will attempt to connect to the first public Wi-Fi access point it detects.

If you’re unfortunate and the thief is intelligent enough to format the whole thing right away he might get away with it but research has showed that mostly thief tend to check the laptop for valuable data first so chances are you may still catch the guy.

Download Prey

Mobtimizer is a free web application that is specially designed for those who have a really slow mobile internet connection and have to wait forever for a web page to load. It is responsible for speeding up your internet browsing on your mobile phone by optimizing the web pages. It does that by removing all the unnecessary graphics and leaves only the important content.

I earlier reviewed  Quietube, that removes everything from a Youtube video page and shows nothing but the Video so that you can enjoy fast video streaming without all the annoying ads.

Key features of Mobtimizer include

• Faster browsing
• Reduces large web site codes
• Reduces large images upon request
• Supports RSS Feeds
• Settings can be saved by user.

Mobtimizer is currently in its beta stage and developers are working on features such as customizing and saving personal preferences.

If you want to disable the Sticky Keys feature:

1. Click on the “Ease of Access Center” link in the Sticky Keys pop
2. In the next window click on “Make the keyboard easier to use”
3. In the next window click ‘Setup Sticky Keys”
4. In the final window uncheck the box ‘Turn on Sticky Keys when SHIFT is pressed five times”

The best thing about online applications are that they don’t require you to download any sort of software and most of them don’t even require a sign up. Plus you can do stuff you can’t imagine doing without having a professional’s help. More importantly they come free of charge. I’ve stumbled upon PsykoPaint today. It’s like an online image editing tools that gives your images an original painting feel.

With PsykoPaint you can turn your picture into painting by simply grabbing one of the available brushes and start painting on top of your image. Here is an example of what you can do with your photos with this tool.

Just log on to the website and use Brushes, blend mode and saturation according to your need.

These effects lets you

• Use brushes such as strokes, polygons, particles, shapes, ribbons and geometrics.
• Blend mode offers effects including erase, darken, hardlight, multiply, overlay, screen etc

This is a brilliant tool that lets you do more than just basic editing. Plus it’s intelligent enough to blend color with effects on its own. Color selection is done automatically.

They are a part of Bodog which offers poker along with online casino games and sports betting. Professional players sponsored by Bodog include Josh Arieh, David Williams and Evelyn Ng.

Bodog Poker features a variety of games including Texas hold’em, Omaha, Omaha hi-lo, seven card stud, seven card stud hi-lo and five card stud. Tournaments and cash games are available and games come in no-limit, pot-limit or fixed-limit structures.

Bodog Poker Advantages

Since Bodog is affiliated with an online casino, traffic may be driven to the online poker site with players who traditionally play other online casino games. These players may be more likely to see online poker as almost entirely luck-based like other casino games and may therefore be good targets for skilled players.

Bodog Poker has an appealing loyalty system, with Bodog Poker points earned for continued play. These points can be used for tournament entries or merchandise. A big advantage is that Bodog Poker accepts US poker players, which not all sites do after the implementation of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA).

Bodog Poker Drawbacks

Some people may find the “floating table” effect of the Bodog Poker graphic interface unsettling. In addition, the software only allows three- tabling, whereas other sites may support the playing of four tables or more at once.
In addition, poker tracking software, which gives players a detailed breakdown of how they and their opponents play, may not be supported by Bodog Poker, at least not for tournament play.

Compact Calendar Creator

Compact Calendar Creator is free web application that allows you to create compact calendars and save them in PDF format. You simply have to enter the exact start and end dates on the website and choose the version of the calender and click create. It also lets you automatically makr the holiday dates for any country by simply pulling them from Google Calendar.

There is no registration required on this website and since it is a free web service you can create as many calendars as you like.

ePrintable Calenders

Another useful website that lets you create and print calendars online in a matter of seconds. You can create these calendars on weekly, monthly and yearly basis. In addition to that you can customize your calender by choosing its layout, color and by making the holiday dates.

Free Photo Calendar

Free Photo Calender is my favorite favorite because it not only lets you create calenders for free but you can always add pictures of your friends and family on each page of the calender.

To get started all you have to do is

• Upload your photo
• Choose the month
• Size of the calender and
• Click “Generate”

Once done a calendar with your own photo will appear on your screen in printable PDF format.

ePrintable

Here is another fast calendar generator that lets you create and print regular calendars totally free of charge. It doesn’t matter if you need a weekly planner for your refrigerator door or a yearly calendar you can use on your desk, ePrintable is there to help you with it.

The website doesn’t require any registration. All you have to do is

• Select the calendar type
• Add custom image
• Add Quote and
• Click “Print” to generate the calendar.

Using my guide you can watch tonight’s European Champions League Final Game between Barcelona and Man Utd live online on your PC for free.

More: How To Watch Champions League Football Online

Here are the key features of FixTunes:

• Edit the song title, artist, album, track, year and genre tags of your music
• Fix your songs automatically, without having to type all the information yourself
• Automatically download and add album cover art images to your music files
• Look up online information on your music like artist bios and reviews with one click
• Rename the music in your library into a standard format
• Organize your music into folders according to artist, album, year or genre
• Remove duplicate music files from your collection with ease, saving the best version
• Quickly search and edit only a portion of your music collection

To try FixTunes for free click here.

Creating small banners for websites use to take a lot of time a few years back. Thanks to the internet and all the developers who are spending time and money to produce some of the finest web tools so that you can enjoy the same features many software offer. Interesting enough for me, with these web 2.0 services a 20 minute job can be done in less a minute or so.

Following websites offer the easiest way to create free banner in less than 3 minutes.

BannerFans

BannerFans is first ever web application I discovered last year that allows you to create banners for your site and then download in popular image formats including JPEG, PNG or GIF. It comes with a very user friendly interface and provides tons of options to customize your banner.

You can customize your banner layout by changing its size, colors, text, fonts and border. No registration or sign ups are required.

Animation Online

AnimationOnline is an excellent web application that lets you make custom animated banners online instantly. Just like BannerFans it doesn’t require any registration or sign ups. The website features a number of free template you can use and edit according to your needs. You can easily customize is with various color schemes and text.

Since there is no limit on the number of banners you can create, you can create as many banners as you want.

Banner Generator

Last but not the least Banner Generator provides a cool tool that allows you to create your own banner totally free of charge. To create your own banner click “Start Banner Creation” and choose the size of your banner that are already available in JPG, PNG and Flash format.

From there simply follow the on screen instruction and get the job done in hardly a minute or 2.

You can always use the comment box below and mention websites that you think are banner than these.

One option for tidying up your MP3 files is to go through each file or album one by one, find the information you need on the internet or on Amazon, and add it manually.  Now, even if you’ve only got a small music library this is going to take a long, long time.

The sensible way to fix your music library and to add missing information is to use an automatic tool that will find and correct missing track details, add missing album artwork and remove duplicates all automatically.  The best tool I’ve found that does all of this automatically is FixTunes.  This ultrasmart program can even find artwork based on misspellings or missing info.  FixTunes works with both iTunes and other MP3 players.

Here are the key features of FixTunes:

• Edit the song title, artist, album, track, year and genre tags of your music
• Fix your songs automatically, without having to type all the information yourself
• Automatically download and add album cover art images to your music files
• Look up online information on your music like artist bios and reviews with one click
• Rename the music in your library into a standard format
• Organize your music into folders according to artist, album, year or genre
• Remove duplicate music files from your collection with ease, saving the best version
• Quickly search and edit only a portion of your music collection

The automatic mode is fantastic and saves users having to  manually accept every change from FixTunes. If you have a big library, just leave it running overnight and it will work its magic overnight.

If by some chance FixTunes makes a mistake then there is a manual option that allows all details to be manually edited.

The trial version of FixTunes can be downloaded for free and works on both Macs and Windows.   It’s fully functional so you can see and use all features for a limited time.  Update: If you wish to upgrade to the full version, One Tip A Day readers can exclusively receive $5 off by entering the code DD9D6 when checking out.

More: FixTunes

FontStruct is a web service that allows you to construct fonts by using geometrical identities arranged in a grid base. To create your own font you will first need to register on the website. After becoming a registered member of FontStruct, log in to your account and click “Create New Fontstruction”. This will lead you to the next page where you can start building your font.

The process is really very simple but it may take a little time as you have to create each alphabet separately. This is how it looks

As soon as you’re done with that you will be able to save your font in a .zip file together with a ‘license’ and ‘read me’ document. Note that FontStructions are in a TrueType format which can be installed on Windows and Mac OSX only.

There are lots of free software available on the internet you can download and add watermarks to photos in bulk. Means you can easily add watermark to all your images in one go. For that you can use WaterMarkv2, a free utility for watermarking multiple images at the same time. You can either add watermarks to your selected images or select the whole folder to add your copyright image to it.

Download WaterMarkV2

If you don’t feel like downloading a software you can always use an online web service such as WaterMarkTool. A free online watermarking tool that allows you to quickly and easily protect your images with a  watermark. With Watermarktool you can easily personalize your images in a variety of ways including text size, color, and position. Simply browse any image you want to add watermark to and personalize it with the giving options on the page. Click “Generate” and you’re done.

Check out WaterMarkTool

Picresize is an online image resizer utility which enables you to quickly resize and crop photos while your on the internet. Picresize doesn’t require any registration and helps you get the job done in seconds.

To get started all you have to do is log on to the website and upload your image from your computer. Once done it will open up a new page where you will be able to resize your image according to your need. In addition to that you can use the one click feature to add special effects to your photo right away.

Select your preferred options and save image in PNG, JPG and GIF format.

Check out PicResize

I had installed a small utility to match Ad colors with my theme but I guess I’m not going to need it anymore. Today I have confronted a free web service known as “Color Palette Generator” that allows you to extract colors out of any image online.

The website comes with a very simple interface and hardly takes anytime for you to extract colors. To get started:

Log on to CSSdrive/imagepalette/
Click “browse” and select an image
Click “Get Palette” and you’re done.

No tag for this post.

There must be lots of us who already know and use “Twitpic“, a free web service that allows you to share pictures on Twitter. It also supports lots of other Twitter applications such as TweetDeck and many more mobile applications as well.

Recently I’ve confronted another cool tool known as “TwitPickr” that is responsible for uploading tweeted pics directly to your Flickr Photo Album. All you have to do is

1. Enter your Twitter username

2. Select the images you want and
3. Click the upload-button.

Once done, approve the authority to Flickr and Twitter. It’s really as simple as it look. It is an excellent add-on for those who regularly use Twitpic.

Following are some of the free web-services that can help you fight against these kind of bots and avoid spam.

Mailinator

Mailinator is a free disposable email service that promises to protect your identity on the internet. It allows you to easily create an on-the-spot email identity that provides anonymity and fights web inertia in one easy step.

It doesn’t really require any registration and helps thousands of people every day avoid spam. Simply create your free email id that is followed by “@Mailinator” and check your inbox after sharing it with any anonymous person out there.

The company had  introduced a feature in March which adds “Alternate Inboxes” to Mailinator and can definitely come in handy. For example, if you check any inbox on Mailinator (say, binkypop), listed on the page is the alternate inbox name. All alternate inbox names start with “M8R-”. For example, for binkypop, the alternate inbox name is  M8R-yg1hkn@mailinator.com.

HideText

Another great way to avoid spam is HideText. A free web service that allows you convert text to an image. This means you can easily hide passwords, personal messages, pieces of code, or any kind of private information on forums, blogposts, emails, irc, msn-aim chats. Your text becomes unGoogleable and leaves no traces at all.

Spam Proof Email Generator

Here’s something similar to HideText. Spam Proof Email Generator is considered nothing but a simply program that helps you fight against a Spam Bot that crawls a website and gathers all the email addresses written there. Since they’re are not able to read images and won’t get a chance to copy your email address.

You can easily fool these bots by simply using the form on the website to create a picture of your email address.

XB List is for those who have become habitual of playing on their Xbox or Xbox 360. It is like an enhancement to the Xbox, as it brings Xbox Live friends to your desktop. The list comes in a format of a buddy-list; the one that we all have been using in the Live Messengers.

This new software updates the Xbox user about any activity of your Xbox friend right on the desktop and displays both Gamer cards and Gamer pictures. However, an Xbox Live account is must to use this application. This tool has been designed especially for those who love to spend more time on their Xbox.

In addition to that XB List include constant updates about the live friends, Halo emblem for each friend, pop-up notifications for sign on and off for all friends, an alert display for new messages and easily accessible friend’s Xbox.com profiles. You can also compose messages and manage your friends list right from the Windows desktop. It also shows you the friends whom you can join on Xbox Live. You need to have at least .

Key features include

• Constantly updates to show which friends are playing what games
• Displays the Xbox Live Gamer Picture or Halo emblem for each of your friends
• Popup notifications when friends sign on and off, as well as on other events.
• Displays an alert whenever you have new Xbox Live messages.
• When
  you hover your mouse over a friend XBList shows their Gamer Card, with
  extra info about when they last signed on and what they’re playing. It
  will also show their Halo emblem if they don’t have a Gamer Picture or
  you prefer Halo Emblems.
• Easily access your friends’ Xbox.com profiles, Halo stats, and compose messages.
• Manage your Friends List right from the Windows desktop – add and remove friends, and accept or reject friend invites.
• Shows friends that can be joined on Xbox Live in blue.
• Shows friend requests.

The only requirement to use XB List is .NET Framework 2.0. You can get it from Windows Update or directly from Microsoft.

Download XB List

Today, I have stumbled upon a website that might play an important role in stopping me from wasting time on Social Media Websites. Not really sure how much it would work but I guess it’s totally worth giving it a shot.

MinutesPlease is a free web service that allows you to setup time limits for any websites you visit. The process is really simple and should not take more than 10 seconds to setup the whole thing.

To get started simply log-on to MinutesPlease.com and

• Enter the Url of the website you want to cut down on use
• Set time limit and
• click “Please”

Alternatively you can always type the url of the domain manually you want to visit and add the time. For example if you want to visit OneTipADay.com for 10 minutes type

“minutesplease.com/10m/onetipaday.com”

Another way to use MinutePlease service is by using their Bookmark toolbar. Simply go to any website then click from any site for a 10 minute limit. Once the limit is set it will show you count down so that you can extend the time if you wish to continue using that web page.

Check out MinutesPlease

twtpoll is a free web based service that allows you to create polls in 5 simple steps.  To get started all you have to do is:

• Enter your Twitter name
• Choose how many answers you want
• Type your question
• Type multiple answers for other users to choose from
• Enter expiration date of this question

You can even allow users to submit multiple votes. If you don’t want that simple check the box below “Expiration date” and it will enable the poll to accept only one answer per IP.

Once your poll is created it will look like this.

From here you can easily re-tweet your poll, post it on Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Reddit and more.

Check out twtpoll

In addition to that I do all my shopping online which mostly includes domains, servers, SEO stuff and more. Today I’ve stumbled upon “PayPal Fee Calculator“. A free web-based tool that allows you to calculate your Paypal Fee with in a matter of seconds. For those of you who are not familiar with Paypal should know that it is the most popular way to transfer money on the internet today. I seriously can’t imagine doing my online business without it.

Now that Paypal transfer fee vary depending on where the recipient is located it sometimes become hard to calculate it. This is where Paypal Calculator comes in action because it allows you to easily calculate the total amount you have to send so that the recipient gets the agreed net amount.

Paypal Fee Calculator calculates fee for different currencies and countries. Note that the calculator assumes that you have a premiere or a business account because personal accounts can’t accept payments via PayPal funded by credit and debit cards.

Simply enter the amount you are expected to receive and get the results right there. It’s a real time saver for those who are using Paypal regularly for their business.

You can also use the advanced version of the calculator if your transaction involves multiple currencies.

Check out PayPal Fee Calculator