Automattic (WordPress) CEO on Wallstrip

Automattic, a web-development company formed by Matt Mullenweg and other core WordPress developers, is now responsible for the much-loved WordPress, Akismet comment spam plugin, Ping-o-matic and the BBPress forum software [that also powers our message board.] Lindsay Campbell of CBS Wallstrip strikes an interesting conversation with Toni Schneider, the CEO of Automattic Inc who is the founder of OddPost, the new Yahoo! Mail. Lindsay and Toni talk about Web 2.0, WordPress, Blogging and...

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Copy Videos from YouTube to Google Video Directly (or vice-versa)

Yesterday we shared a utility to migrate your photos from one photo sharing site to another via the hard-drive. Imagine a similar service for internet video sharing sites (like YouTube, Google Video, MySpace, etc) that lets you to copy videos (any video) from one site to another but without downloading the videos to the hard-drive. [so it works even if you are on a very slow dial-up connection] Hey!Spread today launched a new feature today that allows you to cross-post videos to that...

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When Its Time to Work, Shut Down Websites That Distract You

You sit down on the computer to complete that sales report which is extremely urgent but you are distracted by an email from a colleague asking you to check the "funniest video" ever posted on YouTube. You open that video on YouTube, watch it for five minutes and then switch to Orkut to check the new scraps. Then you move to Facebook followed by Google Reader, then Technorati, then Wikipedia, then CNN and so on. You soon realize that you wasted an hour at work Wilfing while the task at...

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Laser Printers in Office Turn Employees into Passive Smokers

If your cubicle is located somewhere near the common office printer, either ask the support staff to move the printer elsewhere or you shift your desk to a different place in the office as in the current setup, the air around you may be highly polluted. A study has found that laser printers emit particles in the air that can be as harmful as cigarette smoke when inhaled by office workers posing serious health risk for workers especially who sit in the vicinity of printers. Printers emitted...

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School Wants PowerPoint Presentations with Admission Forms

The Graduate School of Business at University of Chicago are trying a new experiment - they are asking MBA aspirants to include a PowerPoint presentation in their applications. Students will have to limit their presentations to text, images and clipart but no hyperlinks or audio-video embeds. If applicants do not have access to PowerPoint or a similar presentation software, they can email the admissions office for alternative methods. One reason for such a requirement is that students...

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Make Screensavers, YouTube Videos from PowerPoint Presentations

This article answers two common questions: How to create a movie from PPT files that can be uploaded to YouTube or Google Video? How to set some PowerPoint presentation as a desktop screensaver that will auto-play while the computer screen is idle. [Both PPT Movie and PPT to Video software are not on GOTD anymore.] To Create Picture Screensaver from PowerPoint Slides Create an empty folder in "My Pictures" or any other folder on your hard-drive. Now open the PPT or PPS file in Microsoft PowerPoint...

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AllCapture - Screen Recording Software Inspired by Adobe Flash

Balesio, developers of Turbodemo, have introduced a new screencasting software called AllCapture 2.0 that provides a pretty solid post-production environment for editing your screencast recordings.  If you have ever worked with Adobe Flash (the authoring environment, not the Flash player), you know that Flash uses the concept of a visual timeline to show the content of a movie over time in layers and frames. You can turn-off layers to hide some object (like an image or sound clip)...

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Backup your Mobile Phone Address Book and SMS Messages Online

Do you use your cell phone SIM card to store all the important contact numbers of your friends, family and business contacts? If yes, it's all the more important for you to backup the cell phone's address book else imagine the case when you forget that cell-phone in a cab or a restaurant table? Most cellular companies offer phonebook backup services for a nominal fee while newer cell phones can transfer and sync contact data to your computer through USB cable, Bluetooth or...

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New! Add Visitor Comments Policy to Your Blogger Blog

Blogger is adding excellent features. They have silently added a new feature that allows bloggers to set a "comment policy" for their blogs that is shown to any visitor who intends to write a comment on some blog post. You can also add external hyperlinks and bold text to highlight the important points of your comment policy. To add your comment policy, open the Blogger dashboard and goto Settings -> Comments. Type your HTML text in the box that says "Comment Form Message". Save Settings. When...

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Word 2007: How to Turn Compatibility Mode On By Default

If you are working in a workplace where some users have shifted to Microsoft Office 2007 while the rest are still using Office 2003 or previous versions, the following Compatibility Mode hack will simplify things for you. What is Compatibility mode in Office 2007 ? - When you open a document in Microsoft Office Word 2007 that was created in Word 2003, you'll see Compatibility Mode written in the title bar of the document window. Compatibility Mode ensures you can open, edit, and save Word 97–2003...

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How to Clean Your Notebook Computer - Video Instructions

How to clean you laptop - this is a must watch video for anyone who owns a computer. Get a can of compressed air, some cotton ear buds and a damp cloth - your system will look new again. The video demonstrates how to clean dust from almost every part of the laptop computer including the delicate screen, keyboard, various ports, external laptop casing and the interiors of the CD or DVD drive. It takes special care to wipe the dust off your LCD monitor else the dust particles may scratch and permanently damage your expensive screen. [How to Clean LCD Screen] Put a small amount of the...

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Deliver Live PowerPoint Presentations Online with SlideAware

Slideaware is a web-based service to help you publish and deliver PowerPoint presentations on the web. You can upload your PPT files online by either using the SlideAware Add-In for PowerPoint or through web based uploader which was launched just yesterday specifically for Office 2007 users. Unlike SlideShare or Zoho Show which are more popular for viewing static presentations, Slideaware allows you to deliver live presentations to remote team members over the web very similar to any web conferencing...

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Add Tags to Your Outlook Email Messages, Just Like GMail Labels

Gmail use the term "Labels" while del.icio.us, YouTube and other web 2.0 websites prefer to say "tags" but the basic idea is same - tags (or labels or categories) make it easy for you to filter or search content. Like Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail, Microsoft Outlook uses the concept of folders to organize email messages - the problem with the folder approach is that an email message, task or contact can be stored only in one folder at a time unlike Gmail where you can place an email into any number of...

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The Inbox Zero Presentation at Google by Merlin Mann

Getting things done and productivity guru Merlin Mann recently delivered a presentation on dealing with email overload at the Mountain View campus of Google. The video recording of the entire talk is now up on Google Video. You can also download the presentation slides here. Anyone who gets more than a dozen emails a day should watch this Inbox Zero video....

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The Problem with Advertising on Digg - Very Poor Conversion Rate

Digg, who enjoys all the privileges of a premium Adsense publisher, today dumped the Google Advertising program in favor of Microsoft who will now serve advertising to over 150 million eyeballs that hit Digg every month. Kevin Rose and the wise Digg army are no fans of Microsoft. Infact, if you even submit a story on Digg highlighting some bug in MS-DOS of the early 90's, it's likely to reach the Digg front page in no time. Then why did Kevin switch from GOOG to MSFT? [A search for...

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A Wall Projector for your iPod, Mobile phone or Digital Cameras

[Picture of a couple watching video clips from their mobile phone projected on the wall]Imagine projecting pictures or video clips from your iPod or mobile phone on to the nearest wall. Or playing the PowerPoint presentation directly from your smartphone or PDA on the wall of the conference room without the bulky projector. Explay, a company based in Israel, has developed a battery-operated projector called "oio" that looks like a USB thumb drive and can be used to display...

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FeedBlitz Lost Over a Million RSS-to-EMail Subscribers Overnight

FeedBlitz, a service that lets you read blogs and RSS feeds like any other email message, lost over a million email subscribers in one day. Just yesterday, Feedblitz website claimed to have around ~3.3 million email subscribers. (see screenshot) Today, that number has dropped by a million to around ~2.4 million email subscribers though the number of RSS feeds syndicated by FeedBlitz is fairly constant during the same period.   Wondering why this mass exodus ? Did FeedBlitz publishers...

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The GigaOm Show - Video Podcast with Om Malik on Revision3

"The GigaOm Show" - Om Malik is launching an online television show on Revision3 that will feature 10-minute interviews with technology CEOs and start-up entrepreneurs. Robert Scoble is doing something similar for Podtech on The Scoble Show. Kara Swisher, who broke the news, says that Om Malik will handle the editorial while Jay Adelson, Kevin Rose and others–will deal with production, distribution and ad sales. Both domains gigaomshow.com and thegigaomshow.com are inactive at the moment...

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How to Upload Videos to YouTube if Access to Website is Blocked

Richard, who works for a large Fortune 100 company, recently wrote on Facebook that he cannot upload screencast video clips to YouTube since the company he works for has blocked access to YouTube and other video sharing websites though the firewall. One of the available options is to use your mobile phone for uploading videos on YouTube - just create a mobile profile on YouTube from a computer outside the organization's firewall and then email the video to YouTube as an MMS...

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Create Timelines With Your Photos and Videos

AOL today launched an extremely cool web-based timeline maker software called circaVie that helps you define and build interactive timelines to represent events with pictures, videos and text captions. Your friends can click on the individual pictures to learn more about the event. There's a horizontal scroller to help them easily navigate the timelines. Or they can manually type the date to jump to a specific section of the timeline. To create your personal picture timeline with circaVie,...

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Upload Large Images from Photoshop to Box.net Directly

Box.net today released new plugins for Adobe Photoshop, 3DS Max and Adobe Acrobat to help users send large documents and images from these programs to their box.net account in a single click. Download all the different Box.net Plugins at www.box.net/apps The free Box.net account provide 1 GB of storage space and data download bandwidth is limited to 10GB/month. Box.net already provides a free Microsoft Office Plug-in called "Office on Demand" that allows Office workers to save Word, Excel or PowerPoint...

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Outlook 2007 Junk Email Filter Flags Microsoft Newsletter as Phishing Message

The junk email filter in Outlook 2003 SP2 and Outlook 2007 includes an anti-phishing feature that will automatically disable hyperlinks in an e-mail message that may point to phishing websites. Perfect but the phishing detection algorithm of Outlook can get funny sometimes - see the screenshot. The email is actually a Microsoft Technet Newsletter from microsoft.com itself that was wrongly flagged by Outlook as a "potentially unsafe phishing messag...

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Connect USB Devices Wirelessly to the Computer from upto 30 Feet

USB peripherals are here to stay but this latest accessory unties you from USB cables. You can soon buy Wireless USB kits from D-Link that will allow you to transfer photos from existing digital cameras to any laptop computer though the standard USB ports but without any USB cables. Not just digital cameras - anything that connects to your computer via USB will go cable free - so you can send jobs to the printer, transfer presentations to USB Flash drives, copy video from the camcorder, backup...

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Add Photo Frames and Border Effects to Your Pictures

Pikifix may sound like any other online photo editing software but it's not designed for improving your digital images - it's all about adding nice picture frames, borders and creative effects to your photographs so they look more appealing and professional. Close rival Picnik also provides support for borders and rounded edges but the wide range of borders and image effects available inside Pikifix makes it a more impressive option.  Filmstrips, Television, Photo Montages, Glow. Wall,...

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Bloglines RSS News Reader for iPhone

Bloglines today launched iBloglines, an iPhone optimized version of the web based Bloglines.com. [Google Reader is not of iPhone yet, officially] Type i.bloglines.com inside your iPhone browser - the site would redirect to the main Bloglines website if you use it on a desktop. More iPhone-Bloglines screenshots on Paul's Journal website. [via Bloglines Bl...

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Nokia Has a New Audio, Video & Picture Sharing Website - Twango

Twango (first impression - excellent) is a YouTube style file sharing service that's not just limited to video - you can use Twango to share virtually any file format including pictures, audio MP3s, Office documents, PDFs and even ZIPs. The good news is that Nokia, the company that manufactures mobile phones multimedia computers, has acquired Twango. Nokia devices like the N-series are popular for capturing user generated content (pictures, podcasts, videos), Twango would now make it...

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Children Create Audio Stories on Normal Paper with Crayons

Most children love to scribble sketch and draw on paper but imagine if they could record their own voice or other sound effects to the same drawing. Hayes Raffle and his team at MIT have created a tool called Jabberstamp that allows children to record sound and voices to their drawings made on normal paper using pencils and crayons. Children have to press a rubber stamp (see video) onto the page to record sounds into their drawings. The audio will playback when people touch the marks of the...

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Yoga Exercises for People Who Spend Long Hours at their Desk

Computer users and office workers who spend long hours sitting in one position at their desk run a higher risk of developing deep vein thrombosis (formation of a blood clot in a deep vein, most commonly in the legs). Doctors warn that the clots can travel to the heart, lungs or brain, causing chest pain, breathlessness or possible death from a heart attack or stroke. Stretching Software Reminds You to Exercise While it is often recommended that office workers take break, get up and walk around...

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Play Classic DOS Games in Windows XP or Vista

  Mario Brothers, Prince of Persia, DOOM, Duke Nukem, Aladdin, Jazz Jackrabbit, Wolfenstein 3D.. remember those classic game titles of the MS-DOS era that were so entertaining, yet so small that they would fit in your 1.44" floppy disks. Though most of these legacy games are freely available for download on the web (google "download classic dos games", you may have some trouble playing the games using the DOS command prompt of Windows XP or Vista since the games were originally written...

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When Documents Need Stamp of Approval from Multiple People

You have written a proposal in Microsoft Word and want all other members of the team to review the document before you can email a copy to the client. So you add that document as an email attachment to the team with the subject "Please review by August 5 - Deadline 3P.M." All you can now do is wait. When you have a big group of say five or more members, it becomes a Herculean task to track who all have reviewed the document, what comments they have made and whether there are any suggestions...

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Read Full Articles on The Wall Street Journal Without a Subscription

"The full WSJ.com article is only available to subscribers." You may often see this registration message when trying to access content published on The Wall Street Journal Online edition [unless you are lucky]. BugMeNot database does have username-password combinations for most paid-subscription websites (including the WSJ) but it's tough to find one that works. Now George has a handy trick though only for geeks. You can read any subscriber-only articles published in the Wall Street Journal newspaper...

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We Love Microsoft Software Piracy in China: Bill Gates

Microsoft sold over 20 million legal copies of Windows Vista globally in the first month of launch while in China, only 244 licenses of Windows Vista were sold officially in the same period.  Most preferred to buy the $1 pirated Vista DVDs. Contrary to what you may think - Microsoft isn't losing sleep over the rampant software piracy in China but it's the other way round. The "something is better than nothing" strategy of Bill Gates is that when people in China are pirating so much software,...

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Why Carrying a Laptop With Long Battery Life Makes Sense..

What do you do in a situation when you are stranded on a railway station, the next train is couple of hours away, it's biting cold and there's no shelter at the station to save you from the chill? You can either shiver and wait for the next train to arrive or if you are smart like Lee, switch on the laptop in full brightness mode and start the Windows disk defragmentation program - that will generate even more heat from the system to keep you warm and comfortable. Craig writes: As he shivered on...

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ASCII Text Portraits of 100 Popular Bloggers

Blogger ASCII Art - Photo-realistic face portraits of 100 popular bloggers done in ASCII Text. Try to decrease the text size in your web browser for best effects. This is the first public release featuring the most well known bloggers, expect to see tons of new blog faces in the future versions of Blogger ASCII Project. Suggestions, feedback are always welcome. What others are saying about the Blogger ASCII Art project: Vanessa Fox - Heh. That's crazy! Veronica Belmont (CNet) - Awesome! Duncan...

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Goodbye Tangled Cables, Wrap the iPod Earphone Cord Neatly

How do you keep the headphone cables when not listening to the iPod? If you are not wrapping them carefully, you may be wasting time untangling the headphones before you plug them in the iPod, iPhone or other MP3 players. The following videos show simple methods to help you neatly wrap the headphone cable of your iPod and prevent the wires from getting twisted and tangled. Related: How to Connect iPod to Your TV or Projector While wrapping the iPod cables is no rocket-science, the good part about...

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Room Wallpapers Created from Your Favorite Pictures

Want to decorate your room walls with some personal pictures ? Better Wallpapers is a UK based company that will convert any of your scanned or digital photographs into a full size personalized wallpaper that will stick to the walls of your room like any other wallpaper. Create Large Wall Posters from Your Images You can upload an image online and they'll email you a proof - you approve it and the final wallpaper arrives in the next 10 days. The image will be enlarged to fit the size of your wall...

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Download Sparky: The Official Alexa Toolbar for Firefox

The Alexa toolbar for Firefox is now available as Alexa Sparky - though they call it a toolbar, it's more like a status bar. Alexa Sparky adds visual traffic graphs to the status bar of the browser which shows the site's popularity over time (based on Alexa traffic) and the Alexa rank number. [see screenshot below] A Related Links option is added to the Firefox menu bars that shows the 10 websites related to the web page that's currently open in your Firefox browser. Right click the traffic graph...

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Photograph: When Lightning Strikes People Listening to an iPod

This is a picture of Jason Bunch who suffered burns after lightning struck while he was jogging and wearing iPod. Link Experts says that it's not just iPods that people have to be concerned about - anything similar that requires headphones or even cellphones being held to the ear could result in similar injuries. To estimate the number of miles you are from a thunderstorm, count the number of seconds between a flash of lightning and the next clap of thunder. Divide this number by fi...

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Yahoo! to Rival Adsense with Tyroo Ads, Jajah Now in India

Interesting picks from India Inc. Yahoo! Enters Pay-Per-Click Advertising Market in India with Tyroo Yahoo! India today picked up a 35% stake in Tyroo, a non-contextual Cost-Per-Click advertising program that is primarily focused on Indian website publishers. This could mean some good news for thousands of bloggers and site owners in India who were looking for alternatives to Google Adsense - Yahoo! will possibly leverage it’s existing sales and marketing resources to bring more publishers...

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