Getting Things Done Wallpapers for Desktop and Mobile Phones

Love GTD? Make that your desktop or mobile phone background so you always remember the core principles of GTD. Stefanos Karagos has created some beautiful wallpapers for fans of David Allen's Getting Things Done workflow. They are available for the desktop or the iphone here.    Some more motivational desktop backgrounds by Stefanos are available here. The wallpapers are done in MindManager, Photoshop and PowerPoint. If you have a copy of MindManager, you can download the mindmap...

Read More

For Start-Ups Who Want Some Positive Review on TechCrunch

It's a fact that a review on TechCrunch can really make or break Web 2.0 startups. To win a positive (or even neutral) review on TechCrunch, you just don't need to build a solid product, you should also pray to God that TechCrunch editor Mike Arrington is in some good mood while he's blogging about you. Here's what Mike told PC Magazine recently - "sometimes I wake up and I'm in a pissed off mood and I trash a company. You're never going to do that when you have an editorial process. And while...

Read More

Firefox Running Slow? Make It Fast Again Without Re-Installation

Problem: You cannot imagine life without Firefox but over time, your favorite browser keeps getting slower and slower. Not only is it slow, Firefox sometimes hangs for no reason, consumes a large amount of memory and CPU usage can climb to 90% or more when you have multiple tabs open simultaneously. You have uninstalled most of the extensions and toolbars, deleted all the cookies and internet temporary files, cleared up the file download queue and disabled the background check for software updates...

Read More

Add Picture Frames to Your Digital Photos Online

flauntR is a new web based image editor - extremely fast and works in the browser. It's layout looks no different from any desktop based software. While the basic image editing features in FlauntR are no different from other online image editing tools, what impressed the most are the variety of photo frames, textures and light effects that you can apply to digital images in a click. These small but very creative effects suddenly make your boring photos look very interesting. Related: Photoshop...

Read More

Tumblr Bookmarklet for WordPress Blogs; Post Stuff Quickly

Tumblr is probably the easiest and fastest way to publish blog posts online - select anything on the current web page (be it text, video or pictures) and they will be on your Tumblelog almost instantly via the Tumblr Instant Post Bookmarklet. Unfortunately, that quick posting bookmarklet can only be used for publishing on Tumblr.com - there's no way to integrate Tumblr with your existing WordPress or Blogger Blog. However, here's some good news for WordPress bloggers - there's a new Tumblr inspired...

Read More

Google Warez Search Engine

It takes lot of effort for websites to rank high in Google web search results - you require lot of incoming links, unique content, good reputation and sometimes a decent PageRank as well. However, warez sites (that illegally distribute pirated software) seem to have discovered a way to trick Google. Do a search for "adobe cs3 master collection" on Google.com and you'll be so much surprised to know that five out the top ten results on the first page are linking to underground sites. (enlarge the...

Read More

Record Skype Calls and SkypeCasts with Skype Recorder

Skype Recorder is a simple tool for recording podcast interviews, skypecasts and voice calls made through Skype as MP3 or Windows Media audio files. Skype Recorder will start the recording by itself as soon as you start talking on Skype. Once the conversation is over, Skype Recorder will encode the audio recording to your preferred audio format. It has an in-built audio player, so you can replay your Skype recording immediately and decide whether you want to keep it or just delete it. Skype...

Read More

Add A Picture To Your LinkedIn Profile; Help People Recognize You

Your work colleagues, old classmates and friends will now have no problems finding you on LinkedIn even if there exist a dozen profiles with the same name as yours. Starting tomorrow, LinkedIn members will be able to upload a photograph to their profiles. You can control if the photos become visible in your public profile page or just your approved connections can see the picture. Thanks Adam. Click here to connect with me on LinkedIn....

Read More

Fix for Excel 2007 Calculation Error Coming Very Soon

If you are an Excel 2007 user, try this: Type =77.1*850 in any cell and press Enter. Excel 2007 would return a value of 100,000 instead of 65,535. Any combination of numbers that should calculate to 65535 will show 100000 in Excel 2007. Excel Team says the issue is actually not in the calculation itself (the result of the calculation stored in Excel’s memory is correct), but only in the result that is shown in the sheet.  Said another way, =850*77.1 will display an incorrect value, but...

Read More

Fix Blogger Sitemap XML Warnings Inside Google Webmaster

Though you can easily redirect Blogger Feeds to FeedBurner now, this has a side effect - you will see some warnings when you submit the Sitemaps file (xxx.blogspot.com/atom.xml) to Google Webmaster Tools. (see screenshot) The following Sitemap warning messages are shown in the Google WebMaster Tools control when using Blogger feeds with FeedBurner: Line: 2 Invalid XML: too many tags - Too many tags describing this tag. Line: 2 Incorrect namespace - Your Sitemap or Sitemap index file doesn't...

Read More

Microsoft Office 2007 Contacting Server For Information

When you try to copy paste some text from a web page to a Word 2007 document, the application freezes for few seconds and the message in status bar says "Contacting the server for Information. Press ESC to cancel." This annoying behavior, also present in Outlook 2007 and other Office programs, mostly occurs when the clipboard has HTML formatted content (like when you copy content from a website to the clipboard). Would anyone know how to get rid of this permanent? Which server is Office 2007...

Read More

Closed An IE Browser Tab By Mistake? Get It Back Easily

If you accidentally close a tab in Firefox, you can easily retrieve it by pressing Ctrl+Shift+T. If you do the same mistake in Opera, Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Z will help you reopen the most recently closed tab. Or click the Trash icon near the toolbar to see a list of closed tabs arranged in reverse chronological order. Coming to Internet Explorer, there's no inbuilt feature to restore closed tabs but there's a free add-in called IE7 Open Last Closed Tab that makes your IE 7 behave just like Firefox...

Read More

A Convenient Case For All Your Memory Cards

If you carry multiple Flash memory cards of different formats, the Elecom card reader is a perfect thing for you. Elecom MR-C12 series has numerous slots for housing a variety of Flash memory cards that may be from your mobile phone, PDA, digital camera or other devices. As in the figure, the card reader attaches to the computer via USB port so you don't have to worry about slipping the SD Card in the Compact Flash slot or vice versa. More details on Elecom website. It's currently available...

Read More

Winners of Screencasting Software Give Away!

Thank you everyone who participated in the software giveaway! - We received 112 responses and deciding the winners was no easy job.Here’s the list of five winners in no particular order - each of them gets a full licensed version of ALLCapture 2.0 screencasting software from Balesio. Congratulations and do stay tuned for more such events in the future.Announcing Winners of Screencasting Software Give Aw...

Read More

Automatically Download Satellite Images from Google Maps

Google Maps Image Downloader is a Windows-only tool that lets you auto download satellite images from Google Maps between two locations anywhere in the world. To use Google Maps Image Downloader, you will first need to specify the latitude and longitude of the two locations on the Google Map, then specify the zoom level and click download. The software also comes with an image stitching tool that will create a large panorama or a wallpaper by stitching these individual tile images of Google Maps....

Read More

Embed Flickr Photostreams in Web Pages as a Flash Slideshow

Want to display Flicks photos in web pages as a Flash slideshow? Look no further than PictoBrowser. Here's a sample Flickr Photo slideshow generated just using PictoBrowser - all the pictures are displayed as thumbnail images in the lower navigation bar, you can also read the descriptions of individual images by hovering the mouse over the thumbnail. To get started, you type your (or someone else's) Flickr user name and then select the tags or photo sets that you would like to embed in web pages. The default dimensions of the Flash slideshow is 500x580 but you are free to customize that as...

Read More

Say Cheese - This Sony Digital Camera Clicks Only Smiling Faces

Say Cheese else the new Sony cameras won't capture your photographs. These affordable Cyber-shot DSC-T Series cameras have a special "Smile Shutter" mode that can recognize facial expressions like smiles, grin or a hearty laugh. If there are several subjects in the frame, you can specify the smiling face that you want to take as the main subject - or let the Smile Shutter choose the main subject and take the picture. The 8-megapixel, DSC-T70 and DSC-T200 Cyber-shot cameras won't lets you click...

Read More

Amanda Congdon - The Perfect Match for Mobuzz TV

Amanda Congdon, the famous vlogger who joined ABC News after her split with Rocketboom, is now moving out of ABC as well. There are two versions of the story - some say that Amanda has been let go by ABCNews.com while Amanda says that she herself decided not to continue at ABC as she is taking up a new digital project after her ABC contract expires. The excellent MobuzzTV, an English video blog similar to RocketBoom, are also looking for an anchor ever since the departure of Karina Stenquist....

Read More

Password Protect Hyperlinks Before You Share Them Via Email

A lot of companies read emails sent by their employees. If you are also worried that someone in your office may be secretly reading your email messages, here's something you can do to at least prevent the email snoopers at work from visiting links (URLs) that you share in your emails - use a password. HideLinks is an online service that helps you password protect any web URL easily. You type in the URL and a password - HideLinks will then generate a new wrapper URL that you can pass in the email...

Read More

Create Videos from Photos and Screen Captures - QlipBoard

QlipBoard is free application that lets you create movies from photos and screenshot images. The interesting part is that QlipBoard has an in-built screen capture feature and voice recorder. The images (or screen captures) appear in the timeline of QlipBoard (like most other video editors) so you just have to drag-n-drop to change the position of any image frame in the timeline. Further, you can easily record voice narrations, annotate or add text to images. And all your pen highlighter movements...

Read More

When You Click An Adsense Ad On Your Own Website by Mistake

What is the first thing you would do if you accidentally clicked your own Adsense ads that are displayed on your website? As an honest Adsense publisher, you are likely to send an email to Google Adsense support with the URL of the web page where you clicked your own ads and probably the reason (like the mouse was so sluggish). Yes, it's important that you don't click your own Google Ads else there's an element of risk that Google may disable your Adsense account but do not get too worried...

Read More

A YouTube Download Manager Similar to Real Video Player 11

  Some may recall the Real Player 11 software [review] that lets you download streaming web videos in a click. When you are watching a video on say YouTube, Real Player 11 adds a "Download this video" hover button near the video player - you just have to click this button to initiate the video download process. Orbit Downloader is a free download manager that not only offers a similar approach as Real Player 11 but also extends it to Flash Animation movies, audio files and other media content...

Read More

Is Your Computer Connecting To Websites Without Your Knowledge

If you are worried that some programs on your PC are secretly making connections to websites in the background, here's a quick tip that uses a simple DOS command to detect and prevent such suspicious activity: 1. Type cmd in your Windows Run box. 2. Type "netstat -b 5 > activity.txt" and press enter. After say 2 minutes, press Ctrl+C. 3. Type "activity.txt" on the command line to open the log file in notepad (or your default text editor) The file activity.txt will have a log of all process...

Read More

Microsoft Releases Office 2003 SP3; Slipstream Your Installer CD

Microsoft today released Service Pack 3 for Microsoft Office 2003 (link). The service pack includes all patches and updates released for Microsoft Office 2003 since SP2. Some notable changes include: 1. Office 2003 programs can no longer open or save certain file formats like PPT created in PowerPoint 97 or before. 2. The Fast Save setting in Microsoft Office Word has been removed. Here's a guide to slipstream SP2 into your Office 2003 installation CD - the procedure to slipstream SP3 into Office 2003 should be similar though the file names will be different. [the installer is Office2003SP3-kb923618-FullFile-enu.exe]...

Read More

pfingo - Get an International Phone Number With FAX, Voicemail..

pfingo is a new service that provides a personal phone number for you to make (or receive) phone calls from a PC (or Wi-Fi enabled mobile phone) to any landline or mobile phone number in the world. You just have to install a small software called pfingoTALK softphone (see screenshot) onto your computer or mobile phone. Other than talk, the pfingoTALK client lets you send or receive SMS message using the computer, the voicemails reach you as .WAV files in email and you can also send and receive...

Read More

Create A Tag Cloud Based On The Content of Your Blog or Website

Tag Clouds, you have seen them on delicious, Technorati or Flickr, are an easy way to get people explore your site deeper. Here's a sample tag cloud that uses Google AJAX Search. Tag Clouds (provided they are not cluttered and display just the relevant words) help visitors quickly visualize what your website is all about since the topics you frequently cover are mentioned in bold or relatively bigger fonts. WordPress community already offers some excellent plugins for generating tag clouds...

Read More

New York Times Makes TimesSelect Available Without Subscription

Good News. New York Times has decided to break the subscription firewall and provide TimesSelect content for free. If you are a paying TimesSelect subscriber, you will receive a prorated refund. In addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain. There will be charges for some material from the period 1923 to 1986, and some will be free....

Read More

Google Docs Adds Web Based Version of PowerPoint 1.0

Google today launched a "very basic" PowerPoint clone that lets you create Presentations inside the web browser. Other than creating presentations from scratch, you can also upload your existing PPT and PPS slideshows into Google PowerPoint. The new Google tool, which surprising doesn't have any name (they call it Google Docs presentations feature), is available at documents.google.com or can also be accessed from docs.google.com. It's also available for Google Apps customers. Microsoft PowerPoint...

Read More

Did Google Relax Rules for Mahalo To Join Premium Adsense Club

Mahalo is now a premium Adsense publisher meaning they get permission from Google to display custom Ad formats on their web pages among other benefits. Related: Premium Adsense publisher privileges Normally, Google invites only those websites to the Adsense Premium club that average more more than 20 million page views a month. If Mahalo has managed to cross that number in such a short span of time, hats off to Jason Calacanis. There are, however, some doubts. For instance, TechCrunch of Michael...

Read More

Want to do More With Firefox? Get The New HyperWords

Say you are reading a blog or website inside Firefox and encounter some name (or an unknown term) that you would like to explore deeper. You will probably visit Wikipedia to read more about that person and search Flickr or Google Images for some photos. And if the text on the webpage is not in your native language, you'll copy paste that into Babel or Google Translate. Is that the way to work on the internet ? Well, that's a perfect approach but a bit inefficient. Enter HyperWords that lets...

Read More

More Ways to Upload Presentations & PDF Files to Slideshare

SlideShare, an online service for hosting PowerPoint and PDF documents, has registered an extremely impressive growth ever since its debut last year. (see this recent Alexa snapshot) Related: Comparison of PowerPoint Hosting Services SlideShare have added some new email+web based options for uploading PDF and PPTs that makes the service all the more attractive. For instance, if you want to move your presentations from Scribd to SlideShare, just type their URLs here and SlideShare will automatically...

Read More

Adsense Referrals - How to Pick Relevant Products That Convert

Unlike the regular Adsense ads (CPC or CPM)where Google automatically picks relevant ads based on the content, Adsense Referrals (CPA) require some effort on the part of Adsense publishers because they have to manually select products from the vast Adsense inventory that is changing almost everyday. How do you find the Adsense Referral Ads that are likely to become popular among your visitors ? I have been using the Adsense Referrals (Text Links) program (here, here and here) for over a month...

Read More

Google Developing GMail Offline Version Using Google Gears

A report, citing highly placed sources, says that Google has developed an offline version of Gmail that is likely to be made available within this year.   Like Google Reader which lets you work offline using Google Gears, GMail users will be able to interact with their GMail account even when they don't have an active Internet connection. This news, that Google is developing GMail Offline, is reported by a prominent Indian newspaper though the Google spokeswoman in India officially...

Read More

Blogger Play and Bloglines Wall of Images

Blogger Play is a self-running slideshow of photographs recently uploaded on Blogspot blogs. Other than the image, you also get to read a short excerpt of the accompanying blog post and the profile of the blogger. Excellent implementation. Bloglines offers a similar feature called Image Wall but that's not limited to Blogger Photos - they show recent images from virtually all blogs that are indexed by Bloglines. A small concern with such projects is that you are never too sure about stuff that...

Read More

Most Creative Flickr and YouTube Search Engine Ever

oSkope will leave you impressed for sure. It's an extremely innovative online tool to help you browse and search YouTube videos, Flickr photos and more with minimal paging. When you type a keyword, oSkope pulls thumbnail images of the results and arranges them on the screen like a deck of playing cards spread out on a physical table. You can click the thumbnails of Flickr Photos or YouTube videos to watch them inline. The thumbnails can be easily in different styles like a stack, pile or plotted...

Read More

How to Extract Pictures from PowerPoint Photo Slideshows

Ques: Your have a PowerPoint presentation (PPT, PPTX or PPS) that contains lot of pictures embedded in the slides. Is there an easy method to save these images out of the presentation ?As an example, let's take the above PowerPoint presentation that contains unseen aerial photographs of the World Trade Center captured by a military chopper on 9-11. To extract pictures from the PPT slideshow, all you have to do is export the Powerpoint Presentation as an HTML web page. Choose File -> Save As and select .html from the File Format drop down.PowerPoint will automatically extract every picture embedded...

Read More

Make Flowchart Diagrams in the Browser with Draw Anywhere

If Google every wanted to add a Microsoft Visio like flowcharting application to their Google Office suite, they'll have plenty of good options to choose from. Draw Anywhere is a new web based tool for creating flow charts, org charts and other drawings online. Like the Picnick image editing, DrawAnywhere is done in Flash and sports an extremely responsive interface. You can either save your Flowcharts online or export the diagrams as images and PDF files. drawanywhere.com...

Read More

Let Firefox Turn Off The Computer When All Files Have Downloaded

Say it's midnight and you want to call it a day. But the issue is that you are downloading some huge files from the Internet via Firefox (see screenshot) and at your current internet speed, the download will take another two hours to finish. You could either cancel the downloads, or leave the computer in running state (forget environment), or just install Auto Shutdown from mozilla.org. As the name suggest, this extension will turn off the computer automatically as soon as Firefox has downloaded...

Read More

Stretch YouTube Videos To Fit the Browser Window, Better Than Full Screen

You already know about the Full Screen mode in YouTube video player that scales the current video to fill the entire desktop screen. The one big problem with full screen mode in YouTube player is that you cannot do anything else on the computer while the video is playing - you have the exit the FullScreen before initiating any other task.   There's however an excellent alternative to FullScreen and that's about auto resizing the video player to fit the browser window. When you resize the...

Read More

An Ergonomic Laptop Mouse That Stores Your Files & Documents

Microsoft today unveiled the Mobile Memory Mouse 8000 for your notebook computer. The unique feature of this ergonomic mouse is the USB transceiver that doubles as a 1 GB Flash drive - so you have one less device to carry while on the move and it also frees up an additional USB port on your laptop. Another improvement over the Wireless 8000 Laser mouse is the charger - earlier they had a separate rechargeable base but with Mobile Memory Mouse 8000, the mouse can be connected using a magnetic cord...

Read More

Why Use Acrobat PDF Writer Instead of Non-Adobe Converters

The marketplace is flooded with non-Adobe PDF writers that promise to convert practically every file format into PDF. Like Acrobat, you can install these third-party PDF generators [1, 2, 3] as virtual printers and create PDF files from any application that has the Print button. Some services go a step further - you send them a file as an email attachment and they'll mail it back to you as a PDF. That's not all. WordPerfect and OpenOffice have in-built PDF printers. Microsoft released a free...

Read More

DMCA Notice of Copyright Infringement - Sample Template

If you discover your content published illegally on another website without permission or attribution, the first step is to send a polite email to the owner of the website.  If the website owner fails to respond to your email requesting removal of plagiarized content, it may be time for you to send a formal DMCA letter to his web hosting company and also to his advertising partner(s) (like Google Adsense) that are helping him monetize content which is actually owned by you. While web hosting...

Read More