Download Music Videos, Full iTunes Movies, TV Shows for Free

Apple iTunes has a huge collection of downloadable movies, music videos, TV shows, audiobooks and music clips.

You can download them from iTunes for a fee - MP3 songs on iTunes Music store cost 99¢ each, full television episodes and music videos cost $1.99 each while full length movies cost $9.99 or $14.99 if you download the movie from the Internet during their first week of release. Movie trailers in QuickTime are free.

And when you download movies from iTunes, you get near DVD-quality, 640-by-480-pixel video perfect for watching on your computer or the iPod.

Remember that you cannot burn video content purchased from the iTunes Store to DVD directly but you can easily transfer them to the iPod or watch on your TV using Apple TV.

And if you have a slow Internet connection (128 Kbps or less) and are trying to play a song preview in the iTunes Store, the preview may not play smoothly. Choose Edit > Preferences, click Store, and select "Load complete preview before playing."

Want to download songs and movies from iTunes for free ? Now you can. All you need is Apple iTunes and a download manager like FlashGet, GetRight - No credit card, Apple ID or AOL screenname required.

The following trick will allow you to download full length episodes of Spiderman, The Office, Star Trek, Desperate Housewives or any other TV show for free. Using the same trick, you can also download music videos, audibooks, short films and movies from iTunes for free.

Update: This was only an April 1 prank and is therefore taken offline. You can however learn to save music from iTunes radio.

Photo Flicks - Make Stunning SlideShows of your Digital Photographs

Photo Flicks is an awesome online Flash slideshow creator for digital photographs packed with features like you may have never seen before.

With Photo Flicks, your digital photographs can look like a revolving 3D Cube, a rotating spiral, moving glass slabs, puzzles and so on.

Some slideshow also support sound and text captions. The standard zoom-n-pan style picture transitions are also available for old-school users.

Our personal favorite is the Photo Book effect which emulates a physical photo album - click the picture and the pages flip just like a norbal book.

Just upload your pictures and start creating these impressive Photo Flicks. The Flash slideshows can be easily embedded inside any webpage or blog.

Go, give it a shot. You'll love Picture Flicks for sure.

Picture Trail | Sample Slideshows [Photo Flicks]

More Slideshow Software - XDrive Shows, Pixtivity and Flickr Picture Slideshows.

Download Music from Internet Radio Stations to iPod or MP3 CD

Geoff Allen is a 69 year young Aussie, a jazz musician and loves listening to music on web radio from USA and Australia. He is looking for a simple internet radio recorder to rip save his favorite songs as MP3 audio. Geoff writes:

I want to record songs from online radio stations, label each one as I record it and put a small space in between each one (about 2 seconds) then save the songs (could be as many as 30/40 per session) in MP3 format to burn to a CD disc or the iPod MP3 player.

My greatest thrill in life other than riding my sidecar motorcycle rig is listening to good music that I can replay at my discretion and take with me wherever I go.

Disclaimer: While the method described here can be used to save streaming audio from all internet radio stations like Live365, Last.fm, AOL Radio, Pandora music or even from iTunes and Yahoo! Music Launchcast, you should cross-check their terms of service.

Geoff, assuming that you have the necessary permissions, here's a step-by-step guide to help you create an MP3 album of your favorite songs from online radio:

Step 1: Download Audacity from Sourceforge.net here. Available for Mac, Windows and Linux platforms.



Step 2: Open Audacity and choose View -> Float Mixer Toolbar. In the drop-down menu on Audacity's mixer toolbar, choose "Wave Out" or "Stereo Mix" as the input source. Open the Audacity Preferences dialog and choose Mono channel in the Audio I/O tab. Select your sound card name in Recording Device [Sigma Tel C-Major Audio in my case]

Step 3: Open the radio station of choice using the web browser or Real player or Yahoo! Messenger. Hit the play button and switch to Audacity.

Step 4: As the song of your choice is about to play, hit the keyboard shortcut - R to begin recording of the song or press the Record button on the Audacity interface. When the song end, hit the Space Bar to stop recording.



Now when your next favorite song is playing on the radio station, hit the R button again. Now Audacity will record the song in a separate track. This is helpful as you will realize in a minute. Repart the R-space bar cycle until you record all the songs to your PC or Mac.

Step 5: The last step - Choose File -> Export Multiple - this will save the individual Audacity track as separate MP3 files or WAV files. Choose the export folder and select "Split files based on Tracks". Click export.


That's it. Burn this folder as an Audio CD or transfer them your iPod or mobile phone and enjoy the web music offline.

[Make sure you download the free LAME MP3 encoder to export recording as MP3 files. Advanced users may consider Audacity effects to fine-tune their internet recordings.]

Related: Record BBC Radio as MP3, Convert Real Audio to MP3 (RM to MP3)

Wooden Computers - Monitor, Keyboard & Mouse Made in Wood

This is the perfect marriage of technology and nature. A company called Wood Contour manufactures computer hardware peripherals using wood of your choice.

All products including LCD computer monitors, keyboards and USB mouse are made from one piece of solid wood. Customers can get logos inscribed on these peripherals and may choose the type of hardwood such as Cherry , Mahogany, etc.

The company claims that no two keyboard or mouse in the world will ever be the same because no two trees in the world are equal. But this luxury comes at a premium - A 17" Mahogany monitor costs $435 while a Wireless Ash wood mouse costs $162.

Warning: Don't smoke near your computer workstation.

Wood Contour | Computer Products | Cherry Wood Monitor

The Wiz Kids of Silicon Valley Featured on BBC Technology

Darren Waters, technology editor for the BBC News website, was recently in Silicon Valley meeting the wonder boys of the Web 2.0 era. If you love the internet and social networking space, this is a series that you should not miss reading.

Some really interesting details about the founders or their Web 2.0 projects:

Zoomr founder Kris Tate, who's still a teenager, single handedly programmed the entire website and works from home or wherever there's wi-fi.

Meebo founder Seth Sternberg shares that the name "Meebo" was decided in a California Pizza Kitchen restaurant as they wanted something memorable, easy to pronounce and, most importantly, had not already been used on the web.

Seth also has some golden advice for tech companies seeking VC funding - build something, get a couple of blogs to write about it, all the VCs and angel investors will find you.

StumbleUpon co-founder Garrett Camp created the site while finishing off post-graduate studies. "Google has search almost solved. But the discovery side had not been cracked. This is a tool for finding interesting pieces of content."

Watch the Unofficial Google Song - Just Google!

<a href="//www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO_ey4v1ccA">Watch the "Just Google" Music Video on Youtube</a>
Lex Friedman and Seth Brown of the Leth & Sex News podcasts have composed an excellent music video devoted to your favorite search engine - Google!

The song titled "Just Google!" is a parody of "Beat It" by Michael Jackson. Don't miss this one.

Download the Google music video by clicking here and save the file with an flv extension. Or use vixy.net to save this video as an AVI or MP3 only song.

Related Songs:

Blogger Anthem - Official Song for Bloggers ("I started a blog which nobody read")

Yahoo Song - A two second audio clip.

Find How Much Remaining Space You Have on Blogger Images

There's a new feature in Blogger - you can now view how much storage you’re using in Blogger Photos using their web based blog editor.

Create a new post in Blogger and click the Add image button - a new window opens up where you can upload photos from your Desktop to Blogger Photos. At the bottom corner, you'll see a line saying the amount of space occupied by the uploaded photos in your blog.

Any photos that you post to Blogger are included in your Picasa Web Albums storage quota. Google now has a 1 GB storage limit per blog account - if you are exceeding that quota, either delete some pictures using Picasa Web Albums or buy additional storage from Google.

The charges are $25 per year for 6.25GB which is way higher than rival Flickr. Compare Picasa with Flickr Photos.

A Single File Viewer for PDF, Videos, Images, Music and Microsoft Office Documents

Universal Viewer is a lightweight and versatile file viewer that can open virtually any file format including PDFs, Fonts, Flash Video, SWF animations, Microsoft Office formats, Images, Music and Video Files.

This will be a blessing for the not-so-techie crowd who have a hard time remembering the file associations.

Universal viewer can also be used a web browser or an HTML code editor. When you open an HTML webpage inside the viewer, it can either display the HTML file as a rendered webpage or as a source editor. That's so useful for making quick edits to your HTML files.

While you can open all common formats including Photoshop, AVI, FLV, etc - you can include support for additional file formats by downloading free file viewer plugins.

Unfortunately, this gem of a tool cannot be used as a Microsoft Project Viewer which is clearly the most sought after viewer on the web.

Universal Viewer (ATViewer) | Lister Plugins [H/T Abdul Aziz]

Professional Tricks for Getting Your Work Done

Matthew Baldwin has compiled an excellent list of trade secrets and techniques that are otherwise known only to the professionals or employees.

Here are some favorite "Tricks of the Trade" for the tech professionals:

Graphic Designer
If you have a client who is unable to approve a proposed design without putting her stamp on it, just put an obvious error in the proposal: a logo that's too large, a font that's too small, or a few judiciously seeded typos. The client requests the change and feels she's done her part - and your design, which was perfect all along, sails through to approval.

Technical Support
When helping someone fix their computer over the phone, and you want them to see if all the cables are plugged in correctly, don’t ask, "Have you checked to see if the cable is plugged in?" because the customer will always say, "Of course I did, do you think I’m a moron?" Instead say, "Remove the cable, blow the dust out of the connector, and plug it back in." The customer will most likely reply, "Hey, it’s working now - I guess that dust really builds up in there!"

Source: The Morning News, Tricks of the Trade [via]

IE 7 Installer from admin@microsoft.com

A slew of emails have hit our mailbox in the last two days with links to download the beta 2 version of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (file name: IE7.0.exe)

The e-mails appear to come from admin@microsoft.com with the subject as "Internet Explorer 7 Downloads."



As you would have guessed it, the file IE7.0.exe is a virus (Virus.Win32.Grum.a) and is being hosted in multiple places around the world.

While GMail is doing a good job at filtering such emails and marking them as spam, make sure that you don't fall in the trap and download software updates only from the developer's website.

More on this issue at F-Secure labs, Arbor and SANS.

Sticky Notes for Your Computer Screen - SnagIt Notes

Hate cluttering your desktop with 3M Post-It notes ? Get the digital version of these yellow stickies from Techsmith that are much more useful and customizable than the paper notes.

TechSmith today added a new feature (or output) to SnagIt called SnagIt Notes that converts your screen captures into sticky notes.

To create a sticky note for your desktop, capture any portion of the computer screen using SnagIt and save that as a SnagIt Note. The screenshot image will stick to the desktop and you can also enhance it with text and colors.

Download SnagIt Notes Accessory | SnagIt Notes Output

While we have similar Post-It widgets / gadgets in Google Desktop or Windows Vista, SnagIt notes are useful in situations when you want to quickly grab a screenshot to visually remind you of pending tasks or appointments (see the screenshot above)

If you don't own a copy of SnagIt, try Stickies, a free yet powerful sticky notes program for your desktop. With Stickies, you can also share sticky notes over email or your home network, set alarms and reminders. Stickies can be attached a web site, document or folder so they only show when it's on screen.

Another great option is Post-it Software Notes from 3M, the same company that introduced these classic yellow notes to the world.

Related Reading: Add Post-It Notes to Web pages

Tahiti - Microsoft Screen Sharing Software Review

Microsoft today launched a free screen sharing software for Windows XP and Vista users. The software ("Tahiti") can also be used for providing remote tech support or co-authoring presentations and documents with far-away colleagues. [Tahiti invites closed now.]

The workflow is simple - download and install the Tahiti software (~2.5 MB), login with your Windows Live ID and you are ready to share your entire desktop, web browser or any program application with the world.


The desktop screen can be simultaneously shared with upto 15 people at a time and the person sharing can give control to anyone else who's also part of the screen sharing session. And each participant has a personalized mouse pointer to point out specific items or highlight an area of shared screen.

Tahiti is tighly integrated with Microsoft Word and it may even be an attempt by Microsoft to counter the GTalk chat feature of Google Docs. With Tahiti, you can share a Word Document and every edit made by a participant can be identified with the participant’s name and timestamp.

Not just the screen, Tahiti will also let you share files, presentations or images which other participants can download during the screen sharing session. That's a useful feature because you don't have to upload files to a third-party site like rapidshare or send them as email attachments.

The shared portion of the screen is brighter than everything else to visually suggest what is curently being shared.


Microsoft may be planning to add audio features in Tahiti but until that happens, you can use your VoIP software like Live Messenger or Google Talk to share and speak at the same time.

Unfortunately, there isn't a way to record the screen sharing software without using a third-party software like Camtasia Studio or Wink.

Some may think Tahiti as a poor cousin of WebEx or Microsoft Live Meeting but it is still useful and powerful enough for most non-corporate users.

Microsoft Codename Tahiti | Download Tahiti [Thanks Abhishek]

Related: Live Screen Sharing with Skype

Update: Microsoft has closed the Tahiti beta program for new users. If you are already running the pre-Beta release, the service will continue to be available. An official version of Tahiti is expected in mid-April.

Google Adsense Adds Statement of Earnings

Like Paypal, Google has also added a Statement of Monthly earnings that can be accessed from the Payment History tab of the Adsense control panel.

Though you cannot export it in Quickbooks or other formats, print a hard copy and attach it with your Tax returns. The statement has all the earning details for the previous month including the currency exchange rate at which the payment was issued by Google.

Tricks of the Trade: If your local currency is getting too strong against the US Dollar (like in India where the Rupee is at a seven year high), you can issue a self-hold instruction to Google.

Next month, if the exchange rate gets better, remove the hold payment instruction and Adsense will issue you a check of accrued earnings using the currency rate prevailing at that time.

The risk is that if dollar weakens further, your earnings will be reduced even more. Also, Google won't pay you interest for the accrued earnings.

Make Your Work Hours at the Computer More Comfortable

The Office Ergonomics presentation is a much watch for anyone who spends a fair amount of time infront of the desktop computer. [related: Rearrange Your Workspace]

This quick and interactive presentation will help you identify potential risks for pain and strain in your current office environment.

Then there are some easy-to-implement suggestions to help setup your desktop workstation and modify your work practices to minimize ergonomic risks. For instance,

» The top edge of the monitor should be at or below your eye-level.

» You can place a phone book under the computer monitor to raise the level.

These little adjustments can make your work hours at the workstation much more comfortable.

Watch the Office Ergonomics presentation. This was also the winning entry at Articulate Guru Awards. Thanks Gabe Anderson.

Related products: Articulate Engage, Articulate QuizMaker

Download Google Search Posters, Tent Cards and Bookmarks

Google provides free posters and handouts that you can print at home and use as bookmarks in magazines, as tent cards on the table or hang them as wall posters.

These Google posters are essentially PDF files and contain search tips & tricks to use Google more effectively.

Other than Google Search, there are free posters for Google Earth, Google Books and Google Scholar. If you are looking for a large version, try the Educators Poster that can be scaled by any amount without distortion. It has real examples to create better Google searches.

Google Librarian Central [via Google Newsletter]

Build A Sudoku Puzzle with Rubik's Cube At Home

Sudoku Puzzles, which some refer to as Rubik's Cube of the 21^st century, are now also available in the shape of a 3x3 Rubik's cube.

Called Sudokube, this puzzle is effectively a Rubik's cube, but instead of being made of colours, it is made of numbers. You play Sudokube in the same way as you would a Rubik's Cube, but you need to get the numbers aligned on each side as you would in a Sudoku grid.

And if you hate spending that $10 on a Sudoku cube, get hold of a normal Rubik's cube and glue numbered labels to each of the cube edges as shown in the figure. If you have old date calendar at home, you can cut the digits from that calendar and glue them on the Rubik's cube. Happy solving.

Related Sudoku reading: How to Solve Sudoku Puzzles ?

Buy Sudokube [Thanks Alex Tan, DeKarma]

Twitter Addiction Gone Too Far ?

Q: What's worse than serving a life sentence without parole ?

A: Sharing a cell with a twitter addict.

Twitterholics just can't stop twittering. Thanks Amber

GMail, Yahoo! Mail Should Add a Block Address Button for Lazy Users

Yahoo! Mail and GMail, the two most popular web-based email programs, have a "Report Spam" button which lets you quickly block and delete junk messages that have managed to gain entry in your otherwise clean Inbox.

Hit the spam button and the message is trashed to the spam folder. Google also learns in the process. According to a GMail engineer, the "Report Spam" action sends information back to the spam team at Google to help them flag messages and senders in future.

Unfortunately, lot of us are hitting the "Report Spam" as a shortcut to block emails that are really not spam. An MSNBC reports suggests that e-mail users typically decide whether to click on the "report spam" button based on the address and the subject line without opening the actual message.

That may be a slightly worrying trend as it puts legitimate e-mail senders (who are reaching you for the first time) in the same league as spammers.

MSNBC says that users also click the "report spam" button as a quick way to remove their email address from a mailing list. Imagine if hundred subscribers to a popular Yahoo! Groups mailing list mark their email as spam instead of unsubscribing, GMail anti-spam filters may go horribly wrong if it decides to learn from the action of these lazy users.

What GMail or Yahoo! Mail or even MSN Hotmail need is a simple "Block Address" button - no one has the patience to create an email rule to block email messages from an unknown sender but when they get an easy way to block messages from certain sources, they'll be more inclined to click that button instead of the Report spam button.

Related: Catch False Positives in GMail Spam folder

ToonDoo Comic Strip Creator - a Youtube for Cartoons

Toondoo is a new service from the developers of Zoho Office where anyone can create comic strips in seconds.

Drag-n-drop the characters on the canvas, change backgrounds, add speech bubbles or even upload your own pictures. Everything is packed inside a very intuitive Flash interface that even a three year old can get started in minutes.

Like Youtube videos, users can rate and comment on your cartoons or embed them in blogs. With ToonDoo comic creator in town, professional cartoon artists may soon feel the heat.

ToonDoo.com | ToonPress | [Thanks Aravind]

PhotoCasting with Google Photos Screensaver

Google Photos Screensaver - that's the name of a new screensaver included with the Google Pack. Google Photos Screensaver replaces the older Google Screensaver which was more like an automatic running slideshow of your digital photos on the hard-drive.

The new Google Photos Screensaver is on the lines of a PhotoCasting software. It can download images from RSS photostreams and show them in a slideshow.

So your grandma in another town can set the Google Photos screensaver on her desktop and whenever you upload new pictures of your daughter on Flickr, they'll display as a slideshow on her computer, automatically.


Google Photos Screensaver can fetch live photos from Flickr, Picasa, or any website that provides an RSS stream. You can also use it to view images from the latest events using the image stream of Yahoo! News. [via Google Blog]

Google Photos Screensaver version 2.0 is a 4.4 MB download available via Google Pack which is another 750kb.


Related: RSS Screensavers - Display Blog Content in your Screensaver

ICC World Cup Cricket Videos on YouTube Puts Google in a Fix

Google had some big plans for the ICC World Cup Cricket 2007. They launched a series of cricket gadgets that displayed the latest scores, match pictures and World Cup video clips from Youtube right on your desktop.

*For IPL Season 2, the organizers themselves have put an official channel on YouTube for uploading IPL Cricket Videos.

Unfortunately, Google's Cricket World Cup campaign may be in jeopardy now. YouTube has been ordered to remove all World Cup Cricket 2007 video clips. Fearing another lawsuit, Google has complied by deleting most of the cricket videos and replacing them with the standard message:

This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by ICC Development (International) Limited and Global Cricket Corporation Pte Limited

That leaves the Google Cricket Videos gadget of little use since it only fetches the latest videos related to cricket matches from Youtube.com. [Though at the time of writing, the widget was still showing clips from the latest match between Bermuda and Bangladesh]

Secondly, India is out of the tournament now and some people have gone to the extent of boycotting products endorsed by Indian cricket players. It is very much possible that the Blogger promotion bus may also receive a cold reception in India. Thing would have been very different if the men in blue had reached atleast the Super 8 stage.

Adobe Audition or Adobe SoundBooth CS3 ?

Adobe Audition (formerly Cool Edit Pro) and Adobe SoundBooth CS3 are both professional audio editing software. SoundBooth CS3, a brand new offering from Adobe, is available for $199 while Cool Edit Pro's descendant called Audition costs $399.

So whether you need to record voice-overs or edit music for your podcasts, Youtube video or screencasts, which of these audio tools is right for you ? (assuming you want something extra than what Audacity has to offer)


Adobe SoundBooth CS3 is primarily aimed at people without audio production background. SoundBooth can automatically detect and clean the background noises including hisses and hums from your sound recordings. The UI is simple with just the essential tools.

And like the auto heal feature in Photoshop, you can visually identify and remove unwanted noises. SoundBooth users can also download thousands of sound effects from the internet without leaving the software interface.

Adobe Audition is an high end editor for professionals who really understand audio. It has all the features of SoundBooth and more. While I am no audio expert, this page has a great overview of the various features of Audition.

Your current OS may limit your choices. Adobe Audition is available only for the Windows XP platform but it's new cousin (SoundBooth CS3) is supported on Mac as well Vista/XP platforms.

Audition is not on the same path as ImageReady or GoLive. Adobe Audition 3.0 is very much in the works though it is no longer part of the Adobe Creative Suite 3.

Resources: Download Adobe SoundBooth CS3 Datasheet, Podcasting with Adobe Audition

Related: Adobe SoundBooth: Audio Editor for your Mom

Technorati Blog Directory Is Useful But Needs Work

Technorati launched the Blog Finder service to help users find the most popular blogs on any subject based on the number of incoming links.

For instance, one can browse a ranked list of technology blogs by visiting technorati.com/blogs/tech or technorati.com/blogs/technology. Microsoft related blogs will be listed at technorati.com/blogs/Microsoft and so on.

Recently, Technorati added more options to the Technorati Blog Finder and that includes the ability to sort listed blogs either by relevance or authority or freshness of the most recently published post.

But are these new features working ? Not in all cases.

By Relevance - Technorati probably uses the Blog Title and the Blog Domain URL to calculate relevance. If we look at the Top 10 blogs related to Google and sorted by relevance, all have the word "Google" in their titles and URI but none of these blogs are relevant. Infact, some of them are defunct or last updated months ago.

By Authority - This is the original method where Technorati uses the number of incoming links (or Technorati Rank) to determine the order. This is still the most preferred route but not without problems. For instance, the top Technorati blogs on Design are sorted in incorrect order. fadtastic, at number 8 has more incoming links than Devlounge which is at number 7.

By Freshness - Blogs are sorted based on the time when they were last updated. At the time of writing this post, the Personal category of blogs was ranking blogs updated 15 hours ago at higher position than blogs updated 6 hours ago.

Can Technorati share what factors they take into consideration while ranking blogs on relevance ? Can they change the default sorting order and base that on authority instead of relevance. That will make the Blog Finder Directory all the more useful again.

The Best Tool for Embedding Spreadsheet Data in Webpages

Gone are the days when you had to buy expensive Excel add-ons to embed spreadsheet data into HTML web pages. Now one can use free online spreadsheet programs like Zoho Sheet, Google Docs & Spreadsheet or EditGrid to post live spreadsheet data on blogs.

We do a quick comparison of the embed feature offered by the above spreadsheet tools to help you decide the best online spreadsheet for your job.


Google Spreadsheet: Google converts the spreadsheet data into HTML tables and embeds it using the IFRAME tag. You can either embed the entire spreadsheet, a specific sub-sheet or just a range of cells from one sheet (say A1:D9).

The spreadsheet data embedded in webpages will either remain static or refresh every five minutes depending on the settings that you have chosen at the time of publishing the Google sheet.

Since the embedded data is rendered as plain HTML table, site visitors can do little except view the data or copy-paste as plain text.


Zoho Sheet: Zoho has long been our favorite tool when it comes to embedding spredsheets. Upload an excel spreadsheet to Zoho, click the Publish button on the Zoho Sheet menu bar and you get a small HTML snippet for pasting inside your blog - still the most user-friendly and non-geeky method.

Visitors can add/delete/format data inside the embedded sheets, perform calculations or even save the edited version onto their local hard-drives in Excel format.


EditGrid: With EditGrid, you get completely customize the look-n-feel of your embedded spreadsheet including the cell colors, dimensions, headers and the grid lines. Depending on your blogging platform, you can either embed data using HTML tables (DHTML) or though Javascript snippets.

Like ZohoSheet, EditGrid also provides a full-featured interactive but read-only spreadsheet with the menu bar. Visitors can easily export the spreadsheet data into variety of format including xls, pdf, csv, etc. However, you do not have the option to show specific sheet pages with Edit Grid.

Final Thoughts: We liked the different custom options offered by EditGrid and also that visitors can export spreadsheet data into multiple formats without leaving your web page.

Google Spreadsheets are plain HTML formatted text but they can be very useful in situations when the underlying data is changing quickly (like stock quotes or currency rates).

Zoho allows visitors to interact with the spreadsheet and save the changed data locally, a feature missing in all other online sheets.

Related: Convert Excel Spreadsheets to Flash SWF.

Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000 vs Natural Ergonomic 4000 Keyboard - Video Review

We recently replaced our Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 keyboard with the Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000 series which also comes with a rechargeable Wireless Laser Mouse 8000. So how does this new Bluetooth desktop compare with the ergonomically designed 4000 series ?


Microsoft has made some big changes in the 7000 series - the standard Numpad is gone so the keyboard is less in width and they have moved the multimedia keys from the top edge to the left side which makes them more accessible.

The 7000 keyboard has an integrated touchpad (like in Laptops) so you can navigate the screen easily even without the mouse. And there are even buttons to emulate the right / left click mouse operations.

<a href="//www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC55LyMPKbs">Video Review of Microsoft Keyboards</a>
The keyboard layout has a comfort curve layout though not as wide as we have seen in the 4000 Ergonomic keyboards. The standard F1/F2 and other function keys are replaced with feather-touch buttons and using the Microsoft Intellitype software, you can can assign any program/file folder to run using these keys.

The Wireless 8000 Laser mouse has a comfortable design but it's slightly on the heavier side. It comes with a rechargeable base and connects via BlueTooth or USB.

The Windows key has been moved to a new location below the space bar though I would still prefer the previous placement which is next to the spacebar. Using the Live Call button, you can run any of your favorite IM programs like Google Talk, Yahoo or Windows Live Messenger in a single click.

This high definition mouse supports scrolling in all four direction and there's a magnifier button to quickly zoom areas where the cursor is.

The keyboard-mouse duo has an attractive design and you'll love it even more if you struggling with desk space. Do check our video review where we compare Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 Keyboard with the Microsoft Wireless Desktop 7000.

Camtasia Studio 4 for Windows Vista Is Available

Techsmith have just announced a new version of Camtasia Studio v 4.0.1 that makes this popular screencasting cum podcasting tool compatible with Windows Vista.

Other than Vista compatibility, numerous bugs and audio related issues have been fixed in Camtasia Studio 4.0.1. Full history here.

Download Camtasia Studio 4.0.1 | Camtasia Studio 4.0 Review

And here's a short screencast video on transferring pictures from Yahoo! Photos to Flickr or Picasa Web albums that was produced only using Camtasia Studio 4.0.



Update: A Techsmith forum member has posted a list of new features that will be added to Camtasia Studio 4.1

Sizer:
We'll have a sizer application built into CS. You'll choose a dimension and then choose the window to snap into that dimension. The real nice thing about it is that the app will also snap subsequent dialogue windows into the center of the recording area, so you don't have windows opening up outside your recording space.

Resume Recording:
By default, when you resume the recording, the cursor will reset itself to the spot it was when you hit F9.

Screendraw:
Screendraw will be an icon on the toolbar, which you can use to draw on the screen. You click on it and you'll see a tray of tools to choose from underneath the recording space.

Clock:
You'll see a little clock under your recording so you'll know how long you've been recording

Timer:
You can set your recording to record a webinar while you go have lunch. It will disable your screen saver while it records.

GMail Delete Keyboard ShortCut - Works in IE, Firefox, Opera

Do you know that GMail has a simple keyboard shortcut to delete email messages ? The same key combination works across all web browsers but for some reason, Google decided not to share it with GMail users.


If you are reading a message in GMail, press the # key (Shift+3) and that message will instantly move to Trash.

Alternatively, select one or more email messages in the GMail list view, press the same # hash key and all the selected GMail conversations will be deleted in one batch.

We tested this on Internet Explorer and Firefox but it should work just fine on Opera, Safari and other browsers. Go, spread the word. Thanks mattl.

Related GMail Tips & Tricks:

   Keep Your GMail Inbox Size Under Control
   Quickly Remove False Positives from GMail Spam folder

Update: If the GMail delete key isn't working for you, make sure that you have switched on the shortcuts from GMail settings page.

Microsoft Live Search for finding Blogs and RSS Feeds

Microsoft had some special RSS search operators in Live Search to help users search across RSS feeds or discover blogs on particular topics.

RSS Search Operators

To find blogs and feeds about iPhone, type feed:iphone in the search box. Similarly, to find blogs that are about Global Warming, type feed:global warming - the search results directly point to the XML feeds and automatically sorted by relevance.

Another RSS search operator is hasfeed: and as the name suggests, it finds web pages that contain an RSS feeds for the keywords you search for.

For instance, to find all google related blogs hosted on blogspot.com, you can type hasfeed:google site:blogspot.com. Another example could be site:nytimes.com hasfeed:david pogue that show all webpages from New York Times website which have an RSS feed related to David Pogue.

Microsoft Blog Search Engine

The Live Search also has a blog search feature much like Google Blog Search or Technorati though it is very limited in features and indexes relatively lesser number of blogs. To access Live Search Feeds, go to http://search.live.com and click Feeds.

The feed: and hasfeed: RSS search operator won't work with Live Search Feeds.

[Movie] Does Google Worry About Users Privacy

While I am not worried about Google placing a cookie on my computer that expires only in 2038 or Gmail scanning personal emails to display content related ads, the Google Master plan video above is still brilliant and worth watching.

This Google movie depicts that in coming years, the entire information in the world will be collected and controlled by Google and that may be a scary development.

It's an irony that although the video is against Google, it's hosted and served from a Google owned property - Youtube.

Related: Prevent Google from Tracking You or Your Search Habits

Run Google Talk in Firefox Sidebar

The Google Talk Gadget is clearly more usable than the stand-alone GTalk desktop client or the floating AJAX version in GMail.

Here, each chat session opens up as a tab (like Firefox browser tabs), it can show previews of images or video and the chat client can easily be embedded inside webpages.

There's however a small problem - while we have browser windows in front of us all the time, the same may not hold true for the webpage (like the Google personalized page) where we have embedded the GTalk gadget.

So here's an alternate option - put the Google Talk client in the Firefox sidebar so it always stays in the foreground no matter what website you are on currently.

To add Google Talk to your Firefox sidebar, bookmark the following URL (right-click and choose Bookmark this link)

talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/client

Now goto Bookmarks menu, navigate to the above bookmark, right click and choose Properties. Tick the checkbox that says Load this bookmark in the sidebar.



Update: An employee of an investment bank writes that their organization has banned Google talk in office but using the above method, he was able to circumvent the GTalk ban and could chat with friend out the firewalls of his office.

Google Talk gadget will always open in the Firefox Sidebar. Thanks Justin.

Know When People Bookmark You on Del.icio.us

When people bookmark your blog on Del.icio.us, they are indirectly giving important feedback about your site.

The text notes and tags that people attach to your site while saving it on del.icio.us gives a fairly good idea about what they think of your blog.

And tracking this information is again very simple. Visit delicious.com/url and type the URL of your blog.

The page has a list of all delicious users who have bookmarked you, what tags they used to describe your site and user notes, if any.

At the bottom, you will see an Orange RSS icon - add it to your RSS reader and whenever people add you to their delicious favorites, the RSS reader will notify you.

Alternatively, you can subscribe to the following URL in any newsreader like Google Reader or Bloglines. [replace xyz.com with your blog URL]

http://del.icio.us/rss/url?url=http://xyz.com/

Online Picture Editor Picnik Adds Photo Borders and Rounded Edges

Picnik.com, the most popular online photo editing suite, has added some new features today. That includes support for Picasa web albums and ability to add frames and rounded corners to your pictures.

With Google making the Picasa API public, Picnik can now load and save photos to and from your Google Picasa Web Albums account directly. Earlier, this feature was available only with Flickr images.

Even will all these nice photo editing features, Picnik and others will be under tremendous pressure to innovate as Adobe is gearing up to change the rules of the game.

Related Video: Download Pictures from Yahoo! Photo Albums

Blog Advertising Rates: How Much to Charge Direct Advertisers ?

Felicia Coley writes a blog on shoes and is facing a dilemma common to most bloggers - "How much to charge advertisers for renting blog space ?"

She writes:

I was just contacted by a relatively large company that is requesting to advertise on my blog. Being a newbie, I'm flattered, yet clueless as to how much to quote as a monthly rate.

While advertising rates may depend on lot of factors like site traffic, your niche, ad placement and even visitor demographics, we can use contextual advertising programs like Adsense / YPN or impression based programs like Adify or TribalFusion to estimate the advertising potential of our blogs.

Say you have a 125x125 space in the left sidebar where you are seeking advertisers. Run an Adsense campaign in that space for a week and track the performance using Adsense channels.

After a week, get the average CPM value for that space (this data is available in Adsense advance reports under eCPM).

Armed with the Adsense CPM figures, you can easily quote rates that are 20% lesser than Adsense.

[Adsense ads are contextual and therefore more relevant and enjoy higher click-throughs. On the other hand, static banners look the same across all pages and return visitors generally ignore them].

Here's an example using the above model:

Your site receives 30,000 pageviews (or hits) every month. The 125x125 Google ad that you ran for 7 days returned an average CPM of $5.00.

If your client is willing to advertise based on ad impressions, you may charge him $4 CPM. If he is interested in a monthly campaign, you can quote him 30*$4 =~ $120 per month.

Also, you may charge a premium (50% or more) for ads that are displayed above the page fold near the most visible areas of the site. [CrazyEgg can help you here].

And always offer choices and remain flexible with the ad formats. If your sidebar is 160 pixels wide and the advertiser's banner button is 180 pixels wide, try to work with your site designer to stretch the sidebar to fit the ad.

Related: Adverting Rates on Popular Blogs

Visual DNA - Pictures Speak Volumes About Your Personality

Visual DNA from Imagini is a very interesting and fairly accurate personality test.

Read the questions and click the picture that feels right. For instance, when asked what your idea of vacation is, you will be shown images of a beach, mountain, road, etc.

The tool then analyzes your personality based on these selections and prepares a neat report. You can also find people who have made similar choices and even connect with them.

Imagini VisualDNA [Thanks Rachel]

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Hidden Lives: A Public Wall of Private Confessions

Hidden Lives is an online project like Post Secret where people can anonymously share their secrets and other thoughts that they cannot reveal in public.

You can either read the secret confessions made by other members or publish your own by answering simple but very thoughtful questions such as "The last time I cried was.." or "The best decision I made was.." or "When I'm alone I.."

Spend some time reading what others have unveiled and it will be a new and fascinating experience for you.

Hidden Lives - Pause. Reflect. Reveal.

How to Determine Which Fonts Are Used in Newspaper Front Pages

The Los Angeles Times print edition newspaper uses 22 different fonts and typefaces in the design of their front page. Weird but true.


Related: Download Windows Vista Fonts for XP Legally

This was revealed when MSNBC cartoonist Daryl Cagle [via] took the LA Times paper and painstakingly reviewed the fonts used on their front page.

If you are no typography expert like Daryl, how do you find the font names that are used in newspaper or magazine layouts ? The answer could be in Adobe PDF files.

Most newspapers provide a sample PDF file on the websites that's an exact replica of their print edition layouts. You may find links to download these PDF files in sections where they have information for subscribing to a the paper via Home Delivery.

The newspaper font information is embedded inside these sample PDFs and can be accessed by opening the file in Adobe Reader and pressing Ctrl+D to access the document properties.

Check the fonts tab and you are likely to find the font name used while composing that newspaper. Here's the LA Times newspaper front page in PDF format. As the PDF suggests, it mainly uses variation of fonts like Deck, Gothic, Helvetica and others.

Related: How to Solve Your Font Display Problems

Earlier, a font study stated that Poynter, Franklin Gothic, Helvetica, Utopia, Times, Nimrod, Century Old Style, Interstate, Bureau Grotesque and Miller were the most popular typefaces in newspapers.

Create Picture Cubes of your Favorite Photographs

You can think of Photo Cubes as six pictures stiched together in the form of a square box or a cube.

These Photo Cubes can be used as personalized gifts or as a replacement for old school picture frames on your desk that fit just a single photograph.

To create a Photocube of your digital photographs, all you need is a printer, a pair of scissors and Tabblo - a photo gallery service that now lets you build Photocubes online.

Choose your photos and Tabble Photocube will arrange them in a PDF file. You then print this file on any paper, cut along the dotted lines and crease the solid lines. Now fold paper according to the instructions and your picture cube is ready.

Using a simple drag n' drop interface, you can decide the layout of the photographs on the sides of the cube. You can also add text captions to your photo cubes or apply image effects to individual pictures.

A useful and easy tool if you have access to a printer (laser, inkjet, dot-matrix). The finished photocube will remain open on the underside.

Tabble Photocube - Create picture cubes of digital photographs online.

Download Yahoo! Photos Locally or Move Them to Flickr or Picasa Web Albums

Good news Yahoo! fans. With a simple trick, you can download Yahoo! Photos albums to your computer or mobile phone. Or you can easily move all pictures from your Yahoo! Photos account to Flickr or Google Picasa Web Albums without even downloading them to your hard disk.

DI reader Sukhwant Sandhu is looking procedure to help him shift all his photographs from Yahoo! Photos to his Google Picasa Web Albums account. So here's a step by step tutorial followed by a video tutorial at the end:

Step 1: Install the free Yahoo! PhotoMail plugin on IE browser by clicking the Get Started button on this page.

Step 2: Compose a new email message inside Yahoo! Mail and you will see a button called "Insert Photos" next to the "Attach Files" button.

Step 3: Click the Insert Photo button, choose the Yahoo! Photos from the dialog that appears and drag-n-drop Yahoo! Photo albums to the message. Yahoo! will automatically attach all pictures from the album to your message. Click OK.


Either send that email to your Gmail account and download all the Yahoo! Photos as a Zip file to your hard drive or address that to your secret Flickr photo address to upload on Flickr via email.

Tip: The Yahoo! PhotoMail plugin is currently available only for IE. The attachment size limit is 10 MB so if you have hundreds of photographs in your Yahoo! Photos albums, send them to Flickr or GMail using multiple emails.

Watch the video screencast demo on how to download Yahoo! Photos to hard disk.

Related: How to Leech Flickr Pictures or Google Image Search

Quickly Filter Legitimate E-Mails from GMail Spam Folder

GMail is much better than Hotmail or Yahoo! at filtering spam email but the system is still far from perfect. As GMail users, we do encounter situations when a legitimate e-mail message from a friend or a client is incorrectly tagged as spam by GMail (known as false positive).

Infact, a NYTimes story suggested that the false-positive filtering rate of GMail is around 3% which means that every 3 emails (out of 100) tagged as spam by Google Mail may be from your friends, family or other contacts.


The next important question is how to catch these "GMail false positives" when you have tons of email in the Spam folder ? Well, it is not so tough as you may think.

First, turn on the Personal Level Indicators in GMail from the Settings page. When switched ON, these indicators add a single arrow ( › ) to messages that have your email in the To or CC field, and a double arrow ( » ) to messages that are sent only to you.

If you 20 or 30 email messages in the Spam folder, these indicators can help you quickly identify messages that were addressed to you. Look at the subject text or the sender's name - if that resembles a known contact, move that message from Spam to Inbox.

The above trick works just perfect for people who receive manageable amount of spam each day.



If your email address is more popular and you get hundreds of spam emails, try a search filter as described below [It is based on a simple theory - unlike friends or business contacts, a spammer is less likely to address you with your real name (or even pet name)]

in:spam to:me your_name

Type the above query in the GMail search box and it will show all spam messages that are addressed to you and have your name either in the subject or in the message body. [Replace your_name with your first name or even your pet name]

You'll get a list of emails that fit the above criteria - apply the same "personal level indicator" rule to visually identify non-spam messages from the search results.

Related: Tricks to hide your email address from spammers

Microsoft Pushes WGA Notifications As Critical Update

Have you installed a cracked copy of Windows XP on your computer ? If yes, don't use that computer for making presentations to clients else you might have to face huge embarrassment.


Last year, Microsoft released a new update called Windows Genuine Advantage Notification (KB905474) to confirm if you are using a genuine copy of Windows. The update connects with Microsoft validation servers in the background and displays irritating desktop alerts and balloon messages on computers that fail the Windows Genuine Advantage validation process.

Initially, Microsoft released this update to a random set of users in a few countries but now they are pushing it across all desktop as a critical update via the Windows Updates program or from the Microsoft Updates website.

Unlike other Windows Updates, you cannot uninstall KB905474 update using the Add/Remove Programs module and the piracy notification messages continue to appear until the non-genuine copy of Windows has been validated as genuine.


And even if you manage to validate Windows using WGA notifications, Microsoft says that "your system may be revalidated periodically in order to take advantage of new information available from Microsoft that can help protect you against new forms of counterfeiting."

The Top 10 Freeware Applications from Microsoft

We have compiled a list ten all-time favorite software programs from Microsoft that are free to download without any limitations.

Microsoft ZoomIt - Like a screen pen, ZoomIt lets you draw or write free-hand on the desktop screen in various colors. [screenshot]

Windows Live Writer - A must have WYSIWYG blog editor for Windows that is compatible with all popular blogging platforms including Wordpress, Blogger, TypePad and LiveJournal.

WebCam TimerShot - lets you take pictures at specified time intervals from a Webcam connected to your computer and save them to a location that you designate. Great for a spy camera or making stop motion animations.

Microsoft Time Zone Utility - It runs as a tiny icon in your system tray and allows you to watch the current date and time of upto 5 cities around the world simultaneously.

Microsoft SyncToy v1.4 - A free utility to help you copy and move files across folders or for keeping directory contents in sync with each other. SyncToy also keeps track of renames to files and will carry the changes over to the synchronized folder.

Windows Media Encoder 9 Series - a versatile screen capture and screencasting software from Microsoft. Windows Media Encoder can convert recorded audio or video to Windows Media format for distribution on the web.

Windows Defender - This free Windows AntiSpyware program can detect and remove spyware from your computer much like Lavasoft Ad-aware or Zonelabs softwae.

Microsoft Photo Story 3 - An excellent software for creating video slideshows of your digital photos with music and titles. The software also lets you create your own music loops. [details]

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 - This VMWare like software allows you to run multiple operating systems on the same computer simultaneously. For example, you can work on Linux, DOS, XP or even Windows 98 inside Windows Vista.

Microsoft Calculator Plus - This includes all the mathematical functions offered in the standard Microsoft Calculator plus conversions between different measurement units for area, temperature, volume and even currency.

Related: Windows Vista Fonts, Microsoft Wallpaper Backgrounds

Resources: Microsoft Downloads RSS Feed

MyBlogLog Users, Get Ready for Nigerian Spam

Nigerian spammers have probably discovered a new way to reach your email inbox - via MyBlogLog messages.

MyBlogLog users are immediately notified when another member leaves a message on their profile page. As long as you are a member of MyBlogLog, you can email (message) anyone else who's also on MyBlogLog.


Spammers are now using this feature to spam the email accounts of MyBlogLog users. Here's a recent email message I received from Sonia Bassey (loversonia) via MyBlogLog.

There is this huge amount of four million five hundred thousand U.S dollars ($4.5m) which my late Father Mr.Albert Bassey kept for me in security company here in Abidjan before he was asasinated by unknown persons during this war in Cote d'ivoire.

Now I have decided to invest this money in your country or anywhere safe enough outside Africa for security and political reasons. If you can be of an assistance to me I will be pleased to offer to you 15% of the total fund.

I await your soonest response. please feel free to contact me here sonabassey@yahoo.fr

If this message had come directly via email, GMail would have marked it as spam for sure but since it was routed via MyBlogLog, GMail thought that it as legitimate.