Archive for December, 2007

Here are some of Lifehaker’s Best top 10 lists of 2007

• Top 10 Free Windows Downloads
• Top 10 USB Thumb Drive Tricks
• Top 10 Free Computer System Recovery Tools
• Top 10 Wi-Fi Boosts, Tweaks and Apps
• Top 10 Free Video Rippers, Encoders, and Converters
• Top 10 Free Wallpaper, Fonts and Icon Sources
• Top 10 Body Hacks
• Top 10 Ways to Sleep Smarter and Better
• Top 10 Ubuntu Applications
• Top 10 Ways to Clean Up Your PC
• Top 10 DIY Office Projects
• Top 10 Food and Drink Hacks
• Top 10 New and Improved Apps of 2007
• Top 10 Home Networking Tricks
• Top 10 PDF Tricks

Best Of 2007: Twenty Top 10′s of 2007

This is from the "So Cool its Scary" department. 

Record tracks of your trips anywhere on the Earth from your mobile device. Tracks are traced on a map and stored in an online archive. All you need to start tracking is a mobile device with the internal or external GPS receiver.
Currently GPSed mobile application supports RIM BlackBerry handhelds and a wide range of J2ME mobile phones, like Nokia N95, Nokia N82, Nokia 6110 Navigator and others.
Download GPSed mobile application

In areas without network coverage it is still possible to record tracks by a mobile device. These tracks can be imported to GPSed when you are in the area with good network coverage or from your PC or Mac. Positioning data can be transferred online via GSM, EDGE, 3G or WiFi networks.

 

 

View and organize your tracks in a personal online archive

The uploaded tracks are stored on the server and available for review and management from GPSed web service.
- Open/Close tracks to view them;
- Make your tracks Public/Private;
- Change track’s color to better distinguish them on a landscape;
- Detailed track information;
- Tracks auto-zoom;
- Search among your tracks and public tracks of other users;
- Split and merge tracks*;
- Add text comments to tracks, photos or placemarks*
* These features are coming soon

Pin your photos to a map with a simple geotagging feature

Take photos when you travel and link them to a map precisely at a place they were taken. The geotagged photos will be stored on your computer for easy and private access.

Other Mobile OS’s supported are, BlackBerry, Symbian, Java, and Palm.

Download GPSed Photo Take’n'Pin

About – Mobile GPS Tracking Service

moBlog is a free mobile blogging client for Windows Mobile 2003, 5.0 and 6 that allows you to create and publish blog posts directly from your mobile device even while offline. moBlog currently supports Blogger, WordPress.com and Live Spaces. Support for LiveJournal and MovableType/TypePad is also on the cards.

 

+ Supports creating multiple profiles (for your different blogging accounts) and multiple blogs within a single account (such as for Blogger.com).
+ For Blogger.com blogs, moBlogger supports setting Labels (Tags). For WordPress and Live Spaces blogs, post categories are supported.
+ The offline mode allows you to write and edit blog posts even while you are not connected to the internet on the device. A connection is only required when you initially setup your blogging accounts and when you want to update your blog with the new content.
+ moBlog allows you to save the blog posts locally while they are still being written and edited. Once it is published, the local copy is automatically deleted from the phone in order to free up the storage space.

This application requires Microsoft .NET Compact Framework to be installed. Download the latest version of moBlog from here.

moBlog: Offline Mobile Blogging Client for Windows Mobile for Blogger, WordPress, Typepad & Live Spaces by Tech[dot]Blog

If you use Microsoft Outlook as the center for all your communications, you might be interested in integrating Twitter directly into Outlook so you never have to leave the comfort of your inbox to read about the daily minutia of your twitter friends.

The OutTwit add-on for Outlook allows you to both send and receive messages directly, and has now become my preferred Twitter client.

Sending messages is about as simple as it gets… just type and hit the enter key.

Read More

Integrate Twitter With Microsoft Outlook :: the How-To Geek

From those same great people that brought us Outlook and Twitter integration, comes another excellent tool – FBLook, which seamlessly integrates Facebook into Outlook. Using FBLook, which appears in your Outlook as a new toolbar, you can update your Facebook status, see your friends’ statuses, and see the number of new requests, all without having to open the browser and log into Facebook. After you download and install FBLook, you will have to tell Facebook that you want FBLook to access Facebook on your behalf, but the FBLook app will display messages that walk you through this one-time process fairly easily. FBLook works with Outlook 2003/2007 and Windows 2000, XP, and Vista.

 

Facebook in Your Outlook | Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10

Launchy is the most efficient way to open files, folders, websites, and
programs on your computer. Nobody likes to hunt through the start menu to
find an application, just to find that the application is hidden under some
obscure folder named after a company you have never heard of! Instead,
Launchy is a smart search program which tries to guess which program or file
you are looking for and will launch it when you hit the enter key. It is only
visible when you hit the alt+space key combination; otherwise it hides in the
background. Once you have used it for a few days, it becomes an indispensable
utility for your computer. And it’s free!

SourceForge.net: Files

OK, here’s the deal.  This app will allow you to turn your Windows Mobil Device into a WiFi Router, and share its 3G goodness.  It is like having a mobile hotspot in your pocket. 

WMWifiRouter is a tool to use your Windows Mobile 6 (possibly 5) as a WiFi <-> GPRS/UMTS/HSPA router. It’ll allow you to use WiFi capable devices to connect to the Internet through your phone’s data connection. 

Thanks to Gizmodo.com for pointing this gem out.

Read More .. 

WMWifiRouter v0.80 (Dec 10, 2007)

ImageSorter is an image browsing application which, for the first time, allows an automatic sorting of images.

The idea of ImageSorter is to find images of which you remember how they look but you forgot in which folder they were. If one or several folders are selected, all images from these folders will be visually arranged such that similar images are close to each other. In this sorted display it will be much easier to find a particular image. Selected images can be copied, moved or deleted (right mouse click). ImageSorter does cache thumbnails and sortings, therefore after images have been loaded once, everything will be much faster.

Read More …

 

Zentrum für Mensch-Maschine-Kommunikation » ImageSorter v2

With a new year comes new computers, and that means new security problems. Viruses, spyware, rootkits, hackers–a fresh machine can be susceptible to the most insidious of plots. Lucky for you, in the CNET Download.com defense bunker, they have devised a list of essential and free top-rated security programs to protect the honor of your computer and ensure that your sanity will last longer than your resolutions.

 

The Daily Download: Security Starter Kit | Tips, news, and opinions from Download.com editors

WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Microsoft Windows. WinDirStat reads the whole directory tree once and then presents it in three useful views: the directory list, which resembles the tree view of the Windows Explorer but is sorted by file/subtree size; the treemap, which shows the whole contents of the directory tree straight away; and the extension list, which serves as a legend and shows statistics about the file types

WinDirStat – Reviews and free WinDirStat downloads at Download.com

One of the best parts of getting a new computer for the holidays—other than that new computer smell—is setting up a fresh, clean system exactly how you want it. Your customized productivity apps, your favorite media players, and maybe even some of the software tools you’ve seen on one blog or another.

But searching out, click-click-click-installing, and keeping all those programs updated in Windows can add up to some serious time. We’ve covered automation apps like InstallPad and AppSnap, and updating tools such as FileHippo, but I’ve found that Appupdater, a Linux-like command line tool, can handle both functions, automatically, with just a little tapping in the command line.

Follow along after the jump and we’ll get started on keeping a number of ultra-useful Windows programs up to date and making them easy to load on a new system.

Note: Appupdater is a free, open source program maintained entirely by one man, Neil McNab, who provided gracious guidance for this walk-through. It’s technically in beta at the moment, and while it likely won’t mess anything up on your system, it shouldn’t be installed on a machine with sensitive data, just to be safe.

I’ll start off by showing how to install Appupdater and keep a working computer updated. If you just want to set up a freshly-installed system, skip down to the section labeled “Create your applications list.”

Read More…

Feature: Automatically Load and Update Your Windows Systems

Weblog Inspect My Gadget explains how to use batch files to create a quick working environment—launching every document and application you need to get straight to work—using a Windows stalwart, the batch script. The post is actually very similar to my quick launch workspaces, which I use to get my workspace from zero to productive in just a few keystrokes, but provides a few different examples to demonstrate other ways you might get more from your workspace batch scripts. For more on how you can use batch scripts to be productive, check out how we used batch scripts to take Launchy beyond application launching.

How-to: Use batch files to create a working environment [Inspect My Gadget]

Batch Scripts: Set Up Instant Working Environments with Batch Files

Today Digg’s launched a new visualization called “pics” which is a new way to see what pictures people are digging in real time. The new feature coincides with the enhancement of a pictures section, and re-categorization, which took place earlier this month.

Each category on Digg gets its own section, and photos from each story show up every time they’re dugg. You can see right away which stories are hot, just like you could with any other Digg visualization, but in the case of pics, you can actually look at the picture without even having to open up the story. The page has also got keyboard shortcuts setup to let you traverse the landscape of stories with your arrow keys.

Like all other Digg labs projects, the visualization was made by the Web 2.0 hearthrob studio Stamen Design, who built out Trulia’s real estate visualizations, Twitter Explore, and the (now defunct) Oakland crime maps.

Digg makes use of new image section with flashy new visualization | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone

We know what you’re thinking, and trust us, we’re right there with you. We’ve no idea how a speaker constructed from a foam plate could sound anything close to decent, but judging by the comments from folks that have made their own, it may actually be worth your while to do the same over your holiday break. Reportedly, all you’ll need is a standard foam plate, a couple of paper strips, two business cards, some wire, a bit of glue / tape, a neodymium magnet and an audio plug; once you’ve gathered your materials, you can hit the read link for the how-to guide of putting together the relatively simple device. Of course, we aren’t responsible for any strange looks you get should you choose to pimp your new sound system to members of your extended family.

Homegrown speaker created with foam plate – Engadget

360Desktop is a new software app that lets you see your Windows Desktop in a whole new way – as a user-generated, panoramic space, which scrolls around in a circular manner. This gives you the experience of having a virtually unlimited desktop, as you can open programs and windows and then spin to the “other side” of your desktop to have more space. You can further customize your desktop with web apps, widgets, RSS feeds, AJAX start pages, and any part of any web page. Even better, the web content placed on your 360Desktop can be viewed independently from your web browser. The download will be free – forever, the company promises. Announced at the DEMO conference, the download is not available yet, but you can sign up to be a member of the beta program if you’re interested in testing it out. The software will work on Windows XP and Vista computers.

Panoramic View of Your Desktop | sarahintampa | Channel 10

The latest Zune firmware update is going to hit today, fixing some of the issues people have been experiencing with their 30GB and 80GB players. Among the fixes are "improved device recognition" and "improved stability and reliability on sync," which doesn’t really tell us much, but should help with the problems (hopefully). No new features in this one, unless you count "not crashing" as a feature. Let us know in the comments if you’re suffering from issues and if this update fixes it for you.

Microsoft Zune Firmware Update: Zune Firmware Update 2.3 Hits Today, Brings Bug Fixes

We’ve seen quite a few next-gen nav device concepts, but none with as much potential as the Virtual Cable, from a New Jersey company called Making Virtual Solid. The system uses a laser, a set of lenses, and a moving mirror mounted in the dashboard to project a 3D route-guidance line above the road ahead, as though it’s actually out in front of the driver. Besides making driving that much more like a video game, the company says mass-produced versions will cost somewhere around $400 as a factory-installed option, and can be easily interfaced with existing GPS systems. Sadly, there don’t appear to be any live videos of the system in action, but judging from the number of patent applications and incredibly detailed schematics and explanations on the website, the vapor factor seems pretty low. Check the read link for a set of video mockups of the system in action.

Virtual Cable nav system superimposes route guidance on your windshield in 3D – Engadget

It looks like quantum computing could now be one step closer to some form of practicality, as a team of researchers from the University of Queensland have announced that they’ve created a light-based quantum circuit that’s capable of performing basic calculations. According to ZDNET Australia, that was done by using a laser to send “entangled” photons through a linear optical circuit, which allowed them to create a circuit consisting of four “qubits,” (or quantum bits, pictured at right), which in turn allowed them to calculate the prime roots of fifteen, three and five. Somewhat interestingly, the university’s research is funded in part by none other than DARPA, which the researchers themselves admit may be due to the technology’s potential for cracking otherwise uncrackable codes

Researchers create light-based quantum circuit that does math – Engadget

We just got the scoop from Microsoft on Windows Mobile 7 and Windows Mobile 8, the two upcoming platforms that will fix what is undeniably broken about the Windows Mobile platform to date.

This was originally going to be a piece about how Microsoft had no idea what the consumer wanted, where I would explain what I thought Microsoft needed to do to fix it. Oh, I still discuss the flaws, but while talking to the Windows Mobile team, I learned about the next two versions of the mobile OS. Turns out, Microsoft knows exactly what’s wrong with the WM platform, and it knows what to do to fix it. Trust me: there’s hope on the horizon.

Before I get to the big Windows Mobile fix, it’s important to see where it is now. Take a look above at the Windows Mobile Professional (the touchscreen version) and Windows Mobile Standard (the non-touchscreen, usually slimmer version). Got a good look?

The number one biggest problem with Windows Mobile is its UI.

I have no problems with Windows itself, and I work on a Vista PC (along with a Leopard Mac) every single day. WM’s problem is that it isn’t Windows. Here are a few of the unnecessarily complicated attributes that Windows Mobile doesn’t share with desktop Windows:

• It’s very hard to multitask. Multitasking is there, and you can run multiple programs at the same time, but everything is "full screen" and there’s no easy way to switch between apps. There’s no task bar to see what apps are open, and there’s no indicator to the user that anything else is open. You actually have to dig into the Start menu, then Settings, then the System tab, then Memory, then the Running Programs tab just to see what’s going on! Microsoft fixed this by inserting a dropdown task manager in more recent builds of Windows Mobile 6, but you still can’t jump from app to app with ease. Which leads us to…

• Closing a program doesn’t really close it. You’d think that pressing the "X" button on an app closes it, but all it does is minimize it. You have to dive into the menus to terminate a program or, on a newer build, go back to the Home/Today screen and close via the top-right icon. Not exactly what we call convenient.

• Different builds work differently. We can see why there are two major versions of Windows Mobile for phones—Professional and Smartphone—since different form factors require different UI philosophies for input. But when you compare the Tablet PC version of Windows with the standard desktop version, there isn’t that huge of a difference. If you know how to use one, you should know how to use the other. Not quite so when you switch from the stylus input of Windows Mobile Pro to the D-Pad of Windows Mobile Smartphone. This isn’t noticed by the masses, since most people only use one Windows Mobile device, but it is a telling concern. Plus, getting around with that D-Pad sucks.

Beyond OS structural design, the day-to-day usage of Windows Mobile isn’t what you’d call "friendly," either. In fact, it’d probably punch you in the face if you even made eye contact. Take dialing, for instance. How can the main purpose of a phone—calling someone—be so hard to do? If you’re using a Windows Mobile Professional device, you have a few options, none of which are good:

• You can pull out the stylus to tap in the digits. This requires two hands.

• You can try and use your fingertip to call, which doesn’t normally work, so you’ll use your fingernail, which does work but, as it results in many misdialed numbers, takes forever.

• You can slide out the keyboard and find the dialpad buried among the QWERTY keys and dial, which requires two hands and intense concentration.

• You can try and bring up the contact list, which takes a long-ass time to scroll through, or you can slide out the keyboard again and search by name. Again, two hands.

• Voice Command has been an option for years, but then again, it kinda works, but it doesn’t work well.

• Probably the best way to go is to program your most important numbers into speed dial, as you’ll be able to actually talk to the correct person within, say, three button presses.

Compare that to the iPhone, which has just a touchscreen, but gets you to the keypad, your favorites, recent calls or your contact list, all within two key presses of the home screen. Dialing shouldn’t be this hard, and the fact that it is just illustrates how bad the rest of the UI is.

WIndows Mobile UI

 

 

 

Read More …

What’s Wrong With Windows Mobile: What’s Wrong With Windows Mobile and How WM7 and WM8 Are Going to Fix It

Probably because it’s not that big of a player in the domestic cellphone space, Toshiba may not be familiar with all the ins and outs of FCC confidentiality agreements, as evidenced by its testing subcontractor leaving tons of juicy photos of the unannounced Portege G910 / G920 smartphones in those devices’ recently-declassified applications. Tosh’s blunder clues us in to a whole world of info about this followup to the WVGA, Windows Mobile 6 Portege G900, such as the fact that it’s eschewing its predecessor’s sliding form factor for the clamshell-design of the Nokia E90 (perhaps an answer to the tilting screen of HTC’s TyTN II?). While full specs aren’t yet available, we’ve pieced together that these devices (differentiated by the fact that one of them will have a crippled GPS receiver) are tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 — sorry, fellow Americans, no US broadband here — with WiFi, Bluetooth, and dual cameras, and powered by a Qualcomm processor of unknown speed. Hit up the gallery below for a few more inelegant FCC glamour shots, including some dissection photos that may help our clever readers glean even more information…

Toshiba’s Portege G910 / G920 go FCC: followup to the G900 superphone – Engadget

Windows only: Previously mentioned freeware text replacement application PhraseExpress has updated with a couple of really impressive features, namely automatic text prediction and the handy clipboard cache, both of which you can see demonstrated in the video above. PhraseExpress saves you time by expanding text snippets to larger pieces of repetitive text. It doesn’t have all of the features you’ll get using Texter, but the text prediction in particular is very impressive, so you’ll have to look them over and decide which works best for you. PhraseExpress is freeware for non-commercial use, Windows only

Featured Windows Download: Speed Up Repetitive Typing with PhraseExpress 5

USB 3.0 really threw down this September with a theoretical max throughput of 4Gbps, but it looks like FireWire isn’t going down without a fight. The latest and greatest FireWire version, dubbed "S3200" by those creatives up in marketing, uses the same ports and cables as FireWire 800, but boosts speeds to 3.2Gbps, which should make it pretty competitive with USB in the real world — though actual real-life speeds will probably depend on who’s adding up the bits. According to the 1394 Trade Association: "The S3200 standard will sustain the position of IEEE 1394 as the absolute performance leader," but we hear they’re biased. They are claiming that where current FireWire 800 hard drives can move 90MB per second, S3200 should be able to do 400MB. Speed concerns aside, the power delivery, peer to peer architecture, and handy networking capabilities of 1394 mean that FireWire should hopefully be around for a long time to come.

Upcoming FireWire spec revs things up to 3.2Gbps – Engadget

You may have already heard of Hulu, a closed beta, on-demand TV service from NBC Universal and News Corp. designed to stream the latest new shows from NBC, Fox, Bravo, Sci Fi, and more YouTube-style. But you may not have heard of OpenHulu, a Hulu clone that’s attempting to embed every video from Hulu (which is part of how Hulu is designed to work) so you don’t need an invitation to Hulu to enjoy the free, on-demand TV. You’ll still get embedded ads here and there, but the quality is high and the streaming quick. Seems like the list of ways you can catch your favorite TV shows is growing by the day

OPENhulu – Hulu Embeds for EVERYONE

Sprite Archie is an archiving utility that allows users to archive the SMS and Phone events of Windows Mobile 5.0 and Windows Mobile 6 smartphones. Many of use would love to archive received and sent SMS messages (including me) and that’s exactly what Sprite Archie is designed for my monitoring the traffic of your SMS messages and call history. While monitoring your phone traffic Sprite Archie creates reports and send them to an specified E-Mail account for archiving purposes, for instance on your PC.

 

Depending on your E-Mail configuration Sprite Archie will send the reports. If you are using Exchange push E-Mail, Sprite Archie will automatically send the reports as per schedule or configurations. If you are not using push E-Mail, Sprite Archie will send the reports when you send/receive mail or connect via ActiveSync.

With Sprite Archie you will never loss a text message or call history again, Sprite Archie monitors and archives the following:

• SMS Inbox
• SMS Sent Items
• Incoming calls
• Outgoing calls
• Missed calls

Download Beta

the::unwired – UTILITY: Sprite Software releases Sprite Archie Beta 2 SMS and Call History backup utility