Consequences do not have to be job related though, think about using dating sites will in a relationship, posting untrue comments about people in bulletin boards or simply participating in the occasional flame war on a favorite forum. Those things usually do not backfire but if they do it can quickly become ugly for the offender. Many Internet users still think that the Internet is a lawfree environment where they can post anything they want without fearing consequences in real life. The realization that this is not the case usually comes when it is to late to change the cause of action.

The reaction of the company that fired the employee for the Facebook comment was a harsh one. Many would have probably asked the employee to remove the offending comment and most employees would probably comply immediately. It does serve as a prime example though as to what can happen if you are not careful about your online postings.

Some countries go even further than this. They make the website owners responsible for the content on their websites. This leads to some ridiculous situations where not only the poster but also the website owner face consequences for the data that has been posted on the website. Users should be aware that their online postings might come back at them at some time in the future in a non pleasant way no matter where they live or post.

Which leads to the question: Are you cautious about what you post online? Do you have any rules or guidelines that you follow? As a company, what would be your stance? Let us know in the comments.

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Pixlr – The online image editor

Pixlr had been developed by a Swedish guy who launched the service with this understated blog post consisting of just:

“So it’s sunday afternoon in Sweden and tomorrow I will let a few know about pixlr. I wonder what they will say about the result of from a years work and thousands of lines of code?”

Fairly non-committal, especially considering the strength of his application. I have no idea if this was a hobby, if he has plans to monetize it or license it, at the moment the idea seems to just be get the word out.

What immediately endeared the service to me was the fact there is no sign-up registration, simply “jump right in” and get started. This is a huge advantage, there is nothing worse then wanting to try a new service but being confronted by yet another registration form.

The application itself is more on the lines of Photoshop express, rather then a complete Photoshop replacement like Aviary is aiming to become. Personally I found it a happy medium between the two, enough functionality without being too basic either.

It also looks pretty darn good, if you’re a fan of the Vista Aero interface. Actually even if you aren’t I think you’ll be hard put to dislike it. Performance wise I would say it’s fantastic, menus are snappy and I could barely tell it was a browser based program.

That said, I will admit I haven’t fully tested it with larger photos, more tasks etc.

The ironic thing I found about using Pixlr is that I immediately wished there was a way I could have the application offline as well as through the browser. It feels a lot slicker and smoother then freeware Paint.NET and would fit well into the Vista desktop, which is a lot more then can be said for most apps.

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Some of you where pretty interested in the topic and there where a few debates in the comments over which was the best, so I’ve decided I’ll share a list of every online OS that I have found up to now.

Enjoy.

Since last week I have discovered one Webtop which is worthy of a special mention- iCloud. You’ll need an invite to access the iCloud beta, but apply and it’s likely you’ll receive it within a couple hours.iCloud comes with a UI that is well designed and varies a little more then the other Windows clones. It also comes with some very handy applications, check it out.

G.ho.st
DesktopTwo
myGoya
Ulteo
GlideOS
Jooce
iCUBE
youOS
Starforce
Purefect Desktop
ZimDesk
Online Operating System
CosmoPOD
Webdesk.in
MyBooo
goPC
Psych Desktop
AstranOS
SSOE

If I have missed any let me know.

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I liked it here, at my desk… safe.

2 years later and I still prefer using desktop software but have slowly made my data accessible to me anywhere over the Internet. I manage my email through a desktop client but it’s also all stored online (Gmail, Hotmail), my bookmarks are all kept in del.icio.us, I use FeedDemon which synchronises my feeds to NewsGator online, my documents are stored in a couple places including Live Mesh and Office Live and all my photos are backed up. I have almost a dozen social network profiles and 5 different email accounts.

In fact the only thing that I hadn’t moved online was my actual desktop itself. After trying out the tech preview of Live Mesh my interest became aroused in the whole subject as I wanted something more fully featured.

I managed to find almost a dozen online desktops and gave every single one a trial as I determined which provided the best experience. I’ve managed to narrow the list down to three.

Desktoptwo

This was possibly the fastest desktop I tried; menu’s opened as snappily as on my PC and icons and windows could be dragged and moved smoothly.

The interface is similar to Windows so you’ll have no trouble navigating around the desktop for the first time. A number of programs are provided such as RSS reader, email, media player, Address book, IM and web browser.

The biggest failing of Desktop2 is that there is no office suite. Not Google Docs, not Zoho, nothing. Also only 1 gigabyte of storage is allocated for free accounts and advertising is displayed on the desktop. It’s not too bad but it does get fairly annoying with time.

OoDesk

It’s still a little buggy (eg: windows will sit in a "loading" state forever) but still pretty impressive. It follows the Windows interface to the point of having an XP style "start" menu. There really are a lot of application provided and the ability to add plenty more if you wish. It has a good "explorer" style file management system and sharing capabilities.

G.ho.st

G.ho.st has become my favourite online desktop and the one I would most recommend. It’s not the fastest, best looking or most stable, but it manages to provide the compromise between all three plus adding in a lot of functionality and does the best job of integrating with online identities and web apps.

There are just so many little things about G.ho.st which make it so much more of a pleasure to use like clicking and dragging to select a number of icons and customizing the desktop. Little things, but ones that a lot of online desktops simply don’t have.

You will also get 5 gigabytes of online storage and 3 gigabytes for email. Invite more people to sign up and receive an additional gigabyte for every person who joins. It has two office suites; Google Docs and Zoho, I prefer Docs as its a little speedier although Zoho gives a lot more functionality.

I like G.ho.st because you can really make it feel like your own workspace, and for me that’s most of the appeal of working on a PC.

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Several well known file hosting services, such as Rapidshare, Divshare and Megaupload, are included in the upload service. The file has to be uploaded only once by the user which is a great advantage and will be distributed by the Tinyload service to the file hosters. It can take a while before the download links become visible.

A unique url is created during each upload that lists the links to the files on the various file hosting websites. This is ideal for posting at Twitter or Instant Messengers.

Tinyload is also accessible through a bookmarklet which comes in handy when something needs to be quickly uploaded.

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The second change might be interesting to users that have to work on different computers. Gmail now offers the option to access mail accounts that support the pop3 protocol from within gmail making it easy to use gmail as the central platform for all your incoming and outgoing emails. This new feature does not seem to be available to anyone yet, just check your settings in the gmail account and click on accounts.

If the option Get mail from other accounts: is visible you can add other accounts to your gmail account. I’m however not really convinced to use gmail for my mail consolidation and administration. I have the same objections when it comes to online storage devices.

I do not trust companies enough to have important mails or files stored online on a server. There is always the possibility of misuse and I don’t want to take any risks. Maybe I’m a little paranoid about this whole thing.

Still, I will continue to download my mails from gmail using Thunderbird and I’m happy with the solution. Mainly because I only work on one computer. I can see the advantages if you work on more than one in different locations.

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Hey!Watch supports many devices and formats including devices such as iPods, Mobiles, PDAs, PSP, Wii, Zune and formats like Divx, DVD and SVCD. The videos that are transferred can be of any size but can’t exceed a playtime of ten minutes. A list of all videos that you have transferred to Hey!Watch is available under Raw Videos in your home directory. Clicking on Encode lets you choose a video and a format / device it should be encoded to. The approximate file size is displayed beneath the selected options.

The encoding takes place in a background process meaning you can simply turn off the computer or download more videos that you want to encode later. Encoded videos are hosted at the Hey!Watch website for 12 hours and get deleted afterwards. Downloads and encoding sessions are limited to one at a time for free users. A limit of 10 encoding sessions per month limits the free service even more.

The user receives an email every time a encoding session finishes. It is also possible to subscribe to an RSS Feed with the same information.

A paid account is available which is offered for $4.99 a month. This one raises the limit of encoding sessions to 100 per month and three can be done concurrently. I personally think that the service should raise the amount of encoding sessions because ten per month does not look that great at all. Even 100 for the paid service is not that great.

As of now Hey!Watch is a great service for a quick encoding session. I think that many users will register and use it for some days and leave it when the encoding cap is reached for the month. This will probably cost them many users in the long run.

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Death Star Designer is your change to make it better. Create the meanest Death Star of them all for the Emperor. You receive lots of credits and have to make all the choices. Install Defense systems, firepower, naval facilities and much more. Just make sure you stay in the limit or the Emperor will not be pleased. Once you are done your design is reviewed and you will face criticism about all the design flaws of your Death Star. You may then redesign the Death Star or submit the design anyway.

The second game is called Tower Defense. Buy and Upgrade Towers that attack the waves of monsters that try to storm your castle and kill your citizens. You receive money for every monster that your towers kill and you can use the money to build new towers or upgrade existing ones to make them stronger. Great game, lots of fun.

The second game was recommend by a veteran reader of my blog, Thinker. It is also a Tower Defense game, this time in the well known Starcraft universe. Instead of building towers you build structures known from the game to beat waves of enemies that try to destroy your hive. Yeah that’s right, you play the Zerg. A bit more complicated than the first Tower Defense game but still lots of fun.

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The word in question is not shown of course in the chat, all other invalid guesses are. You get some fine tools to draw the word(s) like different colors, a spray can, pencil and so on. Could be that this thing is more powerful than paint. Most rooms that are available are English rooms but you also find German, Spanish, French and custom ones.

The game features several modes, the most popular one to draw one word but there are variations of that mode were players may have to draw more than one word or have only five sketches to draw it. Games have a difficulty rating (easy, normal and expert) and can be themed as well. You may join themed channels like Christmas, Poker or Cartoons if you like.

The game has a huge user base. More than 1500 were connected to the game just a few minutes ago while I was checking it out. Game rooms have normally a limit of ten players but sometimes you find more than that amount in a room. This means that not everyone is going to sketch a word but all are able to take part and guess them.

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