The first time I saw the yubnub website I was thinking that no one would need this website at all but after some testing it became clear that it offers an easy way to access many services very fast without depending on bookmarks or links. If you do work with the command line in Windows or Linux you feel right at home, you enter a command and some parameters and yubnub does the rest.
Hey!Watch is a great new web 2.0 service that makes it easy to convert video files online. Hey!Watch offers advanced features that no online encoding service offers at the moment. You may upload your own videos and encode them into a great selection of formats or use a bookmarklet or firefox plugin to convert videos found on websites such as youtube and dailymotion.
I do like podcasts. I listen mostly to music when I'm traveling but I sometimes have the urge to listen to podcasts and especially those that teach me something or cover subjects that I'm interested in. Podcasts are a great way of keeping up with the latest trends and technology on the internet in a time saving manner. I do not have to be near a computer and I can learn about new stuff while sitting in a car or train.
We all knew and heard about the common method to upload fake torrents into the torrent system to punish downloaders of copyrighted media files. The Torrentfreak blog reports that some torrent admins were able to identify some of the IP ranges that spread fake torrents and probably also the company that is behind it. The easiest way to cope with the situation would be to block the IP ranges either in your firewall or in a utility such as Peer Guardian. Below are the information for Peer Guardian 2, simply use the IP ranges if you want to block the IPs in your firewall.
Orb is a free software that changes your pc into a streaming server. If the Orb software is running on the pc every other device that has internet such as the Nintendo Wii, a notebook or pda can connect to a website and view any media file that is shared on the streaming server. The setup is really simple. Download the Orb software and install it on the computer that you want to use as the server.
Pandora streams music over the internet which is related to a artist or song that you have entered at the beginning. The service is great to find new artists that make a similar kind of music than artists that you like to listen to. The service was completely free until now.
Most readers might think that it does not make sense to resize images online if you have a image viewer or image manipulation software installed which is able to perform the same task faster and without privacy concerns. I can only think of two uses where resizing images online would make sense.
Checking the bookmarks that I saved at del.icio.us was a boring and long lasting task until I found the little java application called fresh del.icio.us which automatically checks the bookmarks that are stored in an account. You do need the java virtual machine to execute the jar file. After that you only have to supply your login and password to del.icio.us and click on the Fresh button.
Spam free wallpaper websites are rare these days and it does not happen every day that I find a new one which has enough quality wallpapers to get a recommendation on my site. The dont love me website is one of those which really deserves it. They offer more than 2000 quality wallpapers in about 20 categories ranging from 3D over Girls to XP wallpapers.
Etsy is a website where people can buy and sell (only) homemade goods. Everything is neatly categorized and accessible through various innovative methods such as colors where you choose a color and the site displays everything that is offered in that color. Anyways there is also the traditional way of clicking through categories like Furniture, Children and Weddings.
It began with the ban of the Russian website allofmp3 by the internet provider Perspektiv. The Piratebay decided to ban users of the provider from accessing their website as a response of the ban against allofmp3. Guess what, Perspektiv announced today that they lifted the ban of the Russian website and the Piratebay in turn decided to lift their ban as well.
I decided to start a Internet Censorship 101 series of articles that takes a look at and explains the various methods of censorship on the internet and possible solutions to this situation for the user who tries to access information that are blocked / censored. I'm going to start with a relatively weak form of censorship called DNS Filtering.
If you are looking for a comprehensive, and I mean really really comprehensive, guide on bypassing internet censorship you might want to take a look at the excellent guide written by Freerk. The guide is divided into two parts; The first analyzes different methods to censor information on the internet and the second part describes different ways to bypass censorship.
Christmas is only seven days away and it becomes harder to find presents for your loved ones that do arrive in time and are personal at the same time. Sure, you could hop into the next store on Saturday and make a quick purchase just to have something but that's not how it should be. Money is also playing a role here - a limited budget does not make it easier to find something special.
If you ever wanted to know if a person you are talking to in Skype is telling the truth you might want to give the KishKish Lie Detector plugin für Skype a try. Just download the plugin from the developers website and run the file once the download has been completed. It will automatically assign itself to Skype and you will have to tell Skype to give this plugin access.
Fight fire with fire - that song came probably to the minds of the Piratebay crew. They have decided to react on the censorship of the Swedish internet provider Perspektiv by banning the complete IP range of that provider from accessing the Piratebay, sort of like using censorship as a weapon against censors.
Sometimes you download filetypes that your computer can't read because of a missing viewer or that you would like to transport to a portable device that only reads certain filetypes. Instead of download several programs that are able to convert the files you have into the filetypes that you need you could use the online file conversion website Zamzar to do the same.
Fox, the big media company, is apparently forcing a website owner to shutdown his website for linking to tv shows at sites like youtube and dailymotion claiming that linking to those shows would be illegal. This question never made it to court before it seems - here we have it again. A big company with money enough to pay a dozen lawyers is suing a website owner who probably can't afford to even higher one lawyer.
Just a few weeks ago I was reporting that Universal Studios was receiving it's share from every Zune player sold and asked my readers to consider this before buying a Zune player because it could very well be the precedent of something that Universal, and other movie studios, wanted: A share of every media player that is being sold. Apparently they were quick to act.
In these times where computer crimes have become one of the most normal things it's nice that you can protect yourself.
Like Martin, i think that firewalls don't help that much (i have never encountered one that worked good enough)
And when i found X-NetStat i found a really good solution to this problem.
Every wanted to create a huge poster from a relative small image that you had on your computer ? Or are you looking for a great gift idea for Christmas for someone you like ? Rasterbator creates huge rasterized images from pictures that you either upload from your computer or select from a website. You may create those images online or download the software and use it that way. Take a look at two examples that I have selected from the Rasterbator gallery.
Ever been to an website like www.nytimes.com and had to register to login? Of course you can register a fake account using a disposable email address (like 6url or dodgeit) But there are more people who do that, so why not have a database with these kinds of fake accounts?
Ever heard about Bix ? Bix.com to be precise. Don't be ashamed to admit that you never heard about it either. I read about the site today and decided to pay a visit to website I never heard about before. I always thought I know everything that is going on but it seems that some sites seem to slip through my grasps. Back to Bix: Bix is a contest site that seems to be pretty famous for it's Karaoke contests.
I decided to read more about open dns after I read Evertons article "Does open dns really speed up web pages" on his great website connected internet. He was trying to find out why a dns service that was using servers in the United States would be faster than the dns service offered by his own internet service provider. The connection to the latter is of course faster than the connection to the open dns servers - so, why would it be faster or even more reliable ?
Danish Provider Tele2 has to block access to the Russian mp3 website allofmp3 after loosing a civil lawsuit against the IFPI
(International Federation of the Phonographic Industry). The complete story can be read at slyck news. The question that naturally arises is if this can be called censorship. Music Industry and it's lobbyist groups claim that allofmp3 is illegal although it is perfectly legal according to Russian law.
Aol will offer movie and tv show downloads from Paramount Pictures in their new video portal. Downloads will be sold for prices ranging from $9.99 to $19.99 which suggests that most users will be quite unhappy with the pricing. Amazon Unbox and Apple's iTunes is offering download in the same price category and every other portal will most likely follow them.
Internet Explorer comes equipped with the same technique as firefox that allows users to create addons and offer them for download on a site that was specially created for this purpose by Microsoft. Ieaddons is the name of the site and looks like a typical slow-loading Microsoft website. Add-Ons are categorised in the four categories Security, Time Savers, Browsers and Entertainment.
Please read on this is a funny story, I promise that. Germans pay about 19$ a month if they own a television. This fee was introduced right after the war to make it possible that state independent tv stations would be able to run without receiving money from the state. There were only those stations after the war and it made sense at this time. Nowadays you have dozens of tv stations but you still pay the money for those state independent ones (all other stations don't see a dime of that money).
Microsoft finally made it happen and released the final version of Internet Explorer 7 to the public. You can download it from the official internet explorer website at microsoft.com. The download works without problems for everyone, the installation checks for WGA (windows genuine advantage) which means you can't install it if you have no legit key. Please note that Internet Explorer 7 is currently only available for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
When you delete the visited urls and the cache in Internet Explorer after disconnecting your computer from the internet you are safe, right ? Many users think that it is impossible to find out which websites have been visited when they delete the cache and the history. This is not true..
Halloween - Hate it or love it. The time of the year when most adults and teens alike rejoice at the prospect of dressing like superman, the simpsons or south park characters. I tried to find costumes and accessories that could be made instead of just purchased, it does feel better to wear something that you created with your own hands instead of buying something that thousands of other people might wear as well; dont you think ?
With all the rumors about an acquisition of youtube by Google circulation on many websites it was only a matter of time when the real deal was announced. This happened some minutes ago. Google officially announced the deal in a press conference that took place today. Youtube was acquired for 1.65 billion dollars in a stock-for-stock transaction.
Ever wondered where those guys in stormtrooper armor got their suits from ? Look no further, the Shepperton Design Studio is selling a complete Stormtropper armor for a very reasonable price. You can purchase the battle helmet for 299 British pounds and the suit (without helmet) for 999 British pounds. Both combined sell for 1299,95 pounds. The offers seems successful because currently all items are out of stock and will be available again in October.
I'am using Teamspeak for several years now and would like to introduce it to you. Teamspeak makes it possible to voice chat over the internet, just like skype but without its phone abilities. Everyone using it needs the Teamspeak client software which is available for free on the Teamspeak homepage. The client software is available for windows, linux and mac. You also need a teamspeak server that can either be setup on one of the computers that is also running a client version or on a dedicated /or virtual webserver.
This is a video from the dynamic graphics project at the University of Toronto named: Keeping it Real: Pushing the Desktop Metaphor with Physics, Piles and the Pen in BumpTop. Big title, ain't it ? What they did is project the concept of the normal desktop, the real one not the one from your computer to your computer by making it 3 dimensional. Files are shown as three dimensional items as well that can be placed on top of each other, sorted, deleted and manipulated manifold.
Amazon Unbox, the new video download service provided by Amazon, went live yesterday offering users a free and easy way to download and view videos on their computer. Most tv series cost 1,99$ while movies begin at 3,99$ up to 19,99$ for new releases. Files are offered in .wmv and .amzn (for portable devices) format only and can't be burned on DVD to watch the movie at the television. The only way to do that would be to connect the computer to the televsion.
Internet Explorer users beware: Stealth Web Page Recorder is a little add on for internet explorer that records every visited webpage including every action on that website like entering passwords, forms, emails and account numbers. The add on can't be spotted in the task manager nor in advanced tools like process explorer, it is a so called BHO - Browser Helper Object.
Browzer was widely reported as a web browser that takes privacy and security serious. It seems most websites that "tested" browzer did not do their homeworks and parotted instead what the developers of browzer were claiming. The first thing that strikes me as odd is that Browzer is not really a new web browser but simply an add on of the Internet Explorer by Microsoft. It uses the same engine and identifies itself as the Internet Explorer.
I always wondered who made the decision to charge the same amount (or even more) of money for a movie download than for a purchase. Why should I pay 9,99$ for a movie download that most likely will be crippled with DRM and come without DVD cover and booklet. Some services disallow that you burn more than one DVD from the download or make it impossible to play the movie that you burned on DVD on standalone DVD players.
Netvibes offers their users a way to create a personalized homepage on the web. I'am using it mainly to display the RSS feeds that I'am subscribed to but Netvibes offers more than that. You can create tabs just like in Firefox and name them, I categorized my feeds this way by giving them names like seo, money and games. You are able to add numerous feeds to every tab plus additional features that come in handy like a bookmarks manager or a todo list.
