Technology, the Internet, Software and Gadgets in a DIGITAL WORLD

Every writer suffers from the writer’s block every now and then when words just don’t seem to flow. To overcome this block, some just take a walk, others employ assistants for ideas while some others just use Zemanta.

Zemanta is the new blogger’s tool doing the rounds.  With it just being just a firefox plugin, there is no complicated setup process and hence no hassles. You simply install the plugin and start blogging. For now Zemanta supports WordPress, Blogger and Typepad engines. I use Wordpress and this is what Zemanta looks like on my screen.

The suggestions are not that off-the-mark. The link to the article on writer’s block at Wikipedia was inserted using Zemanta. All I did was click on the link suggestion and it got added. Easy huh?

Zemanta also provides suggestions for tagging the article which can be a big help.  All in all this seems to be a nice, easy-to-use and neat tool that will surely help the blogger in his work. And since its new, we can only expect it to get better. So I would say, check it out. Its good.

Yes, I think you have already guessed it right. This blog post is about a website, Ok Or Ko, that allows users to vote on whether a website is hot or not. Similar to the other site where they show you people’s photos and allow you to vote on whether the girl/guy is hot or not, this one is for websites.

Great idea. Wonder why I never thought of it!

This new idea can have some very good uses too. Suppose you came across a website you are not very sure about. You could just head over to OkOrKo and find out what other people think about it.

Also, a webmaster could add his own website to the database and find out what other people think about his/her creation. I didn’t see any link that allows you create an account and upload your own website into the database, but the feature could well be added at a later date.

Here is a screenshot of google.com being rated on okorko:

Software updates really do have a habit of happening at the most inappropriate times. There was the famous Skype outage that happened due to a Windows Update.

Now, look at what happened when a news broadcaster’s Firefox browser decided to carry out an update exactly when a newscast was happening!

(click on the image to view in full size)   

Thanks to xinary for having shared this hilarious pic at the Neowin forums.

If you use calendar programs such as Apple iCal, Mozilla Sunbird, Google Calendar, or Microsoft Outlook calendar, you will know how useful these utilities can be for you to set reminders and plan out your day-to-day activities.

Now, you may have also have many Facebook friends and a huge Facebook events and birthdays list. It would be very inconvenient to have two separate listings in your calendar program and in Facebook events and birthdays.

To solve this problem, there is now fbCal that enables you to integrate your calendar program with Facebook events and birthday list.

The extremely easy to use service can be used in two ways:

• It can be used to generate a .ics file from Facebook which can be added on to your calendar program.
• You could make use of Subscription Calendars to  automatically synchronize Facebook and your Calendar program. In this case, you will have to grant appropriate privileges to fbCal.

You can find detailed descriptions of how to use fbCal with different Calendar Programs here.

Link: fbCal homepage

The best way to mark away a webpage to be read through at a later time is to send it to your e-mail account. The advantages being:

1. You can access it from anywhere whether you are at office or at home.

2. Once you have read the e-mail on your desktop mail reader like MS Outlook or on a web-based one such as Gmail, the e-mail is automatically marked as read. Thus, the need for manually removing a flag or deleting a bookmark (which is often forgotten, leading to unnecessary accumulation of material) is eliminated.

And it gets even better, now that sending the required material to your e-mail has been made a delightfully easy one-click process.

All you need to do is to go to the ‘toread’ website and register by entering only your e-mail address. A link will be provided to you which can be dragged to the ‘Links’ toolbar in your browser.

Now, everytime you need to make a note of something worthwhile on the Internet, just click the toread button and the mail is sent!

The service is obviously very easy to use, extremely useful and free too. I would say this is a must-use facility that could go a long way in easening up your online life.

On a side note, if you are a webmaster, then you could even put in a code on your website that would enable a reader to send away a particular webpage to his mail account for future reading. That can be a useful service to offer to your readers.

Link:  Toread.cc Main page

When you need information on a book you go to Amazon. You might visit Download.com if you need to search for some software downloads. For videos you may go to Youtube. 

Here is Netpile that has come to change all that. Netpile provides a single page from where you can just select what search engine you would like to use depending on the type of file you are looking for, type in the keywords and perform your search. Everything is easy and quick and the sheer variety of search engines that you can peruse is very impressive.

There is also a Multi-search page available where you can select more than one search engine in which case the search results are shown in tiled portions of your screen.

The interface is uncluttered and easy to understand. This is the only site you will need to bookmark for all your Internet searching needs.

Links: Netpile Search page || Netpile Multi-search page

If you meddle around with your Windows XP equipped computer as much as I do then chances are that you probably find it necessary to make a fresh installation of XP every few months. That would in turn mean going about re-installing a slew of softwares such as, say, Firefox, Winamp and others that you are used to having on your computer.

Automating this laborious and time-consuming process can save a lot of time and energy. Alzema Multiset is a small and efficient tool that can do just that. While there may be other ways of creating unattended installers such as using the Microsoft Setup Manager Wizard, this tool provides the advantage of much simpler wizards and the added functionality of being able to pre-load any number of softwares of your choice.

A 30-day limited functionality trial version of the software is available at the Alzema website.

While Powerpoint Presentations are an awesome medium for a speaker to communicate his ideas effectively to the audience, sometimes a badly made presentation can do just the opposite and end up irking the audience no end.

If you have had to make Powerpoint presentations in the past or have been unlucky enough to sit through some of the badly made ones, this video of one of Corporate Comedian Don McMillan’s shows is sure to tickle your funny bones.

While you are at it, you could also take a look at Don McMillan’s website and check out some of the other funny videos there.

The folks at Google never fail to amaze the world with the amount of data that they collect. And the Google search engine also happens to be the ultimate means for rummaging through all the data on the Internet. As such, you just cant hide anything from Google’s prying eyes.

Unluckily for Mr Amim Ramdass, he never realized that fact. The story in this news report says that Ramdass won a huge lottery amount and apparently hid the fact from his wife. The wife got suspicious. What does she do? Google his name. And lo, there was her husband’s name all over the search results proclaiming his winnings! So, Donna Campbell, the wife, is now suing the husband.

Strange are the ways in which  almighty Google affects the common man’s life.

Normal antivirus and Internet security applications seek to protect your computer from viruses, trojans and other malware by adopting a preventive technique. They continuously monitor files and activity in a computer and simply prevent the opening of a file or the happening of an activity if found dubious.

The problem with such an approach is that the software has to continuously keep updating its database of virus definitions and the number of viruses that are coming out each day are just too many. As such, however intelligent the program, the possibility of an infection is still huge. So, how do you ensure your computer remains infection free?

Deep Freeze has the solution. This software preserves the state of a system and then no matter what changes a user makes to a workstation, simply ensures all of them are eradicated and the computer returns to its original state - right down to the last byte - after a re-boot. Thus, it is guaranteed that the computer will each time function smoothly at the original performance levels.

This software can prove invaluable for situations where performance and data security cannot be compromised and changes made between reboots are only needed temporarily.

Deep Freeze is available in Standard and Enterprise editions. Compatible editions are also available for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows Server.

Product Link(s): Deep Freeze