Phoenix Offers Powerful Image Editing in Your Browser

12/04/08 6:00pm

Flash-based webapp Aviary Phoenix is the most impressive image editing tool I've ever seen running in a browser. Free to try, you can do some amazing things with the features on offer, from photo compositing to retouching—the video demonstration embedded above and plenty of tutorials should give you an idea. While…

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Puredyne Turns Any Computer into a Multimedia Powerhouse

12/04/08 5:30pm

If you're looking to get some more use out of an old machine, or just play around with multimedia programs but not interested in shelling out hundreds or thousands of dollars, download Puredyne. Based on Debian Linux, the downloadable disk image fits on a standard CD-R and will boot on almost any machine — you can…

QuoteURLText Copies Highlighted Text and Source URL

11/21/08 2:00pm

Firefox only: If you like to copy and paste snippets of web pages—but want to include the source URL and date and time in one shot—the QuoteURLText add-on's for you. Once installed, just select the relevant quote from a web page and press Ctrl+Shift+C (Win) or Command+Shift+C (Mac) and the selection will be copied…

Email Activity Random but Cyclical

11/20/08 4:00pm

Looking at aggregate data of 3,000 email accounts over a three month period, researchers at Northwestern University say that emails are responded to randomly, but the volume of sent mail follows predictable patterns. Namely, late at night on the weekends it's much less likely you'll receive any reply, for the obvious…

Forkbombs and Other Things Not to Type in Terminals

11/20/08 3:30pm

"Tell the noob to type rm -rf /," the troll types to his friend in IRC before you're a series of lulz after a friendly call for Linux tech support help turns into a formatted hard drive. If you don't know what a forkbomb is or what it looks like you might want to check this list of seven commands that could prove…

iSerenity Ambient Sounds Offer Soothing Background Noise

11/20/08 1:30pm

Whether you work quietly alone at home or in an office where the hum of fluorescent lights is the dominant soundtrack of your day, tune into one of the 31 ambient loops offered on the iSerenity web site. Listen to the clack of typewriters and maybe your own keyboard pace will pick up; if you miss the big city, you can…

Employees Sue to be Paid for Time Spent Booting Up

11/19/08 6:30pm

If your manager tracks your time based on when you log in and out of your machine at work, then are you missing out on pay for the time you're waiting for your machine to boot up and shut down? That's what a series of lawsuits by employees from the likes of AT&T, UnitedHealth and Cigna demand.

Add those minutes up…

Create "Speakers" from Earbuds and Paper Cups

11/19/08 5:30pm

It's hump day and I was looking for a quick, fun project to try out. So I figured I try something easy I found over at the Make Magazine blog earlier this week—a set of speakers made from paper cups and a pair of earbud headphones originally created by artist Dmitry Zagga (in no small amount of jest). The PaperCup…

Save Time with the Help of a Free Personal Shopper

11/19/08 4:00pm

If you feel shoppping for clothes is a chore and an expensive waste of time, think about using a personal shopper. Get rid of the mistaken idea you may have that personal shoppers are people employed by rich celebrities to dress them (those are called "stylists"). Most large department stores offer a shopping service.…

Merge MP3 Combines Audio Files in Drag-and-Drop Interface

11/19/08 3:30pm

Windows only: If you are looking for ways to merge a bunch of MP3 files into one larger file, and don't like the command line solution I wrote about earlier this week, try Merge MP3. The application is tiny, the interface familiar, and it will allow you to drag-and-drop MP3 files onto a playlist, change the order,…

Kvetch Helps You Get it Off Your Chest

11/19/08 2:30pm

In its third reincarnation since its debut in 1996 and redesign in 1998, web site Kvetch now harnesses the time-wasting powers of Twitter to call a farshtinken tokhis leker a schmuck behind their back. Users have to follow the service's account on Twitter in order to send it direct messages, which are then reposted at…

Let Me Google That For You Passive-Aggressively Helps your Friends

11/19/08 1:30pm

If you're a power searcher, or other people think you are, and you're getting tired of constant requests for answers to questions that a quick Google search would provide, try Let me google that for you. Enter a search term, click the Google Search button, and a link appears that you can copy, paste and send to your…

Microsoft to Offer Free Anti-malware Software with Windows

11/18/08 6:30pm

In an effort to improve user experience and secure more machines from becoming zombies on botnets, Microsoft's anti-malware project codenamed "Morro" will be free with every copy of the operating system. It's specifically designed to require few computing and connection resources to work with older machines and…

Save Money by Converting Your Lawn Into a Garden

11/18/08 5:30pm

"A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule," argues Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn contributor Michael Pollan. If so, Fritz Haeg isn't just an artist but a freedom fighter with his Edible Estates projects around the country. The basic idea: If you're already spending time watering, weeding, seeding and mowing…

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BubbleTimer Webapp Helps Track Time and Set Goals

11/18/08 4:30pm

Based on the Emergent Task Timer worksheets from David Seah, BubbleTimer is a quick and easy to use web application for budgeting, tracking and working towards time management goals. Set up a series of activities, such as work, physical activity, entertainment and personal projects and click to fill in the bubbles…

Cookstr Offers Recipes from Famous Chefs

11/18/08 4:00pm

Looking for recipes from legends like James Beard and Julia Child, or current celebri-chefs like Mario Batali and Daniel Boulud? Try Cookstr, which has created a database of recipes from well-regarded authors and chefs. The search feature works quite well, and particularly nice are the Refine Search tools like Skill…

FlickerEdit Backs Up Your Photos

11/18/08 3:30pm

With CEO Jerry Yang leaving Yahoo and the company's stock price sinking, ZDNet writer Jason Perlow get a bit nervous about the sanctity of his photos on Flickr and started looking for solutions to back them up. I backed mine up using , the updated Java Web Start application , but like Perlow it didn't quite get the…

Tr.im Webapp Creates Even Tinier URLs for Twitter

11/18/08 2:30pm

The latest entry in the URL-shortening service is Tr.im, and while there are a number of features that might make you switch from reader favorite TinyURL, the most compelling is that with so few characters in the service's domain name, it creates really tiny URLs. A quick test for shortening the address to to…

Lorem 2 Offers Text Samples for Copy and Paste

11/17/08 6:30pm

If you've ever mocked up a web page, print publication or set of presentation slides for a project but didn't have any copy text yet, visit Lorem 2. Graphic designers and typographers have long used a stock set of Latin gibberish commonly referred to as "Lorem ipsum" to mock up projects, evaluate layouts and preview…

Create an MP3 Mix from the Command Line

11/17/08 5:30pm

Windows only: Looking for a way to create a mix of MP3 files to send to your crush but aren't sure what playlist format their media player supports or whether or not they'd know how to unzip a folder of individual tracks? Check out this tip using the Command Prompt interface in Windows:

Only one line of code is needed…