Cheapest iPhone and iPod Touch Dictionary Apps [IPhone]
Macworld runs down the cheapest iPhone dictionary applications; sadly, the one free option doesn't get the best review (though it's unsurprisingly the most popular). What's your favorite iPhone dictionary application? Let us know.
Tarpipe Publishes Updates, Content to Social Sites via Email [Webapps]
Web site Tarpipe streamlines your updates to various social web sites, creating simple or complex workflows to update several buckets in one fell swoop. Let's say you want to do something simple like upload a new picture to Flickr and then tweet about it on Twitter. Normally you'd need to upload the photo to Flickr, find the URL of the pic, run it through some sort of URL shrinker, and then update your Twitter account with the shrunken link to the Flickr page. It may not seem like all that much work, but Tarpipe can tackle this entire process in one step—all you have to do is send one email.
Tarpipe creates custom email addresses that, when emailed, run through a pre-defined set of actions to update any service you define. Creating a custom workflow will look very familiar if you've ever used Yahoo Pipes, but rather than creating custom RSS feeds like Pipes, Tarpipes creates custom social media workflows. The site supports integration with Pownce, Flickr, PhotoBucket, Tumblr, Plurk, Evernote, Delicious, TinyURL, FriendFeed, Twitter, and tons more, so if you use more than one of these sites, Tarpipe could come in really handy.
The Pin Clock Makes Watching Time Tick by Fun [Stuff We Like]
A big part of staying productive is keeping track of time, how much and on what you spend it—so why not make glancing at the clock as fun as possible? The Pin Clock is a nifty digital clock that pushes out pins to display its numbers (like that pin toy thing you used to stick your face into as a kid). Ok fine, we're no gadget blog, and the whole "keeping track of time" spin is probably a reach—but we just couldn't resist this one. The Pin Clock will set you back $60 at Amazon.
I Want Sandy, Stikkit Close Doors December 8th [Webapps]
Previously mentioned personal productivity web sites I Want Sandy and Stikkit are shutting their doors on Monday, December 8th, and judging by the volume of emails we've received from disappointed readers, a lot of you may be affected. Tech blog GigaOM suggests that the recent purchase of Values of n—the company that runs both apps—by Twitter may mean I Want Sandy's functionality could find its way to Twitter, but in the meantime, let's hear what you're planning to use as your personal assistant in the comments. Thanks to all who tipped!
Gmail Is Secure, Says Google [Gmail]
If you've read recent speculation that a Gmail vulnerability may be lurking in the depths of your email account, Google wants to assure you that Gmail is secure as ever. According to the post on the Google Online Security Blog, stories claiming a Gmail vulnerability was at fault in recent domain thefts are inaccurate; instead, Google says a phishing scheme was to blame. Whether or not Gmail is at fault, it might be a good time to re-test your phishing IQ.
Print Out a Cardboard iPhone Dock [DIY]
The crafty bloggers at the Geeky Gadgets web site don't want to pay an extra $30 for an iPhone 3G dock, so they fashioned one out of cardboard—and are now offering the cut-out template as a free downloadable PDF. You'll need a printer, some adhesive, a craft knife, and some light cardboard to cut this out and fold on your own. Check out a video clip of the construction.
For more DIY iPhone dock goodness, check out how to make one from the packaging it came in, a business card, a dollar bill, and a paper clip.
ZingSale Notifies You When Products Go on Sale [Shopping]
You don't have to run a manual search every day from now until December 23rd to find the best price on an item you're hot to purchase but only for so much—web service ZingSale will monitor item prices for you over time, and email you when they go on sale. Search for a product on ZingSale, and if the resulting prices are what you're willing to pay, press the "Zing it!" button to enter your email address and set up an alert. Here's what that looks like.
Similar to previously mentioned SavvyCircle, ZingSale looks like yet another tool for the smart and lazy online shopper's arsenal.
Ask MetaFilter Roundup [Hive Mind]
- How do I transition out of a heavily academic/theoretical mode, and into a creative one?
- What small (snack-sized), quiet (non-crunchy), neat (non-crumb making) and relatively healthy foods can I keep at my desk?
- How do I learn Latin online?
- How do I use the slide rule bezel on my watch?
- What is the best way to sync folders on a Mac to folders on a PC media server across a network?
Stinto Generates Disposable Chat Rooms [Chat]
Need to chat with a group of people all running different chat clients and you don't have time to coordinate everyone switching to a multi-service chat client like Digsby? Stinto is a free web-based chat application, specializing in disposable chat rooms. There is no registration required, upon visiting the site you simply click "New Chat" to generate a random URL and set basic settings like the name of the chat room and how long it can remain empty before it auto-deletes. Email or instant message the URL of the chat room to your friends to get started. Moderate your chatroom with backslash-based commands, much like IRC, such as /ignore and /kick. From within the chat interface you can save a log of the conversation, spawn a new chat room, and lock the chat for privacy. For another disposable chat room option, check out ChatMaker.
Get Organized for Black Friday [Shopping]
Now's the time to start getting ready for this coming Black Friday—the day after Thanksgiving, which promises crack-of-dawn store openings and crazy discounts. Over at the Unclutterer blog, Matt shares his wife's and mother-in-law's extensive rules for tackling Black Friday deals in an organized, efficient way. Preparation is key; he says that you should shop with a list of specific items with pre-cut coupons in hand to avoid impulse purchases. Have your coupons in order, your shopping route pre-planned, your cell phone charged, and a breakfast stop planned, and by the end of the day most of your holiday gift-buying can be done almost a month in advance. You heading out early this Friday to brave the crowds and save some cash? Tell us your strategy in the comments.
Forty Colorful Wallpapers [Wallpaper]
What better day than the one before a long weekend to dress up your desktop with a new wallpaper image. The Web Designer Depot site rounds up 40 wallpapers loaded with color for your perusal and downloading. Nice selection here of super-colorful items; for more, see also our top 10 free wallpaper, fonts, and icon sources.
Save Three Hours of Turkey-Roasting Time on Thanksgiving [Thanksgiving]
On the heels of his fast-and-easy sweet potato dish, minimalist chef Mark Bittman demonstrates how to save yourself three hours on Thanksgiving day by roasting your turkey in 45 minutes. The trick, Bittman demonstrates, is to cut out the backbone and flatten the bird out out in the pan, exposing more surface area to get more evenly-cooked poultry in less time. Get the full recipe below, or see Bittman roast one himself in the video clip below.
Get Windows 7's Best Features Right Now [Windows 7]
If you're tired of hearing about Windows 7's upcoming features while you sit and stare at your aging XP or Vista desktop, take solace in a few free apps and themes that can give you a taste right now. While it's true that Windows 7 isn't much different from Windows Vista (inside and out), a few neat features are worth trying out, and you can do it without installing the Windows 7 Preview. Here are a few free apps and alternatives that simulate Windows 7's built-in features.
Pin Items to Your Taskbar
Windows 7 lets you pin programs and documents to your taskbar (instead of or in addition to creating shortcuts on your desktop). However, it's easy to do something very similar right now: using the built-in (but disabled by default) Quick Launch toolbar. To enable it, right-click on your tasbar, and from the Toolbars menu check off "Quick Launch." There you can drop shortcuts to folders, documents, and programs for easy access. (I like to use the large icons instead of the default small ones, as pictured; to turn those on, right-click on the toolbar and from the View menu choose "Large icons.")
Update: Helpful reader DieselLives points out that you can make a toolbar out of any folder of shortcuts or documents and dock it to any edge of your screen by just dragging and dropping it there.
For a fuller, dock-like experience, try the free RocketDock application. To turn open windows to just icons on the Vista taskbar, you can use Enhance My Vista.
Snap Your Windows to Size
One of the most useful Windows 7 features (especially for widescreen monitor owners) is its ability to half-size and dock a window to the left or right of the screen, as shown:
To get this same functionality (and much much more), give the free Winsplit Revolution a try—and you'll get much more customizable window arrangement options with keyboard combinations, too.
For the drag-and-drop action of Windows 7, try out the free AeroSnap application which mimics Windows 7's behavior almost perfectly (though without the glass overlay before you drop).
Try Out Aero Shake
The Aero Shake feature in Windows 7 clears away all the background windows when you "shake" the active window you're working with. Check out a demonstration of how that works here.
The free Aero Shake app clears your pre-Windows 7 desktop the same way.
Tame User Account Control
Instead of nagging you with "Are you sure?" dialogs at every turn like Vista does, in Windows 7 you can fine-tune what alerts and confirmation prompts you get for what. While the gorgeous slider Win7 offers to do that isn't available for Vista, you can always just turn off User Account Control to silence the nags entirely. Update: Adam reminds me that Norton's User Account Control for Vista users (our review) adds more control to UAC prompts without disabling them.
Customize Your System Tray
Windows 7 can tame those annoying yellow balloon notifications that show up in your system tray; in it you can configure which apps you want to get notifications from and which you don't. While that tuning isn't available for XP or Vista, you can disable balloon notifications in Vista entirely with a change to your registry. XP users can use TweakUI to disable the balloons.
In XP, you can customize your system tray behavior to a point, and tell Windows which icons you want to see and which to hide. Right-click on the Start button, choose Properties, then click the "Customize" button (next to "Hide inactive icons") to set which icons show up when.
Helpful reader Charax suggests the free, previously mentioned Emerge Windows shell replacement, which will also give you more control over what shows up in your system tray.
Speed Up Your Startup
One of the Windows 7 perks everyone is looking forward to is a faster startup time so you can get to work right away after hitting that Power button. Windows 7 beats out both Vista and Windows XP in the startup time department. The best way to speed up your pre-Windows 7 startup is to upgrade your rig to faster hardware, but failing that, there are several things you can do to Windows XP and Vista to make them reach a working desktop faster. See our complete guide to speeding up your PC's startup for more.
Upgrade Calculator and Paint; Get PowerShell
Windows 7 brings with it a few key upgrades to the ancillary programs it bundles, like Calculator, Paint, and WordPad. While you can't get the new Office 2007 ribbon in your WordPad right now, if you're a Paint user do consider upgrading to the free Paint.NET, which supports layers, multiple open images, and much more than regular Paint ever dreamed. To get you some powered-up Calculator action, XP users can install Power Calculator, and Vista users can don their eye patch and try getting this version of the Win7 Calculator to run on their system. Finally, Windows 7 comes with PowerShell pre-installed, but you can download and install PowerShell yourself right here.
For more souped-up Windows tools, see our power replacements for built-in Windows utilities.
Get the Windows 7 Theme
If you want your computer just to look like it's running Windows 7, you're in the right place. The Life Rocks blog runs down how to get the Windows 7 look and feel with the bootup screen, wallpapers, and login screen, too. Here's a direct link to the Windows 7 theme; and if you're new to theming your XP desktop, check out our step-by-step for using custom Windows visual styles.
Have More Control over Wi-Fi Networks
One of the most useful Windows 7 features for roaming laptop users is its one-click Wi-Fi network choice. While there isn't an exact match for that for XP and Vista, NetSetMan offers a more powerful way to manager multiple network profiles.
The big Windows 7 taskbar improvement that no one has replicated with a third-party app is the excellent Aero Peek feature, which adds multiple window previews to the taskbar, with the ability to close windows right from the preview. It doesn't seem like much, but my bet is that it's the one Win7 perk we'll all wind up using the most once 7 hits desktops.
Thanks to everyone who contributed suggestions to this article in this comment thread. Much appreciated!
Best CD and DVD Burning Tools? [Hive Five Call For Contenders]
There was a time when—if you wanted to burn a CD or DVD—you had to pony up cash for shareware apps from companies like Nero or Roxio to get many options and good results. Today you've got an ample selection of free optical media burning tools that can handle everything from burning basic music CDs to writing ISOs or burning videos to DVD. So for this week's Hive Five, we want to hear all about your favorite CD and DVD burning tools. Keep reading for details and to nominate your app of choice in the comments. Photo by thelastminute.
Hive Five nominations take place in the comments, where you post your favorite tool for the job. We get hundreds of comments, so to make your nomination clear, please include it at the top of your comment like so: VOTE: CD/DVD Burning Tool Goes Here. NEW RULE: Please don't include your vote in a reply to another commenter. Instead, make your vote and reply separate comments. If you don't follow this format, we may not count your vote. To prevent tampering with the results, votes from first-time commenters may not be counted. After you've made your nomination, let us know what makes it stand out from the competition.
About the Hive Five: The Hive Five feature series asks readers to answer the most frequently asked question we get—"Which tool is the best?" Once a week we'll put out a call for contenders looking for the best solution to a certain problem, then YOU tell us your favorite tools to get the job done. Every weekend, we'll report back with the top five recommendations and give you a chance to vote on which is best. For an example, check out last week's Hive Five Best Desktop Customization Tools.
Google Maps Updates Interface with Emphasis on Street View [Google Maps]
Google just updated the Google Maps interface with revamped controls that match Google Earth's and put the yellow Street View guy ("Peg Man") front and center. Hit the play button above to see a Google-produced intro to the revisions, or just head over to Maps to try it out for yourself.
TextFlow Offers a New Take on Collaboration [Featured Download]
Windows/Mac/Linux: TextFlow is an Adobe AIR-based word processor with a new and innovative take on document collaboration. Rather than offer real-time updates when multiple users are working on a document like Google Docs, Zoho Writer, or previously mentioned Gobby, TextFlow imports multiple Microsoft Word documents, analyzes all of the differences, and provides robust tools for merging, accepting, or rejecting any of the changes therein by a master editor. Say, for example, you send a document to several co-workers. Even if you track the changes, you'd still need to manually merge all the suggestions and changes into one document once they got back to you. On the other hand, you could drag and drop all of the documents into TextFlow and let it analyze the differences, making it significantly easier to create a single document using the best changes available and without making mistakes. When you're done, just export the final result back to a Microsoft Word doc. If you're still not entirely convinced, check out TextFlow's intro video for a better idea of how it works.
Belkin Mini Surge Protector with USB Charger [Stuff We Like]
The Belkin Mini Surge Protector is a perfect stocking stuffer for the mobile worker in your life. The small gadget turns one three-prong outlet into three surge-protected outlets. As an added bonus, you also get two USB chargers—making it a fantastic on-the-go charging station. The mini surge protector lists at $25 on Belkin's site, but you can grab it from Amazon for $15.
DialMyCalls Sends Voicemail to Multiple Recipients [Telephony]
Web service DialMyCalls sends mass telephone messages to a user-defined group. If you've ever been part of a phone tree that, for example, spreads word that your softball game has been called off, you can see how a service like DialMyCalls could come in handy. Rather than requiring you to place several calls to get information out to a large group, DialMyCalls lets you record a message and then send that message off to any size group (with a max limit of 25 people using their free service). DialMyCalls is impressively smart, too.
It detects voicemail and answering machines and doesn't start the message until the voicemail will record the whole thing; it can email the message to recipients in addition to playing the message back in a phone call; and it even lets you set the caller ID that recipients will see so you can make sure they call the right number if they need to follow up. A free account gets you one group call per day to up to 25 people, while their premium accounts offer unlimited calls and recipients. For a similar service that works via SMS, try previously mentioned Tatango.
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