Secured email messaging through Lockbin

Many email services today use SSL, the secured Service language to protect the privacy of your messages. But your emails are still not safe. There are lots of freely available programs on the Internet, which can sniff your message easily, specially at the Hi Fi spots.

Lockbin, is a special and free online web tool, which encrypts your message with a code words supplied by you and sends an email to the recipient along with a link to retrieve the message. However, the recipient can read the message only if he enters the code word, with which you had encrypted the message. Now it is upto you how you send the code word to the recipient, it can be through IN, chat, email or phone.

Simple service, but still useful.

11 great Firefox add-on free games to waste (use) your time

Firefox today is the first choice of the informed web surfers. Firefox is fastly racing ahead IE in the browser race. It is true that with the introduction of IE 7 and Safari, its pace has slowed down, but it is still the popular browser of people who use Internet more than average persons.

One of the reason of its popularity is its open source nature. That is, add-on applications developed by third party can easily be integrated with it to customize it as per your needs and requirements. This blog has previous written posts on various firefox add-ons like ScreenGrab, Hyperwords, Sparky, SiteAdvisor and many others.

Here we are going to let you know about 11great firefox add-on games, which you can play within your browser. No need to download heavy flash files, no need to spend big bucks purchasing them and absolutely no risks of adware, spyware and other sorts of malicious scripts generally associated with various games.

But let it be clear, that these are not very hi profile games. These are simple, light weight desktop games, but surely have the potential to keep you involved for hours.

So here goes the list. It is in no definite order.

Xoom: A simple racing game, which offers two tracks - beginner and advanced. The controls aren’t very much like steering.

Clines: A clone of the colored lines game you’ve seen here and there. The goal is draw a line of five balls of the same color, which then disappear and give you points.

Mozteroids: Nice graphics. It is like a modern version of the old “Asteroids” game. You drive a spaceship, which can spin, thrust, stop, and shoot. The target is to blow up the approaching asteroids before they collide with you.

Cards: A collection of card games like Solitaire. It also includes games like Aces Up, Double Klondike, Double Solitaire, and many more. This is a very complete solitaire implementation, with your choice of about 29 different solitaire card games. Also has a full feature set; undo, hints, scoring, automatic “smart” card moving, and more

Froggr: It will bring memories of the classic arcade game, Frogger. But here, the movements are a bit smoother and game is slightly more challenging.

Mines - Another classic game - Minesweeper - in your browser window.

Pag-Man: Remember the famous addiction of nineties. This new avatar comes with a two-player mode also.
PingPong - For those people who find playing Pong against other people too difficult, you can just play against the computer.

PONG! Multiplayer: Play a game of the classic game Pong while chatting with people online.

Snake - A clone of the popular game Snake and Worm.

Xultris - Bringing the love of the colored block game Tetris to your browser.

5 great Gmail web tools for doing things other than email

Gmail is a wonderful email service. The secure and robust email service from Google is probably using one of the most powerful spam blocking techniques and the ever increasing storage capacity, which is more than 2.6 GB at present, and still counting, gives you something more than you can wish for.

But there are lots of other application, which can over ride on Gmail and give you a unique experience.

One such application, which allows you to use the spare storage capacity of your Gmail account virtually as your hard disk, was mentioned elsewhere on this blog.

Here are some other applications, which you can use with Gmail.

Gmail Music: Allows you to store MP3 files in your Gmail account and play them on any computer using a web-based GUI. This application has been developed by SourceForge.net project.

GTDInBox: This is a firefox browser add-on, which allows you to be more organized. It incorporates a Getting Things Done tool with Gmail. It was once ranked #12 in the 'Top 50 Firefox Extensions' article in .NET Magazine. Gmail Todo is yet another tool from the stable of SourceForge.net project, which also allows you to do the same thing.

Gspace: Just like GmailDrive, this tool also lets you turn your Gmail account in to a virtual web drive that you can upload files to and store them. It is a firefox add-on makes your Gmail account look like a FTP host.

gTalk Sidebar: This great firefox add-on Google Talk into the Firefox sidebar for easy chatting on the same browser window you are browsing. This tool can also be used to send off mails quickly.

These are great web tools. Try them, they are free.

GmailDrive | A useful web tool for using Gmail as your hard disk

Most of us use Gmail, the robust, secure mail service from the big 'G' Google.. which gives us more than 2.5 GM worth of space. But most of this space is remain unutilized as emails generally consume very little space unless heavy files are attached to them.

Have you ever thought of utilizing this space for some productive use.

Gmail Drive, is a useful web tool, which allows you to use this space virtually as if it was available on your hard disk. You can save files, add folders, rename files, search files and delete them through Windows Explorer just like any other file on your computer. And the best part is that, these files are available to you from any other computer, which is connected to the Internet.

GMail Drive actually creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google GMail account.It actually creates a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder.

Caution: But GMail Drive is still an experimental tool and is developed by third party.

Take notes online with TwitterNotes

Remember the old school days...when we used to remember the things by taking notes. Wasn't that the best way to do / remember things.

The same flexibility is now available with TwitterNotes. With TwitterNotes, you can twit your note, tag it and it will get added to your note list, that all while your are online. The web tool is closely linked to Twitter but they only scan your timeline for notes and copy them into TwitterNote service. There will not be any change to the messages in your Twitter account.

To create a note using Twitter, you just have to write a message and prefix it with a plus sign, like this: + I will write today a post about web tools on taking notes.. And the note will be saved into your account.If you want, you can also tag your notes as per your convenience for better organization.

I like it, a nice web tool.

Learn foreign language online with Mango

Learning a foreign language is often a tedious and time consuming job and generally requires special tutors.

But Mango is a new online web tool, which makes learning foreign languages a whole lot easier. It is currently in Beta and is FEE at present. Signup process is easy, no email required, no passwords.

The unique plus point of Mango is that it uses both audio and visual technique for learning. You go through different slides; the quality of learning material and quality of audio is great, there’s a lot of the materials, and it’s free!

Why don't get it NOW.

Fluther | Yet another place to find answers to any questions

After the success of Yahoo Answers, there are now many sites on the web, which provide answers to your questions. After the launch of websites like Microsoft's QnA and Ask Metafilter, now you can find your answers at Fluther.

The exact meaning of the word Fluther is a group of jellyfish. Fluther community of users, who ask questions and other answer that. It tracks your activities and let you monitor questions you've asked or answered in real time. They also promise to send your questions to so-called experts, who are considered experts because they have successfully answered questions on related topics in the past.

The Big 'G' Google is also present in this market, but on a more serious note. Google Answers, relies on paid experts to generate answers, and therefore, it costs you to get your answers through them..

Fluther is hand-tailored for you. The more you participate, the more Fluther gets personalized for you. Fluther also a large tag cloud, which displays the topics of questions asked in a easily comprehendible tag cloud format.

Fluther has installed a ranking system also, where you get points for good and bad answers. People rate you based upon the quality of your activity on Fluther. And based upon your ratings, you are given access to advanced features.

In all such website, one thing I really wish. If these services could start a feature, where the person can also be able to discuss the answer in real time, it will be really interesting.

You can find many other services also on this question / answer these. With the presence of Wondir, Oyugi and Yedda, this space seems to be getting over-crowded.

del.icio.us tags: fluther, answers, questions, google answers, QnA, Wondir, Yedda, Oyugi, yahoo answers, ask metafilter

A complete guide to what is social bookmarking (Part I)

The concept of Social bookmarking is probably the fastest growing idea in today's cyber world. social Bookmarking allows Internet users to store, organize, share and search for the webpages of their choice. Users save links of pages they want to remember, at a convenient location. No need to remember them or clutter your browser's window.

These bookmarks may be private or public, which can also be seen by others. The users can browse through them chronologically, by category or tags, via a search engine, or even randomly. The biggest reason for the popularity of these bookmarking sites is that they are now being used to drive traffic towards your own site or blogs.

Social Bookarking as search tools

At the time of bookmarking, you can tag the web pages with appropriate words, which can later be searched by you as well as other. Today's Social Bookarking has started replacing the traditional methods of searching through search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Advantages

This system is human based, as against the automated systems of search engines. So, the system is more perfect.

They virtually provide a rating system to the web pages. Bette pages are bookmarked by more people. So, larger no. of bookmarks usually can be associated with better content.

Drawbacks

However, this system doesn't have standard set of tags. Also there are spelling mistakes while tagging, no discrimination when words mean more than one thing.

Furthermore, thismethod is susceptible to corruption and collusion. A webpage of a popular blog, with just about average quality of content, is likely to be bookmarked by more people than a page, with excellent content, but hosted on a not so popular website. Spammers also use lots of tags to bookmark their pages, just to gain more visibility.

With this background, we will present here a list of some of social bookmarking site in the coming two post of this series.

14 great web tools for taking screenshots (Part II)

[This is the second part of this series. You can find part I here.]

In the earlier post, we had introduced, eight web tools for taking screenshots. Here we take a look at six more tools, which you can use for capturing screen images to be used in your blogs or online articles.

Browser Add-ons

Snissa: Simplicity is the key here. Ideal for taking screenshots of the entire webpage.

Screengrab: Creates an icon in your status bar, simple to use. You can select an area on your screen or an entire window for screenshot.

Standalone programs

PrintKey: A sophisticated version for your printscreen function. Resides in your system tray and gets activated with the press of PrintScreen key. Then you can save the image and edit it as well.

I4X Screencatcher: Allows you to take screenshots of the active window, your whole screen, an area you select or a selector box.

InstantShot: An advanced screenshot tool for OS X, supports JPG/TIF/PNG selection and timer functionality. Options include capturing a region, hotkeys, several output formats, image scaling and many others.

Web based

Thumbalizr: Just enter the target-URL and press the "thumb it"-button. Wait a moment and a screenshot of the desired page will be taken.

14 great web tools for taking screenshots (Part I)

If you are a blogger or a journalist, you would understand the need of a good and handy web tool for taking screenshots of a website. There are many of them, some are web based, some are standalone executable programs and some are just browser add-ons. Still more, some are free and some require you to purchase them. My personal favourite being SnagIt.

In this two part series, we take a closer look at some of the most common screenshot web tools.

Browser Add-on's

Save as image: A neat firefox add-on. Takes screenshot of all of the contents of your current page, even if it above or below what you currently are seeing. After takinga capture, it prompts you to save avoiding hassles of opening your image editor and pasting the image there. You can also crop the image before pasting.

Pearl Crescent Page Saver: Another Mozilla Firefox add-on. It also gives you an option to capture the entire page or just the visible portion. Lets you save the image either in pNG or JPG. Also allows you to save the image either in full size or scaled down. The pro version, costing around $15, gives some more features.

Picnik for Firefox: Very easy interface, nice tools, and you can add text caption to your images. Launching a new premium subscription service today. At a price of $24.95 a year, you get of access to host of advanced effects and fonts.

Standalone programs

SnagIt: The king of all screenshot capturing programs. It is a powerful image, text, video, and Web image capture program with many features and options. Here is nice guide for using SnagIt. It costs you $ 39.95, and there is also a trial version for free. Torrent version is available here.

FastStone Capture : A powerful, flexible and intuitive screen-capture utility. It allows you to capture anything on the screen including windows, objects, full screen, rectangle regions, freehand-selected regions and scrolling windows/web pages. It also has innovative features such as a floating Capture Panel, hotkeys, resizing, cropping, text annotation, printing, e-mailing, screen magnifier, screen ruler and many more.

WebShot: Freeware and allows you to take screenshots of a web pages or the entire websites. The main advantage is its powerful command line utility which enables you to automate the process of taking screenshots.

Paparazzi!: For Mac OS X, allows you to take screenshot of the entire webpage in contrast to the built in feature of Mac, which allows you to capture only the visible portion.

Web based

WebShotsPro: Now downloads, no purchasing, no installation. Just visit this website adn enter the URL of the page for which screenshot is to be taken. But you may have to wait a bit, because there is a queue.

[Part II of this series coming soon.]

Yuuguu | Share your screen with this great remote desktop sharing web tool

Yuuguu is the latest cross platform collaboration tool, which everyone to share their computer screens with each other. This latest remote desktop sharing utility requires a small software on both (all) the computers and invitation are sent from one computer to the other. One screens are shared, you can use chat feature to explore the collaborative possibilities. Voice chat is also available for your convenience, but at a small cost.

Yuuguu is different from other such services as it combines the IM features with remote desktop sharing. Here you can make a buddy list, invite them to share your screen when they are online, show them what you are looking at on your computer, let them move your mouse and use your keyboard as though they were sat right next to you, and easily start a conference call together.

Yuuguu, derives its name from a Japanese word , which means fusion. It supports any device with browsing capabilities, meaning that you can also use it through mobile phones.

Yuuguu is similar in use to utilities like GoToMeeting but I find it much simpler to control and use.

It's founder Anish Kapoor says, "Yuuguu takes Web collaboration to a new level by integrating community, messaging and collaboration in a whole new and natural way."

I wish, if they had incorporated some sort of video interaction between the participants, it would have been a complete package. But still, a great utility.

del.icio.us tags: Yuuguu, Desktop sharing, Desktop, remote sharing, screen sharing, collaboration

HideLinks | Protect your visited links and surf secretly

If you work on a shared computer and are concerned about someone knowing your visited links, then HideLinks is an ideal solution for you. You just have to copy the link you want to hide and paste it on hidelink. It will give you an encrypted link, which is a lot shorter than your original link and which nobody knows except you.

So, what's new about it. There are tons of such services. But the best part here is that you can password protect it also. The HideLink will retrieve the original link only if the correct password is entered.

YouConvertIt | A free online conversion tool for converting anything to anything

There are a lot of online conversion tools available, like zamzar, which convert documents, images, audio files and video files from one format to the other. But most of them are restricted to be able to handle only a few formats.

YouConvertIt is a great online conversion tool, which handles virtually any format and thus gives you total freedom, and that too at one place. With this tool, you can covert virtually anything into anything. The best part is that it is free. Even further, a conversion tool for units is also available on the same website.

To use it, you have to upload the file, select the desired format from a drop down menu and enter your email address. They will send you an email after the conversion and you can then download the converted file. It is just like zamzar. But there is no limit on the size of your file and also, at present, this service is free from any ads.

Speed up loading of Acrobat Reader witht his free webtool

If you are one of those frustrated with the long long time taken by the Acrobat Reader to load, then use following trick.

Download Adobe Reader SpeedUp from Softpedia, install it and you are through.

It actually speeds up Adobe Reader's launch time by disabling the majority of plugins that are completely useless for most users. It's completely free from any malicious scripts.

Or, alternatively, if you don't want to use any third party program on your machine, follow these steps.

1. Go to the installation folder of acrobat reader (eg. C:\program files\adobe\acrobat\reader\.. ).
2. Move all the files and folders from the “plugins” directory to the “Optional” directory.

It will prevent Acrobat Reader to open the (mostly) useless plugins and load the Reader faster.

Use Migratr to move your photos among different image hosting sites

On the Internet you can find several image hosting and sharing website like flickr, picasa, snapfish, webshot etc. and there are many occasions when a user want to shift from one of the service to another because of any reason but doesn't shift just to avoid the hassle of downloading the images from old service and uploading them on the new one.

But now, with Migratr, you can easily do it. This free webtool is developed by an independent developer Alexander Lucas and is able to work with Flickr, Picasa Web, 23HQ, SmugMug, and Zooomr at present.

The process is very simple and is completed with a simple click. It first authenticates your downloading site, then downloads the images, then stores them in a local directory, then authenticates your upload site and then finally uploads your images to this site. All the mata data associated with your image is also transferred.

The best part of this service is that out of the above steps, you can choose any step and skip other steps. For instance, if you just want to download the images, skip the last two steps. If you need to upload bulk images from your PC, then start from the fourth step and skip first three steps.

Pix2Phone | Simple way to upload images to cellphone from your PC

Pix2Fone is a simple and free webtools which allows you to upload any image on your PC to your cellphone. You just have to choose an image on your PC, select the model and manufacturer of your cellphone and then you have two options to upload the image on your cellphone.

1. Download it to your cellphone via WAP: You are given an image code, note it. Go to wap.pix2fone.com in your phone's browser (Take note of the f in the 'fone' when entering the WAP site address) and enter the image code. The image of yoru choice is downloaded to your cellphone.
2. If your mobile service provider provides you email id linked to your mobile number (like phonenumber@mobilenetwork.com) then this website sends an SMS to your cellphone, which contains a download link. But here also WAP connection is required to download the image to your cellphone.

It really easy to use. Try it.

Sparky | New Alexa Toolbar for Firefox

Firefix is the browser of choice of millions of the savvy Internet users around the world. But one of the astonishing shortcoming of firefox has been the non-availability of the Alexa Toolbar, which helps to increase the traffic statistics of a website.

There have been a few webtools as a replacement of Alexa Toolbar. One of them being SerachStatus, a firefox add-on, already discussed on this blog here.

Now there a toolbar for firefox also, which has been announced officially by Alexa. It is more of a status bar than a tool bar, which shows traffic graphs in your status bar. You can download Sparky for firefox here at http://www.alexa.com/

InviteSahre.com | Send and Receive Invites to new services

Community based sites are growing like never before. The biggest advantage of community based sites is that they are user driven. The promoters of the sites are not required to create content, they just have to put the systems in place and the content is created and shared by the users themselves. The revenue model of most of these sites is based upon Google Adsense, which generates enough revenue to run these sites.

Latest among them is InviteShare.com, which is basically a place which lets users share the invites for the new websites and services. Get registered there, find the service to which you want to get an invite and register your request. Some other user will send you an invite. The trick here is that, the more you send invite to others, the more are your chances to get the invite you desire.

Simple trick, but big potential.

blend two colors to get many other colors and their HEX / RGB codes

There have been a few posts on this blog about picking color codes from a pixel on your screen, which you can find here, here, here and here.

Now I want to give a quick tip, which has helped me immensely in deciding the color themes of few other blogs.

Color Blender is a simple, yet effective webtool, where you can choose any two colors and this site blends them different proportions and provides you many options to choose from. The different output shades are as per the number chosen by you. If you choose to get 10 shades, then this tool provides you the 10 colours, alongwith their HEX / RGB codes, all equally distant from each other. You can you these colours wherever you wish.

See the example where I have obtained 10 equally spaced shades between color #FFFF00 (yellow) and #FF0000 (red).

GIMPShop | Work in GIMP like Photoshop

When I started this blog, I was a total novice at Photoshop. I new that this is a powerful tool, but didn't know much about how to operate it. Besides this, I didn't have the license also and didn't want to spend hefty amount purchasing it.

So, I decided to try Gimp, the freeware, opensource solution, which practically does all the jobs of tweaking an image.

But those users, who are adept at using photoshop, find Gimp a bit difficult because of its different interface and different menu structure.

To solve this problem, Gimp has now introduced GimpShop, the cousin of Gimp, which has most of the menu structure and other features similar to Photoshop.

Let's see the next move of Photoshop.