The other day I tried opening a “zip” file and my trial WinZip program had expired. I then found out about “Power Achiver” from a friend which is a free file extraction tool. The software will not only open up ZIP files, but works on many other file formats.
I have added this program to Leading Hands’ list of open source programs.
Download Power Archiver
http://www.powerarchiver.com/download/
Remember those really annoying John Stamos, Uncle Jessie from Full House, commercials that told you to call 1-7-7-7-6 before you make a call to save on long distance? Guess what… the concept it back with JaJah.
This time you can make call with JaJah on your mobile or landline phone to save money and keep in touch with friends and family. If you make a bunch of international phone calls, you can save some dough. The website says, “It connects you using your existing phone. No contract, no software, no headset. Easy to use, so start saving right now.” I haven’t tried it, but a friend of mine uses it and loves it.
On Friday, the latest iPhone software was released. This updates all iPhones, both the original models and the newer 3G models to the 2.1 version of the software.
Previously, there had been a number of complaints regarding software crashes when using 3rd party applications, and many users had been having problems with 3G reception in some areas. The new software also speeds up access to contacts and is meant to improve battery life.
It’s interesting to think that when you purchase a product like the iPhone, you aren’t really going to end up with the same product you bought. With continuous software updates and improvements, the device keeps evolving as you own it.
Imagine purchasing a TV or car that came with ongoing upgrades. Would you pay extra for such a device knowing that every few months there would be a new “software” patch to fix bugs or improve performance?
You’ve done your research and purchased the best camera, computer or iPod on the market, but then it’s stolen. Now get piece of mind by protecting your prized electronic possession with Gadget Trak, so you can get them back.
What is Gadget Trak?
What do you think of this device? Would you purchase Gadget Trak?
http://www.gadgettrak.com/
I was surfing Google and I saw they introduced a mobile information service called 1-800-GOOG-411. Basically, you call the number, tell the automated agent what you want and it will give you a listing of services. It’s like moviefone for everything. The best part is that it’s free.
What do you do when you call?
If you want just information, you can say “text” and the service will send the text to your phone. In this mode it will even send you a map of your location.
Try it, you’ll like it.
http://www.google.com/goog411/
You may not know it, but at this moment your computer is most likely being crawled by Internet bots. What are these software applications doing? They are scanning your machine, dropping snippets of code on to it and watching your surfing habits. Generally these bots are sending information back to numerous companies in an effort to market to you more efficiently. The good news is you can fight back against the bots by installing a couple of free programs that will remove their malware.
I have been running both programs on my machines because they seem to work differently and catch unique items. Note: These programs are not virus protection software; they are programs designed to only remove bots from your machine.
Spybot Search and Destroy
http://spybot.com
Ad Aware
http://lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php
Did you find a bunch of bots after you ran the software?
Every big computer company seems to have their own video/audio player. Apple has Quicktime / iTunes and Microsoft has Window’s Media Player. You can round out the video/audio program competition with Winamp, MusicMatch and RealPlayer. All of these players have one thing in common, none of them work well playing each other’s file formats. If you try to view an AVI File on Quicktime, it takes some work to make it happen. If you want to listen to an m4p file on Windows Media Player, I would rather search for a needle in a haystack.
Some friends recently told me about the VLC player because it’s free and it can virtually play any audio/video file format. After downloading and experimenting with it, I suddenly realized the VLC player rocks! VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.
Are you a Twitter user? Last week Leading Hands wrote about social media and how it’s dramatically impacting the daily content of the web. Due to the proliferation of Internet ready mobile phones, telling your friends what you are doing at every moment of the day is extremely easy and convenient. Now with a tool like Twitter, you have the ability to immediately post your thoughts to the web and tell the world what you are doing right now.
Jeff Clark describes Twitter as, “for those who like to pretend they’re important enough to broadcast the mundane tasks of their everyday life.” Twitter would be classified as a “status” web 2.0 tool. You have 140 characters to answer the question, “What are you doing now?” The website has become so popular a handful of competitors like Tumblr, Identi, Beemood, etc… have launched similar products. However the term “to Twitter” is like “to Google”, and that’s why these competitors will have a tough time breaking through.
Here are some tidbits on Twitter. The site is so popular that traffic on the website becomes overloaded frequently. There is no parental control so anything and can be posted at anytime.
Join me on Twitter and see what’s all about.
http://www.twitter.com/leadinghands
Do these questions keep you up at night? What is a social network? What social network is right for me?
If so, then take a moment to review a handy breakdown of social networking by Digizen. This child safety organization takes a look at Bebo, Faceboo, Flickr, MySpace, Ning, TakingITGlobal and YouTube. Find out what the security settngs, age restrictions, moderation settings, group tools, mobile policies and search technologies are on these sites.
What I like best about this presentation by Digizen is that it compares each service side-by-side in a easily scanable chart. If you are tossing and turning about the difference between each social networking service, then check out this chart.
Microsoft Outlook users, are you looking for a new way to keep your mail organized? I’ve been using Xobni for Outlook. It helps you organize, search, and navigate your email. Xobni improves your Outlook productivity with ultra fast email search, threaded conversations and contact profiles. If you liked Google Desktop, then you’ll like this product too. It’s all organized in a convenient Outlook sidebar.
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