25 replies to this topic

[Neil P]

So, I had an idea for a thread. I don't think it's been posted before, but forgive me if it has.Okay, here goes:This can be one part "software hall of fame", another part "link of the day/week", another part "whoa, cool!" I couldn't find a good forum to put it in, so I settled on here (the Water Cooler isn't "on topic"!)They don't have to be programs, but they can be. They can be services, products, whatever.For example, my first contribution to the thread is pastebin.There are actually two, http://pastebin.com/ and http://pastebin.ca/As far as I can tell, both are for "general" use, though pastebin.com calls itself a "collaborative debugging tool"--and defaults to php syntax highlighting. pastebin.ca is a "general pastebin". From their "what is this?" page:

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what exactly is this?This is a public place to paste things (primarily configurations and source code), but it is really open to pretty much any text format. The idea is to paste large items here when talking online to someone, or even when holding a phone conversation to paste the little things that are hard to explain.

It's good for things like IRC, where pasting large amounts of text is either frowned upon, forbidden, or good enough to get you kicked (pasting more than 10 or so lines on irc.mozilla.org will get you auto-kicked ). Also, it's good for things like AIM (or any IM software, though AIM is the one I use primarily), where there is a size limit for messages. The only downside is that anything you paste there (I'm referring to pastebin.ca here) shows up on the main page, so it's world-readable.BUT! There is a way around that! http://pastebin.ca/makesub.php offers you your own pastebin. You can have it "public" or "private". Even a public one is more private than none at all, though, because anything you post there doesn't show up on the main page. It would show up on, say, foo.pastebin.ca (assuming you are "foo", obviously), but someone would need your username to find it. Private ones require the username and password to see.There are several options you can choose from, like syntax highlighting and an expiry. You can also name and describe the "posts", to make them easier to find.All in all, these are the kinds of things I'm talking about. You don't have to go into such detail (or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, you can go into more if you choose ). I've got a few more ideas, but I'm also looking forward to what everyone else comes up with!(I don't want to keep people from posting here, but I'm going to ask specifically that Firefox extensions be kept off of this list. There are too many! We can start a similar "Firefox Extensions" thread in B&E Central, if the demand is high enough!)

[Webb]

Are you no longer a Steeler fan for life?  I'm a Seminoles fan for life (gotta go with the alma mater) and a Dolphins fan, probably for life but I wouldn't want to commit to them.

[Jeber]

Hey look, I threw it at the wall and it stuck. :)Good idea.  I've got a few to add when I get a chance.

[Neil P]

Thanks Jeber :)I've got some image hosts to talk about this time, two of them actually. One has compulsory registration, the other is voluntary.The first is photobucket. From their FAQ:

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Q: What is Photobucket.com?A: Photobucket.com is a free, simple, fast, reliable image hosting and online photo album site that allows direct linking and photo sharing. With the increasing number of digital cameras, camera phones, auction sites, message boards, classifieds, live journals, blogs and photo albums, Image Hosting is becoming very popular. Most photo sites are banning direct linking, but not us! At photobucket.com, you can easily upload and store photos online, and then direct link them to any site on the internet.

and

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Q: How much disk space and bandwidth do I get?A: Currently, Free accounts get 25MB of space and 1500MB of bandwidth per month. Premium accounts have bandwidth restrictions lifted and have up to 1GB of disk space.

Next is imageshack. They don't require registration, but if you do register, you'll get access to your previously uploaded images. They also have several tools to make it easier to upload images (including a Firefox extension, which I'll try out as soon as I can restart Firefox). From their common questions page:

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What is ImageShack®?ImageShack® is an intuitive and easy-to-use free image hosting solution. It can be used to share pictures with friends, as well as post images on message boards and blogs. It can also be used to direct link images on your personal website or online auction.

Imageshack has a slight advantage, which is:

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How many images can I upload?You can upload as many images as you want, as long as each one adheres to the Terms of Service.

Going along with that, each user doesn't have a bandwidth limit, but each image does:

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How much bandwidth can I use?ImageShack allows each image 100 megabytes of transfer per hour. If an image exceeds this amount, it will be rendered inaccessible.

Also, each site (at least, I believe photobucket does too, I have an account but haven't used it yet   ) gives you the necessary code to post to forums, or in a blog/other webpage (that is, both the html and bbcode). Also, imageshack automatically provides clickable thumbnails for images over 200x200 pixels. I've used imageshack more often, as they have no restrictions (check the TOS, though, as they do have some, like no pornography, etc.) and better tools (though photobucket has a new Windows Uploader, imageshack has similar tools for both windows and mac).Whew. That was a lot, again.

[Temmu]

steeler_fan - me a fan of photobucket, having used it here since i got here... someone at this forum pointed it out.   also, imageshack sounds cool, may look into it!webb - me a dolphins fan. grew up in orlando and chose them as my team.  they were the champs back then.  sorta follow the saints    he he, now as live around n'awlins.

[SonicDragon]

Great idea for a thread. I had never seen anything like pastebin before. Great stuff :)I know this one is widely known, but for anyone that hasn't checked out http://maps.google.com ... go give it a try!

[mlurp]

If anyone is interested here is a very good photo site and they are giving a user 30 free 4X6 prints free.CLICK HERE

[Neil P]

http://www.audioscrobbler.com/This one isn't "useful" as much as it is "neat".

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Audioscrobbler is a computer system that builds up a detailed profile of your musical taste. After installing an Audioscrobbler Plugin, your computer sends the name of every song you play to the Audioscrobbler Server. With this information, the Audioscrobbler server builds you a 'Musical Profile'. Statistics from your Musical Profile are shown on your Audioscrobbler User Page, available for everyone to view.There are lots of people using Audioscrobbler, but you probably won't be interested in most of them. The Audioscrobbler Server calculates which people are most similar to you, based on shared musical taste, so you can take a look at what your peers are listening to.With this information, Audioscrobbler is able to automatically generate suggestions for new songs/artists you might like. These suggestions are based on the same principles as Amazon's "People who bought this also bought X,Y,Z", but because the Audioscrobbler data is what people are actually listening to, the suggestions tend to make more sense than Amazon.

There are plugins for many OSes and media players:

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    *  Winamp    * Windows Media Player 9/10    * iTunes (Windows)    * iTunes (Mac)    * foobar2000    * XMMS/Beep Media Player    * AmaroK    * QCD    * Rhythmbox    * J. River Media Center    * Xbox Media Center    * SlimScrobbler    * Noatun    * AmiScrobbler (MorphOS)

It does require registration, but how else would they build your profile?

[SonicDragon]

I was reminded of http://del.icio.us/ again today when i saw a coworker using it today. del.icio.us is a free online bookmarks manager so you can have all your book marks no matter where you go. I don't use it, i've never had the need, but i thought some might find it useful here. I know it's been posted before too, but i think it deserves a mention in this thread :)One of it's biggest draw backs though is that (from what i can see) you can only add one site at a time to your book marks as there is no option to import from firefox or your browser of choice. Enjoy

[rolanaj]

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http://www.audioscrobbler.com/This one isn't "useful" as much as it is "neat".

Isn't that funny I just signed up for this the other day, I liked the fact that it was cross platform too. Ive noticed http://del.icio.us/ has been mentioned several times lately might be time to check it out.  It would be good for when you're are jumping back and forth between different distros.I thought this site was kind of cool http://www.googlefight.com/ not sure if it has been mentioned before or not.

[claren44]

I've used Photobucket for a year or more. Other than a slight outage hiccup early on, they've been solid & simple to use. And yes, you get both bbcode & html for linking to each image you upload.Love & Peace, Clarence

[SonicDragon]

I found two very useful things from google today. (three if you count Google Talk which already has a thread here).www.google.com/ig - Personal, customizable google homepage (you need to have a gmail acount for this).and if you need to look up the definition of a word, just search "define:word" without the quotes!

[patio]

From another Forum...patio. B)p.s. Great Sticky ! !

Edited by patio, 30 August 2005 - 10:36 AM.

[SonicDragon]

Nice link patio! Bookmarked!Found a very nice photo site the other day: flickr.comGreat place to post / organize photos. It has advanced features like groups, RSS, slideshows, comments, captions, auto resizing, and makes posting to a lot of the common blogging sites really easy  

[Neil P]

I've found another: The Coral Content Distribution Network

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Publishing through Coral is as simple as appending a short string to the hostname of objects' URLs; a peer-to-peer DNS layer transparently redirects browsers to participating caching proxies, which in turn cooperate to minimize load on the source web server. Sites that run Coral automatically replicate content as a side effect of users accessing it, improving its availability. Using modern peer-to-peer indexing techniques, Coral will efficiently find a cached object if it exists anywhere in the network, requiring that it use the origin server only to initially fetch the object once.

This can be used on any site at all, at no cost. It's simple: Just add

.nyud.net:8090

to the end of any URL. That's it.From their FAQ:

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Why should I use CoralCDN?    As a web-site operator, you can greatly reduce your bandwidth usage by redirecting clients to CoralCDN, as well as providing better performance when your web server would otherwise be overloaded.    As an interested third-party -- such as the poster to a popular Web portal or mailing list -- you can ensure that your readers can still access a certain web page or files, when the multitude of readers would otherwise overload the website and make the content unavailable.    As a user, CoralCDN can help you reach content that may be efficiently cached nearby. If several nearby users access the same web pages, the can enjoy better performance by leveraging Coral's cooperative cache, rather than using the possibly-distant origin web server. Try installing a browser plugin.    For more information on how to use CoralCDN, see our usage page.

Basically, it's great for links that get slashdotted (or something similar). They have an extension to "Coralize the current page" and a search plugin to automatically Coralize the page for you. Pretty neat, and useful.

[Neil P]

Digg

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What is digg?  Digg is a technology news website that combines social bookmarking,  blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users  submit stories for review, but rather than allow an editor to decide  which stories go on the homepage, the users do.

I've seen digg described as "the new slashdot". The users decide what goes on the frontpage--popularity means promotion. In fact, a Mozilla sysadmin (along with a bunch of others) claims that digg is the new slashdot, particularly when it comes to the "slashdot effect" (bringing down servers just by linking from the front page--or at least tremendously increasing traffic).New stories are contstantly being pushed to the front, so there's nearly always new content.

[rheck]

Have you tried the free Webshots Desktop available from www.webshots.com/samplers.  Webshots allows your to download thousands of professional photos and millions of community photos uploaded by Webshots members.  You can upload and share your own photos.  Be aware that some of the community pictures are not very good, but if you have the time to browse, you can find many good high density pictures.  The every day person is likely to have a very good digital camera now and only has to be concerned with lighting and framing.  For some, it is going to be a slow learning curve.The Websshots Desktop can be set up as wallpaper and screen saver.  A feature that I like is that you can load photos (vacations, family, hobby or anything else) from your digital camera that are stored on your computer into Webshots.   Also photos on your computer that you may have downloaded from elsewhere on the Web may be added to Webshots.  I have over 1.5 GB of pictures in the Webshots collections which I have set in the random display screensaver mode.  When people stop by my computer, they sometimes hesitate to leave, waiting to see what comes up next on the screensaver.  It sure beats flying toasters.The free version of Webshots limits you as to the number of downloads per day and the maximum density to 800 X 600 pixels.  Webshots automatically sizes the screensaver or wallpaper to fill your screen and on larger screens, 800 X 600 originals can become grainy.  A paid premium version of this software ($29.88 per year) gives you high density 1600 X 1200 pixel downloads of the professional photos and the downloads per day are unlimitted.  Also some of professional photos are available only in the premium version.  If you have a wide screen monitor, downloads in the 16:9 aspect ratio (1920X1080 pixels) are featured in the premium version.  I chose the premium version after several years of using the free version.  I collect high density digital images, from Webshots and elsewhere.  Disk space today is no longer a limiting factor.

Edited by rheck, 14 April 2006 - 11:39 PM.

[epp_b]

rolanaj, on Aug 2 2005, 09:52 PM, said:

I thought this site was kind of cool http://www.googlefight.com/ not sure if it has been mentioned before or not.

Yup, that's a good one! http://www.googlefig...sta&word2=Delay

Edited by epp_b, 15 April 2006 - 12:03 AM.

[patio]

No contributions since April ?OK Here Goes...patio.  

[LilBambi]

For Music Lovers - free and pay sources for Independent Artist Music:Audio Lunchbox (free/pay)BLEEP - Digital Downloads from Bleep.comGarageBand.comMP3Tunes.com (and home of Oboe plugin for browsers for sideloading music or podcasts to your MP3Tunes Locker)Mindawn.com (Nice service, but I do not install their software! Not needed unless you intend to 'preview' their offerings before purchase - headsup: DRM crap in their software)nugs.net presents LIVEDOWNLOADS.comMagnatune.com (free/pay)We have (and update as new artists contact us) Independent Artists listed on our Independent Artist page at CNIRadio.com - NOTE: I guess we will have to remove AmpCast.com from the page since they are apparently now defunct. Shame too since that used to be where you could get tracks for free/pay for many artists such as 3 Dead Trolls in a Baggie. We had hoped their demise was exagerated but apparently not -- since it never came back.And of course some artist websites for free and pay for Independent Artist Music:Steadman Band - Donations accepted, but they have about three albums that are totally free for the downloading - great music! (Paul McCartney loved this band and so do we!)TheOohs.com (can sample their music here and here - great music! (We love this band too!)We have some more artists to add to the Independent Artist page at CNIRadio.com.Comedy Independent Artists:3 Dead Trolls in a Baggie - authors of  "Internet Help Desk" and so much more!NOTE: If you know of any other Independent Artists that would like us to play their music and/or comedy to help promote their art on CNI Radio, please have them contact us. We do not do hip hop or rap but we do have a large variety of favored music that we will play to give Independent Artists exposure to listeners and we do list any Independent Artist site for music we play, or any collaborative location for getting Independent Artist music, or if an Independent Artist that we play don't have a site we can put folks in touch with them directly if someone likes their music. We play Independent Artist music during our warm up show at 6:30 PM on Saturdays and may soon have enough variety to do something more on our Internet radio station for Independent Artists as well.Do you have sites you visit that feature different Independent Artists?

[Jeber]

This little application will appeal to my *nix friends who have to use Windows on a regular basis.Taskbar Shuffle allows you to reorder the icons in your Windows taskbar.  The developer says,

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No hotkey, no extra steps, rearrange the programs on your Windows taskbar by simply... well, dragging and dropping them!  Neat concept, huh?No need to get all nervous when a program crashes or if you wanna reboot; you can reorder the programs/buttons on your taskbar exactly how you like.

Check it out.

[patio]

Exgellent. Thanx jeber...

[Temmu]

thx, jeber!  got it!

[bob3160]

File2.ws is a free website that converts any of your own files into a public online web page. Every converted file to a web page has a unique web address so you can share it with friends, or other people on the internet. This allows information to be shared quickly and efficiently to a large audience.Here are two example:http://file2.ws/theavastganghttp://file2.ws/freewareAs you can see this is one service that can come in very handy.You'll all probably get sick of all the times I'll be posting links to anew creation utilizing their service....   

[bob3160]

File2.ws