Thursday, April 30, 2009

If you like cycling, you should bookm...

If you like cycling, you should bookmark Bikely. It contains good bicycle routes across America, Europe and other countries shared by other cyclists. Currently you can browse close to 100,000 routes, with new ones added daily. You can search for bike trails by country, by specific locations and filter by length of the route. If you know of any bike trails, you are welcome to share them on the site by signing up.

bicycle routes across america

Features:

  • Discover good cycle routes in Europe USA, and other countries.
  • Lists Around 100,000 bike trails and routes from over 40 countries.
  • Search for bike trails by country, by specific locations and filter by length of the route
  • New routes added daily.
  • Sign up to share your own routes.

Check out Bikely @ www.bikely.com

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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

If you want to put a cool glowing wel...

If you want to put a cool glowing welcome text on your personal web profile or blog head to Glowtxt.com.  It is a  web utility which lets you easily add glow to text.

Simply enter your text, select options (style, size, animation type, glow effect etc.,) and click “Make text” to generate your glowing text.

add glow to text

Once generated, click to download the image to your computer or get the online image codes for webpages and forums. You can also preview your text on different backgrounds.

If you are not sure which text style to use, scroll down the screen and preview sample graphics with the style names - sweetheart, flutter, ping glow… etc, and click on one to apply it to your text.

Generated glowing text from the above example

Image from glowtxt.com text generator

Features:

  • Online glowing text generator.
  • Generate as many as you want
  • Customize style, size, animation type, glow effect… etc.
  • Download the generated image on your computer or use the provided image codes
  • Insert the glowing text into your social profiles, forums and other webpages
  • Free, no sign up.
  • Similar tool: Cool Text

Check out Glowtxt @ www.glowtxt.com


5 great free CD and DVD burning apps ...

From the folks at the Download sQUAD ( Cnet) 

5 great free CD and DVD burning apps for Windows

Most of my customers still think Nero and Roxio are the only people that make burning software. Most of you know better - there are tons of good, free burning applications for Windows. Here's a quick list of five that I enjoy using. If your favorite isn't mentioned, share it with us in the comments!
ImgBurn (pictured above) Since most of my recording tasks involve ISO files or burning entire folders as a backup, ImgBurn has become my app of choice. It's small and easy to use, and I've yet to produce a coaster with it. It's also a great tool for creating ISO files - either from a disc or files and folders on your PC. ImgBurn also gets bonus points for the random comments that appear in status bar. See the rest after the jump!
CDBurner XP If you prefer a more Nero-style experience but can do without all the bloat, CDBurner Xp is a great option. Apart from burning pretty much any kind of project, you can also use CDB to create covers and burn Lightscribe artwork to your discs. It also now supports Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats. It's very easy to use even for non-technical types (read: I install this on my friends' and parents' systems).
InfraRecorder InfraRecorder has been part of the Portable Apps suite for a long time, and with good reason. It's an excellent burning application that can handle just about any type of project. It is, of course, totally portable so it's a perfect tool to cart around on your flash drive. Running 64-bit Windows? There are also native x64 versions of both the installer and portable versions of Infrarecorder. You've gotta love the "Smoking Aero" demo video - check it out on their screenshots page.
NCH ExpressBurn ExpressBurn packs a lot of functionality into a sub-400Kb download. In addition to creating data and audio discs and ISO files, it can also copy discs and burn video DVD and Blu-Ray/HD-DVD data discs. Volume normalization is supported on audio CDs.
Burn CDCC If you just want a tool to burn ISO files, this is as simple as it gets. Burn CDCC is portable and supports CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray image files. It's totally portable and only takes up 150Kb of disk space. Browse for your ISO, choose the burner you want to use, and press start. That's all there is to it.

OCRTerminal is an online Optical Char...

fROM THE FOLKS AT mAKE uSE OF dOT cOM 

OCRTerminal is an online Optical Character Recognition (OCR) scan to text converter that lets you convert scanned documents to text. It tries to preserve the original layout and formatting of the documents as much as possible. Service is free (requires sign up though) and allows you to process up to 30 scanned (JPG, GIF, BMP, TIF) images per day.

Sign up to get started. First upload an image file and then click on “YES” to begin the processing. When done download the converted file in multiple text formats (TXT, DOC, RTF).

Service also lets you convert PDF files into Word.

convert scanned images to text

Features:

  • Online scan to text converter.
  • Convert from JPG, GIF, BMP, TIF image formats into TXT, DOC, RTF text documents.
  • Convert from PDF into Word.
  • Convert free up to 30 images per day.
  • Similar websites: ComomboQipit and Scanr.

Check out OCT Terminal @ www.ocrterminal.com

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Saturday, April 25, 2009

5 Dead-Easy Ways to Create Your Own P...



Panorama Rama from  Make Use of dot com multiple sites feature tools to quickly generate panoramic images in the cloud 


5 Dead-Easy Ways to Create Your Own Panoramic Photos

Posted: 25 Apr 2009 11:23 AM PDT

You want to create your own panorama, but do not want to bother with messy details like control points and blending options? Here are 5 ways to get you up and running with your own panorama without getting embroiled in advanced photographic terminology.

Clevr

Clevr is a website that allows you to upload your overlapped photos, sort them in order and automatically stitch them together. The site works with your choice of Adobe AIR or Java. Clevr allows you to zoom in, pan, save, and to share your panorama via email, or on Facebook and MySpace. You can also embed the panorama in your own website. You can read our in-depth look at Clevr here.

MagToo

Magtoo is another website that allows you to easily create slideshows and panoramas from photos on your computer or online photo-sharing sites like Flickr. The site allows you to stitch your photos automatically, and its viewer lets others ‘look around’ the panorama. Though you need to use Internet Explorer to create, viewers can use any browser/platform to view your panoramas. You can geotag and embed the panoramas in your own website.

Autostitch

Autostitch is a Windows desktop application that allows you to stitch panoramas automatically. Mac/Linux versions are planned but not available at present, but it works under WINE. There is no installation required, you simply extract the files from the zip archive and run AUTOSTITCH.EXE. Though it offers a plethora of options, you do not need to use them by default. Autostitch works only with JPEG files and creates a JPEG file of your panorama. In most cases, you will want to crop and tweak the output image to suit your requirements.

Image Composite Editor

Microsoft’s Image Composite Editor takes a set of overlapping photographs and produces stunning panoramas easily. It can handle very large photographs (in gigapixels), and can create output panoramas as static images (TIFF/JPEG/PNG) or interactive viewers using Silverlight technology. Support for a wider range of input/output formats, ease-of-use, and the right level of advanced options make this a superior alternative to Autostitch.

Rsizr

All of the above methods to create your panorama require that you take multiple overlapping photographs. But it is very likely that in the excitement during a vacation, creating panoramas was the last thing on your mind and you only shot a single image of a great scene. Enter Rsizr.

One of the intelligent things this free website allows you to do is to stretch a single image into a panorama, without distorting any objects in the scene. The flash-based site is very easy to use and lets you stretch and resize JPG, GIF, and PNG files using a technique known as seam carving. Read more and watch videos of Rsizr in action here. Also, note that Resizr is different than Rsizr, in case you enter URLs directly in your browser.

Apart from the above, you might want to check out these other panorama creation tools:

Wrapr - website that pulls images from pre-selected groups in Flickr to create panoramas

ViewAt - website that geotags panoramas created by users all over the world

Hugin - cross-platform, open-source, image stitching application with advanced features and powerful control over the stitching process

Pos Panorama Pro - free Windows desktop application to create panoramas

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Sunday, April 19, 2009

http://current.com/items/89891774_two...

Tweets were annoying before the large lady from the city of broad shoulders stuck her fat fingers upon the keyboard....for posterity here's a mid-march 2009 tale of the twitter phenom...... 

http://current.com/items/89891774_twouble-with-twitters.htm

Saturday, April 18, 2009

10 Youtube URL Tricks You Should Know...

Excerpted from Make use of DOT Com 

Please sign  up with ther folks at make use of...

Utube refresher tags: Embed, Utube

10 Youtube URL Tricks You Should Know About

Posted: 18 Apr 2009 09:10 AM PDT

youtube url tricksYoutube - You know that site with videos and all. Yeah! It turns out that its quite popular and you happen to visit and use it quite often. Instead of just searching and playing here are some top Youtube URL tricks that you should know about:

1. View high quality videos

Youtube gives you the option to switch to high quality videos for some of the videos, however you can check if a video is available in high quality format by appending ‘&fmt=18′(stereo, 480 x 270 resolution) or ‘&fmt=22′(stereo, 1280 x 720 resolution) for even higher quality.

2. Embed Higher Quality Videos

While the above trick works for playback, if however you want to embed hig quality videos you need to append “&ap=%2526fmt%3D18″ and “&ap=%2526fmt%3D22″ to the embed url.

3. Cut the chase and link to the interesting part

Linking to a video where the real action starts at 3 minutes 22 seconds, wondered if you could make it start at 03:22? You are in luck. All you have to do is add #t=03m22s (#t=XXmYYs for XX mins and YY seconds) to the end of the URL.

4. Hide the search box

youtube url start time

The search box appears when you hover over an embedded video. To hide the search box add ‘&showsearch=0′ to the embed url.

5. Embed only a part of Video

youtube url to mp3

Just append ‘&start=30′ to skip first 30s of the video. In general you can modify the value after start= to the number of seconds you want to skip the video for.

6. Autoplay an embedded video

Normally when you embed a Youtube video and load the page, the player is loaded and it sits there waiting for you to hit the play button. You can make the video play automatically by adding ‘&autoplay=1′ to the url part of the embed code.

7. Loop an embedded video

Append ‘&loop=1′ to make the video start again without user intervention after it reaches the end.

8. Disable Related Videos

youtube url downloader

Publishing your content in the form of Youtube video? Don’t want people to see other people’s content that may be related but may as well be in competition to you? Just add ‘&rel=0′ to the end of the url part of the embed code and you just turned off the related video suggestions!

9. Bypass Youtube Regional Filtering

Some videos are only available in certain parts of the world. Your IP Address is used to determine your location and then allow or deny access to the video. Change the url from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<somecode> to http://www.youtube.com/v/<somecode>

10. Download Video

Although not inherently a youtube trick but useful all the same for downloading videos. Just change youtube to kickyoutube in the url of the video and it will take you to kickyoutube.com with all the options for downloading the video you were watching.

Do you know of some similar Youtube URL tricks and hacks? Fire them in comments!

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Monday, April 13, 2009

free video chat site redux

BoostCam is instant video messenger that provides free and disposable online video conferencing rooms. No need to install any software or plugins. Just visit the site, allow access to your webcam and get a temporary URL that you must share with a person to start the live video conference.

instant video messenger

Chats are disposable and anonymous: it doesn’t keep any chat history, asks for any usernames, or requires the person to contacts. And since it’s a two-way conference, only two people can chat at the same time. The chat session always launched in a separate browser window.

Features:

  • Free, instant, anonymous two-way instant video messaging.
  • No software or plugins to install.
  • The chat room launched under temporary URL.
  • Similar websites: Fonomo, Confabio, ooVoo, Ekkotv and Uniqq.

Check out BoostCam @ www.boostcam.com (via Orangeinks)