Science toys you can make with your kids

Make toys at home with common household materials, often in only a few minutes that demonstrate fascinating scientific principles. The site will teach you how to make electronics and electric toys using with common materials found in our junk.

You can build an electric motor, a radio and many more other projects with detailed explanation of “how” and “why”, photos and diagrams that make it easy to understand even for a beginner! Visit the site Scitoys to build scientific toys and teach your child.

Mix up your photos

>>Mixercast allows you to mix your photos, videos or sound to create embeddable player to display them. The output can be email to friends, post it directly to your MySpace Blogger or take the embed code to paste it on your own webpage. If you have a lot of images to share this are a fun and easy way to do it.

>>With pre-made templates, it is quite easy to build Mixercast. After uploading your images, drag and drop them were you want to be in. The site will currently allow you to upload from your computer, download pictures from a stock photo site, Flickr, and record a video with your webcam. You can also upload video from YouTube, MySpace.

Visit the site Mixercast

Source downloadsquad

The most visited personalization site on the internet

Windows Live Gallery – A one-stop location to personalize your Windows Vista and Windows Live experiences with fun and interesting content- is the most visited personalization site on the internet.
According to Liveside.net Windows Live Gallery have over 3.9 million unique users and over 27 million page views in March, is updating to provide more content and a new look. Here you can personalize your Live Messenger, Vista sidebar, etc

Check out the new features and the new look at http://gallery.live.com

Outlook express or Thunderbird

Outlook express (6.0) comes with part of Windows XP and has a very simple easy to use interface and because of the integration with Windows, it performs with easy and speeds. Outlook Express supports POP3, IMAP, NNTP (News group support) and LDAP. You can create different virtual folders to automatically transfer emails to the required folders. No junk filtering and RSS. Integration with MSN messenger lets you synchronize contacts. Outlook Express is one of the least secure email clients, and rather vulnerable to viruses and worms.

At the same time, Mozilla thunderbird (Released new version- Thunderbird 2) is an open source, free email client. The interface is pretty simple and allows you to arrange mails in different virtual folders. Thunderbird supports POP3, IMAP, and LDAP and also NNTP, (lets you subscribe to News groups) and supports feed from RSS and Atom. This is a basic email client and less vulnerable to viruses because of the lack of Active X support and included Bayeian spam filter and you have a safe email client. One important thing with Thunderbird is plug-ins from open source community, which brings in new functionality.

Microsoft has introduced next generation of Soapbox and MSN Video

Microsoft has renovated Soapbox on MSN Video unveiling a new website. The new user interface is the major sweetening introduced to Soapbox. And the users will be benefit with dynamically scaling thumbnails and page, a new video player with integrated Play lists and Progressive Download Indicators, enhanced full screen experience, and a video gallery. However, as MSN Video is available for all users, Soapbox is still a limited beta program, accessible by invitation only.

Additionally, Microsoft has also made available a new MSN Video , featuring a user friendly interface and Soapbox-based functionality.

Visit MSN Soapbox .

News source www.news.softpedia.com

Microsoft Update Catalog-one-stop location for updates

Microsoft has introduced a one-stop location for delivering software updates, drivers and hot fixes for a range of Microsoft products.

The Microsoft Update Catalog Beta comes with user friendly interface that enables to search for and find updates, drivers and hot fixes. With ‘Microsoft Update Catalog’, you can create a list of updates for a variety of products by using the Ad to Basket option. All the updates in the basket can be downloaded simultaneously, and a window will guide you through the download process.

Microsoft recommended that non-corporate users should fix to automatic updating or to use Microsoft Update website and leave the MU Catalog, as the service is still in beta stage in order to compensate for any functionality issues.

Link to Microsoft Update Catalog Beta

Firefox Tricks

In Firefox typing keyword in the main address bar by default searches Google. But the default setting is to use the ‘I am feeling lucky’ option. To change this to general search result, do the following change in firefox. This is also applicable to other search engines like Yahoo, Live or Ask.com.

Type about: config in address bar and press enter. Scroll down to ‘keyword.URL’. Double click on it (or right click and select modify). Change, any of the URL you like, as shown below. For example, the URL for Google general search result is http://www.google.com/search?&q=, enter this for Google or enter any of the following.

Yahoo - http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=

Ask - http://www.ask.com/web?l=dir&o=ffx&q=

Live - http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=

Answer-http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?s=

Amazone-http://www.amazon.com/s/103-3324616-6724616?ie=

Firefox extension - CustomizeGoogle

CustomizeGoogle is a Firefox extension that modifies a few Google services in a useful way. It enhances Google search results by adding extra information like links to Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, MSN etc and removing unwanted information like ads and spam. You can use Google Suggest (suggest words while you are typing) with this plug-in

Features of Customize Google

*Use Google Suggest (suggest words while you're typing)

*Rewrite links to point straight to the images in Google Images

*Removes image copying restrictions in Google Book Search

*Secure Gmail and Google Calendar, switch to https

*Block Google Analytics cookies

*Hide the Gmail spam counter

*Remove ads

*Add a result counter in search result

*Filter spammy websites from search results

*Add links from Google to your bookmark manager

*Stream Google search result pages

CustomizeGoogle feature saves you from the hassle of paging through Google web search results. Whenever you navigate to the end of the page, you don’t have to hit the next button. CustomizeGoogle automatically fetches next set of results and appends them to the bottom of the page. It is very easy to configure. After installation, select Tool menu (Firefox) and select ‘Customize Google Options’. From here you can select what you need.

Install from Mozilla add on

Online Photo Editing Made Fun

Picnik is an online photo editing tool. With Picnik you can quickly edit all your online photos from one place. You can import photos from Picasa, Flickr, from your computer from a web URL, or from your web cam. Editing is very easy and fast, fix underexposed photos, remove red-eye, or apply effects to your photos. After editing you can save the photo to your computer, Picasa or Flickr. It supports JPG, PNG, BMP and TIFF image formats. Just have a look at www.picnik.com

Search your friend with Pipl

Pipl is an interesting search engine. You can find your friend with Pipl. For example, there are various reasons to miss your relative, classmates or old flame. Now it is very easy to find them, just enter the first name, last name, country and state in the search box and push the search button, you will get the result if they are, for example, in blog posts, or any where on the web.

Since most personal profiles, public records and other people-related documents are stored in databases and not on static web pages, most of the higher-quality information about people is simply "invisible" to a regular search engine. Pipl's query-engine helps you find deep web pages that cannot be found on regular search engines.

Interesting? Just try pipl at www.pipl.com

Deraradio-Voice from the desert

Deraradio is an on demand online radio station. The sites data base includes English, Hindi, and Arabic and Persian music. Music can be select in deferent category like Pop, Film songs etc and there are online dedications, request shows and the popular Derachat. We can hear full length of music here - A hot spot for music buffs. You required Real player to play the music.
www.deraradio.com

Yahoo Updates the Upcoming

Upcoming is a social events calendar from Yahoo. It allows users to configure their own events for certain locations. The new release of Upcoming modified and updated to provide special events for musicians, artists, and like others. It also makes deeper integrations with Flickr. So the users are able to customize the appearance of a certain event as well as share their own photos with other members of the service. For full details visit Yahoo’s Upcoming or their official blogpost

What is wine?

Wine is made to run a handful of windows programs on top of Linux operating systems. It is completly an Open Source implementation of the Windows API.

Wine is a compatibility layer for running Windows programs and does not require Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code; however Wine can optionally use native Windows DLLs if they are available.

Wine provides both a development toolkit for porting Windows source code to Unix as well as a program loader, allowing many unmodified Windows programs to run on x86-based Unixes, including Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris.

For more details click here

Old version software

Older versions of software are sometimes useful, sometimes we use for nostalgia’s sake. For example you might prefer an older version of Acrobat reader instead of bloated newer version.

OldApps.com, founded by Akash Ayare and Chirag Patel, provides more than 2000 old version software in different category includes media player, acrobat reader, open office etc. According to them, “Often newer versions are attractive yet complicated to use and we understand that it is hard to find old versions. The Idea behind our site is to provide most of the current and old versions software online for free”. It is sometimes useful for old and slow performing computers.

Have a look at Oldapps.com

Create your own Netvibes Universe

Netvibes announced the launch of Netvibes Universe. Every single Netvibes user will be able to create a personal Netvibes Universe, that is, a Netvibes page that you can build using the content and widgets that you want -- and make it available to the world at large.

Netvibes Universe allows users to create personalized home pages with widgets and publish them for public use. The widgets includes like RSS feeds, weather reports, Flikr Image searches, YouTube video searches, Blog search and a lot more. Publishers now also have the ability to add their own CSS and HTML to pages as well. Users can add public pages or portions of public pages to their own page and stay updated on changes.

Personalized Universe's have already been set-up for a number of popular news site like USA today, CBC news as well as popular musical artists such as Moby, Ben Harper, 50 cent, and Mandy Moore. Start discovering Netvibes Universes now!

Inkless Printing

Printing technology is on its way to be new high. There are many breakthroughs in printing in recent periods. For example Kodak introduced an ink and paper that lasts a century. Now it is possible printing without ink by a new technology, Zink.

Zink is a new technology which required zero ink for printing. It generates the required color images and photos without using ink, toner or ribbon!

The technology introduced a new category of printers and papers that work as an integrated system to print with a unique technique. The technology uses a patented Zink paper, an advanced composite material with dye crystals embedded inside and a protective polymer overcoat layer outside. Before printing the dye crystals are colorless, so Zink looks like regular white printing paper. The Zink printer uses heat to activate and colorize these dye crystals.

Visit the site

The first age-relevant search engine

Cranky.com targets online audience in the age group of 50 and above. It is the old mans online stick. It is a search engine made especially for peoples who are pushing 50 and beyond.

The site is launched by Jeff Taylor, the founder of Monster.com, the online employment mine; this next venture also seems to be a winning innovation. It is an extension of Eons.com, a website that specializes in 50+ every thing.

Crancy.com is quite a pioneer in customizing a search engine for a specific age group. It has features that perfectly blend with the concept, like only 4-5 results per page for every search term which are displayed in big fonts and the colors are very easy on the eyes. Top 10 search of the day are also given on the home page for instant explorations. This seems to be a great solution for aging eyes who may easily get annoyed with the crowded pages of search results on Google or Yahoo.

Cranky.com has wonderfully inculcated the requirements of this age demographic from the layout of the webpage, to the available option like narrow and expands; with witch you can manipulate the result of the search.

Every single link you see on this webpage has been eased out; it has buttons for further simplification. It also gives the option of blogging for this age groups.

Adobe Soundbooth CS3 -A brand new application

Adobe Soundbooth CS3 is a brand new application built in the spirit of Sound Edit 16 and Cool Edit that provides the tools to video editors, designers, and others who do not specialize in audio need to accomplish their everyday work.

What is the Soundbooth CS3 beta?

Soundbooth is built for video editor, web designers and developers, motion graphic artist, and other creative professionals. It delivers tools for audio editing, cleanup, sound design, and music creation all with in a familiar Adobe interface. With a set of powerful and intuitive tools, Soundbooth enables even those with very little audio experience.

Why both Adobe Audition and Adobe Soundbooth?

While Adobe Audition is designed to give audio professionals in music, film, video, and radio a flexible audio production toolkit that can handle a broad range of audio engineering tasks, Adobe Soundbooth is focused on creative professionals without audio expertise, or those who prefer an application focused on making short work of the most common tasks they handle every day. The tools in Soundbooth CS3 remove the mystery from editing while preserving superb sound quality.

Full details available from Adobe

Make Screen Saver in XP With out any third party tool

You can create a photo slide show as a screen saver in XP with out the need of any third party tool.

Right-click on your desktop and choose Properties. Click the Screen Saver tab.

In the drop down menu, select ‘My Pictures Slideshow’. Then click on settings.

Adjust the parameters like transition time, transition, size of photo, etc and browse the location of photos or put the folder containing photos on ‘My Picture’ directory.

Clock on Ok your photo screen saver is ready.

A directory of Web 2 Sites

Go2Web20 is a complete directory of web 2.0 site and services. The service is born around mid 2006 and around 1107 logos as of 15 April, 2007. The directory is laid out visually, with each sites logo in a rectangle. If you move mouse over any rectangle you get a tool tip like pop up that will show you further information about the site. Click on site and more information is displayed in a bottom pane that slide open. You can then choose to visit the site or move to the next one

Online photo editing – Simple, fast and good

Wiredness is an online photo editing tool. It is a free and good service for your basic photo editing requirement. You can import the photos from your computer, from Flickr or from a URL directly.

Editing process is fast; you can easily resize or crop your image, adjust color balance, remove red eye, give photo effect or put some text on your image. Images can be saved in PNG, JPEG, or GIF format to your computer. Currently, it has no support to Picasa or Flickr to upload image but you can host your images to Glowfoto.com or Imageshack.us.

InstaCalc-A different calculator

InstaCalc is a new, refreshingly different calculator. This online calculator follows the web2 tradition and gives you the answer as you type. The calculator is very fast, we will get the answer without any delay or waiting to click a button.

You are not just restricted to numbers; you can use word to represent number. You can create graph, embed the results in your blog, and tag it using del-icio-us.

You can extend your calculation frenzy beyond numbers and start playing around with units.

Have look at – http://instacalc.com

Firefox add- on FoxyTunes integrates the planet

FoxyTunes, a Firefox add on, is popular among music lovers around the world as it lets you listen music while surfing the web. FoxyTunes control almost any media player right from the browser and find lyrics, covers, videos, bios and much more with a click.

FoxyTunes just updated to version 2.9, with the integration of FoxyTunes Planet. FoxyTunes Planet is a music discovery site that collects videos, lyrics, photos, downloads, and other related material and supports LastFm, an audio sharing site. The widgets from FoxyTunes Planet, that can be included on that artist page, include YouTube, Flickr, MP3 files from the Hype Machine, Google search results, and albums on Amazon.com

Popular Firefox extensions – should be avoid ?

Many Firefox extensions are so popular. But is it a plus point to install all of them on your computer?

The important question is whether it enhances your browsing experience without any nasty side effects.

The good news is that the extension community is actually pretty adept at self-policing. Most extensions that are truly "broken" (for instance, they crash your browser or suck up all your CPU power) either get fixed quickly or simply vanish.

Read full story at: Computer World

Convert Audio or Video through on line

If you want to convert video, audio or any files to other format through online without installing any software, you can opt for Zamzar. It is an online file conversion site. You can convert up to 100MB at free of cost. You can select file from your hard drive or from a URL.

Zamzar supports over 200 file format including popular document, image, video and audio formats (check out the site for full details). File conversion at Zamzar is a simple four step process. Select a file up to 100MB in size; choose the format you want to be converted to; enter your email address; and click convert. Note that Zamzar will narrow down your list of choices based on the file extension. After uploading the file Zamzar converted it and a link sent to your email from where you can download the converted file. File conversion takes up to a few hours depending on your file size.

Remember that the link valid up to 24 hours after the mail has-been sent. Ok, online file conversion is convenient, but, be careful about spamers while using confidential data.

http://zamzar.com/

Google planning to buy Maxthon Web Browser

Maxthon is currently one of the most popular browsers on the Internet, being based on the Internet Explorer engine but offering almost the same functions as the Mozilla Firefox browser. The browser has had over 80 million downloads, and over half of its users are in China. Maxthon-originated searches may account for up to 25% of total Baidu traffic (search engine from China), according to one source.

At the very least we expect the strategic deal to involve replacing the default search option in the browser from the Baidu search engine in China and Yahoo in other countries with Google search. The deal may also go beyond search and involve integration with other Google services directly into the browser. Maxthon would then be promoted on Google as a preferred browser.

Source from: Techcrunch

Find picture on Flickr on color basis

If you want a particular picture on a selected color and intensity for your project, for example, red flower, white flower like that, it is time consuming searching through the internet to find specific color images. Here is a simple web tool that will help you to select photos on the basis of certain color and comparison.

Enter the site Krazydad.com and you will find a color picker and a regulator for adjusting intensity of the color. Click on a color and adjust intensity to view the picture. Clicking on a picture will direct you to Flickr page of that picture. There is also some other options to select like flower, which allows you to search certain other areas that restricts main color.

Alternative search engine for Flickr

Flickrcash is a pretty search engine for finding images on Flickr. Unlike Flickr search you will get a whole more image per page. Just enter a keyword in the search box; you will get thumbnail view of pictures. Click on a thumbnail for a slightly larger image, and an option to see different sizes.

You can see metadata when you place mouse over an image, including Flickr description and tags.

You can filter your searches by date or by looking for images from particular users.

Firefox add on full screen

You may know that Firefox has a "full-screen" mode. If you press F11, the Windows task bar and the very top tool bar in Firefox will disappear. Thus you will get some more space for text.

But you can do even better by installing a add on ‘Fullscreen’.This extension enhances the Full Screen mode into a really full screen mode, hiding the remaining toolbars and status bar and making them visible again when the mouse pointer hits an edge of the screen. After installation just press F11 and note the difference. You could always use F11 to toggle back and forth between full screen and windowed mode

This cross-platform extension is tested on Windows and Linux, and is licensed under the Mozilla Public License.

Install from Mozilla add on

Stop your endless search for relevant news

There is lot of online newspapers available on the internet. For example in India around 35 online news papers available. It is bit difficult to find all of them by keyword searching.

If you are looking for relevant news around the world, jut takes a look at findnewspapers.com. You needn’t search any ware on the internet for online newspapers. Just enter the site and click on a country name and look at lists of online news papers from that country and select a paper.

This is a link site that opens up a list of information. The site covers daily news papers, news paper archives, article, and news magazine

Have a look at www.findnewspapers.com

Know more about a person

Do you want to know more about a person who have global fame? Then visit ‘NNDB’.

>The specialty is that with the usual information such as date of birth, religion, birth place, etc you will also get information on their boy friend or girl friend, sexual orientation like that. That is it mostly exists to document the connections between people, many of which are not always obvious. A person's otherwise inexplicable behavior is often understood by examining the crowd that person has been associating with.

>The site is an intelligence aggregator that tracks the activities of people, NNDB have determined to be noteworthy, both living and dead and have profiles over 20000.

There is also another section called ‘Dr.Sputnik’s Society Pages’ which is a gossip column about famous personalities the world over.

Visit the site www.nndb.com

Searchmash from Google

Yesterday I posted an article on Yahoo’s new search engine Alpha. Here is another one, more or less the same, from Google, Searchsmash. Searchmash was especially designed by the search giant Google with testing reasons to allow the company to test all the new features before they are implemented into the well-known Google product.

“Some features of SearchMash may enable you to interact with search results beyond simply clicking through a result or navigating to another page of results. It may record the use of these features in a non-personally identifiable manner to evaluate their usefulness.

Information collect through SearchMash will only be used to evaluate, research, and analyze the ideas and features offered on the site and will not combine or otherwise correlate information (such as cookies or log data) from SearchMash with information we may have from your use of our other services.”

Go to Searchmash Go to Alpha

Yahoo! Revealed a New Search Engine

Yahoo recently unveiled a new search engine based on an innovative technology for searching the Internet. Code named ‘Alpha’ is in its beta stage and is especially designed by Yahoo to represent an alternative to the classic search engine. It allows users to find files on the Internet using the concept of Federated Search which allows technologies to link two or more databases and return information from all of them according to the search query entered by the user.

Visit the link for a look: Alpha

Lonely Planet TV uses user generated content

Lonely planet, publisher of the famed travel guides, announced the launch of LonelyPlanet.TV. Lonely Planet is enlarging its online presence to include more user-generated content. For LP.TV, this UGC (user generated content) is very focused on video contributions from travelers all over the world.

Lonely planet uses Reality Digital Opus, a digital media hosting platform from Reality Digital to launch the new website. It provides Lonely Planet viewers with a more participatory environment that includes blogging, video sharing, forums, geo-location information and more.

Visit Lonely Planet Tv

Web-Based Google Talk – No need to download

Google updated the instant messaging client Google Talk and made it accessible through a web interface without having to download or install any application. This version of the instant messaging client allows you to chat with your friends or with your Gmail contacts and offers videos or photo previews in chat. The new edition of Google Talk is based on the recently introduced gadget that allows users to add the instant messaging client straight on their Personalized Homepage.

Samsung NV3-Shoot pictures,play music and read text

Samsung has launched anew range of digital camera NV3, which not only shoots pictures, but can also read text files, play music and videos.

NV3 has a metal finish body, sporting a 7.0 Mega pixel sensor, 3x Optical zoom, 5x Digital zoom, a PMP player and a text file reader. The NV3 also has digital camcorder functionality with MPEG-4 TVD (720x480) 20fps &; VGA (640x480) 30fps with Auto Gain Control (AGC) technology to minimize zoom noise during video recording.

Yahoo Mail made new improvement

Yahoo Mail, the most popular e-mail service provider, received a major improvement. It decided to make it bigger, better and faster. You may know that Yahoo recently announced an update for Yahoo Mail, offering unlimited storage space for all the users. Now the company presents a new pack of updates able to make the product even more powerful by making it bigger, better and faster. Remember that you should switch to new beta version to get the updates.

The first update is infinite storage size and is available for all Yahoo mail users starting from May 2007. Next, now it reduces the loading time, thus allow users to read message faster. Next improvement related to the check boxes placed near the messages that are useful for a huge amount of messages. With this you are able to select, control or organize your email with ease without having to right click on it. Now it is very easily remove the email clutter with this new version.

Back up your Firefox

Some times it may be required to backup of all your Firefox or Thunderbird settings like bookmarks, mail, contacts, history, extensions, cache etc, if for example, you want to reinstall Firefox or install another computer, it may be essential to restore your old bookmarks, extensions etc.

Here is a good program called MozBackup, which packages all your essential Firefox and thunderbird settings. Install and open MozBackup and choose ‘backup a profile’. You will be able to password protect your backup file. Please note that you can’t run Firefox when you are backing up. When you are done the resulting .pvc file will be contain all your settings and copy this to your new computer and you can also email this at a remote location and download to new computer. Note that MozBackup can’t back all extensions; please check it up at their website. Install MozBackup on your new computer and run it. Now choose the option ‘restore a profile’. This should set your Firefox in the same way you had it on your old computer. Download from

http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/

Seitz 6x17 digital Camera

160 million pixels camera with 48 bit color depth and you get images beyond definitions. At the maximum resolution an image is 900MP, and you can’t use flash memory to store so the 6x17 uses a MAC Mini as its storage device. You can control the camera remotely using a PDA. You will get full details from Seitz site.

Ms Dewey is smart, sexy and funny

Are you boring with ordinary search engine? Just enter her site for a cool search which has artificial intelligence and a real personality. You will see a young smart lady and presumably named Miss Dewey.

She prompts you to enter key words in the search box for search. And if you proceed slowly she gets impatient and tease you, with ‘come on, I haven’t got all day expressions’.

Ms Dewey is an interactive search assistant. She can speak on searched words in her on style. She makes random action when we are idle - taking props from behind her desk, throwing an imaginary lasso at you, and shooting you with her imaginary gun.

Ask her what you want and she rolls her eyes up look the other way and moves her fingers to her chin in deep thought while the data base is scanned. When the result arrives, she looks back at you with a smile and twinkle in her eyes. The answer is also comes in her sexually exciting voice.

Search results are also listed along side in the old fashion text format. The site is powered by Microsoft Live Search and required latest version of Adobe flash player.

Visit www.msdewey.com

Draw lines for a rider to ride on

Line Rider is a funny game. This is a drawing tool you use to draw lines for a rider to ride on. Just draw a track and pres play button a rider now riding on the line. The trick is to draw tracks that will keep the rider on it as long as possible. You would have to spend a few hours trying the rider to get to stay on for those extra three second. According to the author this tool is a toy not a game. It was created to teaching illustration, but it has become a world wide hit, and thousands of people are addicted to playing with it. To play the game visit at: www.official-linerider.com/play.html