Computer and Web Articles

If you own a Mac and aren’t running an older operating system, chances are you’ve heard of Widgets. If you own a PC and have already upgraded to Windows Vista, chances are you’ve heard of Gadgets. If you’re still running XP, this next little bit of information doesn’t pertain to you.

For the ultimate resource offering the latest Gadgets and Widgets, head over to http://www.Widgipedia.com.

You won’t be disappointed; the site is overflowing with useful and/or fun Gadgets and Widgets for you to download and run on your computer. The site is clean and easy to use, and there’s a great FAQ page as well as a forum to answer all your questions.

Typing the exact same snippets of text over and over is nothing more than a waste of time and another big step down the path toward Carpal Tunnel City.

If you find yourself frequently entering the same text over and over into input fields, forms, webmail-based emails, blogs, blog comments, or forums, save yourself a bit of time by using the Clippings extension for your Firefox browser (because you are using Firefox and not Internet Explorer, right?)

The Firefox Clippings extension allows you to quickly and easily paste various snippets of often-typed text into forms, blogs, emails, etc. while on the web. Save your wrists! To download this nifty extension along with a great Quick Start Guide, visit http://tinyurl.com/rlukb.

For a nominal fee each year, parents can purchase up to 10 safe e-mail addresses that allow for automatic supervision appropriate to their children’s age. Decide once if each of your child’s e-mail friends is suitable; after that, parents are “only alerted when strangers come calling.”

Safe2read.com is extremely easy to use, handles all good and bad e-mails automatically, and allows children to familiarize themselves with e-mail communications without the concerns of receiving adult spam or advertisements each week - all without parents having to supervise and constantly look over their shoulders. Take a look at www.safe2read.com.

See you next Friday, everyone! Oh, and stop by www.timeforcake.com sometime and say hi. We just launched our all-new site a couple weeks ago. Let us know what you think.

Though I’d of course prefer that you use timeforcake the next time you decide you need new business cards, I’m well aware that many businesses’ marketing budgets are stretched thin. Enter BusinessCardLand.

The creators of www.businesscardland.com have built a website that allows non-designer individuals and business owners to design and build their very own business cards - for free (assuming you can print them out on your home or office printer). The site also offers tips on successful designs, paper types and locating great fonts, photos and graphics for your cards.

Did you know you can download NPR’s Fresh Air and This American Life shows onto your iPod? You can.

Download a few NPR podcasts and listen to them on your iPod during your next hike, flight or lengthy wait in a post office line. Download “Fresh Air” podcasts here: tinyurl.com/yvtswf and “This American Life” podcasts here: www.thisamericanlife.org.

This site won’t make you a better person, it won’t save the world and it won’t further any important causes … but it sure can be fun. Pikipimp.com lets you make friendly mockeries of your enemies, coworkers, family, friends, etc. by making it easy as pie for you to dress up their photos with an endless number of “accessories.”

Slap a long gray beard and devil horns onto that photo of your sister, put Paris Hilton’s head over your ex-girlfriend’s, give grandma a tattoo, add chest hair to that photo of your friend. Save your masterpieces, e-mail them to your pals, and have fun just being silly. All for free, of course.

www.Booqbags.com sells a variety of high quality bags, backpacks, sleeves and accessories for laptop computers. Their products most definitely cannot be classified as cheap, but I’ve learned that you tend to get what you pay for when it comes to laptop accessories. And yes, I learned the hard way.

Last summer I purchased a cheap laptop bag from eBay for my new laptop, thinking there was no reason to spend a larger chunk of money on a nice bag. And OK, yes, I admit it, I also purchased that bag on eBay because it was bright red and, at the time, I thought it looked pretty cool.

Anyhow, upon returning from my New Zealand trip last September with an almost-broken back caused by nothing other than carrying that cheap red bag around day and night during my travels, I understood how wrong I had been about the “no need to invest in a good bag” decision. Needless to say, I tossed the cheap bag and made a visit to the Booqbags website, quickly finding a product that was worth every penny.

Without a doubt, BooqBag’s neatest site feature is its time-saving “BagFinder” tool. Punch in the dimensions of your laptop and the site instantly displays a list of all compatible products. Cool.

What antivirus protection are you running on your computer? Do you know? Do you like it? How much did you pay for it? Are you required to pay for a subscription? What about yearly upgrades?

Perhaps you’re using McAfee for your computer’s antivirus protection. If so, my guess is that you’d pay a good chunk of money for someone to magically keep McAfee from bugging you day in and day out with its incessant reminders, questions, and warnings.

Well … you don’t have to pay money, actually. And regardless of what program you’re currently using, you don’t have to keep upgrading, ensuring your subscriptions are up-to-date, or wondering when your virus protection runs out. There IS an easier way.

Believe it or not, that easier way is called ClamWin (weird name, good program); it’s a free antivirus tool for PCs that be downloaded at http://tinyurl.com/n6pvl. ClamWin can protect Microsoft Outlook and your e-mails, run virus scans on demand, schedule scans in advance and regularly download the latest virus definitions to keep your computer safe. Plus, it’s a piece of cake to install. Sweet.

Though it may sound like it, Floodle most definitely is not another one of those Google rip-off sites. I’ve actually never run across anything like Floodle in all my gazillion hours online.

Let me backpedal for a moment here. If you’ve ever spent even a small amount of time on eBay, chances are you’ve seen at least a listing or two for some type of eBook. eBay sellers auction off eBooks (which are usually downloaded or e-mailed to your computer) on a tremendous variety of topics — especially those related to the parts of life people tend to worry about.

You’ll find eBooks on losing weight, doubling your reading speed, looking younger, encrypting your website, learning 120 different jam recipes, speaking French, playing poker, “turning pennies to Mega-Bucks,” etc.

Enter Floodle. The owner of Floodle purchases a number of these eBooks on eBay every week, then posts them on his homepage for anyone and everyone to download. The best part is that he offers all these eBay-purchased eBooks for free! (I believe his goal is to generate income via the advertisements placed throughout his site.)

So go on — instead of paying for eBooks on eBay, head over to www.Floodle.net and download any number of the many, many eBooks listed. I’ll let you know ahead of time, though: in my opinion the content contained within many of these eBooks is rather sketchy and a bit questionable. The good news is that when the content is sketchy and questionable, it tends to be rather humorous and entertaining. (Example: “So although we cannot guarantee it, we believe these plans will enable you to build a car that runs on water.”)