A collection of everything I have found good on the Web inc. Programs,Games, Utilities and those "Just plain interesting sites"
Welcome to the 2009 Webware 100! Below you'll find 100 Web apps in 10 categories voted to be the best of the best by Webware readers and users of the apps themselves.
Be sure to also see the new 11th category, Editors Choice, for a list of 12 products that we feel merit inclusion in this year's awards program, even if they weren't big enough to win the popular vote.
Congratulations to the winners of the Webware 100!
)
Atlantis is an innovative,Instant, simple and free
There are no restrictions in terms of what you can listen to or when. Forget about the hassle of waiting for files to download and fill up your hard drive before you get round to organising them. Spotify is instant, fun and simple.
Because music is social, Spotify allows you to share songs and playlists with friends, and even work together on collaborative playlists, Friday afternoon in the office might never be the same again! We’re music lovers like everyone else.
We want to connect millions of people with their favorite songs by creating a product that people love to use. We respect creativity and believe in fairly compensating artists for their work. We’ve cleared the rights to use the music you’ll listen to in Spotify.
Search engine giant Google stole a march on its internet technology rivals today when it launched a new system that integrates email and phone messages.
Google Voice gives you a single number streamlining your work, home and mobile phones and lets you store transcripts of voicemail phone messages in your email inbox.
Using speech-recognition technology, it will even let you search those messages for a snippet of information just as if you were trawling a sea of emails.
It will also let you make free local and cheap international calls, as well as consult Goog411, the company's free U.S. directory enquiries service.
Google Voice is based on technology originally launched by Grand Central Communications, a company bought up by Google nearly two years ago.
The acquisition had taken so long to bear fruit that observers were starting to suspect it had come to nothing.
Like the original Grand Central product, Google Voice offers consumers a single phone number that can route incoming calls to home, office and mobile phones
Google Voice is available to existing Grand Central users from today and to the general public in the weeks to come.
following the popular success of birdsong radio on dab. we have launched birdsong as an online service! listen to the peaceful sounds of dawn chorus via your computer at home or whilst at work. using the player on site
 |
Despite whatever fears you might harbor about wrinkles or weak muscles or a less-than-quick mind, there are ways to age gracefully.
All that's required is following a set of ground rules that stress physical activity, intellectual engagement and preventative health care. While such recommendations aren't very difficult to follow, particularly for the healthy, it's even easier for people to run afoul of them.
Granted, some of the obstacles can be hard to avoid: a chronic disease, poorly coordinated health care, a lifetime spent hunched over a desk. But Colin Milner, chief executive of the International Council on Active Aging, a network of 7,500 organizations that cater to aging adults, says that it's never too late to adopt a proactive approach.
"You have to start somewhere," he says. "Really, what we're talking about is being able to live your life into your 80s and 90s, and then you'll drop dead," he says, contrasting a sudden death late in life with one that happens after a prolonged period of deterioration. Of the former, he says, "That's the way you want to go, having maximized your life."
In Pictures: Simple Secrets to Healthy Aging
Sound mind and body
While it's true that exercise benefits the body at any age, research also shows that physical activity can be particularly important for older adults' mental health. In a study published in October in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, two neuroscientists found that adults age 60 to 75 improved not only their physical fitness but also their mental acuity after walking briskly for 45 minutes a day, three days a week.
Throughout the six-month study, participants improved their ability to complete tasks that required scheduling, multitasking, planning and other executive functions, compared with a control group that engaged in nonaerobic activities like stretching and toning. The authors also did a critical review of similar research and found that moderate physical activity may slow or prevent cognitive decline or Alzheimer's disease by increasing the volume of brain tissue and improving brain function.
Physical exercise may have a two-fold benefit, but stimulating the brain shouldn't stop at the end of a workout. Dr. Gary Small, director of UCLA's Memory and Aging Research Center at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, and author of many books on the subject, says aging adults can employ a number of strategies to fend off the "middle-age pause." Crosswords and other mentally challenging tasks like Internet surfing can be effective, says Dr. Small, but there's no scientific proof linking such mental "jumping jacks" to the prevention of Alzheimer's or other cognitive conditions.
Still, Small recommends these and other techniques to improve memory, including staying socially active, which has been shown to maintain cognitive skills. Staying upbeat is also important.
"The best thing is a positive attitude," he says, noting that stress can muddle the mind. "If you worry about it, your memory will be worse."
It is unlikely that the global recession has completely dampened people's enthusiasm for new gadgets this Christmas.
But for cash-strapped consumers with a shiny new mobile in their
hands, there is a way of making money from their old, unwanted
handsets.
According to mobile phone trade-in website FoneBank, only 20%
of UK consumers are recycling their mobiles but those that do can
recycle their old mobiles for cash.
During November Fonebank sent out £200,000 worth of cheques,
with an average per person of £50, although an iPhone can raise
much more.
"One of the most popular ones traded in during October was Nokia's N95 which can raise £102 for the owner," said Mr Tagg.
"People recycling their phones make a bit of money and feel they
are doing the right thing. The whole process takes three minutes online
and then they just have to stick their phone in a jiffy bag," he added.
This year Fonebank has teamed up with Oxfam to donate a minimum
of 10% of the value of the phone to aid the charity's work in the
developing world.
Other charities, including Age Concern and the British Red Cross, are also offering people the chance to donate phones.
By Peter Griffiths
LONDON (Reuters) - Two U.S. fighter planes were scrambled and
ordered to shoot down an unidentified flying object (UFO) over the
English countryside during the Cold War, according to secret files made
public on Monday.
One pilot said he was seconds away from firing 24 rockets at the
object, which moved erratically and gave a radar reading like "a flying
aircraft carrier."
The pilot, Milton Torres, now 77 and living in Miami, said it spent
periods motionless in the sky before reaching estimated speeds of more
than 7,600 mph.
After the alert, a shadowy figure told Torres he must never talk
about the incident and he duly kept silent for more than 30 years.
His story was among dozens of UFO sightings in defense ministry files released at the National Archives in London.
In a written account, Torres described how he scrambled his F-86 D
Sabre jet in calm weather from the Royal Air Force base at Manston,
Kent in May 1957.
"I was only a lieutenant and very much aware of the gravity of the
situation. I felt very much like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking
contest," he said.
"The order came to fire a salvo of rockets at the UFO. The authentication was valid and I selected 24 rockets.
"I had a lock-on that had the proportions of a flying aircraft
carrier," he added. "The larger the airplane, the easier the lock-on.
This blip almost locked itself."
At the last moment, the object disappeared from the radar screen and the high-speed chase was called off.
He returned to base and was debriefed the next day by an unnamed man who "looked like a well-dressed IBM salesman."
"He threatened me with a national security breach if I breathed a word about it to anyone," he said.
The documents contain no official explanation for the incident,
which came at a time of heightened tension between the West and the
Soviet Union. Planes were on constant stand-by at British bases for a
possible Soviet attack.
The files blame other UFO sightings on weather balloons, clouds or
normal aircraft. Torres said he had been waiting 50 years for an
explanation.
"I shall never forget it," he told the Times. "On that night I was
ordered to open fire even before I had taken off. That had never
happened before."
UFO expert David Clarke said the sighting may have been part of a
secret U.S. project to create phantom aircraft on radar screens to test
Soviet air defenses.
"Perhaps what this pilot had seen was some kind of experiment in
electronic warfare or maybe it was a UFO," he said. "Something very
unusual happened."
The files are online at: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos
For the second year, YouTube
on Friday unveiled a holiday feature that lets users create hosted
video cards to send to friends and family. Users can select this option
from any YouTube video, or from a special page that houses selected community videos and links to a user's own clips.
There's also an option to make a more personalized greeting straight
from a connected Webcam. For now, only one video can be attached to a
given greeting card.
When users are finished picking a video for use in a greeting card,
they can choose from a handful of themes that house the video player,
then add up to 230 characters of text and send the complete card to up
to 25 e-mail recipients.
According to YouTube's company blog, more than a million of these greetings were sent out last year, before the feature disappeared in January.
Sending
photos from Windows Photo Gallery works just fine, but it sends the
photos as attachments that the recipient must click individually to
open, which makes it tough to browse the photos all at once.
 |
| Photo attached to an e‑mail message |
To
present resized photos in the message, you can use a feature in
Windows Live Mail called Photo e‑mail. You can download
Windows Live Mail for free online at the Microsoft website for Windows Live.
 |
| Send a Photo e‑mail using Windows Live Mail |
You
can quickly send e‑mails of photos in a variety of size and layout
styles with Photo e‑mail. You can autocorrect and rotate photos; add
effects, such as borders; add captions; and include any text in the
e‑mail that you want to send.
If you create a Photo e‑mail while
signed in to Windows Live Mail using a Windows Live ID,
there's an added bonus: the option for recipients to view the photos as
a slide show hosted by the Windows Live Spaces website. The people
you send e‑mail to can view larger versions of the photos if they want
to, and they can also download the larger versions at their
leisure—all without them having to enter any user name or
password to view the pictures. Plus, there’s no uploading or
managing by you—you get the benefit of posting photos online to a
website without any of the fuss.
If you already have a
MSN Hotmail, MSN Messenger, or Microsoft Passport
account, you've already got a Windows Live account. You can go
online to sign in now with your current account information to start
using Windows Live. If you don't have a Windows Live ID, you
can get one online at the Microsoft website for Windows Live.
To use Photo e‑mail | |||||||||||||||||||
|
When
your friends and family receive your Photo e‑mail, they’ll see
the photos in the layout and size that you chose. That alone is great,
but if you created the Photo e‑mail while signed in to
Windows Live Mail using a Windows Live ID, they can also view
the photos presented as a slide show, and then download larger versions
of the images if they choose to do so.
 |
| Play a slide show from the Photo e‑mail message |
When they click Play slideshow,
a Windows Live Spaces website opens up that displays the images in
sequential order. The recipient can vary the speed at which the photos
display, download the larger picture from the website, and view
larger-resolution versions of the file.
 |
| Change the viewing speed or download a higher-resolution picture |
Diary.com
Diary.com is the new place to publish, share and discuss your thoughts,
plans, pictures, videos or web pages you love with chosen groups of
people or individuals. These can be snippets of written thoughts, a
picture shared from a public event, or a fun video discovered on the
web.
Diary.com gives you a private diary just for you and allows you to
create shared diaries, which solves the problem of everyone seeing your
activity by allowing only an individual or invited groups of people to
participate.
2008's First
Christmas Joke
Three men died on
Christmas Eve and were met by Saint Peter at the
pearly gates.
"In honor of this holy
season" Saint Peter said, "You must each
possess something that symbolizes Christmas to
get into heaven."
The first man fumbled
through his pockets and pulled out a lighter. He
flicked it on. "It represents a candle", he
said.
"You may pass through the pearly
gates" Saint Peter said.
The second
man reached into his pocket and pulled out a set
of keys. He shook them and said, "They're
bells."
Saint Peter said "You may pass
through the pearly gates".
The third man
started searching desperately through his
pockets and finally pulled out a pair of
women's panties.
St. Peter looked at the
man with a raised eyebrow and asked, "And
just what do those symbolize?"
The
man replied, "These are Carols."
And So
The Christmas Season
Begins......
and…… pay
attention to the last few words. It says a
lot!
Without the need for downloading countless codecs, Kantaris Media Player
can play almost anything you can throw at it - AVI, MPEG, MGEG-AVC,
WMV, MOV, MKV, QuickTime, Matroska, DivX, Xvid, H264, MP3, WMA, OGG
files, and more. It can also play DVDs and audio CDs. The player also
displays some of the most beautiful music visualizations ever seen. All
this is completely free.
It is based on code from Videolan client (VLC) and Bass audio library. The graphical user interface is similar to that of Windows Media Player. [Discovered via Major Geeks]
[8.83M ] [Win95/98/Me/XP/Vista] [FREE]
