Friedbeef’s Tech

Leaving your computer on overnight is usually the easiest option when you need the computer to perform a task that takes quite a long time to complete (e.g. Downloading large files, ripping DVDs, etc.)

It is however, neither energy efficient nor an environmentally friendly option to take.

WinOff is an excellent piece of freeware which very simply shuts down your computer after a defined time so you don’t need to wait till the morning to attend to your PC.

3 things I like most about WinOff

1. It’s flexible.  You don’t HAVE to shut it down.  You can also schedule it to - restart, log off, suspend, hibernate or just lock the computer.
2. You get to see the last thing that happened before shutdown.  There’s an option for capture a screenshot of the desktop right before the shutdown.  With this, you can see if everything turned out OK before the PC shut itself down
3. It’s free.  Need I say more?

In what other ways do you automate windows tasks?  Tell us in the comments!

[tags] freeware, windows [/tags]

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What makes Facebook so addictive isn’t just the networking and hooking up with old friends.  Part of the magic lies in the mini-applications or widgets it allows you to install on your page.  Allowing users this extra bit of customization is one of the key reasons why Facebook simply exploded in popularity this year. 

What is lacking though is a powerful search feature to ensure you find the most relevant app or widget quickly - This is where CleverHippo comes in.   CleverHippo is the best effort I’ve seen thus far in terms searching widgets. 

At it’s core - It allows you to

• Search by popularity, relevance, and how new the widget is
• Vote a widget up or down depending on how much you like it

…which is good, but what really makes it stand out is the ability to

• Refine the search using filters.  For example, you can add ‘NOT’ & ‘OR’ into the search terms to tell it what exactly you want to include and exclude from the results
• Search across multiple platforms.  With this one search engine, you can expand any search into various platforms and look for widgets on MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Friendster, iGoogle, iPhone, Mac OSX, and so much more. 
• Track widgets search results by RSS.  For example, let’s say you want to keep tabs on ‘music widgets’ - you can subscribe to CleverHippo’s feed on ‘music widgets’ to track that space.

All in all - this site is definitely my one stop choice for widgets

Link: CleverHippo.org

[tags] widgets [/tags]

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Happy new year!  What better way to start the year than trying to change the world.

ChangingThePresent.org is a brilliant site which allows you to make donations in the forms of specific gifts.  Not a shopping site in disguise, 100% of all donations are channeled directly to charity.

Recognizing the fact that people are more inclined to donate when they know exactly what the money is going to be used for, ChangingThePresent.org has a whole range gifts for various causes so you can pick the one closest to your heart. 

Help a child today!

To kick off the new year, I’m going on a charitable comment drive.  This is how it works - I will donate one gift to ChangingThePresent.org, and to make things interesting:  The size of my donation will depend on the amount of comments I receive for this post.

If this post gets:

• 5 comments or less: I’ll donate USD$5 to de-landmine one square meter of a mine affected area
• 10 comments: I’ll donate USD$12 for a month in school for a deaf student in Africa
• 20 comments: I’ll donate USD$25 for medicine to nurse a malnourished child back to health
• 50 comments or more: I’ll donate USD$100 for 100 vaccinations for children to combat deaths from preventable diseases

My plea to you - Tell us about your favorite non-profit organization’s site in the comments

I’m not going to set any conditions for the comments, but it would be really great if this comment thread became a valuable resource… So when you leave a comment, please tell us about your favorite non-profit organization’s site…  It can be a local organization, or an international one.  It can be really famous, or extremely obscure.  It can be a charity, or environmental, or any worthy cause under the sun - It’s entirely up to you! 

That way, this comment drive will not only increase the size of the donation - but help everyone who reads this post learn about other ways to make a difference!

ps.  If you blog, you can also contribute by linking to this post and raising awareness.

The deadline will close, and the donation will be made by January 11th 2008 so please get your comments in as fast as possible!

Update 11th Jan 2008: We’ve made the donation at the 25 comment mark!

[tags] charity [/tags]

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