In conjunction with Blog Action Day, here are 3 tech-savvy ways to help with one of the most serious issues of our generation – Climate Change.

1. How to have fun while saving the world

Carbon Rally is a eco-community where people can discover and commit to small, positive actions over time. People on the site could propose great ideas for saving energy and reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and the community would choose the best ideas to pursue as a team.

The collective impacts are tracked, and it can show the power of many people getting the job done together.  You can ‘compete’ with friends or people from around the world to take up these small challenges and see how you can make a difference.

2. How to easily find green products

Ecoseek is a search engine for eco friendly and green products. Their mission is to connect consumers with eco-friendly products, manufacturers and local earth-conscious retailers.  Here you’ll find everything from baby products to furniture. 

All items listed are tagged to show how it’s eco friendly.  For example, you’ll be able to gauge whether it’s recycled, manufactured in a sustainable process, organic etc.  All so it’s much easier for you can make an environmentally conscious purchase.

3. How to easily find carpool buddies on facebook

Carpool is a facebook app which allows you to cut down your carbon emissions by sharing rides.  It’s quite robust in functionality and allows you to:

• view rides in your network
• search them
• manage your frequent locations using Google Maps
• determine how far a detour you need to drive to pick someone up
• Track all the rides you’ve shared, and the miles you’ve traveled and calculate your reduction in CO2 emissions

Always a useful green app if you want to help cut down your carbon footprint when you travel.

Remember, green vanity apps are important, but they don’t mean anything until you do something about it.  Go out, and change the world, and Happy Blog Action Day!

Are you participating in Blog Action Day?  Tell us your blog post in the comments!

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Google, in its venture to expand its empire beyond search has a project that allows users to try experimental applications known as Google Labs. This revolutionary, hi-tech virtual playground for exploratory users feature some of the most creative and useful applications around. Here are some of my personal Google Lab favorites.

1. How to find out what people are searching for

The Google Trends tool, with its recent enhancements has been developed to provide an insight into extensive search patterns of what people are presently searching for, such as what they’ve searched for in the past. The interface of this tool is exceptionally simple, and enables you to compare up to five multiple search terms.

In today’s fast paced and changing world this tool may be valuable for advertisers and search engine optimizers looking for ways to judge how best to position their ads and websites, and to track buzz in general.

2. How to find similar images

Google Similar Images is an experimental service consists of the ability to upload an image and then search for similarities. Now this is truly something that can appeal to users who may not quite fancy searching up for things the conventional way using keywords, as sometimes using keywords can be a little tedious when many other links unrelated to what you are searching for pop up.

What makes this cool is you can just click on the link of an image you like and it narrows down the image search results to exactly what you’re looking for. So for those in the creative industry like arts, designs or even those who just want to have fun with images, this may stand out as an awesome search tool.

3. How to track a news topic over time

Google News Timeline is a handy research tool for online scribes. It presents Google news information in a graphical and chronological timeline. This timeline incorporates a number of different sources, including new and archived news, blog posts, and media.

It is a great search and sorting tool that gives you the ability to sort results by day, week, month, year or even decade.  The snapshot of this tool is constructive and gives one the access to easily see how a story or event has been progressing in the news.

4. How to create a set of items from a few examples

We often use keywords on typical search engines, so how does Google Sets differentiate itself from the rest of the crowd? Well, instead of looking for related links, the tool focuses on related words. It takes your initial keywords and suggests others that are related in meaning.

If you are looking for synonyms or new alternatives in campaigns, Google Sets is a brilliant tool that will bring much success and difference.

5. How to search for audio using Android

With Android appearing on the scene as Google’s new mobile platform, it was inevitable that Google Labs would try to break ground on it. Its prototype software is Google Listen. It’s fundamentally a way of searching and organizing pod casts and other online audio content.

If you happen to be a music junkie who owns an Android handset, you can look up for your favorite shows and stream it immediately or add it to your listening queue for later utilization.

6. How to turn your Android phone into a Sky Map

“Awesome” is an understatement for this amazing application. You don’t need to be an astrologer to download this application and have some serious fun. What’s so great about this tool? It’s a star map that uses Android’s GPS capabilities to display planets, constellations and other celestial objects in an area of the sky.

Once you have this application installed on your Android hand phone, just face the phone towards the sky and be amazed by the mesmerizing display on your screen. With Sky Map, the sky is not the limit anymore.

7. How to Index the Audio WITHIN Video Files

I used to see stuff like this on CSI and always wondered if it was possible to get my hands on it. After seeing Google Labs’ revolutionary product – Google Audio Indexing, I guess its close enough. Google has started indexing what is being spoken in its video and YouTube clips to enhance search results for video.

Using speech recognition technology to convert audio into words, they are then indexed into Google search so that you can look for a particular video clip by merely entering keywords into the search engine.

8. How to Turn Your Android Phone in to a Places Directory

Places Directory is a handy tool that runs on the Android platform and is Google’s version of a help mobile. If you are on the road and want to know what’s hot and what’s not, download this application on your Android phone and follow the link. Based on your phone’s current location you will be able to obtain a directory of nearby places.

You can then browse through the various categories to look for hotels, banks, shops, etc, see their distance from you and even pull up their locations on Google Maps. For backpackers and active travelers or even for those who just hate to stop and ask for directions, this may be the application for you.

9. How to Track Routes on Your Android Phone

If you love the outdoors, then this is one application you might want to try. It pretty much depends on how it works for you. My Tracks is an application that is available to Android users everywhere. It empowers users by recording precise route using GPS tracks and visualizing live statistics while you are running, biking or hiking.

These include aspects such as speed, distance and elevation, essential pivotal information to any outdoor activity. Once you are done, just stop the recording and you can quickly and easily review your route map, elevation, profile, and workout stats.

This post was written by Aaron Pek.  Join our writing crew to share your knowledge too!

Do you use Google labs, or any of the apps above?  Tell us about it in the comments!

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URL shorteners have really taken off in recently, largely due to Twitter’s continued growth.  Although services like TinyURL have been around for years, never has there been so much demand to cut down the number of characters used in a single message. 

There are literally hundreds of URL shortening tools around, but here are 11 of the most unique twists to the service.

1. How to combine multiple links into a single short URL

MultiURL is a free service which allows you to combine multiple links into one short link that you can quickly and easily share with your friends.  It makes the process of sharing multiple links at once much easier and faster. 

Depending on your choice, when you click through on a MultiURL link, you can either view a summary of all the links in one page, or navigate through all the links using a web-based toolbar.

2. How to warn people that your Short URL is NSFW

Ever clicked a link and felt embarrassed with the content in front of your co-workers?  Ever caught unaware because the funny link your friend sent was a little beyond funny?  If for some reason you may need to send stuff like this to others, it make be good practice to use NSFW.in. 

This free service gives a warning that the link may be (Not Safe For Work) NSFW.  Spare your friends and colleagues the awkward moments.

3. How to shorten URLs and post to StumbleUpon at the same time

Su.Pr is StumbleUpon’s new URL shortening service which is packed with great features.  Having something posted to StumbleUpon ensures it will be exposed to a good number of people within the network.  What sets it apart though is it’s scheduling feature which helps you identify the optimal times to post (highest traffic potential) and schedule as many posts as you like — then post in one-click to Twitter & Facebook. 

It also has a very powerful tracking suite to view your traffic, clicks, referrers, Stumbles, and retweets stemming from your shortened URL, all in 1 place.  This free service is currently in lic beta but you can follow their Twitter account for updates and and access codes to use the service.

4. How to make a URL extra long

Sick of short URLs?  Buck the trend with HugeURL.  This service takes a normal URL and turns it into an extremely long URL (which works perfectly fine).  No, there’s no good reason I can think of for this except maybe to freak people out or perhaps to win a bet on who can come up with the longest URL for a web page – but it’s all in good fun :)

5. How to quickly snip URLs on Windows Mobile

ceSnipURL is a little Windows Mobile utility which allows you to shorten URL’s to make them more friendly for use in twitter and sms messages or mobile email.  Rather than go through a more cumbersome web based short URL service on your mobile, this app makes for a much snappier way to get the job done.

6. How to shorten URLs and give extra assurance of safety

Shuurl goes the extra mile in giving viewers of your short URL assurance of safety.  Not only does it tell you where the shortened URL points to, it provides a thumbnail preview of actual link and a safety rating from the ‘Web Of Trust’ so you know what site you’re about to visit is definitely safe.

7. How to track other people’s Short URL stats

More than a one-off URL shortening tool, bit.ly is a fully fledged service which helps you track and understand how widespread links become and how many clickthroughs were obtained, and their conversations on Twitter and Friendfeed.  Stats are not limited to your own links, and you can check any URL out there.  All this and the fact that you’re able to shorten and post directly to Facebook and Twitter makes this one heck of a powerful tool.

8. How to track online marketing campaigns through short URLs

Unlike bit.ly where all the stats are public, Cli.gs stats are private and incredibly comprehensive. 

Cli.gs also tracks in real time of who tweets your link, who shares it on Friendfeed, who links to it, who blogs about it, who writes a blog comment about it, and more. Not just that, Cligs does that for the destination URL too! All in one handy interface.  Finally, it allows you to share different links on different services like Twitter, Facebook, and email and track the traffic and watch it spread across services.

9. How to setup your own URL TinyURL Like Redirection Service in 2 Minutes

The only problem with URL shortening services is that most of them don’t have a solid business model yet so if they decide to shut shop in future, all your existing short links will become broken or point to non-existent 404 pages.

To prevent yourself from running into such a situation, you can consider setting up your own URL shortening service that will run on your own domain (or web server) and the short URLs will therefore resolve throughout the lifespan of your site.  If you’re interested, check out the tutorial here.

10. How to get a really,really short URL

Tinyarro.ws is a free service which uses unicode and thus makes it possible for them to have many more combinations of characters, and hence make the shortest ever tiny URLs.

11. How to find out where your short URL points to

‘Long URL Please’ doesn’t really shorten your URLs.  In fact, it does pretty much the opposite.  It shows you the original URL of any shortened URL on your screen so you can reduce uncertainty when clicking on links you’re not sure about.  This is really a good safety tool especially before visiting shortened links from an unknown source. 

It works with most of the most popular URL shorteners (72 of them at last count), and is available both as a firefox extension and as a bookmarklet.

Do you use URL shortening tools?  Tell us more in the comments!

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Twitter is an incredible communication tool which can also be somewhat daunting if you’re not used to a constant stream of information flow.  Here are several ways to make better sense of the Twitter so you’ll enjoy your experience more.

1. How to properly understand #hashtags on Twitter

Ever find yourself looking at Twitter and wondering what all this talk about #motrinmoms means?  or searching Flickr and not understanding why someone would tag their photo #ip4?  Hashtags can be notoriously difficult to keep track of, so Tagalus is a free service which lets users define tags so that others can understand what they’re talking about. 

Other users can even vote on definitions and decide which best describes the given tag.  Tagalus also has a bookmarklet feature so you can lookup hashtags with a single click.

2. How to filter topics in real time on Twitter

Twitter is essentially a sea of conversations, so tracking certain keywords can be very useful especially if you’re trying to find out what people are saying about your company or product.  One of my favorite tools to do this is Monniter. 

This is a free service which lets you track multiple keywords in multiple columns, and it streams in any mention of them in real time.  Which means you can essentially set up a tracker for you and your competition in a jiffy.  If you’re looking at tracking tools, you can also try twendz, and twitterfall.

3. How to find the most popular links on Twitter

If you’re a fan of PopURLs which lists the most popular content on the web, then you’ll certainly enjoy TwitURLs which is essentially all the most popular links, pictures and videos being shared on Twitter and updated every minute – which stays true to Twitter’s real-time nature.

4. How to group your contacts in Twitter

Once you start following a large number of people, conversations come in thick and fast, and it can be overwhelming if you try to keep up. 

One way to get around this is to use a Twitter client like Tweetdeck, where you can group your contacts up in a more organized manner.  For example, you can have all your ex-classmates in one column, and colleagues in another – that way it’s much easier to keep track of certain groups of people.

5. How to understand how much time you’re spending on Twitter

Want to know how much time you’re spending (sorry – investing), on Twitter?  Tweetstats is the perfect tool for analyzing usage patterns to see how you actually go about Tweeting information, how often you do it, when you do it, and what you tend to tweet about.  Another useful stats engine to consider is TwitterAnalyzer. 

6. How to find relevant people to follow on Twitter

Finding and following people outside your usual social circle can be an interesting way to branch out and meet new people.  This however is most useful when you’re connecting to people who have similar or relevant interests to you. 

My favorite is Mr.Tweet where it analyses your profile and helps your discover relevant people to follow.  Other Twitter directories like JustTweetIt, and WeFollow are also excellent ways to find people who match you to follow.

7. How to get Twitter basics right

If you’re completely new to Twitter, this PCMag article on the ‘Top 10 Twitter Tips for Beginners’ is an absolute must read.  This covers all the basics of how to start using Twitter effectively.  This article covers everything from retweeting to mobile tweeting. 

If you’re interested in learning how to build followers, you can always try these tips from Guy Kawasaki of Alltop.com and Kevin Rose of Digg.com.  If you need a twitter dictionary to help you with more twitter terms, try twittionary.

Hope those tips were helpful, and do follow me @friedbeef :)

How often do you tweet, and what do you Tweet about?  Tell us in the comments!

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Online video streaming has been the rage for some time now – and we can view countless videos through sites like YouTube and Metacafe – but what happens if you find a video you really like and would like to store it for offline viewing or to watch it on a mobile device?  Unfortunately, we are limited only to streaming as there is no option to download the videos on YouTube. Well, fret not as we have at our disposal easy-to-use tools that make downloading such videos possible.

1.  How to Download Videos with One Click

KeepVid.com is a web-based video downloader. Perfect for those who are on the go or do not wish to install additional applications on their computer, KeepVid oozes simplicity and idiot-proof video downloading. To download YouTube videos, simply copy the URL of the YouTube video page you wish to download, and paste it in the Keepvid Textbox. A link will then appear which allows you to save the .flv video file to your computer! As an added bonus, KeepVid can also download videos from several other video streaming services such as Metacafe.  It also comes with a bookmarklet so you can download any video you’re watching with one click.

2. How to Download Videos Directly from the URL Box

Another funky and ingenious method to download videos from YouTube is to add a kiss to the video you wish to download, literally! How would you do that? Simple, just add the word ‘kiss’ in front of the ‘youtube’ word in the URL and press enter. You will then be brought to the download page with a link to the .flv video. For example, say we want to download this Super Bowl video. The original URL would be “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jxyYwrKIKQ”. Now just add a kiss, and make it “http://www.kissyoutube.com/watch?v=9jxyYwrKIKQ” for the download. Simple as that! Java is required for this website to work, though.

3. How to Convert .flv Videos On The Fly

Now this is a tool you won’t want to miss! Vixy.net is both a web-based YouTube video downloader and converter! While many popular media players such as Windows Media Player and Quicktime aren’t capable of playing back .flv extensions (which YouTube videos are streamed in), Vixy.net solves those problems by offering a free conversion service along with any download. After entering the URL of the desired video, just choose the file type you wish to convert into (there is AVI, 3GP, and MOV, among others). This is a truly convenient way of making YouTube videos more accessible to other media players.

4. Where to Find YouTube Download Software

For those who fancy having gadgets and utilities lying around their computer desktops, YouTube Downloader is the perfect tool! As a free download from Download.com, this nifty little program can easily download YouTube videos – just copy and paste the video URL and press the button! Its additional feature includes a built-in video converter to convert downloaded .flv files into other more convenient formats.

5. Where to Find an Awesome Firefox Plugin to Download Videos

Firefox fans rejoice! Now there is a quick and convenient way to extract your favorite YouTube videos using this add-on. Besides YouTube, this plug-in supports other video streaming sites including Metacafe, Google Videos and Dailymotion, among others. Just surf like normal and when DownloadHelper detects a downloadable object, its icon will animate, allowing you to download the streaming video.

Would you download a youtube video?  Tell us in the comments!

This guest post was written by Chan HH.  If you’d like to write for Friedbeef’s Tech, just drop me a line.

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Internet users in the U.S. watched 12.7 billion online videos in November, an increase of 34 percent versus a year ago.  With that many videos available for viewing, it’s no surprise that search is becoming increasingly important.  Here are 7 different free ways to search and find the most relevant videos.

1. The best way to search YouTube with thumbnails

Inspired by compfight the Flickr search engine (which I love),  Wibe7.tv is a mosaic based search which displays a huge number of thumbnails on screen so you can do a quick visual search.  If you need more information, just hover your cursor over an image, and a description will appear. 

2. How to use freeware to speed up your searches

With Ashampoo Clipfinder, you can find and immediately download videos from YouTube, Veoh, Google Video, sevenload, Dailymotion, MySpace, MyVideo, ClipFish, and many more at the click of a mouse. 

3. How to search and avoid fake videos

Do a search for any popular subject and you may find yourself baited by spammers or pranksters who litter online video sites with fake videos.  One way to weed them out when you do a search is to use Videosurf.  What this gives you is a set of time-series thumbnails for the search results, so you can peer within the videos and can decide whether or not to load up the video.

4. How to search multiple sites at once

Many sites crawl and search multiple video sites but few do it as well as Purevideo.  This service goes beyond traditional video sites and crawls practically everything which has a video.  Arranged and categorized well, this is a great stop if you want to find videos.

5. How to add YouTube Search directly to Firefox

Firefox comes with a one-click solution where if you look at the search box at the top right of your screen, and see a glowing arrow, you can add search engines to the list.  So all you need to do it go to YouTube.com, and you’ll be able to click on the arrow and add YouTube video search.  From then on, you’ll be able to search within YouTube from the Firefox search box.

6. The quick and dirty way to search YouTube

YouTube Fastsearch is a homebrew webpage which uses a script to search and retrieve YouTube pages.  It works better than the original YouTube search engine for two reasons.  One, you can mouse over any video, and it will quick preview by showing you images within the video (this is another great way to avoid fake videos).  Two, you can watch the videos directly from the search page saving you the bandwidth of having to load up a fresh page every time you want to see another video. 

7. The coolest way to search YouTube

Cooliris has got to be the sexiest most elegant way to search YouTube.  Available for Firefox, IE7, Safari, it’s hard for me to do justice to the interface by describing it in text, so here’s a video of it in action :)

How do you search for videos online?  Tell us in the comments!

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It’s safe to say that Pandora and Last.fm has changed the face of Internet radio completely by doing such a good job of matching song playlists to users that it’s almost scary :)  Having said that, there’s always going to be a place for traditional Internet Radio stations because of their personality.  After all, many of us still enjoy tuning into a radio station every once in a while even though we’ve got our iPod loaded up.

The issue then lies in discovery, because of the sheer scale of Internet Radio where there are estimated to be at least 100,000 Internet Radio Stations streaming worldwide!  So how do you quickly pick out a station that you’ll probably like?  One Llama is a free service which allows you to discover Internet Radio Stations, by understanding what you like, then recommending relevant stations to you.

How One Llama understands your music tastes

By allowing you to search for artists or tracks, and showing you which stations have played them recently, it makes initial guesses as to what you may like.  If you choose to register for the service (you don’t have to – and registration is free anyway), One Llama will analyze the tracks you listen to online, and constantly refine its recommendations to continuously fine-tune its recommendations to you. 

How One Llama Makes its recommendations

Radio One Llama is constantly updating its database so that it "knows" the characteristics of each of over 30,000 stations, including their entire playlists.  It crawls Internet Radio stations and analyzes the data for patterns of similarity by artist, track and genre. They also have an accurate measure of what is being played when and where, and how often – so that users can search by location and popularity.  By matching what they know about the available music, and what you like – One Llama manages to come up with pretty good recommendations.

The Beef

Overall, this is a pretty useful service – and always useful to have up your sleeves in case your workplace bans Pandora and Last.fm :) .

Do you listen to streaming music online?  Tell us in the comments!

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Ever wonder if a particular website was really down, or if it was a bad Internet connection which was keeping you out?

downforeveryoneorjustme.com is an extremely simple free web service which tells you if the site is down from their end as well.  Just type in the web site’s name, press, a button – and presto – No more wondering if the rest of the world has the same problem as you :)

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Too many people have a great idea but don’t make anything out of it.

Some are afraid of failure, some are afraid of the pressures of success, and some just want to tell people about their ideas, just for the sake of doing so. Here is a general step-by-step guide to taking an idea and turning it into a business as detailed by Chuck of Foldees.com - the greeting card company with a web 2.0 model.

Once you get an Idea…

1. Talk - Share your idea with your friends. Don’t worry about someone stealing your idea. Feedback will triumph over excessive paranoia. Take all feedback objectively, but consider them all.

2. Write it down – Putting things down on paper gets a lot of things out of your head and onto an initial plan. Don’t worry about structure, all the analysis just yet. Put down everything that comes to your head first. Getting this out of the way paves a much easier path to sit down in the future and do up a proper business plan.

3. Assemble a team – Pick your people based on motivation, communication, and skills. The lack of any one of these attributes will result in a higher likelihood of your team not reaching its full potential and morale being affected adversely. Having an especially cohesive team is essential, as a start-up will take a much longer time to reach a point of big rewards.

5. Find a deadline – Make your own deadlines and set your own lofty targets. Break things down into small tasks each which its own deadline so that you at least make baby steps towards the final goal. Failure of this will likely result in procrastination and unnecessary slowdown of the project

6. Manage the team – Be decisive. Insist on reasonable commitments on team members, and don’t be afraid to seek out new blood if they don’t reach expected levels of commitment.

7. Rinse and repeat steps 5 and 6 until you get into business – Constantly seek out new goals to meet, and manage your team based on those goals on deadlines.

Simplistic as it sounds, these are practical steps that will move you in the right direction in a timely manner.

Want to learn more? If you’re in Malaysia/Singapore, come to BarcampJB Day 2 (7th Dec), if you’re not in the area – find a barcamp in a location near you coming soon!

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GreatSummary is a free web service which helps people turn information into understanding by providing a glimpse into the content of a document, without having to understand the entire document.

Just point it to a URL or input some text and GreatSummary will.. well… come up with a great summary of the text :)
What’s more is that you also get to pick how long you want the summary to be.

Oh yes – it also comes with a nifty firefox extension so you can summarize pages on the fly.

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Nowadays you can find almost any information on any person online.  An employer can learn his potential worker’s past records and recommendations. You can investigate a person’s character, friends, find his photos and videos. Alternatively you can look for no one in particular – searching for new connections with similar interests or professional goals. You can even look for a buddy to share a room or trip expenses.  So let’s go beyond ‘Google-ing’ someone and see how else people are searched and found over the Internet.

1. How to find people based on interest

PeopleJar is a service connects people through the networks of interests. You can search people by any combination of relevant attributes, you can create your own search and save it to let the system update you of new members meeting the search criteria.

2. How to aggregate results from several social networks

Wink.com is a social media profile aggregator and people search tool. It has now the ability to unite and crawl profiles from most popular social networking sites: MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc. The process looks like this: a person signs up with Wink, adds links to his profiles at any (or all) supported social media sites and thus gets into the search index.

3. How to search people by name using people search engines

Zoominfo.com focuses on business related information: it will look for the person as an employee of various companies. It has a fairly large database and you most likely to find relevant business related information on the person you are interested in.

Have you looked for people online?  Tell us your experience in the comments!

This is a guest post by Ann Smarty, who does SEO and Internet Marketing when she’s not writing for blogs-named-after-food.  Want to write for Friedbeef’s Tech and share your tips with thousands of people?  Drop me a line.  We’re looking for paid regulars, as well as guest appearances. 

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Thank You

Want a quick way to host images on your blog or share a picture?  Piccdrop is a free image hosting site which allows you to upload any image so you can hotlink to it, and save on bandwidth.  The best part?  It requires no registration, so it’s perfect for that spur of the moment when you need to put up something in an instant.

Is it safe? Piccdrop guarantees that they will continue to keep your images hosted on the site and will still allow direct hotlinking no matter what.  Which means that if it ever gets in any danger of going under, it will only stop allowing users to upload new images, and you don’t have to worry about broken links or lost images.

I’ve been looking for a suitable replacement for AllYouCanUpload ever since they stopped taking new uploads earlier this year.  Looks like I’ve found it.

What do you use to upload pictures online?  Let us know in the comments!

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Gadget Advisor is a new tech blog which is trying to build a sold niche for itself focusing on the product releases and news items that are the most significant, hoping to create a best of the best resource for computer hardware, software, gadgets, and tech news.  That way, it hopes to cut through the chaff for its visitors to make a better reading experience for their readers. 

So you get a feel for what their site is about, you should check these posts out:

• 20+ best Firefox extentions
• A universal remote to control multiple devices
• An evaluation of options to backup online

What’s good

Some of the articles like the ‘Firefox recommendations’ post listed above, provide some useful tips which can really come in handy.  As for the layout, it’s pleasing to the eye, and it’s quite easy to navigate.

What could be improved

Too much of the site is general tech news.  My take is that if you’re going to start a tech news site, make sure you either have a ton of resources behind you, or you have a truly deep niche, so deep that mainstream tech sites won’t cover those subjects.   The reason behind this is that it’s near impossible to outdo mainstream news sites like Techcrunch or Endagdget in terms of coming up with the latest and greatest tech news.  The value of ‘news’, is largely time driven, and if you’re one step behind – old (even slightly older) news being blogged has lost a lot of value.

GadgetAdvisor has some great posts,  so if anything I would advise them to concentrate on building up content like that which is much less time-sensitive. 

All in all, it’s a useful site, do check it out – but I definitely feel it can be improved. 

Do you agree with my assessment of GadgetAdvisor.com?  Let me know in the comments!

Disclaimer: GadgetAdvisor.com has paid me to review their service, and to give an honest opinion.  Please note that all opinions expressed in this post are completely my own, and have not been influenced by the GadgetAdvisor.com in any way.

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Typical cropping has sharp edges and won’t give your images the artistic cropping it deserves :)

Roundpic is a free web based service which helps give your images nice round corners that look very web 2.0…

So you can change something like this…

… to this!

Happy cropping!

ps. These awesome pictures of ‘Star Wars in urban environments’ are from Cedric Delsaux.  Get the full collection of pictures here!

Do you like rounded corners on your pictures?  Let us know in the comments!

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Kiva.org, the Internet’s answer to helping poor people make a better life for themselves, made two significant moves yesterday.  If you don’t know about Kiva – check out this previous post on how it helps change lives. 

1. Loan repayment system faster and better

Kiva will now return repayments to lenders as soon as those repayments are received by Kiva. Because of this change, you’ll be able to re-lend funds right away instead of waiting until the end of the loan term.

This is a huge deal because this liquidity allows lenders to help more people at a faster rate than before.

2. Join a group – make a difference as a team

One of the most powerful things about Kiva is the community of lenders. You now have the option to connect with other lenders.

Members of Kiva Lending Teams continue lending as individuals, but they have the option to count each loan they make towards the overall impact of one of their teams.

Band together and raise your team’s profile within Kiva and build a stronger connection between members.  Whether you’re part of a society, club, company, forum or just part of a local community, banding together for this common good brings us all closer together. 

If you’re Malaysian, you can join the ‘Malaysia’ group that I’ve just set up and help raise Malaysia’s profile within Kiva. 

If you’re not Malaysian, search for like-minded people or people in your area who are active in Kiva.  You can even start your own group!

Make a difference today!

ps. This blog is an ongoing supporter of Kiva with contributions going to poor entrepreneurs in need every month. 

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