Twitter spam can be quite a problem when you tend to follow people back out of courtesy.  There are literally tons of bots and fake accounts out there who are merely interested in selling you dodgy pharmaceutical goods, and questionable MLM schemes.  Here are the top 10 free tools for dealing with Twitter Spam. 

1. How to sniff out potential spammers

TwitBlock is a web app which scans your entire twitter base and provides ‘spam ratings’ to each follower and sorts them according to accounts which are most likely spam.  You can then easily check on their account & block them right away they are spammers. 

2. How to quickly delete DMs from spammers

Spammers have a terrible tendency to either send your auto-DMs or flood your twitter DM inbox.  What you can do to combat this, is to use DM Deleter, a simple bookmarklet and quickly remove all DMs from any given user.

3. How to automatically grade your twitter followers

It’s often too troublesome to analyze each and every twitter follower to determine if they are legit.  TweetBlocker is a tool which grades all your followers based on likelyhood of spam so you can quickly zoom down to certain lower grades (eg. F grade followers) and block them all at once.

4. How to detect and unfollow inactive accounts

Technically this isn’t spam, but inactive followers just adds to clutter.  If they’re not going to say anything on Twitter, why bother following them?  UnTweeps helps you list down all the twitter accounts which hasn’t tweeted recently (you can define this range), and allows you to instantly unfollow them.

5. How to not get spam – a preventive measure

Twitter etiquette be damned, if you don’t know the person, you shouldn’t be obliged to follow them back.  This unwritten common courtesy rule of following someone back made sense back in the day when Twitter was small and relatively pure.  Now, this behavior just makes you an easy target for spammers who just want to you mutually follow each other to push products on you.

6. How to analyze your followers properly

If you’re going to report someone as a spammer on twitter, you may at least want to check their profile out first. Tweetpi Geeky Cleanup has one of the most comprehensive follower stats I’ve ever seen.  From how many replies a user has sent (to measure interaction), to the links tweeted ratio (to avoid ramblers), to the number of times they were retweeted by others(to measure credibility), you really get a full suite of info at your disposal.

7. How to manage the people you’re following

While some services focus on analyzing follwers, Twerpscan analyzes both followers and people you’re following and allows you to bulk block and unfollow people you think are spammers based on their usage patterns.

8. How to search Twitter and get clean results

The problem with searching for popular twitter topics is that spammers also know what the popular topics are, and tend to use their hashtags in their tweets just for the sake of showing up in other people’s searches. 

You can get cleaner results by using Clean Tweets, a Firefox extension which eliminates twitter search results from twitter accounts less than 24 hours old, those with have several hashtags, and allows you to ban people altogether from search results.

9. How to monitor Twitter topics without being overwhelmed by spam

Tidytweet is a twitter search and feed monitoring service which works a lot like Clean Tweets, but is much more flexible.  It allows you to create customized RSS searches, and allows you to to automatically remove all retweets, @replies, foreign language tweets, tweets from new accounts, and tweets with multi-hastags.

10. How to report spam to twitter

This is perhaps one of the most direct ways to deal with spam.  You can either report a spammer by going to his profile and clicking ‘report as spammer’ on the right sidebar, or you can also send a DM to the @spam twitter account and it will help you take care of things.  This method works best when you’re reporting people on an adhoc basis because most of the tools above involve bulk actions.

How do you deal with Twitter spam?  Tell us in the comments :)

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How to you save the world and get free stuff at the same time?  Well now you can do just that. 

Since past giveaways on this site have been going pretty well, I’ve initiated a new project for Friedbeef’s Tech, and it’s called the 33 trees project.  The mechanics are simple:

1. Sponsor plants 33 trees via Mokugift in exchange for the rights to give something away on this site
2. Readers get free stuff

Objective

Our aim is to plant 1,000 trees by the end of the year – and we need you to help us! 

Reader’s benefit and how you can help

Your benefit as a reader:

• You get to help plant trees.  These giveaways work mainly because sponsors see the demand and exposure it brings them.  The more you participate, the more you support this tree planting project.  Who knows?  Maybe next year this project may just be called the 100 Trees Giveaway Project.
• You get free commercial quality stuff which otherwise would have cost a fair bit of money

How you can help:

Just participate for free :) 

Here are our first two sponsor giveaways: Totaling USD$524 amount in value

They have planted 33 trees each *applause*.  Feel free to participate in either one or both of these giveaways!

• Blinksale – An amazingly simple and elegant online invoicing service
• iTypetoGo – A handy iPhone app which allows you to type while you walk

Would you like to sponsor the planting of 33 trees?  Check out out our project guidelines.

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33 Trees Giveaway Project

Giveaway: iType2Go: Text on Your iPhone While Walking

Giveaway: Blinksale: The Easiest Way to Send Invoices Online

Charity

6 Innovative Ways to Save Trees Online

What is it?

Blinksale is an incredibly simple and elegant way of sending invoices online.  It’s fully featured, allows easy formatting of invoices, tracking, and has an open API and integrates with other cool tools like Paypal, Basecamp, and Tempo. 

What I really love about it is not so much the features, but it’s minimalist simplicity in getting things done.  The layout is intuitive, and you can automate everything from billing, reminders, thank you notes, tax calculations and more so you never have to worry about them again.  The learning curve for this product is literally zero. 

Even if you only send out a few invoices every month, it just makes life a whole lot easier.

The giveaway

• 1 Gold account for 1 year worth USD288
• 1 Silver account for 1 year worth USD144
• 1 Bronze account for 1 year worth USD72

…and we’re giving it away for free to 3 lucky Friedbeef.com readers thanks to the kind folks at Blinksale.

How to Get It: 

3 readers will be selected randomly to receive this giveaway.  To be eligible:

Just leave a comment on this post letting us know you want it

OR

tweet this post and tag #friedbeefgifts

Well actually you can do both to increase your chances :) We’ll do the prize drawing a week from now.

This post is part of our 33 trees giveaway project – where sponsors plant 33 trees in exchange for the right to giveaway products.  Your participation saves the world (and gets you free stuff)

Update: Giveaway closed: Congrats to the winners

1. Gold account: m.s.
2. Silver account: David
3. Bronze account: Rahul

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Giveaway: iType2Go: Text on Your iPhone While Walking

Christmas Giveaway: More than USD 1,200 Worth of Products now FREE

33 Trees Giveaway Project

8 FREE Ways to Send Large Files Online

This handy little app was nominated by David Pogue in the NYTimes, as one of 2009’s best tech ideas.  It superimposes what you’re typing over a live camera view, so you can see where you’re going even while you’re focused on the screen.  You can use it to text while walking, enjoying the scenery, or when you’re trying to keep a face to face conversation with your girlfriend…  Oh wait, that last bit won’t work very well  (Follow this set of guidelines, on ‘When Is It Inappropriate to Use Your iPhone’ and you can’t go wrong). 

Anyhow, once you type your message, you can opt to send it to twitter/facebook/SMS or email just with one single click.  So easy!

The giveaway

10 free copies of iType2Go Pro thanks to the kind folks at XcoolApps

How to Get It:  :

Just leave a comment on this post letting us know you want it.  The FIRST 10 people who do so will win a free copy of iType2Go Pro! Updated: Giveaway Complete
Winners:

Berg
Jim Fry
Luis
ha14
Alvin Bruce
Ryan
CS420
Granny
paulcrousel
john

Thanks everyone for participating – do continue to leave comments in support, and do check out the product.

This post is part of our 33 trees giveaway project – where sponsors plant 33 trees in exchange for the right to giveaway products.  Your participation saves the world (and gets you free stuff)

---
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Getting a good night’s sleep can be incredibly elusive for many people out there.  While you’ve probably read many articles on how to sleep better, here are several free tools you can try out, which will help you get a good rest.

1. How to automatically adjust the brightness of your screen to help you sleep better

Without going too much into medical jargon, it’s well known fact that melatonin helps you get sleepy, and is production is inhibited by light.  That’s why many articles out there discourage the use of the computer just before you sleep because of the brightness of the screen.

F.lux is an amazing free tool which sits in the background (with a very tiny memory footprint) which plays with your screen settings to match the time of the day.  It will make your computer screen look like the room you’re in, all the time.

When the sun sets, it makes your computer look like your indoor lights. In the morning, it makes things look like sunlight again.  Tell f.lux what kind of lighting you have, and where you live. Then forget about it. F.lux will do the rest, automatically.  Highly recommended.

2. How to track your sleeping patterns easily

Yawnlog is a cool website where you can set targets and track your sleep so you understand your sleeping patterns and relevant activity.  If you keep up with it for a few weeks, you may just understand what type of activities cause you sleeping problems, and how much sleep you’re missing from it as a result. 

It also has a social element which allows you to share your sleep and track how other people are sleeping. 

3. How to use white noise to help you sleep

If you took all of the tones and frequencies that a human could hear and combined them together, you would have white noise.  The result is simple static sound which in many cases aids sleep because the brain can tune it out quite easily as background noise, and it masks other sounds.

My favorite place to get white noise is SimplyNoise, a cool online tool which allows you to choose the type and intensity of white noise.  On top of that, it lets you download free MP3s as well so you can enjoy gapless playback offline or on your iPod .

4. How to get relaxing zen ambient loops to help you sleep

Zendesk FM3 Buddha Machine Wall is a web based tool which provides some extremely relaxing ambient sounds.  You can even combine together to make the perfect relaxation zen loop for you to relax.  Think of it as a web version of the extremely successful transistor radio toy launched in 2005

5. Where to read some supertips on how to sleep better

Here are some extremely good reading blogposts how to sleep better.  Tech tools are good, but works even better when supplemented with these techniques.

• Top 10 Ways to Sleep Smarter and Better
• 10 Tips For A Good Night’s Sleep Without Pills
• 10 Foolproof Tips for Better Sleep

6. How to use your iPhone to help you sleep better

Well, it goes without saying that there’s an app for this problem :)  Custom Sounds of Nature Lite is a soothing free iPhone app which allows you to listen to some ambient noise to help you sleep.

7. How to generate ambient sounds using a Mac to help you sleep better

dlooch is a free Mac OSX dashboard app which generates evolving ambient sounds.  This means that you won’t be looping the same sounds over and over again, but instead have them sound as natural as possible.

Do you have any sleeping tips?  Share them with us in the comments :)

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If you have a whole bunch of photos to share, it may be easier or even more fun to pull them altogether into a neat little collage.  Here are 3 online tools which work directly from your browser, all free – which will help you do just that.

1. How to make collages with the photos on your PC

Photovisi is a free online service which allows you to pick one of many collage template and then launches an in-browser interface where you can quickly add pictures. 

My favorite part about this service is that it you don’t need to upload entire photos (which can take very long if your photos are high-res) in order to make it work.  It is intelligent enough to create and use thumbnails from your pictures on-the-fly so that adding pictures from your computer is incredibly speedy.  No installation or registration needed.

2. How to make collages with photos already online

Shape Collage takes photos found on any webpage and instantly turns it into a collage.  The beauty of this is that it you don’t need to point it to Flickr or particular photo site for it to work.  Just point it to ANY site, and it will crawl the page and make use of the pictures.  Plus, you get to make all kinds of interesting shapes for collages.

There’s also a free desktop edition which allows you to play with your pictures offline.

3. How to edit photos and make simple collages online

Picture2Life is a free service which allows you to make simple edits to your photos before you collage them.  Available on multiple platforms, it has a facebook as well as a made for iPhone interface, and a Firefox extension so you can collage from wherever you feel most comfortable.

Do you create photo collages online?  Tell us about it in the comments

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Gmail, Yahoo, Msn and other email providers do not allow users to send large files by email. The maximum limit in all of these email services is 20 MB – which isn’t a lot if you want to send movies, videos, or large files.  The following is a list of free ways to send large files online. 

1. How to Send Multiple Large Files at Once

File Factory lets you upload files of 300 MB size. The convenient thing about File Factory is that you can upload multiple files (up to 25) at once. You can upload files from your Computer or from a remote server. The premium account lets you upload files from FTP or using a torrent file.

2. How to Send Large Files Without Even Registering an Account

YouSendIt is another file sharing service that has become popular in recent times. It lets you upload and share files of sizes 100 MB each. The site contains an email form and you can send an email containing your file from the home page itself where your uploaded file is available for download for only 7 days

3. How to Send Large Files via Firefox Extension

Another file sharing service is Drop.io which lets you upload files of sizes 100 MB each. The files uploaded can be downloaded any number of times and you can also password protect your files to retain privacy. If you are a Firefox fan you can use the Drop.io Firefox add-on.

4. How to Send and Password Protect Large Files for Security

TransferBigFiles lets you send large files of size 1 GB each by email. The files can be password protected and you can add a personal note to the email you send to the recipients. When your friends download the file, you will receive email notifications which is a feature. You can send the uploaded file to multiple email recipients with a single click.

5. How to Send up to 5GB Files for Free

The service which allows the biggest file to be sent in the list is File Dropper. This site lets you send files as large as 5 GB in size. You can upload movies, videos, executables, photos and possibly any type of file with File Dropper. The only downside with File Dropper is that you cannot upload multiple files at once.

After the upload is complete, you are given a personal link of the uploaded file. Just copy that link and you can email the link to your friends so that they can download it. There are no sign ups or registrations involved with File dropper. However, signing up has its own benefits as you will be able to keep track of your files, add password protection, mark files as private and delete files later on.

6. How to Email Large Files Without Having to Upload Them Anywhere

Tonsho is an interesting twist to the service.  Rather than uploading files yourself, you can use a normal email client such as Microsoft outlook and Thunderbird, and send your email normally.  Your email will then pass through Tonsho servers and if the attachments are too large, it will automatically upload it to a server, and provide the recipient a link. 

While this takes a lot of hassle away from the whole process, you have to be wary of email security.  I’m not sure I’m comfortable passing my email through anyone else’s server.

7. How to Send Large Files Using a Desktop Client

Dropsend is a free service which allows you to send files up to 2GB large.  While most of these web-upload interfaces work well, for me, nothing beats a desktop client.  It just feels more robust, and its certainly more comforting to use when you’re spending a few hours sending a very large file.

8. How to Send Large Files and Tweet them from your Phone or Desktop

FileSocial is one of the easiest ways to share files on twitter.  Just attach your file and a link will be posted to your file.  Sharesend is another alternative for this, but I’m wary about their non-usage of OAuth for twitter, so I’d recommend Filesocial if you want to send and tweet securely.

This post was written by Abhishek Palit who also writes other useful tips at his blog Softtricks, and James Yeang.  Do you want to write for Friedbeef’s Tech?

Which services do you prefer to send large files? Do let us know your views and suggestions through a comment.

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Hello everyone, Merry Christmas & Happy New Year! 

As we close out the year and celebrate this blog’s 4th anniversary in the next few days, we want to say THANK YOU to all readers for visiting this blog.

To mark the occasion, we have arranged a big product giveaway worth more than USD1,200 exclusive to Friedbeef.com readers!

For more details, do check out the relevant giveaway blog posts below.  Feel free to enter as many of the giveaways as you like :) We’ll do the prize drawing on New Year’s day.

• GIVEAWAY: Audials One: Rip Audio Streams into MP3 Files
• GIVEAWAY: Smart PDF Converter Pro: Convert PDF into DOC files
• GIVEAWAY: TUN3R iPhone App: Discover Music Based on Your Tastes
• GIVEAWAY: Windows 7 Classic Start Menu: Classic Startmenu UI for Win7

Update: Contests closed

Thanks everyone for participating. We had a good response of more than 170 entries for this round, so we’ll see what we can do to get more freebies in for you guys so we can do more giveaways in the coming months :)

If you’re looking for contest winners, please check the individual posts for more details.

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GIVEAWAY: Windows 7 Classic Start Menu: Classic Startmenu UI for Win7

GIVEAWAY: TUN3R iPhone App: Discover Music Based on Your Tastes

GIVEAWAY: Audials One: Rip Audio Streams into MP3 Files

Giveaway: Blinksale: The Easiest Way to Send Invoices Online

What is it?

AudialsOne is a commercial music suite which has one killer feature.  It can record everything you hear on any website or streaming application and automatically saves the file as a new MP3 on your computer.  You can also do this in batch style where you can also just search by genre, artist or song title and AudialsOne will scour the internet for streams which are playing relevant material and record them to your PC as well.

AudialsOne takes care of DRM copy protection and file format problems with music  and audio book files via its PerfectAudio quality guarantee

The giveaway

Worth USD59.90 each, but we’re giving it away to 10 lucky Friedbeef.com readers thanks to our sponsors :)

How to Get It: 

10 readers will be selected randomly to receive this giveaway.  To be eligible:

Just leave a comment on this post

OR

tweet this post and tag #friedbeefgifts

You can do both to increase your chances :) We’ll do the prize drawing on New Year’s day.

This post is part of our Christmas giveaway bonanza to say THANK YOU for reading this blog – Do check out our OTHER seasonal giveaways and feel free to enter as many of them as you like.

Update: CONTEST CLOSED

Here are the lucky 10 winners as selected by Random.Org:

1. alex
2. Ryan Schwartz
3. mlweg3
4. enusri
5. Rafael Capucci
6. vhick
7. Hady
8. jelson
9. Keshav
10. David

I’ll be in contact with you shortly to distribute your prizes. Thank you everyone for entering the giveaway :)

---
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GIVEAWAY: Smart PDF Converter Pro: Convert PDF into DOC files

GIVEAWAY: Windows 7 Classic Start Menu: Classic Startmenu UI for Win7

GIVEAWAY: TUN3R iPhone App: Discover Music Based on Your Tastes

Giveaway: Blinksale: The Easiest Way to Send Invoices Online

What is it?

Converting any document to PDF is fairly straightforward.  Going the other way around however, is much tougher especially when trying to reproduce the original layout of the PDF in a Microsoft Word file.  Smart PDF Converter is a commercial grade software which does just that.  Aside from Doc and MS-Word files, it also supports PDF conversion to other file formats like HTML, TXT, XLS, JPEG.

The giveaway

Worth USD69.90 each, but we’re giving it away to 7 lucky Friedbeef.com readers thanks to our sponsors :)

How to Get It: 

7 readers will be selected randomly to receive this giveaway.  To be eligible:

Just leave a comment on this post

OR

tweet this post and tag #friedbeefgifts

You can do both to increase your chances :) We’ll do the prize drawing on New Year’s day.

This post is part of our Christmas giveaway bonanza to say THANK YOU for reading this blog – Do check out our OTHER seasonal giveaways and feel free to enter as many of them as you like.

Updated: CONTEST CLOSED

Here are the lucky 7 winners as selected by Random.Org:

1. my_immortalize
2. phobos
3. vhick
4. syafiq
5. hunter
6. Spinzer
7. Taiwan Student

I’ll be in contact with you shortly to distribute your prizes. Thank you everyone for entering the giveaway :)

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What is it?

With last.fm and Pandora shutting its doors to many international users, TUN3R is an alternative  iPhone internet radio app for the TUN3R web service which picks and streams radio stations based on your music tastes.  Certainly a great way to discover new music. 

The giveaway

Worth USD2.99 each, but we’re giving it away to 5 lucky Friedbeef.com readers thanks to our sponsors :)

How to Get It:

5 readers will be selected randomly to receive this giveaway.  To be eligible:

Just leave a comment on this post

OR

tweet this post and tag #friedbeefgifts

You can do both to increase your chances :) We’ll do the prize drawing on New Year’s day.

This post is part of our Christmas giveaway bonanza to say THANK YOU for reading this blog – Do check out our OTHER seasonal giveaways and feel free to enter as many of them as you like.

Updated: CONTEST CLOSED

Here are the lucky 5 winners as selected by Random.Org:

1. John
2. yumpstyler
3. byflipper
4. pg
5. Joe

I’ll be in contact with you shortly to distribute your prizes :)

---
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What is it?

Classic Start Menu is an alternative to the Windows 7 Start Menu. It emulates the old classic start menu which we’re all familiar with.  Useful if you don’t like the Windows7 Start Menu and long for the ‘good old days’.

The giveaway

Worth USD19.99 each, but we’re giving it away to 5 lucky Friedbeef.com readers thanks to our sponsors :)

How to Get It: 

5 readers will be selected randomly to receive this giveaway.  To be eligible:

Just leave a comment on this post

OR

tweet this post and tag #friedbeefgifts

You can do both to increase your chances :) We’ll do the prize drawing on New Year’s day.

This post is part of our Christmas giveaway bonanza to say THANK YOU for reading this blog – Do check out our OTHER seasonal giveaways and feel free to enter as many of them as you like.

UPDATED: Contest Closed

: Here are the lucky 5 winners as picked by Random.org:

1. Leland
2. Dee
3. Evan Hahn
4. Ronald G. Freeman
5. Senthil Kumar

Congratulations guys, and I’ll get in touch with you shortly.

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It is estimated that unwanted electronics represents 1.9 to 2.2 million tons in the US alone. The majority of these products, about 1.5 to 1.9 million tons, were discarded in landfills with only 345,000 to 379,000 tons recycled. The end result isn’t pretty. E-waste is toxic and 40% of heavy metals – such as lead, mercury, cadmium – in our landfills comes from the disposal of electronic equipment. 

Here are 9 cool web services which pay you for trading in your phone (or other old gadgets) you have lying around.  In order to help you pick one, we did a head to head acid test by picking 3 phones and comparing payouts from trading in each phone, from each site.

The Acid Test

• 1 high end: iPhone 3G (2nd Gen) 16GB
• 1 mid range: Blackberry Curve 8310
• 1 low end: Nokia 1110

All slightly used but good working condition.  All carrier unlocked.  All with the box and everything that comes with it (chargers, manuals, cables etc)

1. How to get the best trade-in deals quickly: BuyMyTronics

BuyMyTronics first started of as BuyMyBrokeniPod.com several years ago when we first wrote about them a couple of years ago.  Since then they’ve gone from strength to strength and have expanded to cover all forms of consumer electronics and they have one the highest payouts around. 

It has a brilliant search-as-you-type interface which makes it absolutely a breeze to find whatever you’re looking for and the payout rates are among the best.  I guess a good testament to how their service is, is that if you go back to that old post we did 2 years ago, all the other services we wrote about have shut down, while BuyMyTronics now turns over a million dollars in revenue, and have expanded into multiple categories (all that while being 100% windmill powered too). 

Acid Test Results:  What you get for trading in…

• iPhone 3G 16GB USD206
• Blackberry Curve 8310 USD65
• Nokia 1110 USD0

2. How to come together as a group to combat e-waste: RecyclingFundraiser

RecyclingFundraiser is a service which also takes in all kinds of electronics, and even accepts jewelry for trade-in!  What I really like about them is the fact that they mainly promote community recycling.  In fact they have a whole resource library for running your own recycling fundraiser, so now you can help the environment, raise awareness about e-waste and trade in for cash to help another good cause at the same time.

Acid Test Results:  What you get for trading in…

• iPhone 3G 16GB USD75
• Blackberry Curve 8310 USD25
• Nokia 1110 USD3

3. How to get store credit with your old gadgets : C.Exchange

This service has pretty decent payouts, and also ties into a large selection of retailers including Radioshack and CompUSA for store credit.  Just a note that when I tested, I noticed you in many cases, you get a better payout opting for cash rather than store credit.

Acid Test Results:  What you get for trading in…

• iPhone 3G 16GB USD191.74
• Blackberry Curve 8310 USD57.39
• Nokia 1110 : NA

4. How to get money even when your friends trade in old gadgets: EZTradein

EZTradein is like a typical trade-in site, but it also has an affiliate program which offers 3% of all sales made to the center coming from your affiliate link.

Acid Test Results:  What you get for trading in…

• iPhone 3G 16GB USD106
• Blackberry Curve 8310 USD48.78
• Nokia 1110 : NA

5. How to get the best trade-in deals and help plant a tree: Flipswap

Flipswap or Greenphone offers some of the best trade-in prices as well.  They also have a separate program which ties up with retailers and plants a tree for every transaction made with their instore program.  This is expected to result in 250,000 trees planted in 2009.

Acid Test Results:  What you get for trading in…

• iPhone 3G 16GB USD230.75
• Blackberry Curve 8310 USD49
• Nokia 1110 USD USD5.60

6. How to recycle gadgets and help a good cause: YouRenew

Aside from the typical trade-ins, YouRenew will also donate towards a Renewable Energy Certificate, or plant a tree on top of paying you for your goods. 

Acid Test Results:  What you get for trading in…

• iPhone 3G 16GB USD179
• Blackberry Curve 8310 USD55
• Nokia 1110 : NA

7. How to sell in bulk: Gazelle

On top of the usual gadget trade-ins Gazelle also caters to volume selling so if you’re an organization, school or business, you may be able to get a better bulk deal there.

Acid Test Results:  What you get for trading in…

• iPhone 3G 16GB USD196
• Blackberry Curve 8310 USD48
• Nokia 1110 : USD0

Other online recycle centers:

8. MyBoneYard

A basic recycling site.  Average payouts.

Acid Test Results:  What you get for trading in…

• iPhone 3G 16GB USD148
• Blackberry Curve 8310 USD51
• Nokia 1110 : USD0

9. ecoNew

Econew ties into a few retailers but it’s not as flexible as some of the other services here.

Acid Test Results:  What you get for trading in…

• iPhone 3G 16GB USD85
• Blackberry Curve 8310 USD51
• Nokia 1110 USD0

VERDICT:

Bottom line:

The top two choices based on payout seem to be BuyMyTronics and Flipswap, both which give the best trade-in rates based on our acid test. 

However, do check out the other services as well because most of them offer their own unique spin.  No matter what you pick however, give yourself a pat on the back for keeping one more gadget out of the landfill.

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Aspiring writers, freelancers, bloggers and students take note! There’s a new war against plagiarism heightened by the recent rash of content theft, more notably amongst bloggers and freelance journalists.  Here are 5 simple detect plagiarism of your content.

1. How to Look for Copies of your Work Online

Undoubtedly the most well known in the field for fast, accurate searches, Copyscape is every plagiarist’s nightmare! It functions by finding sites that have copied content without permission simply by typing in your URL.  Copyscape is free, but has a premium edition that allows more powerful tools like batch Search, which you can use to check your entire site for copies in a single click, up to 10,000 pages.

2. How to Detect Plagiarism in the Work of Others

Article Checker has been around for a long time, as its classic look belies. However, the adage “old is gold” certainly holds true, as this site has been time-tested to be reliable in what it claims to do. Simply copy and paste the text of the article you want to search for, and Article Checker will scour either Google, Yahoo, or both for signs of plagiarism online. This can be useful if you’re an editor trying to root out the “real” writers from the “copy & paste”-rs.

Alternatively you may also want to check out The Plagiarism Checker developed by the University of Maryland which processes documents and intelligently decides which phrases to searches on.

3. How to Remove the Possibility of being Falsely Accused of Plagiarism: College Students Alert!

Created with college students in mind, PlagiarismDetect is a relatively new site which requires registration for a free account. It promises detection for text and phrases to ensure assignments are 100% original, which means that students can now think ahead to prevent being wrongly accused of plagiarism. However, that’s not to say that others can’t benefit from its services as well.

It even supports document uploads so you can just send it your entire assignment for it to be processed.  The site has proven to be accurate and encourages users to use it on a regular basis as newer and more advanced features are being added to it by the day.

4. How to check for Plagiarism using Yahoo! Search

This site has received numerous recommendations all over the web, so it’s worth a shot. Plagium is a reliable site which has makes use of Yahoo’s Search API to search the Internet for plagiarism. As far as efficiency is concerned, ratings have shown that it does nearly as well as CopyScape Premium, so you can rest assured that it will deliver results.

It has a clean and simple interface which doesn’t support ads, so for all those ad-haters out there, this site is especially for you. Just make sure to donate a little to support their cause.

5. How to Root Out Plagiarism Offenders…and Get Your Fair Share of Money!

Fair Share is a free service site that helps detect plagiarism via RSS feeds. In a matter of seconds, you’ll get results in a personalized RSS feed encompassing billions of websites. Targeted at bloggers and Webmasters who want to keep track of how their content is being used, by whom and where, Fair Share works with Creative Commons licenses to sniff out where content reappears, how often it is used and whether the content is linked or not.

An excellent choice for bloggers and others who can’t afford or don’t have the time to use a more advanced system. Plus, as the above picture suggests, you can even demand payment from the ad networks who run the plagiarized content!

Bonus Links for Reference

• 13 Simple Tactics to Prevent, Detect Content Plagiarism – A great preventive guide on how to deal with content plagiarism
• WordPress Plugin: Digital Fingerprint — detecting content theft – An awesome wordpress plugin which helps you track down content stolen from you
• Reduce Content Theft with WP-CopyRight Pro Wordpress Plugin – A wordpress plugin which disables copying from your site (I’ll leave it to you to decide if it’s too extreme and whether it hurts you more in the long run)
• How to Report Abuse to WordPress.com – A guide to reporting spam and abuse to Wordpress.com
• How to Deal with Online Plagiarism: When People Copy your Blog Articles Without Permission – An excellent step by step manual on how to deal with plagiarism when it happens to you.
• Plagiarism Today – An up to date resource on the topic

This article was written by Aaron Pek & James Yeang.  Contact me if you wish to become a writer for this blog.

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Everyone knows how to tell how much battery power their iPhone has.  Just look at the battery meter – and read :)

What most people don’t know however is what that number actually means when it comes to usage.  Let’s say you have 40% battery power remaining. 

• Do you know how many songs you can listen to?
• or how much you can surf the web?
• or how many videos you can watch?

The awesome app

BattPowr is an iPhone app which tells you exactly that. 

Here are some key features:

• calculates the remaining time for different usages, including: audio playback, video playback, web browsing on Wi-Fi, EDGE and 3G, as well as talk time on both 2G and 3G networks
• accurate information on remaining battery time
• checks device type before estimating remaining time
• beautifully designed interface, multiple skins & large visual indicators
• battery image animates while device is charging
• always on mode when charging, see your device charge itself
• support for ALL iPhone & iPod touch models

The giveaway

This app goes for USD$1.99 but the kind folks at xcoolapps, have kindly given me 20 FREE copies to distribute to readers of this blog :)

How to win it? – All you have to do is drop a comment below indicating that you want this app and I’ll send you the redemption code.

The first 20 people get this app for FREE!  Hurry and drop your comment now!

ps. If you like the app, please make sure you give it a good review on iTunes!

ps. This offer is only valid for a US iTunes account.  If you don’t live in the US, you can still set up a US iTunes account in 2 minutes for free by following this tutorial.

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