reeferss.com

ReefeRSS -- a free service that (with a bit of javascript added to your site) collects information about how many hits you get and where they came from. You can then subscribe to that information in an RSS feed, or view it on a web page. It also shows you which page on your site they entered through last.

Scanr

Scanr - Scan, copy and fax with your camera phone or digital camera. Automatically cleans photos of whiteboards and documents, tags documents with extracted keywords, delivers the results as PDF files or faxes.

xtort.net freeware

Prio

Prio is a freeware "Process Priority Saver", which allows you to save the priority you specify for any process.

Untraceable VoIP

VoIP TalkFree announced a new new, $250 service called the Web Dialer that enables phone calls over the internet that CANNOT BE TRACED. It also doesn't require any software installed on the PC, other than Java. You access it with a simple URL. China, Iran, Cuba: This is your new international phone company!

Untraceable, No-Software VoIP Hits

The best is yet to be

...a software product that could dare to say, Heroic System Recovery!

Have no fear. SuperDuper v2.1 is here!

SuperDuper is the wildly acclaimed program that makes recovery painless, because it makes creating a fully bootable backup painless. Its incredibly clear, friendly interface is understandable, easy to use, and SuperDuper's built-in scheduler makes it trivial to back up automatically. And it runs beautifully on both Intel and Power PC Macs!

SuperDuper's interface confirms all your actions in simple, clear language to ensure that the end result is exactly what you intended.

I'll put that in my shirt pocket.

802.11s mesh networking standard

Engadget says, In a move all but totally shocking to these jaded writers, two wireless standard groups, SEEMesh (backed by Intel, Nokia, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo and TI) and the Wi-Mesh Alliance (backed by Nortel, Philips, and Thomson, among others) have actually come together in peace and love to combine their proposals for the IEEE 802.11s mesh networking standard into one single draft. Now, we all know how wack tech forums can delay standards ratifications -- or sometimes circumvent the process from occurring entirely -- which is why it's so nice that these guys took 802.11n's lead, kissed, made up, and came together to put the technology before the royalties.

Oh, so what exactly is the 802.11s mesh networking standard do, you ask? It's a few things to a lot of companies, but it'll first be a boon to metropolitan WiFi networks, so base-stations will have a standard method of communications both to nodes (802.11a/b/g) and to each other (802.11s) when moving around data. Of course, that doesn't help cities that have already rolled out WiFi, but pre-S gear getting sold to cities rolling out in the near future could probably be expected to cut costs and increase speed to nodes.

• Read

Brainfuel

Boot up Windows before you log in

If you don’t use any Windows XP login security, then you can skip this article. Otherwise, if you are like many Windows XP users who have to enter a password every time their computer sluggishly boots up, then read this!

Persistent Search

Bill Burnham thinks it is the next battleground.

Persistent Search allows users to enter a search query just once and then receive constant, near real-time, automatic updates whenever new content that meets their search criteria is published on the web. For example, let's say you are a stock trader and you want to know whenever one of the stocks in your portfolio is mentioned on the web. By using a persistent search query, you can be assured that you will receive a real-time notification whenever one of your stocks is mentioned. Or perhaps you are a teenager who is a rabid fan of a rock group. Wouldn't it be nice to have a constant stream of updates on band gossip, upcoming concerts, and new albums flowing to your mobile phone? Or maybe you are just looking to rent the perfect apartment or buy a specific antique. Wouldn't it be nice to get notified as soon as new items which roughly matched your criteria were listed on the web so that you were able to respond before someone else beat you to the punch? Persistent search makes all of this possible for end users with very little incremental effort.

via Emergic

You wrote: "One could easily imagine search companies in the near future executing billions of incremental stored queries an hour." At PubSub, we normally do billions per minute and trillions per day... In the last minute (1:16am EST), we did 2,858,901,318 query evaluations. That works out to over 4 trillion queries per day. The future is now.

You wrote: "“stream database” query techniques pioneered by start-ups such as StreamBase." Actually, PubSub has been providing services much longer than StreamBase. PubSub is still the only Internet-Scale near-real-time persistent search provider (we call it "prospective search").

You wrote: "[No one provides] real-time, automatic updates across multiple distribution channels at a viable cost." For free, we deliver via XMPP/Jabber, REST, SOAP, RSS, Atom, SMS (via partners) and email (some topics). We'll be adding more delivery mechanisms in the future.

bob wyman
CTO, PubSub.com

Guide to Activating Windows

Are you tired of choices yet? Well, too bad, here is another one.

There are currently three ways to activate Windows depending on your version.

Retail Versions can make use of the WINNT.SIF method of activation, or use a backup of their activation file.

OEM Versions can make use of the WINNT.SIF method, a backup of their activation file, or use the originally included activation method.

Then there are Volume License CDs which you must purchase a license for which don't require activation at all.

• WINNT.SIF Method
• Backup Activation Method
• OEMBIOS.BIN a.k.a. original OEM Activation Method

freeware scripting tool

AutoIt v3 is a freeware BASIC-like scripting language designed for automating the Windows GUI and general scripting. It uses a combination of simulated keystrokes, mouse movement and window/control manipulation in order to automate tasks in a way not possible or reliable with other languages (e.g. VBScript and SendKeys). AutoIt is also very small, self-contained and will run on 95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000, XP, 2003 out of the box with no annoying "runtimes" required! You can even make compiled executable scripts that can run without AutoIt being installed!

Rename a group of files in XP

OK - I give up. Frequently I want to be able to rename a bunch of files in the same directory changing part of the file name but retaining part of the file name. For example, uploading a lot of pictures from a digital camera leaves you with something like: IMG_001.jpg IMG_002.jpg IMG_003.jpg I would like to rename them to something like: Vacation-001.jpg Vacation-002.jpg Vacation-003.jpg You used to be able to do this at the DOS command line with wild card commands, etc (I think). How do you do it in XP? - Stephen N. ANSWER: Select the files you want to rename using the CTRL key. Then press F2 and type the new name. All the files will be named with the new name and a number in parentheses. For instance, if you select all and type in the name "Vacation," the files will be named Vacation(1).jpg, Vacation(2).jpg and so on. Another way that gives you more flexibility and options is to download a little utility called Batch File Renamer. It's a free download and you can get it at http://www.wxpnews.com/BG41NK/060328-Softforall

Router 101 for the Practical Man

a little insight on routers to those who are curious of the features that normally ship with household wireless routers.

Router Security Secrets

Most people who install a home network never delve inside the netherworld of security settings on their router. Who can blame them—it’s about as frightening as putting your hand in a shoebox full of rabid gerbils. Nevertheless, it’s worth the effort if you know what you’re doing.

That said, here are 10 router settings you can use to make your network more secure. For the purposes of this article, I used a popular router, the DLink DI-524, to show you how to engage the features, because this router doesn’t bite—usually.

1. Turn off UPnP
2. Change your admin password
3. Deactivate SSID broadcast
4. Turn on the DMZ
5. Filter MAC addresses
6. Customize the SSID
7. Update your firmware
8. Reset the factory default
9. Engage WEP
10. Activate WPA
11. Conclusion

Write your Senator, Mayor, Mother

Qualcomm keeps upping the ante in wireless data speed trials it seems - and this one is a zinger. Qualcomm and Nortel announced the completion of a 7.2 megabit-per-second data call over HSDPA - which is about seven to eight times faster than deployed HSDPA networks now. That, my friends, is mobile broadband.

Now, we've heard this all before - hype before the reality settles in. But, if Qualcomm can get even half of the HSDPA bandwidth they are talking about in this recent test, they'll have a winner easily. HSDPA is decently fast now, but topping out over 1 Mbps would be a huge boost to the technology and really would help adoption move along.

via Wireless Report

Nada costs nothing

NaDa™ is a new concept. A thought, really. It is very light : 1 byte. It doesn't take long to fetch. It doesn't take long to understand. It doesn't disturb your habits nor does it makes you feel insecure. It is a reassuring piece of software that does nothing, and does it very well. That's a lot!
Most products we see on the market want to increase our productivity, organize our screen joyfully or make wonders with our sound card, but NaDa™ does nothing. This is a revolutionary whole new approach, a concept far beyond what you usually expect from the software industry. Download it and forget it.

rss for sites without feeds

what can you do with FeedYes.com?
» Generate feeds for any website or specific page
» Save those feeds, so you can read them in any rss reader. One click adding.
» Syndicate those feeds: put the headlines on your own website
» Monitor websites realtime: always know the latest news from any webpage

Transmit 60 DVDs per second

March 24, 2006 As the world’s internet traffic grows relentlessly, faster data transmission will logically become crucial. To enable telecommunications networks to cope with the phenomenal surge in data traffic as the internet population moves past a billion users, researchers are focusing on new systems to increase data transmission rates and it’s not surprising that the world data transmission record is continually under threat. Unlike records where human physical capabilities limit new records to incremental growth, when human ingenuity is the deciding factor, extraordinary gains are possible. German and Japanese scientists recently collaborated to achieve just such a quantum leap in obliterating the world record for data transmission. By transmitting a data signal at 2.56 terabits per second over a 160-kilometer link (equivalent to 2,560,000,000,000 bits per second or the contents of 60 DVDs) the researchers bettered the old record of 1.28 terabits per second held by a Japanese group. By comparison, the fastest high-speed links currently carry data at a maximum 40 Gbit/s, or around 50 times slower. (more...)

75 Helpful Web Design Resources

Design Inspiration
If you’re anything like me creativity doesn’t come easily. The truth is we could all use some design inspiration from time to time. Thankfully there’s plenty of resources for us to find inspiration in. Here’s a list of sites that haveuseful for me when I need to get the creative juices flowing.

CSS Vault
Favourite Website Awards
CSS Reboot
CSS Zen Garden - The beauty of CSS design. The Zen Garden shows what’s possible with a CSS based design. This site is responsible for turning me on to CSS based designs. Very inspirational.
HOW Magazine
Web Standards Awards
35 Sexiest Designed Websites You’ve Forgotten About
Web Pages That Suck - Good examples of what not to do.
Screenspire - This my favorite site for design inspiration. Not only do they have thousands of inspirational designs, you can view the screenshot of each site which makes it very easy to browse through the huge collection.
Design Shack
CSS Beauty
CSS Import
W3C Compliant Sites
Liquid Designs
Web Creme
Stylegala - Stylegala is an online resource and inspiration guide for web agencies, designers and developers who take interest in websites that combine the powers of design, web standards and CSS.

via my name is Cameron Olthuis and this is my blog

free online storage

By providing a web site to upload your files, we're offering free online storage for up to 1Gb. But the real meat of Openomy is in the open APIs. It's something we continuously preach, but that's because it's something we really believe in. By providing our users with a single place to store their data, and giving them the ability to use that data anywhere in the world through our APIs, we hope to be helping users kick ass.