While you can always display your digital photographic triumphs on a digital frame, sometimes nothing trumps size and permanency. The My Masterpiece printing service puts your favourite snap onto artists’ canvas and then onto a stretched photo frame, producing a ready-to-hang print to wow visitors or your other half with. While the results are impressive, they’re not cheap (the smallest size comes in at $60). For some low-cost big picture wall-decorating alternatives, check out the album art wall or wire photo wall projects. Thanks Ben! [My Masterpiece]
Free, alternative office suite OpenOffice.org’s latest version 3.0 is now available for download by testers. OpenOffice.org 3.0 Release Candidate 1 offers several new features and improvements from its last major release, including better Mac support and collaboration capabilities. Let’s take a look at the notable fso you can decide if it’s worth taking another look at OpenOffice.org as an alternative to Microsoft Office.
It might seem obvious that you should dump all personal information from a mobile phone before selling it — especially a smart phone which could be jam-packed with sensitive business data — but it seems that many of us don’t bother. Jennifer Foreshew at The Australian reports that new research suggests that as many as one in five second-hand mobiles still contain personal information. And then there’s the problem of what happens if you lose your current mobile. While the first step is always to ring your provider, the response can sometimes be a bit tardy, as I note in a news story for APC. To keep your phone secure, check out our guides to erasing iPhone data and setting up self-destruct on a Windows Mobile phone, as well as our discussion of what to do when your mobile gets stolen. Sensitive data on second-hand mobiles [Australian IT] Optus slow to block stolen phones, say angry customers [APC]
Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Firefox extension Tabs Open Relative tweaks the behaviour of opening new tabs in Firefox so all of your new tabs open directly to the right of your current tab (as opposed to at the end of all your tabs). If you’re a middle-click fanatic for opening links in new tabs, this extension keeps related tabs closely grouped together.
Like the look of Google Chrome but don’t want to ditch Firefox? Try the Chromifox theme, a “coat of Chrome for Firefox.” While you’re at it, why not enable more of Chrome’s best features in Firefox. [via]
New beta online video recommendation engine Invision.TV launches today, and offers a personalised dashboard of related video from sources all over the web, from Hulu to YouTube to CNN to ESPN. Discover new video clips by channels and interests, or sign up to create your own playlists. [via]
Google says it’s bringing history online, one newspaper at a time with a new initiative to digitise millions of newspapers—like this article from the 1969 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the moon landing.
Now that you’ve been enjoying Google Chrome’s headliner features and speed for almost a week now, it’s time to dig into the less obvious functionality and options you don’t already know about. Become a keyboard shortcut master, take a peek under the hood, and customise its behaviour and skin with some of the best shortcuts, bookmarklets, themes, add-ons, and subtle functionality in Google Chrome.
Free site-search service Buildasearch does exactly what it purports to—combine a bunch of site:whatever.com commands into a single search box. Beyond just bookmarking a long Google URL, however, Buildasearch offers customised logos, colours, and layouts, and seems to return results pretty quickly. The interface (and translation) can be a bit rough, but the end result works as promised. You can keep your custom search on Buildasearch’s servers, or use their API to install your search on any server that supports PHP. It’s a handy tool for those who find themselves digging through the same collection of sites repeatedly. Buildasearch [via MakeUseOf.com]
Windows only: Just when you thought a simple shutdown button was all you needed to turn off your computer, Slawdog’s free Smart Shutdown utility offers so many more useful options. If you’re always forgetting to turn off the old PC before you wander off to do other things, Smart Shutdown can automatically hibernate, restart, lock, or shut down your PC after a set amount of idle time (like 30 minutes), with options to kill open applications, empty the Recycle Bin, and eject removable drives when it does. Smart Shutdown also adds a Shutdown button to your system tray with one-click access to several actions, like logoff, hibernate, reboot, standby, and for those of you still rockin’ a dial-up internet connection, hang up. Here’s a look at Smart Shutdown’s options dialog.
