Web site Splicd creates custom links to embedded YouTube videos that start and stop at any time you define, allowing you to skip straight to the good part and avoid the rest. Let’s say, for example, you’ve stumbled onto a gem on YouTube but had to suffer through 10 minutes of complete boredom to get there. You want to share the video with a friend, but you don’t her to have to sit through the whole mess for 20 seconds of pure gold. Just paste the URL of the video into Splicd, give it your desired start and end time, and it generates a custom link that starts and stops the video where you told it to (like this one). Splicd [via Life Rocks 2.0]
Does anyone except your brother-in-law still use Hotmail? Well, your brother-in-law will be happy to see that Microsoft’s rolling out a fresh paint job on the classic webmail service that’s speedier, better-looking, and roomier. You get 5GB of mail storage to start with the new Windows Live Hotmail, and then get 500MB more per month you hit your limit. I haven’t logged into a Hotmail account for ages, but test-driving this new version I was impressed—it actually feels like Microsoft Outlook in a browser. (In my test I was using Firefox on a Mac, and it worked like a charm). The new look is rolling out slowly to all users; you can opt out of it by clicking the “Switch to classic” link on the lower left hand corner of the screen.
Windows Live Hotmail [via ReadWriteWeb]Windows only: Free application TrayDiskFree is a tiny executable that adds an icon to your system tray displaying the free space of any drive you choose—and that’s about it. If TDF doesn’t mesh well with your taskbar, the app supports command line options for customising the colour as well as specifying which drive to use at startup. File this one into the lightweight, single-use application bin. If you want more full-featured system monitoring, check out previously mentioned apps like CoolMon. TrayDiskFree [SourceForge via Download Squad]
Adam showed you how to build a desktop “Hackintosh” PC running a version of Mac OS X Leopard, and now Jose Perez at Planetx64.com gets the job done on a mini laptop—specifically, the MSI Wind, which retails for about $550. Of course, this whole process voids your laptop’s warranty, disables your ability to do OS updates, only works with a Wind-friendly, hacked build of Leopard 10.5.4 (not the most recent 10.5.5), and leaves some hardware functionality behind, like the microphone and headset. But for the brave, stick-it-to-the-Apple-man-ers out there, it’s nice to know the Hackintosh laptop version can be done. OS X on the Wind [PlanetX64 via Make]
Running a screensaver on multiple monitors can be a tricky affair. The default Windows screensavers work just fine with multiple monitors, but you didn’t install dual 22″ wide screens at your workstation to blow away your coworkers with the expansiveness of your scrolling marque text messages. Fortunately there are several solutions to dealing with the quirkiness of Windows and multi-monitor screensavers.
YouTube is testing a new video upload tool that lets you edit your clip’s metadata while the upload happens, and they’re bumping the upload size limit from 100MB to 1GB. (Nice!) Here’s the tester link to the new uploader. While you’re all up in the ‘tube, check out our top 10 YouTube hacks. [via CNet]
Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): The Firefox Universal Uploader extension (aka fireuploader) uploads and downloads files to and from popular web sites through a simple dual-pane interface. In essence, the Universal Uploader acts very much like previously mentioned FireFTP—the extension that turns Firefox into an FTP client—but it uploads directly to popular web sites like Flickr, Facebook, Google Docs, Picasa, Box.net, and YouTube. So rather than require you to log in to those sites to upload photos, videos, documents, or other files, you can fire up this extension and simply drag and drop files to the webapp you want to upload to. The extension is a little rough around the edges, but it’s a great idea and works as advertised.
Firefox Universal Uploader [Firefox Add-ons]More than a few commenters had questions about the Gbridge tool for Windows we featured last week, which works on top of your Google account to provide file sharing and remote desktop capabilities. Why does it bother using Google accounts? Is it any better or different than LogMeIn or Techinline? Is it secure? We spent some time checking out Gbridge, and came away impressed with its ease of use and nifty features, along with a few answers to your questions and screenshots.
Mac OS X only: Today Google releases Top Draw, a nifty image generation application that rotates its creations on your desktop. Top Draw uses scripts to create colorful psychedelic images, and sets them as your desktop wallpaper with an option to automatically refresh at an interval you set. A Google Mac developer writes: The Top Draw scripting language leverages Apple’s Quartz and CoreImage rendering engines for graphical muscle. In addition to the drawing commands that are supported by the HTML canvas tag, there is support for particle systems, plasma clouds, random noise, multi-layer compositing and much more.
After just a few minutes, Top Draw’s given me some beautiful images. Top Draw is a free download for Mac only. Introducing Top Draw [Official Google Mac Blog]
Prolific blogger Steve Rubel identifies a handful of web-based tools you can use to recession-proof your job in the face of a possible global economic downturn. The post describes how to use several previously mentioned tools—like PageAddict and Google Reader Trends—to personally ensure you’re holding yourself accountable for your time and not getting too distracted at work. Already have methods in place for recession-proofing your job? Tell us about them in the comments.
Recession Proof Your Job with Web Based Tools [Micro Persuasion]
