If you’ve ever stumbled onto a foreign-language YouTube video and you’re dying to know what’s happening, you may be in luck: YouTube has added support for auto-translating captions in videos. The video will still need captions to begin with, but you still can’t help but think—we live in incredible times. [via]
Windows/Mac OS X only: Free application VoxOx is a combination of popular multi-protocol chat and social networking application Digsby and voice chat service Skype—or at least that’s the idea. VoxOx claims to combine all of “today’s main forms of communication into one snazzy interface.” To its credit, VoxOx does offer a lot of worthwhile functionality. Like Digsby, it works with most popular IM networks, integrates with Facebook (though not MySpace or LinkedIn, which Digsby supports), and offers email integration. Like Skype, VoxOx gives you a phone number and allows you to make outgoing calls to any other phone and receive calls from your computer (you’ll get a free phone number and 120 free minutes when you sign up). VoxOx even does video conferencing, call forwarding, file sharing, and integrated text messaging. Sounds pretty good, right?
We’ve shown you how to keep up with the cutting edge releases of Chrome, the new open-source web browser from Google, but today Google announced a proper update for all Chrome users. According to Google, this release “is packed with plugin fixes, and early developer-channel users noted that plugin performance improved dramatically.”
When Google released a couple of gadgets for the Gmail sidebar and provided an open means of making more, long-time users of Remember the Milk might have guessed the task manager that tries to be everywhere would be all over it—and they were right. The Remember the Milk gadget lets you add, complete, edit, and postpone tasks, as well as single out a task list to show in the sidebar. It doesn’t have the second-brain, star-equals-task power of RTM’s Firefox extension, but it’s a nice, unobtrusive way to add task management to your email/calendar/docs landing page. Hit the link below for instructions on installing RTM (which requires a free accont) in your Gmail sidebar. Remember the Milk for Gmail Gadget [via RTM Blog]
If your presentation skills at work are shakier than the economy, you can’t pass up a single opportunity to make them better. Fortunately, the skills you learn on the job can serve as a great foundation for the speaking and presenting skills you need to hit a home run on a dream project or make a great impression on your bosses. Here are some of the responsibilities you can grab hold of at work that will pay off when you are in front of a room full of your friends, your peers or the people who can help make your dreams come true. Photo by lewro.
Microsoft has already caught some flack for “copying” the OS X dock with the new Windows 7 taskbar; the video above from the Professional Developer’s Conference both addresses that criticism and takes you on a guided tour of the new taskbar. Whether or not you think Windows 7 borrowed from OS X with the update, there’s no question that Microsoft added its own flair and probably even improved the taskbar/dock concept, particularly with the peek feature. For a look at some of the other features you can expect from Windows 7, check out our Windows 7 first look. Thanks Jason!
[via NeoWin]Mac OS X 10.5 only: While every machine running Mac OS X comes with the FileVault encryption tool, Espionage can lock down a single folder, and nor will it add all the processing and disk overhead or delay shutdown like FileVault will. The download is quick and painless, and creators TaoEffect have put together a screencast tutorial to get you started. The Espionage demo is a free download for Mac OS X 10.5 (“Leopard”); the full version costs $US14.95.
Espionage [via MacUser]If you don’t like the idea of your iPhone’s SMS logs getting trapped in iTunes, or you just want have a plain-text copy to play around with, you can upload iTunes’ binary archive to the iPhone backup SMS extractor webapp and get back the text. It’s particularly useful for iPhone owners who use Windows to sync and or Mac users who can’t get Syphone to work. But the grep command used to find the archive on your hard drive will work equally well in Mac OS X Terminal. This method is not as complicated as jailbreaking your phone to pull SMS data into a spreadsheet, but since you’re sending your data to a web site, it’s not as private or secure. Thanks, WareNuddles! iPhone backup SMS extractor
If you’ve got skills to share or are looking for someone generous with their expertise, TeachMate provides “a dating service in education.” Enter in what you’d like to learn and find someone who can help, or offer lessons in a subject you know well. You can set a location to find teachers and students near you, and if none are found, subscribe to email notifications when a match comes up. A quick scan shows many current users are in Europe, especially Russia — which makes me think it might also be a great way to meet locals when travelling and participate in some cross-cultural exchange. TeachMate is a free, open-source online application.
TeachMateEveryone’s been there: You just bought an expensive ink cartridge for your printer, you use it for a while, and then suddenly—much sooner than seems reasonable—your printer tells you that you’re either low on or out of ink. Suspicious of the amount of ink wasted by adhering to the low ink warnings of popular printers, PC World hit the lab, testing just how much ink is left in “dead” cartridges. The results: Many manufacturer-branded (OEM) and third-party (aftermarket) vendor cartridges leave a startling amount of ink unused when they read empty. In fact, some inkjet printers force users to replace black ink cartridges when the cartridge is nearly half full.
