We’ve posted plenty here about how the iPhone can be a useful organising tool, but babblebaby offers up a useful roundup on applications for Apple’s iconic gadget that make life easier for parents. If you’ve never contemplated using your iPhone as a baby monitor, breastfeeding tracker or nappy-management-tool (really), it’s worth checking out the options, if only so you can show off at the next mother’s group meeting. The iPhone: Making Parenting Easier (and Techier) [babblebaby]
With CEO Jerry Yang leaving Yahoo and the company’s stock price sinking, ZDNet writer Jason Perlow got a bit nervous about the sanctity of his photos on Flickr and started looking for solutions to back them up. I backed mine up using FlickrEdit, the updated Java Web Start application, but like Perlow it didn’t quite get the whole job done. We’ve covered flickrfs, which only runs on Linux. Any readers care to recommend a way to back up a large Flickr account on Windows or Mac OS X machines?
After a small delay, Google released their new and improved Google Mobile for iPhone app yesterday. We gave you our one-word review, but now it’s time for a closer look at Google’s impressive new voice recognition search app—the one that’s going to make typing to search on your phone a thing of the past.
The latest entry in the URL-shortening service is Tr.im, and while there are a number of features that might make you switch from your current favourite, the most compelling is that with so few characters in the service’s domain name, it creates really tiny URLs. A quick test for shortening the address to to Lifehacker got it down to a mere 17 characters, equivalent to abbreviated web addresses from is.gd. If you’re a hard-core character counter, it’s probably because you’re a user of Twitter or similar services, and Tr.im will automatically send created links directly to your Twitter stream if you like. It also offers stats to keep track of where from and how many folks clicked through the link. A bookmarklet is available to make it quick and easy to trim a site’s location while browsing. And you can also give a custom word for the URL or even add tags to improve searchability. Check out our Hive Five of best URL shrinkers for more tiny-fying solutions.
Tr.imWindows only: Web browser plug-in Tidy Favorites creates a customizable bookmarks start page for Firefox and Internet Explorer complete with thumbnail previews. We’ve seen several Firefox extensions covering similar ground before, but Tidy Favorites adds a few more ideas to the thumbnail start page. For example, Tidy Favorites lets you customise each thumbnail individually, so you can independently resize different thumbnails or zoom in and out on a page. You can also create different tabs and folders for bookmarks, or place any bookmark in the Tidy Favorites stack. Be sure to check out the demo on the homepage for a closer look at how your Tidy Favorites bookmarks can be customised. Tidy Favorites is a free download (a Pro version is available, but the free version is functionally complete), Windows only, works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. If you want to take your Tidy Favorites bookmarks with you, try installing Tidy Favorites in portable mode to your thumb drive.
Tidy Favorites [via FreewareGenius]Windows only: Every time you save a Microsoft word doc, Word embeds gobs of potentially embarrassing metadata in your document, meaning that when you send a document off to someone else, you may be sending more than you intended. Free application Doc Scrubber analyses Microsoft Word documents for hidden data, scrubs the document of any metadata you tell it to, and then creates a new clean file. Doc Scrubber can scrub whole folders at a time and offers a lot of control over what it scrubs and how it does it. If you do a lot of work in Word—especially with sensitive material—Doc Scrubber could come in very handy.
Doc Scrubber [via gHacks]Google announced today that they’re now hosting around 10 million photos from the LIFE photo archives on Google Image search. You can search the photos—which range from the 1750s to present day—directly from the LIFE photo archive start page, or you can simply include source:life with any Google Image search query. If you give it a spin, share some of your favourite photos in the comments.
Windows only: Free application Axence NetTools is a comprehensive suite of networking tools for your PC, including a network scanner, inbound/outbound connection monitor (NetStat), port scanner, and other network and bandwidth measuring tools. NetTools is very similar in ways to previously mentioned network monitors like Look@Lan, but if you want to get elbow deep in your network, it’s another great option to add to your toolbox. Axence NetTools is a free download, Windows only.
Axence NetTools 3.2 [via Confessions of a freeware junkie]Mozilla is looking to streamline the process of multiple extension installation with a new webapp called Fashion Your Firefox. In a nutshell, Fashion Your Firefox identifies a handful of browsing types, from the “Finder and Seeker” (“I want to make finding information on the Web simpler and more relevant to me.”) to the Digital Pack Rat (“I want a hassle-free way to keep track of my favourite sites, bookmarks, blogs and, well, everything!”), then suggests popular extensions for each type of user. Just click through each list of suggestions, cherry pick the extensions you’re interested in, and then click Install my Add-Ons.
As we mentioned yesterday, the normally $US40 firewall and antivirus solution ZoneAlarm Pro is available for free today only, so if you’re interested in some free quality software, consider this your reminder to grab a copy.
