Four Googlers show off their artistic skills as well as Google Docs’ collaboration capabilities in the time-lapse video above of a spreadsheet holiday art project. Hit the play button to watch them fill in an 100 row by 186 column spreadsheet with 18 colours to make a detailed holiday snowflake pattern. (The eagle-eyed will notice that at least one of the authors was not using Google’s own browser, Chrome—it looks like Firefox on the Mac.) Hit the link below to grab the template and make your own. Spreadsheet Art Template [Google Docs]
New peer-to-peer file sharing web service LittleShoot finds and downloads files right inside your web browser. LittleShoot founder (and former LimeWire engineer) Adam Fisk says he created LittleShoot to overcome LimeWire’s shortcomings. To get started, you can search for a keyword at the LittleShoot web site without installing a thing and you’ll get dozens of results from YouTube, Flickr, Yahoo, and LittleShoot users. (See the results for a search on “Twilight” above.) To play or download a file, you will have to download and install a small LittleShoot add-on. To publish a file on LittleShoot, hit the Publish tab and add a file on your local computer. The Mashable web site reports that LittleShoot is optimised to find nearby computers that host the file you need as well as defaulting to computers on the same ISP to increase download speeds and responsiveness. All in all, LittleShoot is looking very promising for P2P-ers who don’t want to run full-fledged BitTorrent or other clients. What’s your favourite way to P2P? Let us know in the comments. Thanks, Sangraal!
LittleShoot [via Mashable]Firefox only: If you like to copy and paste snippets of web pages—but want to include the source URL and date and time in one shot—the QuoteURLText add-on’s for you. Once installed, just select the relevant quote from a web page and press Ctrl+Shift+C (Win) or Command+Shift+C (Mac) and the selection will be copied along with the URL of the source page. Additional options allow you to include the time browsed and title of the page, as well. Advanced options let you refine the metadata added to the selection in the clipboard further. QuoteURLText is a free add-on download for Firefox browsers. QuoteURLText [via gHacks]
Researchers at the University of Maryland found the one activity unhappy people do more than happy people is watch TV. The New York Times reports: “We looked at 8 to 10 activities that happy people engage in, and for each one, the people who did the activities more — visiting others, going to church, all those things — were more happy,” Dr. [John]Robinson said. “TV was the one activity that showed a negative relationship. Unhappy people did it more, and happy people did it less.”
The study doesn’t indicate whether TV-watching is a symptom or a cause of unhappiness, so turning off the TV won’t necessarily make you happier. Have unhappier times in your life involved more TV-watching, less, or the same as happy times? Let us know in the comments. What Happy People Don’t Do [NYTimes.com]
Windows XP only: When you right-click on your desktop or on a file, do you have to go through two dozen useless menu items before you hit the one you want? Free utility Mmm offers an easy interface for hiding and organizing context menu items—into a “Rarely used” subfolder, for example. With Mmm running, hit the coloured button it adds to the top left of the menu to see the configuration area, shown here. Check out the before and after photos of my context menu using Mmm.
Mac OS X only: The latest version of the free Plex Media Centre for Mac now includes iTunes and iPhoto support, iTunes visualizations, TV theme music, and the ability to play songs you’ve purchased from the iTunes Store. This tight iTunes/iPhoto integration comes in part from the Plex Media Server, which makes your songs and photos show up inside Plex while running in parallel. The Plex developer explains: The Plex Media Server is a standalone program that runs alongside Plex (or alone on any machine, it’s a Universal Binary). It serves up media from your iLife applications (iTunes and iPhoto today, Aperture and Lightroom shortly). Plex communicates with the Plex Media Server on the local machine, on your local network, or even across the world over the Internet. This means that you can play your friends’ iTunes playlists or browse their podcasts or photo albums.
The Plex Media Centre is a fork of the XBMC project, which also offers a Mac version. In fact, XBMC Atlantis’ Mac version also includes iTunes and iPhoto support; compare our Plex screenshot tour to the Atlantis tour to see the differences between the two projects, which share the same code base. Plex is a free download for Intel Macs running Leopard only. Plex
Along with the release of the iPhone 2.2 software, Apple also drops a new iTunes update to version 8.0.2, which includes bug fixes and integration with VoiceOver (Mac) and Window-Eyes (Windows), screen reader utilities for increased accessibility. Hit Check for Updates from the iTunes menu to download it.
Windows and Linux only: A new release of the open-source, all-in-one email, calendar, and task manager Spicebird is now available for download. Kevin took you on a tour of Spicebird 0.4 back in January, but the new version 0.7 adds features and fixes. Notably, 0.7 got support for Google gadgets on the home screen, revamped instant messaging capabilities, Google Calendar support, and experimental blogging capabilities—see the full release notes for details. The Spicebird 0.7 release is a free download for Windows and Linux. Thanks, Asian Angel! Spicebird 0.7 Released
Prague-based virtual panorama company 360 Cities is offering its entire collection of nearly 10,000 spherical images on Google Earth. Head to the “Featured Preview” layer in the 3D tool to enable 360 Cities, then just click to scan around and gawk. [via TechCrunch]
