Melt Mail is a free email forwarding service that creates a temporary email address that forwards all incoming mail to your real email address. To use it, just enter the email address you want messages forwarded to, select how long you want it to work, then hit Create. Melt Mail generates a random address that you can use with impunity to register on spam-likely sites, for example, and after 3, 6, 12, or 24 hours, the forwarding will stop. There are lots solutions for disposable email around, Melt Mail isn’t breaking any new ground, but since some services won’t allow you to register with popular temporary email addresses, it’s worthwhile to have another option in your arsenal. Besides, the dead-simple interface is a nice touch. Melt Mail [via Download Squad]
Firefox with Greasemonkey: If you’ve consolidated multiple email addresses in Gmail, chances are you’ve accidentally sent email using the wrong From address at one point or another. If this is a persistent problem for you, reader Eric Biven’s Gmail Multiple From Address Greasemonkey script helps ensure you’re sending email from the right address every time you compose an email. After you install it, just compose an email as you normally would and hit Send. The script will display a pop-up confirming the From address you’ve chosen, giving you the opportunity to cancel sending the email and switch From addresses in case you’ve forgotten to do so. To accept it, just hit Enter again or click OK. To cancel, hit Escape or click Cancel. It may not be for everyone, but if you manage multiple email accounts from a single Gmail inbox, it could come in very handy. Thanks Bill!
GMail Multiple From Address Extensions [Userscripts.org]Windows only: Free application Newzie is a feature-rich desktop newsreader designed to keep you up to date with the latest web content, whether that content is coming from a traditional RSS feed or not. To that end, Newzie monitors feedless web pages for changes, supports “virtual channels” that monitor user-defined keywords (great for ego tracking), and more. It also supports advanced content filtering, customisable keyboard shortcuts, subscription priorities, a Post Sweeper feature that clears out unnecessary posts when you’ve fallen behind, and built-in reading statistics. In the end, Newzie is full of interesting and innovative ideas that we’d love to see from more newsreaders, but it could use a little more polish overall if it wants to attract a lot of users. If you give it a try, let’s hear what you think in the comments. Newzie is a free download, Windows only.
Newzie [via gHacks]Reader projectvirus creates a smart, dynamic desktop HUD that prominently displays a desktop-sized flip clock. That big old clock is pretty cool by itself, but projectvirus went one step further by embedding small pieces of information along the edges of the clock, including the date, weather conditions, system monitor, and music playback info. To top it off, the whole setup is accomplished using the following free, popular desktop customisation tools:
Mac OS X only: Preference pane Visage lets you customise your Mac’s desktop, login panel, and alerts. Set a custom login panel background image and logo with Visage, or enable a “desktop effect” that runs a screensaver (like the Word of the Day, RSS visualizer, or iTunes album art) as your wallpaper, behind your windows. Visage offers a free trial for seven days, then if you don’t register and pay its $US9.95 licence fee its features are limited (though it’s not clear what you can’t do beyond the seven-day trial). Visage is a free download (with seven-day full trial) for Mac OS X only. Thanks, bachya! Visage
Everyone’s done it: you’ve got a raging stomachache and you’re feeling kind of fatigued, so you search online for the cause of your malady and conclude that you’ve got cancer. A new study from Microsoft shows that “cyberchondria” is common because when you search for symptoms, the worst case scenario can be the first result—or not representative of the frequency of a serious illness. (For example, searching for a headache will return just as many brain tumor results as caffeine withdrawal, when the chances of a tumor are “infinitesimally small.”) Have you decided you’re dying after searching for illness symptoms online? Tell us about it in the comments.
