Voting for the 2008 Weblog Awards closes soon, and our gadget-obsessed sibling title Gizmodo needs your support in the Best Australia or New Zealand blog category. So case your vote over at the the awards site, and give Nick and the team something to brighten their day. Remember, it’s all about the geeks!
As I report over at APC, Skype is hoping to have the final version of its 4.0 release for Windows out in February. While it won’t boast the costly Wi-Fi and screen sharing features of the recently announced Mac client, it will offer a new improved codec and the integrated large-screen interface that has provoked plenty of comment from users. By Skype’s reckoning, only a tiny minority of users have tested out the beta, so it’ll be interesting to see how it scales up across the general Skype population. Skype heading to iPhone, Android, Blackberry [APC]
iPhone/iPod touch only: Free application HearPlanet plays audio tracks of Wikipedia articles based on points of interest surrounding your current location, turning your iPhone or iPod touch into an audio tour guide. HearPlanet uses your iPhone’s location awareness to find places of interest near you. When you choose a topic, HearPlanet loads up a screen with both the text and audio of the Wikipedia article in question. If your iPhone or iPod touch can’t find you, HearPlanet offers a search option in which you can enter a search topic and location. That means that even if you don’t want the audio tour guide, you can still use HearPlanet to listen to Wikipedia articles on the go—if you don’t mind a little robot voice, that is. HearPlanet is a simple but smart app with a nice look and feel. As TUAW suggests, integration with maps and phone numbers would be a great addition in time. HearPlanet is a free download (for a limited time) from the iTunes App Store, works on both the iPhone and iPod touch.
HearPlanet [iTunes App Store via TUAW]Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Check4Change is a simple Firefox extension that allows you to check web-pages for changes at a user determined interval. Once installed you can select text from a page, right click and select a time interval for refresh. When a change occurs the following notifications occur based on your preferences: the tab icon becomes a little dancing C4C emblem, a pop-up notification occurs, and/or a sound plays. Check4Change only works on open tabs. If you need to monitor a page for change over the long term, it isn’t effective to keep the tabs open for every page you want to monitor. Check out Firefox extension Update Scanner to keep tabs on site changes over time. Check4Change is a free Firefox extension and works wherever Firefox does. Thanks Joshua! Check4Change
Web site VisualWikipedia adds new context to Wikipedia articles by integrating advanced interactive features, YouTube videos, and relational maps to the free online encyclopedia.
Windows only: Geek.Menu is a fork of the PortableApps.com menu that includes a host of extra features and customisations. The over all appearance of Geek.Menu is very similar to the PortableApps.com menu it split from. You won’t find yourself clicking in the wrong spot and opening your documents instead of your videos for instance. One of the most prominent features of Geek.Menu is integration with TrueCrypt. The installation comes with a TrueCrypt package included and accessible from the main menu. If you’re not usually on a computer with administrative privileges—which would put a damper on the handiness of the TrueCrypt integration—there are other features that make Geek.Menu worth a try. It’s the little tweaks that make using the menu more enjoyable. The tray icon stays fixed to the edge of the tray, even as other icons appear and disappear. The menu includes support for multiple profiles for trusted and untrusted computer environments and for automatic application launches after activating the menu and scripts to be run on shut down. Additionally, there are quick launch icons for Google services and Wikipedia, and you can edit the quick icons under the advanced menu to change them to whatever you’d like. If the idea of launching your portable applications from a single menu sounds great but Geek.Menu sounds entirely too complicated, check out the radically more spartan launcher Porta’Menu.
Geek.Menu is a free download, Windows only. Thanks DeadPlayerWalking! Geek.Menu
If you’ve considered dual booting Windows 7 with XP or Vista but all you really want is some Windows 7 eye candy, reader Dato’ Fazly’s Windows 7-like XP desktop might be right up your alley.
According to a roadmap spotted at a recent Microsoft presentation, Office 14 will hit the street in 2010. The followup to Office 2007, the new version is said to debut with Office Web, which will bring Word, Excel, and the rest of the Office family to your browser. Looks like you’ve got one more year to get comfortable with Office 2007 before you step into an Office 14 world. [via Cybernet]
Windows/Mac/Linux (all platforms): ANki, a free “spaced repetition system” (i.e. flashcard-style memorisation tool), offers a gentle learning curve, a pared-down software interface, and online access and synchronisation.
Once you install and launch Anki, you can easily spend hours discovering all its neat capabilities and tricks—like an HTML editor for manually designing your “cards,” audio embedding, tagging, and many more—but setting up a basic “deck” and “cards” is hardly rocket science. Hit the big “plus,” choose a basic deck style (or use a pre-templated style you created), and write the front (question), back (answer), and tags of your cards one after another.
Once you’ve created your decks, you can hit File, “Save and Sync” to make them available on other Anki installations, or access them through a free Anki account.
Check out a video introduction of Anki’s features and possibilities below.
