Thursday, March 19, 2009

OpenStreetMap Provides Open Source Maps

11:30PM Jason Fitzpatrick | For a quick set of directions it’s tough to beat Google Maps, but what if you need to use the map data for publishing or other projects? OpenStreetMap is free, editable, and remix-friendly. All the street data in OpenStreetMap has been created from free sources and user input. You can use the maps for any purpose or publication, and even participate in the expansion and refining of the maps. If you’re interested in using OpenStreetMap for more than just copyright-free maps, make sure to check out the wiki. There are detailed entries covering all the ways you can contribute, like uploading GPS waypoints, photographs, and participating in the Wikipedia-style distributed editing to correct errors on the maps. OpenStreetMap is an open-source project, free to use, and only the wiki requires a sign-up to edit. OpenStreetMap [via gHacks] More »

Internet Explorer 8 Officially Releases Today

11:10PM Kevin Purdy | Microsoft has announced that a final version of Internet Explorer 8, the faster (but not quite fastest), web-standards-compliant, default browser of Windows 7, will be available starting at 3AM AEST today. Checking in just after that time and the IE page has updated, so go grab it if you’re keen. More »

Firefox New Tab Prototype Adds RSS Items, Smarter Action Items

10:30PM Kevin Purdy | Mozilla continues to think deeply into the New Tab page for Firefox 3.5, killing off the page thumbnails from the last draft, adding quick favicon links, and improving the brains behind “actionable items.” Aza Raskin details the latest ideas for, and tweaks to, Firefox’s next New Tab page. The design has been stripped down and scaled back, with an eye for making features like undoing a closed tab available but unobtrusive. Thumbnailed page screenshots have been taken out and replaced with favicon links, along with the latest RSS item from a page (when available, and when it works—my screenshot above didn’t quite pull them down, for some reason). And any text you’ve copied within the last 40 seconds will be presented as an action-able item, like mapping addresses, searching for terms, and the like. Check out more screenshots, including way-out-there prototypes, at the link below. Firefox New Tab: Next Iteration [Mozilla Labs] More »

The Form Letter Machine Customises Your Canned Emails

9:30PM Kevin Purdy | Find yourself knocking out formula letters or emails with just a few words of difference between them? The Form Letter Machine is your best friend in textual automation. This free Windows app gives you the tools to create a “configuration tree,” letting you select and check off items that should be included in each letter, along with leaving room for variables. So if your form letter needs a different name and company, plus a decision on whether or not you’ll be accepting their office supplies pitch, you can easily throw in those two variables and create radio buttons for deciding yea or nay. It takes just a few minutes to grasp the configuration options, and while the app can’t automate output to email apps, browsers, or the like, its straight-up text pastes easily into pretty much anything on your computer. The Form Letter Machine is freeware for Windows from the Donation Coder site, but the author asks for (wait for it) donations to remove a benign nag screen upon start-up. Donation Coder’s Form Letter Machine [via Download Squad] More »

Undo Closed Tabs Button Resurrects Accidentally Closed Tabs

5:00PM Jason Fitzpatrick | Firefox only: You have a bunch of tabs open and decide to click like a fiend to free up memory, and bam! You close a tab you wanted open. Save it without diving into the history. If you’re well versed in your Firefox keyboard-fu, you know that pressing Ctrl+Shift+T will bring the last tab you closed back to life. If you close multiple tabs however you’ve got to re-open several tabs to get to the one you wanted. Undo Closed Tab Button is a simple Firefox extension that adds three menus to your user interface. A button is placed on your toolbar, a tiny button is placed on the tab bar, and an entry is inserted into the right-click context menu. The menu placement ensures you’ll never be more than a quick click away from resurrecting the tab you just accidentally closed even if you close a bundle and realise there was one in the mix you wanted to keep open. Undo Closed Tabs Button works wherever Firefox does. The previously mentioned Tab Mix Plus extension adds this functionality on top of a whole lot more, but if you don’t need to bloat of Tab Mix Plus, this simple extension is a good alternative. Undo Closed Tabs Button [via Firefox Facts] More »

Use Google Image Search For Quick On-The-Spot Translation

4:30PM Angus Kidman | The Official Google Blog offers up a neat trick for quick translations from a foreign language: using Google Image Search. While Google has its own translation option, Image Search is easier to access via the standard Google mobile option, and a pictorial clue can make the meaning of a word much clearer. As the post points out, it can also be useful when you’re practising with a native speaker and trying to nail down a particular word in both languages. For auto-language-detecting translation online, check out previously mentioned Frengly or the To English bookmarklet. More »

Share Your Memories With The ABC, Get On TV

3:00PM Angus Kidman | Between Flickr, Facebook and any number of blogging platforms, it’s not hard to get your life story out there — but getting it onto television is a tad trickier. As part of a documentary series called ‘The Making Of Australia’, the ABC is inviting people to post their memories of life since 1945 on a dedicated web site. Some of the material will be used for an eventual TV documentary, but the rest will remain on the site in photo, text, video and audio format. Hit the link for full details and tutorials on how to get started. Making Of Modern Australia More »

Can You Eat Ethically And Not Spend A Fortune?

1:01PM Angus Kidman | Wanting to eat food that’s been produced in an ethical manner is a worthy goal, but is it going to get harder in a recession-hit economy? Loaded examines the evidence and looks at why supermarket in-house labels will become more popular. More »

eBay Ditching Dutch Auction Format

11:00AM Angus Kidman | eBay is dropping Dutch auctions — a relatively obscure format designed to let sellers sell multiple items in a single auction — from the middle of May. According to eBay’s announcement, only a very small percentage of sellers currently utilise the format. (On a side note, eBay’s planned change to its My eBay format appear to have kicked in; the option to switch back to the old version had disappeared when I logged in this morning.) More »