The universal, high-speed-everywhere web isn't quite a reality yet, as anyone who's used a relative's dial-up or a seriously weak airport connection can testify to. Web page re-formatting tool Finch gives you just the text, ma'am, from any site you plug into its address box, stripping Flash, JavaScript, stylesheets, and even images from the layout. Tools like this often crop up for mobile phones, such as Google's Mobilizer, but Finch is made for the desktop browser. Some sites will work better with their graphical navigators removed than others, of course, but for anyone stuck with a fist-poundingly slow connection, or paying for every megabyte, Finch is a great bookmarket to keep handy.

Free font-matching service Identifont is a good bookmark for anyone who works in words, design, or just has to occasionally match up hard-to-pin-down fonts. While not as automatic as the previously mentioned upload-and-analyse app WhatTheFont, Identifont leads you through a series of questions about certain characters, like how the tail on the "Q" is shaped, the style of the "$" symbol, and so on. After a maximum of 15 questions, you'll likely get a match from Identifont's huge database, or at least a remarkably similar font. If you're in need of an exact match for a weird font, Identifont is a free spot to dig deep for it.

Read More »

The Red Ferret Journal points out a slick, Japanese upload-and-convert tool for giving photos that browned-out, decades-old look. Select a photo or paste in a URL (both words are written in English, as luck would have it), and hit the bottom blue button. The photo results aren't returned at full resolution, but, depending on lighting, quality, and, of course, modernity of subject, you can get pretty authentic-looking results without any image editor filters or plug-ins. The site is free to use, and (it appears) doesn't restrict upload file sizes.

Read More »

If you're one of those folks who handwrites HTML, you know how laborious it can be to type out all the tags and descriptors for a simple but highly-efficient table. Kotatsu, a free AJAX utility, generates clean code for however many rows and columns you need, with optional class options thrown on the cells. The code is blog, personal site, and start page-friendly, and that's all there is to it (thankfully).

Read More »

Need a phone line to receive a one-time fax or voicemails on a particular project, auction, or job search? Free service K7 hands out 10-digit Seattle-area phone numbers that can answer calls with customised voicemail greetings or accept faxes. You can access both the audio files and fax documents through your sign-up account, and the only restrictions are a 20-message/fax limit (the site starts deleting the oldest after that) and an account wipe out after 30 days of inactivity. Other than that, you've got a free bin to keep your personal numbers private and still get at your messages.

Read More »

You already love the one-stop convenience of shopping online at Amazon.com, but chances are you're not getting everything you can out of this feature-packed shopping engine. Did you know Amazon can email you suggestions from Mom's wish list two weeks before her birthday? Automatically ship you a new case of toilet paper every two months? Refund the difference on the price of an item you purchased that went on sale? Several advanced Amazon features and third party apps and add-ons can help you get the best deals and the stuff you want delivered to your door right on time. After the jump, add our favourite 10 Amazon power-shopper tools to your cart.

Read More »

Need pointers to further reading on a certain area you'll be staying or working? Google Maps has added a "Mapped web pages" view to its advanced search options choices, displaying only pegs related to relevant web pages. Google Maps has always offered direct web links for businesses and places found in a search, but this view lets you see non-directly-related sites and a wider range of thoughts on certain places. Seems like a good vacation planning helper, or at least a nifty way to peek around your neighborhood's web activity.

Read More »

Tempo isn't the first or only web-based project tracker, but it conforms pretty well to whatever methods you prefer for entering and receiving data—email, Twitter and SMS messages, mobile or desktop browsers, or even RSS feeds. The site is geared toward those tracking personal or group time spent on particular clients, with a tag-based tracking system and all the graph and chart-y goodness you'd expect out of a data-rich site. Tempo is free to use in its "Adagio" version for one worker and one client, $5-$49 per month for incremental versions after that.

Read More »

Want to share a presentation with friends, co-workers, or the web at large without worrying about who does or doesn't have PowerPoint installed? authorStream, a free presentation sharing site, offers the same kind of embed-anywhere utility as previously-posted SlideShare, but also provides options to download presentations as MP4 video files, putting slideshows with or without audio one step away from YouTube, iPods, DVDs, or whatever format comes in handy. To work as video, presentations must have either recorded narration or rehearsed timings added in PowerPoint, which the Digital Inspiration blog explains in detail at the via link below.

Read More »

Running a home web server and need to lock it up? Want to set up standard hosting for multiple sub-domains? Don't worry about tinkering with Apache server's arcane .htaccess file, just tell the .htaccess Editor webapp what you're looking for. The site's interface is a good deal better than many of its ilk, meaning you can usually guess what it's asking for and why. For budding web tinkerers and those with their own storage space, .htaccess Editor is a time-saving tool worth checking out.

Read More »