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.
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. Tempo [via eHub]
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. AuthorStream [via Digital Inspiration]
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.
Find out how to say a word you’re unfamiliar with at web site Forvo. Aiming to one day have “all the words in the world pronounced”—including words in 23 languages—Forvo relies on users to generate both words in demand and the proper pronunciations of those words. So you could, for example, check out the pronunciation of different cities, and if you can’t find the city whose pronunciation you’re uncertain of, just head to the add a word page and put in a request for the word you want. Alternately, you can head to the pronounce page to record pronunciations of words you know. Forvo has a simple aim, but it’s a great idea for harnessing a bit of social web power. Forvo
You’ve just read about a cool new web app or informative article on Digg, Slashdot, or some other link-heavy site, so you hit the link and … minutes later, you’re still hitting refresh and seeing 404 errors. Just before you give up, try loading the site in Coral Cache, a free service that uses a distributed server network to keep content from being overwhelmed—i.e. “Slashdotted” or, as is sometimes the case, suffering from the “Lifehacker effect.” No software or bookmarklet necessary, just add “.nyud.net” to the end of any URL. You may get a slower load and occasional formatting wonkiness, but it’s often more up-to-date than the Google Cache version, and a helpful work-around.
Internet start page PageOnce aims to integrate all of your online accounts in one central location. Currently PageOnce can handle and display widgets monitoring everything from your social tools, like Gmail and Facebook, to financial tools, like your phone bill and your bank account. If handing banking passwords over to a start page startup makes your security-side wince, you’re not really alone, but whether or not you’re comfortable with that, the social aspects are still worthwhile. Any way you slice it you’ll have to put some trust in PageOnce when you hand over any login credentials. That said, there’s no question that the idea behind PageOnce—that you can access all of your online accounts from one central location—is a useful one. The site is currently in private beta, but if you’re ready to give it a try you can start an account through a link on the TechCrunch post. PageOnce [via TechCrunch]
Moonk, a free Flash conversion application, serves as a one-stop shop to turn your photos, videos, or music into slick-looking embeddable boxes. Sure, YouTube and a wealth of other hosting sites can do much the same, but for those who don’t want to add their videos or other media to a search-able site or mess with privacy settings, Moonk lets simply make your media files web-playable. New users get 500 MB of storage—pretty generous, considering the small size of the Flash output. I also like the uncluttered interface and straight-forward conversion tools, compared to similar tools of its kind. Moonk is a free service, but requires a sign-up to use. Moonk [via Red Ferret Journal]
Web site ShortcutGuide is an illustrated, interactive keyboard shortcut guide for discovering and learning shortcuts in anything from Windows to Gmail. The guide highlights all keys that have shortcut significance, and when you hover your mouse over a shortcut key, it displays what the shortcut does. If you’re rocking a Dvorak keyboard layout, ShortcutGuide even rearranges the keyboard layout appropriately. If you’re not into traditional shortcut cheatsheets, this interactive guide is certainly worth a bookmark.
ShortcutGuide [via Download Squad]US-centric: Free web site TrackThePack offers an interface to simultaneously keep tabs on FedEx, DHL, and UPS packages. It sounds similar to previously mentioned PackTrack, but TrackThePack keeps your packages on its own page rather than moving you to the shipping companies’ web sites. It currently tracks only the three major private package firms, and can save your all-in-one screen through a free account or by your IP address. For corporate workers and serious online gift shoppers, it could serve as a handy toollbar link.
TrackThePack [via MakeUseOf.com]
