Those Who Search for GOOG Are Filthy Rich, Seeking Luxury Homes

Try googling "GOOG" (the stock ticker symbol of Google) and you are likely to see the following ads:

Filthy rich? We'll help - Throw away your newfound cash at Woot. You're welcome.

LuxurySiliconValley.com - $3 Million+ homes and condos for sale in the Silicon Valley

Surprisingly, Google currently has no ads for people googling for BRK.B (Berkshire Hathaway Inc.) - this stock trades at 7x the stock price of Google

For MSFT (Microsoft) and YHOO (Yahoo) - the ads are related to jobs in both cases:

Write beautiful code? - www.ooyala.com/careers [Thanks Rakesh]

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Single Sign-in for YouTube and Google Accounts

Good news YouTube fans - you have one less username / password combination to remember since you can now move your YouTube data to Google account.

See: Multiple Sign-in for Gmail and Google Accounts

And if you have never signed-up for YouTube before, you can now create a new YouTube account with your existing Google Account. [you'll still need to supply an additional YouTube username though which is kind of strange]

Everything remains the same except that a new YouTube icon will show up in your Google Account Services page.

What's a Google Account - if you are on GMail, Google Groups, Adsense, iGoogle, Google checkout, etc - that's your Google Account - it may not necessarily be a @gmail.com address.

If you would like to unlink your YouTube and Google Account association, goto youtube.com/my_account_unlink.

If you unlink your accounts, you will no longer be able to login to YouTube with your Google account. Your YouTube account will stay the same otherwise, and you can still login with your YouTube username and password.

See: Secure your Google and Gmail account

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Cheerleader Girls Wearing T-Shirts with your Message

Click To Play

[this post contains a video which may not be visible in your newsreader]

Philips created this Cheerleading Girls Generator for the FIFA World cup 2006 - just type in some text message and click "Cheer Up". Time waster but fun.

Links: Cheer Up Generator | Sample Video

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Windows Live Writer - Guide for Power Bloggers

Windows Live Writer from Microsoft  is probably one of the best and most popular blog editing software around for Windows platform.

Have you explored all the wonderful features, tips and tricks of using Windows Live Writer ? If not, here's a comprehensive Windows Live Writer tutorial cum guide to help you become a power blogger:

Embed Video Clips from YouTube and Facebook

There's a very easy way of embedding video clips inside your blog posts - just copy the video embed code from YouTube or Google Video and paste that inside the normal view of Windows Live Writer (or simple drag-n-drop). You don't have to switch to the HTML view of Windows Live Writer as the software is smart enough to recognize the Flash video code and renders it just perfect.

Related: How to Embed Anything in your Website

Do you Paste or Paste Special ?

When you paste a block of formatted rich text in WLW using the standard Paste command (Ctrl+V), all the font styles and hyperlinks appear exactly as in the source. Windows Live Writer gives you another option called "Paste Special" that's borrowed from Microsoft Office.

Using Paste Special (Ctrl+Shift+V), you have the option to remove all HTML formatting but preserve hyperlinks and images.  Or you can try the Thinned HTML option which preserve the fonts sizes and text alignments but strips the source text of all extra formatting like CSS styles.

Not just categories, Add Tags to Your Wordpress Posts

By default, Windows Live Writer lets you add categories to your blog posts that are listed as a tree view near the status bar. In addition to categories, you can also include any number of tags in your articles by using the following syntax [not to be confused with Flickr, del.icio.us or Technorati tags]:

The Ultimate Tag Warrior or Simply Tagging Wordpress plugin will automatically recognize these tags and this line won't appear in your main blog. You can also use Windows Live Writer to insert the More tag for Post excerpts <!-- more -->

Use Link Glossary for Quick Access to Favorite Websites and URLs

Link Glossary is your personal repository of web pages or URL that you frequently quote in your blog posts. For instance, if you are regularly link to the Yahoo! homepage in your blog post, you can include that address in the Link Glossary.

The next time you want to add a link to yahoo.com in your post, Link Glossary will do that for you without you having to type the whole URL over an over again. Available from Tools -> Options -> Link Glossary or right click any hyperlink in your post and say "Add to Link Glossary".

Tumbleblog - Quick Blogging from the Web Browser

Similar to the BlogThis bookmarklets, you can select web images, hyperlinks or any portion of a web page inside Firefox or IE and quickly publish them to your blog using the Blog This feature available separately.

Windows Live Writer will automatically insert the attribution links (source URL) in the blog posts. You can also customize these HTML snippets through Tools -> Options -> Blog This. A good example would be to include social bookmarking icons, Technorati cosmos, Sphere related posts, etc.


Resize Images using the Image Handles

Most of us may know this trick but still mentioning it here since it is simply the biggest time-saver for bloggers. Sometimes that web images don't fit our blog layout so you can easily resize them right inside WLW by dragging the pointers near the image corners. Windows Live Writer will maintain a link to your source image for readers who like to view the image in full size.

To Move Draft Blog Posts from one Computer to Another

When you are composing blog posts inside Windows Live Writer, the software won't save the draft entries to you hard drive - they are only accessible from the Windows Live Writer interface. If you like to move your unfinished blog posts from one PC to another, the best option is to save them as online draft which are accessible from all computers (Goto Save Draft -> Post draft to Weblog)


Turn Off Smart Correction

When you type a string of characters that resemble a web URL or an email address, Windows Live Writer will convert that into an http: or mailto: hyperlink. You can easily reverse this change by pressing Ctrl+Z or right-click the hyperlink and says "remove hyperlink"


Insert Blog Widgets, Google Adsense Referrals and other Javascript

Switch to the HTML code view (Shift+F11) and insert any scripts or CSS code.


Important Windows Live Writer Shortcuts

• Ctrl+K - Insert Hyperlinks 
• Ctrl+L - Insert Images from the desktop or the internet
• Ctrl+S - Save drafts locally
• F7 - Run Spell Checker
• F9 - View or Hide the Sidebar

Additional Reading: More Windows Live Writer Tricks

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Apple Releases Patch for Windows Safari 3.0.1

The half baked public beta of Safari 3 bought enough bad PR for Apple and so they have silently released a new version - Safari 3.0.1.

The new patch fixes certain security issues but the font display problems persist on lot of computers. Here's a screenshot of the latest version of Safari (notice the random fonts in the menu bar, bookmarks and the About dialog)

You'll have to redo the entire exercise of editing the fonts.plist file in order to see the menu bars and websites like Yahoo or Amazon correctly.  The other option is to manually copy the Lucida Grande fonts from your c:\windows\fonts folder to the C:\Program Files\Safari\Safari.resources folder. It has worked for lot of Safari users.

If you don't see the toolbar or status bar in Safari 3, copy the Defaults.plist from C:\Program Files\Safari\Safari.resources\ to C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>\Application Data\Apple Computer\Safari and rename it to Preferences.plist - this will reset everything to factory defaults.

This overnight release looks more in response to the 0day exploit discovered just two hours after the public release. Should wait for another patch from Apple.

Download Safari 3.0.1

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Search Video Clips from Popular Video Sharing Sites

How do you find videos on the web related to some topic? The Youtube website is probably a good place to start but if you confine the search only to YouTube, you will miss so much exciting stuff that exists in other places.

DailyMotion, Metacafe, Vimeo, and other video sharing websites may not be as big as YouTube but they still have a great fan following and host tons of video clips that may well be of your interest.

We often ignore searching video content on these "non-YouTube" sites because of lack of time - fortunately, this problem is now a thing of the past with uLinkx - a comprehensive video search engine to help you conveniently search multiple video websites from one place.

uLinkx provides RSS search feeds for your video search queries. And you can also watch any of these videos without leaving the uLinkx website - no more hitting the back or forward buttons in your browser.

My favorite feature is the Live Video search which is like a common wrapper for all video sharing sites. You execute a live query on YouTube or sites right inside uLinkx.

Other than video search, uLinkx can be used for bookmarking video clips from multiple sites or organizing them in video playlists. [image a single playlist that streams videos clips coming from different sources like YouTube, Metacafe and Google Video]
Wishlist - more customizable RSS feeds and support for BrightCove and Blip.tv. I also faced problems subscribing to the Video search feeds in Newsgator but they worked fine inside Google Personalized homepage.

Update: uLinkx is no longer available but you can use Bing Videos for video search.

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Social Bookmarking Enters YouTube, Related Videos Now Optional

The YouTube Videos website sports a new look today that looks cleaner and more usable with the re-arranged modules. The site has moved from a 3-column layout to a 2-column with the embed section now placed just below the actual video clip.

They have added two new features and also removed few things:


Other than the cosmetic changes, the very interesting news is that YouTube is now giving users an option to embed video clips on their sites with or without the related video thumbnails. This option is available near the Embed box.

For existing videos in your blog, you can insert the parameter "&rel0" to the Youtube URL to include related video clips or "&rel1" to hide the related videos - the default setting is that related videos will be shown in the video clip.

Another enhancement is that use can now share YouTube videos on Digg, Delicious, Furl, Reddit and StumbleUpon directly from the YouTube interface.

YouTube has removed the favorites link that suggested how many YouTube members have marked some video as their favorites. The star ratings stay.

Also missing are the links which showed the top five websites who have embedded that video clip.

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View or Search Your Web Browser History in a Picture Timeline

Thumbstrips is a wonderful Firefox extension that helps you view recently visited web pages in a visual manner - it's a more user friendly and powerful approach than the native Firefox History view (Ctrl+H).

Thumbstrips, like an automatic screen capture program, takes screenshots of the websites that you are visiting and also records other details like how long you stayed on that web page and the number of times you viewed that page in your current session.

With recording turned on, press F2 and the website thumbnail images will display as a filmstrip in chronological order - move your cursor over the thumbnails to browse through your web history or right click any image to get more details about your interaction with that particular webpage.

Since thumbstrips will also save the associated HTML source code of web pages, you can use it for searching the browser history with keywords that may be in the title, URL or body of the webpage. The thumbnail images can also be saved to a local folder or shared with friends.

And Thumbstrips will save a snapshot of the webpage as you see it in the web browser - not the entire webpage which could span several folds.

I was expecting Thumbstrips to consume tons of memory since it is always processing in the background but fortunately, that's not the case.  Give it a shot.

Thumbstrips Extension [Firefox Only] | Thanks Dave

Related: How to Capture Web page Screenshots

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Find Alexa Rank of any Website using Google Talk

Imagine typing "whois xyz.com" inside GTalk to find out who owns that web domain name. Or saying "alexa abc.com" will show you the Alexa Traffic details of that website right inside your Google chat window.

You can now easily run popular network commands inside Google Talk, Yahoo!, AOL or Windows Live messenger through IMified - just add imified@imified.com to your buddy list and start using the chat window as a network command line tool.

Other than whois, commands like traceroute and ping can also be executed from GTalk.

We earlier mentioned IMified as a quick tool for publishing posts on Wordpress or Blogger blogs through messenger clients.

The service has come a long way since then and now works seamlessly with tumblr, jaiku, twitter and so on.

You can even use Imified to add bookmarks to your del.icio.us account from Google Talk. How cool is that.

imified | Add it to your friends list and the add the netlookup widget.

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Convert Powerpoint Presentations to Flash with GMail PPT Viewer

GMail now has an inbuilt PPT viewer that lets you view Powerpoint attachment as a Flash picture slideshow in the web browser itself without requiring Microsoft PowerPoint application.

This slideshow feature of GMail will be useful since you no longer have to download the full PPT attachment in order to view that 16th slide of the presentation.

Here are two additional situations where it may help:

1. If you have to view a presentation on some computer that has no copy of PowerPoint, gmail yourself the PPT file and watch the slides inside the web browser. [similar to converting PDF to text using GMail]

2. GMail converts every slide of your Powerpoint presentation to a Flash (swf) file - if you manually advance the entire PPT slideshow using the arrows, all the slides will become available as Flash files in your browser's temp folder.

Just a quick way of transforming Powerpoint slides into SWF documents without using any desktop conversion software. The swf files may then be embedded in your blog for sharing with readers. Nothing great since Scribd can also convert your PPT to Flash paper.

Do you know if GMail Powerpoint viewer can read PPS (Powerpoint Show) formats.

Related: Reduce the File Size of PowerPoint

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Know The Articles That Visitors Are Currently Reading on your Blog

There exist hundreds of web analytics software to help you understand how people discovered your website, how long they stayed on some web page, what browser they were using, etc.

Whos.Amung.Us takes a different approach to web stats and answers two very useful questions in a visual manner. The questions are:

(a) How many people are currently on your blog ?

(b) What stories of your blog are they reading at the moment?

whos.amung.us is not about pageviews or organic search keywords, it's about visualizing content that is being read by visitors on your blog this very moment.

No registrations, no javascript, just insert a small HTML image code and your site stats will begin to show. You can also change the color of the widget to match your blog style.

Like the del.icio.us tag cloud, this service will also show a list of your most popular blog pages - the larger the font, the more hits or more people reading that page.

Since it uses a simple GIF or PNG image, you can use the service to track visitors in Flickr, MySpace or any other site that doesn't accept Javascript code but allow the IMG tag.

http://whos.amung.us/ | Developer Blog | Color Wheel

I think we can also use this service to get email read receipts by inserting the tracking graphic as an inline image in the email.

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Safari 3 Is An Half-baked Web Browser from Apple, Wait for a Patch

If you are also excited about the new Safari Browser for Windows, please defer installing the beta version on your PC until Apple releases a new Safari patch the fixes the display problems.

The current version of Safari, which is more of an alpha version, has problems rendering text on web page, adding bookmarks and crashes often. The Safari support forums on the Apple website are flooded with complaints from Windows Users who are also facing similar problems while loading web pages inside Safari.

Infact, there seems to be a clash between the Lucida fonts bundled with Safari and the ones that are existing in your Windows fonts folder. If you use the Apple supplied fonts, your browser Menu bar, bookmarks and toolbars will either disappear or show greek characters.

Related: Fix Font Display Issues in Windows Safari

Look how the Yahoo! website appears inside Safari for Windows - the text near the Yahoo! services is not displayed while the news headline fonts are showing random characters:

One of the geeky solutions suggested is to manually edit the fonts.plist file in the c:\documents and settings\<User Name>\Local Settings\Application Data\Apple Computer\Safari folder and restart the browser.

Add the following lines at the beginning of the second <dict> node the file:

<key>Verdana</key>
<string>C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\verdana.ttf</string>
<key>Verdana Bold</key>
<string>C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\verdanab.ttf</string>
<key>Verdana Italic</key>
<string>C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\verdanai.ttf</string>
<key>Verdana Bold Italic</key>
<string>C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\verdanaz.ttf</string>
<key>Tahoma Bold</key>
<string>C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\tahomabd.ttf</string>
<key>Tahoma</key>
<string>C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\Tahoma.TTF</string>
<key>Trebuchet MS</key>
<string>C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\trebuc.TTF</string>
<key>Trebuchet MS Bold</key>
<string>C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\trebucbd.TTF</string>
<key>Trebuchet MS Bold Italic</key>
<string>C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\trebucbi.TTF</string>
<key>Trebuchet MS Italic</key>
<string>C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\trebucit.TTF</string>

Apple should quickly fix the problems in the Windows version of Safari else it may soon leave an average impression in the minds of Windows XP or Vista users.

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Heads or Tails: Toss a Coin Online

Do you flip a coin in the air when choosing between two alternatives?

Normally coin flipping requires a metal currency coin but you can now toss coins right inside your web browser using Coin Flipper from Random.org, a popular random number service.

The interesting bit about Coin Flipper is that you can flip coins from several countries in different denominations - even the antique coins of the Roman era are available for flipping, virtually.

Other than simulate the coin tossing activity, Random lets you simulate roll dices, pick state lottery ticket numbers or generate random bitmap images. Random.org

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Shorthand Typing: Write Emails in Outlook More Efficiently

When we compose a new email message in Outlook or reply to an existing email, the body of our email will always have some text phrases that we type repeatedly. For instance:

When you get a blog tip, your reply may have - "Thank you for the tip."

When someone wants your phone number, you'll write - "You can reach me at 123-322-323 anytime during the day."

Hate typing the same text in different emails over and over again ? Here's an alternate solution:

You probably know of an old feature in Microsoft Outlook (and most other Office applications) called AutoCorrect that recognizes spelling errors and replaces them with the correct words as you are typing.

Other than fixing typos, AutoCorrect can be used for creating shortcut command for auto typing long lines of text.

For instance, you can set "familygreeting" as an AutoCorrect entry for Outlook some long line of text like "Hope you and everyone in your family is doing good." Whenever you type familygreeting in the message, Outlook will replace that with the greeting text. More text with less number of keystrokes.

The Autocorrect feature in Outlook can be accessed from Tools -> Options -> Spelling -> Spelling and Autocorrection

You can use this excellent feature to auto insert long email addresses or your website URL in the email message.  Warning: Don't use common English words as autotext entries since Outlook will not warn you before making the replacement.

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Fix Fonts Issues in Safari for Windows

If you are running Safari 3 on Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista, you may have noticed that the fonts on the application menu bar, contextual menus and certain web pages are not displayed properly.

The Windows fonts are sometimes replaced by random characters and numbers. The problem occurs due to the Lucida Grande font that ships with the Safari installer - it probably conflicts with your existing copy of Lucida Grande font for Windows.


Here's an easy fix for font issue:

• Open the Safari 3 installation folder (C:\Program Files\Safari)
• Double click the "Safari.resources" folder. You will see have two font files - Lucida Grande Bold.ttf and Lucida Grande.ttf.1.
• Either rename the files with some different extension or delete them completely from your system.

Restart Safari - everything should look perfect now. No greek or strange characters anymore in the UI.

Update: If the above trick doesn't solve your font display problems in Safari, here's another workaround that works for sure.

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Use Notepad, Vim or Any Text Editor with Firefox for Writing Text

Ever tried editing your Blogger Templates or Wordpress Themes in Firefox ? Or a Wikpedia story that spans several paragraphs ? Editing large blocks of text in Firefox is both confusing and dangerous because it's so easy to make mistakes.

Here's an extremely useful  Firefox extension for you called "It's all text" - though the name offers no hint about the purpose of the extension, it enables you to edit or write text in Firefox using any external text editing software like Notepad, GVim, etc.

It's-all-text extension adds a small "edit" button near the textboxes in Firefox and if you click that button, the existing text opens up inside your favorite text editor.

You can edit the text and then close the editor - your text will automatically appear in the Firefox textbox. [think round-trip editing]. There will be a short Ajax style glow to hint that the text has changed.

The extension will be very handy for editing long blogger templates, Wikipedia entries, composing new blog posts in Wordpress web editor, writing blog comments, editing files in Web based FTP programs or replying to forum threads in Internet message boards.

Geeks may configure Firefox with Vi or Emacs while others may configure it with Notepad, UltraEdit or other text editors. Highly recommended.

It's All Text | Developer Website | Thanks Freakitude

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Yahoo! Celebrity Gossip Site Goes Live, Watch Out Perez Hilton!

"A very pregnant Pretty Woman", "Recovering Lindsay Works Out Her Issues", "Hot Hollywood Beach Bods" - these are the kind of juicy headlines that you are likely to find on most hollywood gossip and celebrity rumor blogs.

[No wonder, sites like Perez Hilton or TMZ.com draw the maximum traffic.]

But here's a small difference though - these are titles from the front page of Yahoo! OMG, the new Hollywood-centric web portal from Yahoo! with celebrity gossip news, pictures and video sourced from Associated Press, Access Hollywood and X17.

It's surprising that Aishwarya Rai, bollywood star from India, also figures in list of hollywood celebrities. Maybe Yahoo! has some plans to introduce an Indian version of Yahoo! OMG and this could be a dry run.

Unfortunately, Yahoo! OMG offers no RSS feeds for any of the content.

Coincidentally, Yahoo!'s partner X17 is the same agency that sued Perez Hilton blog for using copyrighted work. The competition is getting hot.

Yahoo! OMG | Celebrity Index | Thanks Rhiza Sanchez

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Get Your Blog Linked on BoingBoing - An Alternate Way

Unless you have written something very unusual like waterproof iPod speakers, schizophrenia virtual simulation or a bluetooth motorcycle helmet, it is extremely tough to get your article linked on the directory of wonderful things (aka Boing Boing blog).

But don't loose heart if BoingBoing editors aren't linking to your posts - you can now create Boing Boing posts yourself with this post generator developed by graphics designer Katie Sekelsky.

Stuff in a few words and your BoingBoing Story is ready. See the screenshot.

It's such an innovative idea that Xeni Jardin mentioned it on BoingBoing. And here's a fictional story created using the BoingBoing post generator with some editing:

The free WiFi in downtown New York is now blocking Digital Inspiration, following suit with what happened in Boston just last week. I was in the city just last week, for a signing of my new book, Overclocked, and predicted that this would be the next step that city officials would take, especially after the popular technology blog posted pictures of a love that resembles iPhone, as well as links to iPhone skins.

As everything on the website is Creative Commons licenced, I urge all of you living in or near the city to print and post as much of the site's content around as possible, from the church to museum. However, when you're out in the city, beware the roaming cameras of Google Street View Maps.

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Submit Multiple URLs to del.icio.us Bookmarks as a Batch

Imagine you have hundreds (or even thousands) of webpage URLs that you want to upload to your del.icio.us account. How would do this bulk submit when the delicious system allows you to bookmark web pages one at a time ?

There are some very genuine reasons for submitting bookmarks in bulk - for instance, bloggers can put all their blog posts onto del.icio.us to know which posts are most popular among delicious users and what kind of tags / text notes are users attaching to their posts. It's like a good visual analysis of your blog site.

Now let's see how to enter multiple URL's inside del.icio.us database in one go.

Assuming that you have all the URLs and the associate page titles, create a new text document in the following format:

<!DOCTYPE NETSCAPE-Bookmark-file-1>
<TITLE>Bookmarks</TITLE>
<DL><p>
    <DT><A HREF="http://www.abc.com/a.html">Page Title A</A>
    <DT><A HREF="http://www.abc.com/b.html">Page Title B</A>
............
............

    <DT><A HREF="http://www.abc.com/z.html">Page Title Z</A>
</DL><p>

Save this as a text file - It is fairly easy to create the file if you know any shell scripting language (like Perl) or just use the Concatenate function inside Microsoft Excel.

Now open the delicious homepage and go to settings » import / upload. Browse and select the above file, choose "Yes, Import Popular tags" and finally click the upload button.

The upload status page will reload once every minute. A success message will appear when the job is complete. If you are importing a large number of bookmarks (say more that 200), you can safely close the status page and check later as importing will take some time to complete.

These imported bookmarks will be marked as private by default meaning others won't see them in your del.icio.us account.

Know When People Bookmark Your Site on Del.icio.us [example]

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Share Pictures Directly from your Desktop

Photographer Claude Renault is looking for a tool to share pictures with friends and family directly from his computer's hard drive without uploading them on a public photo-sharing website or sending them as email attachments.

Some of you may recall PurpleNova that turns your desktop into a website - every file or folder on your computer (that you decide to share) is automatically assigned a web address and  your friends can view the pictures from your computer onto their desktops. No uploads required.

Another good alternative (to PurpleNova) for sharing photos and music from your computer is Dekoh Desktop - it runs inside your web browser (as a small Java applet) and works the same on Windows, Mac or Linux computers. [PurpleNova was Windows-only]

Getting started with Dekoh is simple. Create an account with your email address and the Dekoh software will seamlessly install in your web browser. Select the Dekoh Photos and add the picture folders that you like to share privately with your contacts.

Send them an invite via Dekoh desktop itself and they'll be able to view your photos from anywhere in the world. The pictures will stream live from your desktop so if you go offline, the sharing stops automatically.
Your friends can view the photos you shared as thumbnails, individual pictures, or in a slideshow.

The look-n-feel of the Dekoh Desktop is pretty impressive and though I had some issues installing it on my main computer (due to conflicting JRE versions), Dekoh worked like a snap on another computer.

They have just launch another application called Dekoh Music which scans your chosen folders for MP3 audio files and and you can listen to your music collection from any other computer. Dekoh.com

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