The Machets’ Blog

Name: Flash Earth Price: Free

There are many different companies that offer free maps. However, some areas are not covered my many map providers, and it can be quite difficult in finding out which one will return the best results. However, a new service called Flash Earth provides a very handy and simple way to search them all, including Google Maps, Microsoft VE, Yahoo! Maps, Ask.com, OpenLayers and NASA Terra.

Flash Earth has a great interface that is better than many of those on the official websites. Give it a go today!

A few weeks ago, I decided to reinstall Windows XP onto my computer. That is, wipe everything and put it all back on again. This dramatically improves system performance, and I am very familiar with the process from the beginning to end.

After backing up my important data (such as my Microsoft Outlook emails and contacts, Desktop, etc), I decided to save space on my backup hard drive by leaving the My Documents folder on a spare internal hard drive. After the long 2 hr process of installation, I discovered that Windows had been installed on the spare internal drive (My Documents). I realised that there was no way of retrieving the information.

But fortunately, my files had been backed up the last time I reinstalled the operating system (about a month or two before). However, since my backup hard drive had almost reached its capacity, I had begun to delete many large files and folders. So I had deleted my previous backups as well.

I did a quick search on the web, and found a program called Recover My Files. At first glance the website looked a little suspicious, but SiteAdvisor told me that it was OK so I downloaded it. It searched my backup hard drive (very slowly) and returned a list of every deleted file. I was then able to recover my important documents. Of the 1100 or so files, only about 20 had been corrupted. Luck was on my side.

What did I learn from this exercise? What we have all been told since the dawn of computing. Backup your files. I can’t stress enough how important it is to make a backup. I strongly suggest that you invest in an external hard drive, and backup your data as often as possible. Because what if a virus came and destroyed the lot? What if you accidentally press the “Delete” button? It can and does happen.

Time Required: 2 Minutes Difficulty: Easy

If you would like to make your photos have faded edges, it’s quite easy to do if you have Adobe Photoshop. Here’s how:

1. Open a photo.
2. Convert the background to a layer by double clicking on it. (Give it a name if you wish.)
3. Select the Elliptical Marquee tool.
4. Drag a marquee selection around the area of the photo you want to keep.
5. Click the “Add layer mask” button at the bottom of the layers palette.
6. Click on the layer mask thumbnail in the layers palette.
7. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and make sure the Preview option is checked.
8. Adjust the radius until you are happy with the amount of fade and click OK.
9. Add a layer under the photo and fill it with the desired background.

Tips

• You can paint in the layer mask with shades of gray for other effects. Just click the mask thumbnail in the layers palette to activate it for painting.
• The icon next to the eye in the layers palette will show a paintbrush icon if the layer is active, and a mask icon if the mask is active.
• If you decide you don’t like the effect, simply drag the mask thumbnail to the trash icon on the layers palette and then click discard.
• To reposition the vignette, click the link icon between the layer thumbnail and the mask thumbnail to move the mask independently of the layer. Don’t forget to relink them when you’re done.

[From About.com]

Name: WLM Universal Patcher++ Price: Free

Windows Live Messenger is one of the best instant messengering programs available. However, the advertisements have become more intrusive and annoying than previous versions of the program (formerly MSN Messenger). Ads appear at the bottom of the main window as well as as text in every chat window. Many people also find the tabs to be an annoyance, as well as the search feature if Windows Live Search is not your preferred search engine.

Fortunately, there is now a way to take back control and remove all the annoyances. WLM Universal Patcher++ is a small program that doesn’t require any install. It’s simple functions are self explanatory; simply choose what you want to eliminate, and they disappear! It also enables the ability to run multiple instances of Messenger. If you don’t want to change a feature (such as removing the actions pane which I find useful), you can leave it blank.

Download WLM Universal Patcher v0.9.3

Name: Google Pack Price: Free

Google Pack is a great program that downloads essential software for your computer and keeps them up to date for you. It is estimated that the average time for a new computer’s security to be compromised once it is connected to the internet is 12 minutes, so Google Pack should be one of the first programs to be installed on a new computer as it includes Ad-Aware and a trial for an antivirus utility (but you should probably get a better one like McAfee VirusScan or AVG Free Edition).

Google Pack comes with useful programs such as Adobe Reader to read pdf files, Mozilla Firefox for better web-browsing and Picasa; one of the best free photo managing applications. It also includes the Google Pack Screensaver so that you can enjoy your photos.

The programs included in Google Pack can be added and removed to suit your liking. Google Pack contains an excellent selection of essential and free programs, and what’s best is that they’re free!

Name: TrashMail Price: Free

Why does SPAM exist? Put simply, you provided your email address to someone who was may have given you something in return, but sold your email address on the way.

SPAM is unsolicited mail. It is both annoying and wastes time; however it is still very successful. Companies send these emails that most of us ignore. But there are some people, say 5% at most, who do buy those cheap watches or participate in special offers. This makes the whole thing worthwhile for the spammers.

Unsolicited messages are sent to you though a number of means. If you use a free email provider like Gmail, or a well known company such as AOL, spammers will probably get to you by guessing your email address. They send millions of emails to accounts that never exist. But that’s not the only way. As previously mentioned, spammers may buy yours and other people’s email addresses when you sign up for free or other account-based products. You are then promptly added to the list.

Other than creating a sophisticated, unique email address that will be hard to remember, you can create aliases when entering in your email address online. TrashMail is a very useful service which lets you create an email alias that expires after it receives X amount of emails or after a certain amount of time (whichever comes first). You can then safely give your email address to anyone you like, and SPAM will be largely reduced. This also applies to showing your email on a website (a forum is a good example). The team at TrashMail have created a Firefox extension where you can easily and instantly give out your @trashmail.net email address online, specifying where emails sent there should really end up.

Unfortunately, SPAM is not going to ever go away. The US and international courts may be tracking down and jailing/fining the biggest names in the ‘industry,’ but smaller spammers will always continue to cause agony. TrashMail is the best way to help reduce the waste of time that SPAM presents.

Name: PDF Online Price: Free

PDFs (Portable Document Formats) are very useful read only files that you can download and email. The catch is that the major player for creating them is Adobe Acrobat, and it doesn’t come cheap.

Now, you can turn Word Documents among others into PDFs with PDF Online. Simply upload your document (maximum file size is 2mb) and provide a valid email address. Your converted PDF is then sent to you instantly.

PDF Online comes from BCL Technologies, a company which also makes easyPDF Print Driver; a fantastic program which lets you ‘print’ virtualy anything to a PDF (with no file size restrictions). It costs US$14.95 but is well worth it if you want to present your documents in a professional way.

Name: Simply Headlines Price: Free

If you don’t want to use an RSS reader to receive feeds from selected websites, there may be another solution. Simply Headlines is a new site that will email you a number of RSS Feeds from websites that you choose, and will display it like a newspaper.

Simply Headlines is free to use, and you can choose to receive your news in either the morning or afternoon. Click the button below to sign up and receive the Machets’ Blog (among others) daily, or otherwise head to Simply Headlines to receive your choice of blog and news feeds.

Name: Firefox 2.0 Price: Free

Mozilla has recently released the latest version of its popular web browser, Firefox 2.0. This release offers some new and innovative features for the market, including a better management system for extensions, better support for feeds, and better overall security.

Firefox 2 contains some other useful improvements such as a spell checker (for multiple languages of your choice) and new phishing protection. The page search now searches text fields as well.

This excellent web browser, coupled with the many extensions available, gives you the very best experience in your day to day web browsing.

We have now reached an age that can travel back in time! The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is a site that lets you see many websites as they were in the past. You can see the roots of Yahoo!, Google, even The Machets’ Website.

The Internet Archive Wayback Machine has taken copies of many websites over the ages since 1997, and lets visitors see each version that has been archived. You won’t be able to see every webpage on the net, as some have been disallowed by webmasters, or couldn’t be found. Some images and links are also unavailable.

This service is very useful and interesting, and it is definately worth taking a look.