Description: Moby Gratis is an archive of instrumental music clips created by the alternative rock/electronic music maestro Moby. These are available to anyone to download and legally use in their film projects, provided that these are independent, student, non-commercial, or non-profit films.

One day I will make a film, and it will be fantastic (you’ll see!). When that day comes and I am faced with the issue of finding music to use for my scenes I will go to Mobygratis and check out the growing collection of instrumental/electronic/soundtrack music that might fit the mood. If you are working on your own project you should check it out.

You will have to create an account first, afterwhich you can log in and check out multiple pages of links to music. All of the music is instrumental; you will not find tracks from his albums (or at least I didn’t see any). You can preview the clips on the page through a flash player, and request a license on-the-spot if you want to use it. How cool is that?

See video below of Moby talking about Moby Gratis:
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Description: Over the past few months there seems to have been an explosion of games released as freeware. This posting will present a sort of meta-index of freeware games-lists that I have found on the net.

At first when this posting was conceived I was going to put together a list of my favorite freeware games; however, I was thinking why create another list when there are so many out there? Here’s a collection of my favorite freeware games lists:

1. Freewaregenius’ reviewed freeware games category (scroll down, multiple pages).
2. 1UP.com’s 101 Free games 2008
3. 1UP.com’s 101 Free games 2007
4. 1UP.com’s 101 Free games 2006
5. Gamespot: Adrian’s guide to 2007 freeware games
6. Wikipedia’s list of freeware games.
7. Wikipedia’s list of commercial games released as freeware
8. Wikipedia’s list of open source games
9. Wikipedia’s list of free first person shooters
10. Open source games at the Open Directory Project
11. IndieGames.com: best freeware games 2007 and 2006 . Categories include shoot em ups, platformers, arcade games, etc.
12. TIGsource: best freeware games of 2007
13. Indygamer has their own best of lists 2007; whaddyaknowit.
14. GameTap free games: you have to download and install the “GameTap Player”, and you will have to watch an ad before you play, but it’s worth it for some great games. The fantastic Psychonauts is available for free (although it’s a 1.5 gig download).
15. Caiman Games: top 60 ranked freeware games
16. The Random Gnome’s Lair: Our freshly hand-picked free games selection.
17. Another Random Gnome’s: Oh no! More hand-picked free games.
18. Also Gnome’s Lair: 100 excellent free games in bloom
19. Finally Gnome’s: bouquet of hand picked games with dirty commercial pasts
20. Home of the underdogs’: list of freeware [games] recommendations.
21. Ghacks also has an ultimate free games list.
22. Über 100 kostenlose Games!
23. Cnet’s: 10 most addictive flash games ever made.
24. Butterblog: neverending list of best free games
25. MarcoFolio: best freeware first person shooters
26. Last one — I’m going to bed.
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Description: Free Wi-Fi Hotspot Finder is a web service that can give you a list of free wireless internet locations for any address of your choosing and present these locations visually on a map of the area.

If, say, you’re going to a conference, going to visit relatives, or for whatever reason will be in an unfamiliar part of town and wondering about the available options for wireless internet check out this neat service. Free Wi-Fi Hotspot Finder allows you to enter an address (e.g. a zip code) and gives you a list of Wi-Fi hotpots in that area. It will also place these venues on a Google map mashup.

Of course, this will only help you if you’re planning ahead, unless you have an internet-enabled mobile phone in which case you can log-on and get this information on the spot when you need it. I tried this with mine and although the Google maps service does not show inside the browser on my iPhone I was still able to get a list of Wi-Fi places.

I tested this service on the two locations which I know the most: my neighborhood where I live, and the downtown area where I work, and I can report that it was able to identify more than 95% of places (in both cases it missed only one place that I knew of, but revealed a number of others that I had not known about previously).
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Description: Panoye is a community-driven photo sharing site with a twist: all uploaded images are panoramic, 360° views, and all of them are geo-tagged to show you exactly where the photos were taken on a map of the earth.

I must admit to a certain fondness for panoramic photos and 360° views, which is why I found this site so interesting. Aside from the (decidedly brilliant) concept, and the fact that you need to scroll through the image and/or click into it and drag it around to view it, Panoye feels and behaves much like other photo sharing sites such as Flickr: users can rate and leave comments on images or leave tags that point to interesting features or other information within the images.

Images that you like are easily downloadable (click "show image" and the right-click save background as). You can also subscribe to the site’s RSS feed to be instantly informed of new image uploads and/or subscribe to your favorite Photographers’ RSS feeds and be notified when new images by them become available.

Whats even cooler is that for any image that’s uploaded on Panoye (whether you uploaded it yourself or not) you can obtain a code that enables you to embed it on your site. Check out the following Panorama from Venice, Italy.
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Description: this posting will compare a number of different possible ways to convert PDF files into Word Doc format, including freeware programs and free web and email services. Six different programs/services are tested: (1) PDF2HTMLgui, (2) the Koolwire email PDF to DOC conversion service, (3) the Zamzar web service, (4) Free PDF To Word Doc Converter, (5) Adobe PDF to HTML email conversion service, and (6) the MediaConvert web service.

In order to do this test I created a PDF document using Open Office’s export to PDF function that had the following elements (1) a two-column table with special formatting, which contained (2) three thumbnail-szied jpeg images. My PDF document also contained (3) working hyperlinks; and (4) it featured text that was bolded; (5) contained bulleted points, as well as (6) a numbered list.

For the sake of simplicity my PDF was only a single page. To see what the document looked like click on the screenshot to the right.

The objective: was to get a converted document that could be loaded into MS Word where the text/contents could be edited and subsequently saved as .DOC format, which is to say any of the following formats would be satisfactory: .DOC, .HTML, and .RTF.

Comparative results: look for them at the bottom of this positng.
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Description: this posting will present an overview of a number of freeware options that can add informational tooltips to various file types. Informational tooltips are those informational windows that appear when you hover the mouse over various files. Five programs are presented here including Infotag Magic, Filetip, Thumbview, MediaCoder, and Audioshell.

Shortly after publishing my Infotag Magic review (a program which introduces informational tooltips for a variety of file types including audio files, text files, and executables), I received an email from a reader asking about the possibility of adding tooltips to images and video files that displayed the image resolution for these. I therefore did a bit of research about the various freeware options for installing tooltips for a range of filetypes, and this is a summary of what I found. Note that the first thing that you should do before installing anything is check if the filetypes you are interested in already have adequate tooltips, as many media players and image viewers introduce this functionality.

1. Infotag Magic: adds a variety of info tooltips for: MP3, WMA, APE, and Ogg Vorbis, text-preview tooltips for various text files (TXT, INI, LOG, BAT, DIZ, BAK, and QUE), file version tooltips for executables (EXE, DLL, and OCX), and original file locations for shortcuts. The only drawback with this software, aside from the file types that were not supported (such as images and videos) was that the audio file info was not consistent, and would fail to display tag info that was in the audio files on occasion. Which is a good segue to the next program I would like to mention.
2. MediaInfo: this is one of the better freeware programs designed to provide all manner of information about your video files (resolution, codecs used for different audio/video streams, etc). The latest version of MediaInfo has an optional experimental feature whereby it displays extensive and detailed tooltips covering every bit of information that you might imagine about your media files (both audio and video), perfect for anyone who does a lot of media editing, conversion. The only drawback is that the tooltips look a little bit messy, and the program does not allow you to configure the information presented in the tooltips or the media file types to display tooltips for. Note(1): you have to enable tooltips in the settings, where you will find a message telling you that this is an experimental feature and to disable it if explorer starts acting strange. Note (2): this program handles all manner of video and audio file types, but it does not support image files.
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Description: in this posting I present 5 of my favorite wallpaper images, all of which feature a single, lonely tee typically surrounded by an expansive sky and/or field.

There is an image that I’ve been using as my wallpaper for a very long time of a single, lone tree in a brown field, illuminated by the brilliant orange of a sunset. I am not sure where I downloaded it, but it was featured in numerous screenshots that I have put up on Freewaregenius. This is probably my favorite wallpaper image ever, and works really well as a wallpaper because of the large single-color areas without much activity. Thankfully, I was able to find more information on this image by searching for its filename on Google, and was able to trace the photographer Michal Karcz’s page on deviantART (more nice photography there, including variations the tree theme). You can download a hi-res version of this wallpaper image here. (Note: the images that open when clicking on the thumbnails have all been degraded, but I am providing links to pages where you can find hi-res versions for all of these).

Now I usually do not put much effort into seeking wallpaper images, and am in fact inclined to use the original Windows XP “Bliss” wallpaper that is the default provided by Microsoft. However, every once in a while I will browse image/wallpaper sites out of curiosity. Thus I was browsing an image site and downloaded a handful of images, my favorite of which, once again, depicted a single lone tree surrounded by a vast expanse of sky and field. Unfortunatley this took place some time ago and I can no longer trace back what the site was that it came from, but you can download this image here.
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Description: Flickvision is a web site that displays pictures being uploaded to Flickr and the location they are being uploaded from on a map of the world in real time.

It’s been just over a week since I wrote about Fotoree, a recommendation engine that makes it easy to find images you like on Flickr, and I thought I would follow that posting up with this one. Flickvision is a very simple concept: a map of the world is displayed on-which tooltips appear showing images that were just uploaded to Flickr and pointing to the geographic location on the map that this event took place. Each photo is displayed for about 3 seconds before moving to the next one, and if you click on the name of the Flickr user and you will be taken to that person’s page on Flickr (where you can also see/download the image).

There are two versions of Flickrvision; a 3D rotating globe or a “classic” view that uses a 2D Google maps style representation of the world. You can view the 3D globe fullscreen as well as rotate it and or zoom in and out, which is very cool, but believe it or not I kind of prefer the 2D version.

There isn’t really any practical use to this aside from the mere voyeristic pleasure of observing the pictures that random people from all over the world are taking and uploading, but I found that interesting enough in itself to want to mention it here. Check it out for yourself.

[Via DownloadSquad].
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Description: The Economist magazine provides city guides to more than two dozen cities worldwide, as well as audio business guides and country briefings, all freely accessible.

The Economist is the only print publication I subscribe to, and is definitely one of the best magazines in the world. They also provide city guides and other resources on their website to more that two dozen cities and about 80 countries. If you are going to be travelling I highly recommend you check these out. More notes as follows:

• The city guides include what you would expect: sightseeing recommendations, nightlife, shopping, etc… They also have hotel and restaurant recommendations although these do seem to be more on the upscale side, so if you are looking for backpacking ideas or travelling on the cheap you might want to look elsewhere.
• What I like about these guides is that they are linked to the relevant stories on these cities/countries from the magazine, which makes it very easy to get to grips with all the current events in those places. This applies to both city guides and country briefings.
• The audio business guides are actually very fun to listen to from an anthropological perspective: what would Chinese business partners say if they want to reject an offer, what would Taxis in Beijing charge a foreigner, whether a tip is expected or not, etc.
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Description: Photoree is a web-based recommendation engine for images. It can learn what kind of images that the user likes by serving images and asking for a simple thumbs-up, thumbs-down or no rating, and can use this information to point the user to images/photographs that it thinks he/she will like. It is based on a database of more than 1 million indexed images.

Do you enjoy good photography? Maybe you frequently find yourself downloading images or wallpaper backgrounds because of their artistic merit? If so then you probably visit Flickr and you probably are aware of the fantastic photography that can be found there. The only problem is that it can be quite time consuming to surf Flickr or sites like it in order to find the best stuff, and this is where Photoree, a recommendation engine for images and photographs, can be very useful. To quote the site: “Photoree is to Photos what Last.FM is to music and StumbleUpon to websites”. Here are more notes on this web service:

• The image database: the site states that Photoree has a database of more than 1 million images. All the images seem to share 2 characteristics (a) they all originate from Flickr, and (b) they are all under the Creative Commons license. Oh, and (c) they are mostly very good. All images are linked to their page on Flickr, where you can find out more information if you need to.
• Rating: Photoree will serve images to you based on what it learned from your previous ratings. Images which you “thumbs up” will be saved in your favorites. Curiously, once you rate an image up or down Photoree will let you skip rating a couple of images but will force you to make a judgment call after that, which feels weird at times but certainly makes the process more efficient.
• Your favorites: you can view these as pages of thumbnails in a grid, and can either share them with everyone, with people who have registered with Photoree only, with your contacts only, or just yourself. Note that you can add people as contacts very easily and at will.
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Description: FeedCrier is a free web service that delivers RSS feeds into your IM client and works with AIM, MSN, and Jabber/GTalk. It can also provide a widget for your website that your readers can use to quickly subscribe to your site’s RSS feed and have it delivered into their IM clients.

If (a) you use AIM, MSN, or Jabber/GTalk, and (b) there is a site or news source that you follow religiously and like to be instantly notified in real time whenever updates are published (e.g. Freewaregenius ), you can use FeedCrier to deliver these RSS updates straight into your IM. Or for example if you publish a blog and would like to be instantly notified whenever there’s a new comment you can have your comments RSS delivered to your IM client in real time. Here are more notes on this service:

• How it works: all you have to do is add ’FeedCrier’ to your buddy list within your IM client. From that point forward you can add RSS subscriptions in 3 different ways (a) through your IM client itself, (b) using the FeedCrier site or a FeedCrier widget featured on a site, or (c) using a FeedCrier bookmarklet that you can add to your favorites.
• Interaction with FeedCrier: there are 4 commands; help, subscribe [URL], unsubscribe [URL] and list, which lists all of your RSS subscriptions. These simple commands allow you to quickly and easily manage your account, and I found them to be easier to use that man anging your account through your account page on the FeedCrier site. The URL used can either be the site URL (in-which case FeedCrier will attempt to find the RSS feed on its own), or you can specify the RSS feed URL itself.
• Adding a widget to your site or blog: is extremely easy; you can generate a little code snippet that does this that you can insert into your site.
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Description: This posting will describe how to change the default icons used for any file-type using the free”Icon Phile” program.

Imagine this: you have just installed a very nice program that may be outstanding in many respects but inexplicably foists on yours PC some of the ugliest icons you’ve ever seen for the file extensions that it handles. Or you’ve just downloaded some nifty icon libraries with very nicely done icons for various file types, and you would like to use those instead of the default icons on your system. This how-to will show you how you can do this; it will assume that you have (a) an icon or icons for a file type that you want to change, and (b) an icon or icons that you want to use in their stead, in the form of an icon file (.ICO), an icon library (DLL) or even an executable that might contain the icon(s) you seek.

For the purposes of this posting I will change the default icons for PDF files from those used by my favorite free PDF reader, PDF-XChange Viewer, to another icon I found in a library.

The program used: is called Icon Phile. Alas this freeware program is no longer in development but you can find a download link on my Icon Phile review page. Once downloaded unzip the archive in the place you want to keep it, as this program does not require installation. After this go ahead and launch the program.

Step by step:
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Description: Virustotal is a web service that provides on-demand scanning of your local files for worms, trojans, and all kinds of malware detected by antivirus engines. It allows you to upload any local file up to 10 megs in size and will perform a scan across 30+ different virus scanning engines (which include all of the leading heavy-hitter virus killer engines on the market).

Let’s assume for the sake of discussion that most of us have fairly competent, updated virus-killer and antispyware software and firewalls that keep malware attacks at bay. But what if you want to open a file or run an .exe that is, by your estimation, of dubious origin? It is possible for you to manually override your antispyware and firewalls merely because you are accustomed to doing so when they intercept legitimate software and files and ask for your arbitration. Or, alternately, you might have a dangerous file that is simply not being recognized as such for whatever reason by the security software you are using.

This issue is of particular concern to me as I like to think that all the software featured on Freewaregenius is malware free, and the way I "check" for this is to simply try out the software and see how the security software I run responds, which is not really a guarantee that a file is malware free.

Enter Virustotal, a service that will scan any file that you upload to it using more than 30 virus detection engines with all the latest updates, making it far more likely that if the file in question is dubious that it will be recognized as such by a subset of these engines at the very least. Here are more notes on this service:

• Types of malware detected: can detect worms, trojans, and all kinds of malware detected by antivirus engines. This does note include adware (I tested with a known adware program), but most (not all) of the engines will identify spyware.
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Description: Note2Email is a website that allows you to send quick emails to yourself or others through a simple form. You can optionally enter in a special encryption key such that the recipient will only be able to read the email if they know it.

Have you ever logged into your email account in order to send a note to yourself ? (I know that I personally have done this numerous times). With Note2email you can send notes by email quickly and easily without needing to log into your email account. All you need to remember is the note2email.com URL. Here’s more info on this service:

• Your email will be from "note[at]note2email.com",which enables you to set up a filter in your email service or program and create a repository folder for notes sent to yourself.
• Note2email relieves you from needing a web-based email if sending email notes from a computer that’s not your own.
• Note2email relieves you from needing to log into web-based email in order to send email notes from a computer that’s not your own. This is both more secure (alleviates any risk of compromising your account password) and will save you time otherwise spent logging in.
• You can send email with a special encryption key that you specify. Your recipient will only be able to view the email if they can enter in your key.
• Spam protection: you will need to identify the note2email logo from other random images to send email with note2email. This protects against random spammers using the service for junk mail.
• Lastly, I should mention that note2email allows you to send email fairly anonymously to any address. (Note: anybody with little technical skills can send an email disguised as being from anyone they choose. At least with note2email the sender is "note2email" and not some fake identity).
• Bookmarklet for taking quick notes by email is in the works.
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Description: this posting will cover three online services that provide solutions for common RSS issues, namely: filtering you RSS feeds by user-defined keyword(s), consolidating multiple feeds into one, and converting RSS feeds into email updates.

FilterMyRSS.com: is a web service that can filter your RSS feeds based on keywords that you specify. Needless to say this can be extremely useful in reducing information overload by delivering only those news items that contain your keywords and thus have a high probability of being interesting and/or relevant to you.

Here’s an example: let’s say that you get the RSS feed from a popular software portal but that you are only interested in seeing news items about freeware or open source items. Assuming that the RSS entry actually include a mention of the software licensing in it (as some do not), FilterMyRSS will allow you to enter “freeware” and “open source” as filter keywords and will only deliver those news items that contain any of these keywords in the RSS entry. Very useful indeed.

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FEEDblendr.com: if you’ve ever wished that instead of your dozens of RSS feed URLs you simply had a single URL that combined all of them together then you’re in luck; FEEDblendr is a s service that can combine multiple RSS feeds into a single river-of-news type feed for you.The FEEDblendr interface is very easy to use; simply enter your RSS feeds one by one into the form. If you would rather upload an OPML file with all your feeds that is also possible. Overall a really cool and potentially useful service.

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SendMeRSS.com: what I have discovered publishing my blog is that there are certain readers who (a) want to be updated with all new published postings on the one hand, while (b) do not want to subscribe to an RSS feed or deal with the RSS world in general, or (c) simply want to be notified by email whenever there’s a new posting.If this describes you then you’ll appreciate the SendMeRSS web service. All you have to do is enter the RSS feed URL into the service, and they will send updated feeds as emails straight to your inbox. They also will let you upload an OPML file if you would like to import a number of RSS feeds at one go.

SendMeRSS also offers widgets for site/blog owners that allow visitors to request email updates straight from the site. If you’re a publisher however consider that they will not share the email addresses of your subscribers with you, which is something to keep in mind (although they will give you stats on your number of subscribers).
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