Archive for June, 2010
5+2 Best Apps To Securely Sync Online And Share Your Files
This is one of the very best list of its kind where you can find incredibly useful and life saver data synchronization applications that you would love to bookmark for future use. I hope everyone of you will like this list, you can try these whether you are an office worker, a manager, a supervisor, a student, a home user, etc. These great tools will give you excellent experience and peace of mind when you need online synchronization and data sharing. Just take a look at them and share your thought’s here.
You are welcome if you want to share more useful synchronization applications that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at smashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and follow us on Google Buzz as well.
IDriveSync
IDriveSync syncs files online and across multiple PCs. On installing and logging into the application, it opens up a ‘Sync’ area where you can drag-n-drop files from your PC into or add your files into. Anytime you make a change to synced data anywhere on those multiple PCs, all the PCs will shortly reflect the modified data. IDriveSync does easy sharing too.
Sync.in
In case you do not know what the term means, online collaboration is a group of individuals working on the same file or document online. Everybody makes changes and edits to the documents and these changes can be viewed by other group members. Currently countless websites offer this service. One such website is Sync.in.
SpiderOak
SpiderOak provides innovative cloud-based personal data management services that simplify the process of backing up, accessing, organizing, sharing and synchronizing data from any number of computers or external storage media. They offers 2 GBs free account for life and you will be enjoying all of the features SpiderOak has to offer.
Live Mesh
With Live Mesh, you can synchronize, share and access files with all of your devices, so you always have the updated copy of your files. It’s very simple and easy that you can now access your files from any device or from the web, easily share them with others, and get notified whenever someone changes a file. The best of all this service is powered by Microsoft and absolutely free for everyone.
Syncplicity
Syncplicity is effortless synchronization, backup, and sharing. Install it on one computer and all your important documents, photos, and music are backed up online, complete with remote access and aversion history. If you are working on a presentation at home, hit save, and it’ll be waiting for you at work. With sharing, it’s a walk in the park to collaborate with colleagues or to share your high-res photos with your friends.
Newly Added
Dropbox
With 2GB of online free storage you can sync files of any size or type on Dropbox. You can sync Windows, Mac and Linux computers. It may automatically syncs when new files or changes are detected.
Box.net
Box.net’s online file storage makes it easy to securely share content as a link or a shared folder with anyone inside or outside your company. This will help you create an online workspace where you can share project files, add comments, assign tasks, start discussions or create new content.
DoYouBuzz Can Help You Easily Create Customizable Resume and Spread It Across Social Networks
People whose work involves computers need to have an online version of their resumes a.k.a. curricula vita. If you plan on uploading an online CV furnished in Microsoft Word, you will not stand out from the crowd. You need a resume that is brilliant and eye catching. DoYouBuzz can help with that.
DoYouBuzz is a wonderful website that helps you create an online resume within minutes. The site features free and paid accounts. While you can take full advantage of the site’s services only through the paid account, the free version will be a good place to start.
You start by creating a username and password on the site. Entering your name gives you your very own DoYouBuzz URL. As you move on you can transfer information from your LinkedIn and Viadeo accounts. At the time you enter your name, you can also enter your employment type and field.
The resume starts off as a basic black and white template which you can modify to give a visually brilliant look. This is what the resume looks like without any work done on it:
Additions to your resume can be made using the buttons on top. From there you can choose different templates and color schemes for your online CV.
You can choose to add a variety of things to your resume such as media additions to your portfolio.
The completed resume can even be linked to your social media accounts to share with your friends and family.
People who work online (especially freelancers) can immensely benefit from DoYouBuzz’s online resumes. Click here to visit the site.
40 Stunning Examples Of [Exterior & Interior] Architecture Photography
The field of photography has taken a step forward to interpret the architecture in several ways. Since architecture is a way to express the creative stance of the architect who has designed that master piece. Nowadays, the art of architecture photography has taken the many forms; either it is photographing the exterior or interior, you can always come up with many awesome photographs if you have make the use of correct photographic techniques and above all if you have an observant eye that can spot the different point of view.
In this post, we have collected some awesome examples of Architecture Photography that would simply amaze you with their beauty. You will notice that the interior architecture with repeating patterns and geometric shapes serves like a bonus for photographers. So, without a further ado, let’s take a look at this post. Feel free to share your opinion.
You are welcome if you want to share more Architecture Photography images that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at smashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter. Click on the images to go from where the images has been taken and learn more about their creators and to appreciate them.
Interior Architecture Designs
Malta – Mdina – St Pauls Cathedral Interior 05 – v2 sq
Interior details of Oslo Opera House
Cripta Guell: interior
Casa Batlló
British Museum ~ Art is all around ~
Interior of St Peter Cathedral II – HDR
Architecture of the 50th 09
isboa – Igreja de Benfica
DAM Interiors, Try to find your way
Turkey – Istanbul – Blue Mosque Interior 4
Holy Trinity Church Interior
São Vicente (III) – Abrantes – Church :: HDR
UAE – Abu Dhabi – Airport interior
Spain – Seville – Cathedral Interior
Exterior Architecture Designs
Automatically Redirect To Print Pages On News Sites
The internet is not only used by people who like to store their media or connect with friends through social networking sites; it is also a great source of information and knowledge. Major newspapers and magazines have their online versions up as websites. These are accessible versions of their paper versions. There is only drawback: the extra things.
When you read a newspaper or magazine, the text is easily viewable and you can get the information you want quickly. However on the website of the same magazine you will find many advertisements and a layout that is not best suited for reading conveniently. A tool that solves this problem is “Fit to Print”.
Fit to Print is an extension for Google Chrome that makes it easier to read online articles of a number of reputable newspapers / magazines. The supported sites include nytimes.com, boston.com, thenation.com, washingtonpost.com, and alternet.org.
The extension sits neatly on your address bar. Clicking the extension turns it on / off. When you reach an article link on one of the supported sites, you are automatically taken to its print version which is much friendlier to read.
Here is the normal view of a recent article on nytimes.com:
And here is the print view:
(* The article can be read here.)
As you can see the print version is much easier to read than the ‘glossy’ version.
Digital Product Delivery: Selling Products Online Is Not That Hard, As We Assume!
Selling digital products on the Internet can look like an overwhelming and expensive endeavor. However, with the right tools, knowledge, and experience, it is very feasible to make a remarkably viable online marketplace in a matter of a few clicks of the mouse. Significantly helping to streamline and simplify the process for online marketers while still offering a wealth of features and options is DPD.
Standing for Digital Product Delivery, it is a comprehensive e-commerce utility for people who want to sell digital products on the web.
Sell Digital Downloads at a Flat Price
With some of the other online marketplaces that facilitate the sale of digital products, the sellers are hit with transaction fees, hosting fees, and other charges that can quickly bite into the bottom line. Such is not the case with DPD. Instead, subscribers pay a low monthly fee and are offered unlimited downloads and unlimited transactions. In fact, it is possible to sell digital products through a number of different websites, all through one DPD account.
When you use a standard Google Checkout or PayPal process for selling a digital product, you may be hosting your premium content on a freely available webpage. You may use a generic link that is sent out to all buyers, opening up the possibility of link farming, piracy, and other related issues. DPD is different in the way that it works. Each buyer is provided with a unique, secure download link. This way, it is much more difficult for multiple people to download from the same purchase. In the settings area on the user dashboard, you can also set restrictions in the number of download attempts, as well as a time limit for how long the generated download link remains active.
Multiple Websites, Multiple Profiles, Multiple Products
One of the major features offered by DPD is that it can handle multiple websites and multiple products from a single DPD account and interface. This significantly streamlines the process. Each website can be afforded its own profile, defining such items as the store name, website URL, currency accepted, contact name, default language, payment processor, Google merchant ID, tracking HTML, download limits, and more. Since this e-commerce tool hosts all of your digital products too, you don’t have any worries about bandwidth and minimal concerns over downtime. Most DPD plans have no product file size limit, ensuring that you have enough room for larger content like videos and software packages.
Inspecting the User Dashboard
From this dashboard, you have quick access to your stats and analytics, as well as the ability to edit your websites and products.
Each website and each product is listed separately on your inventory page, including links to the different options and customizations available. Each product is given its own unique product ID, as well as a thumbnail image. Going into each individual product, you can also gain access to pre-designed buttons (including the full HTML code for each) that you can then embed on your websites, forums, and other places on the Internet. There are sets compatible with single-item (instant) checkouts and multiple-item (shopping cart) checkouts. After the buyer completes the purchase process, he or she can be redirected to a return URL that you define. This could be a specialized “thank you” page that you design or it could be back to your main website; it’s up to you.
Integration with WordPress Blogs
WordPress continues to be one of the most popular content management systems on the Internet, not only for blogs, but also for content websites and e-commerce stores. As such, DPD has also been designed to be compatible with the platform. In this way, you can “turn your WordPress blog into a download selling marketplace” with DPD. There is no extra code-edited needed on your part. In fact, you don’t even need to copy-and-paste like how you would with a regular website. Instead, the entire transaction can be facilitated with the WordPress plugin. Simply download and activate the plugin, connecting to your DPD account, and you’ll be ready to sell digital products on your WordPress site in no time. This includes a sidebar checkout widget, customizable buttons, and the ability to add cart buttons to your posts.
Run Your Own Affiliate Programs
Want to enlist the help of affiliates to promote your product? As it turns out, DPD comes with it’s own built-in affiliate system to automatically track affiliate’s commissions and generate payout reports. DPD generates your own affiliate “mini-site” to link from your sales site where your affiliates can log in and view their sales stats, generate links, read vendor news, and more. DPD supports multiple payout levels too, so you can set up “super affiliates” with higher payouts. A unique feature of DPD, vendors can create affiliate buy buttons that allow affiliates to sell your products, right from their website while you retain complete control.
Offering Coupons and Discounts
Allowing you to open a regular e-commerce store is already pretty powerful, especially with multi-website and multi-product support, but DPD goes even further.
It is possible to offer discount codes for each of your digital products. These coupons codes are defined by you and you can define the amount of the discount, either as a flat rate or as a percentage of the purchase price. Want to only offer the coupon to the first X number of buyers? You can do that too. The coupon can also be time-limited, giving you all sorts of opportunities for creative marketing and promotion.
Sell Digital Products with Fixed Costs
A remarkably robust and powerful e-commerce tool, DPD is also very affordable, even for the smallest of online merchants. There are a number of pricing plans available, including a 30-day free trial. All plans include PayPal support, Google Checkout support, an affiliate enabled multi-item checkout cart, ClickBank support, and the ability to give free samples. The smallest plan is just $5 a month and includes up to 10 products with a max product size of 50MB. Even at this price, you are afforded unlimited bandwidth and unlimited transactions. The most popular plan is $10 a month, allowing for up to 20 digital products, unlimited product space, unlimited bandwidth, and unlimited transactions. The 30 product, 60 product, and 120 product plans are $16, $22, and $30 per month, respectively. DPD even has larger plans available for volume sellers!
‘If It Was My Home’ Helps You Visualize an Oil Spill Where You Live
Our technological process has, unfortunately, adversely affected our planet. Global warming was the most concerning impact our lifestyles has on Earth; but now, the latest in our damages to Earth’s environment is the BP Oil Spill.
In case you are not familiar with the spill, it is one the most threatening environmental hazards of today. The Deepwater Horizon was a $560 million floating oil platform constructed by Hyundai Heavy Industries; the platform was owned by Transocean and leased to BP (British Petroleum) till the year 2013. The platform was located in the Gulf of Mexico. On April 20th this year, the drilling rig exploded. The explosion caused a massive fire which later resulted in the platform sinking. The incident has also resulted in a massive ongoing oil spill which we now know as the BP Oil Spill.
The world does not fully recognize the seriousness of this oil spill. To help them understand the gravity of this situation, Andy Lintner created “If It Was My Home.”
If It Was My Home is a free to use website that aims to spread awareness about the BP Oil Spill. It contains a Google Map and shows the current situation of the spill and help you demonstrate the seriousness and severity of the BP disaster.
You can type in your geographical location and check what impact the spill would have in your area. If you are using Chrome, Gears can automatically convey your location to the site and you can view how much of your local area can be covered by the spill.
You can shift from simple map view to satellite, hybrid and terrain views from the available buttons.
At the bottom of the map, you can view some useful information and tips on how to spread knowledge and awareness about the spill.
Oil from the spill is exponentially spreading. By June 4, 2010, the oil spill had fouled 125 miles of Louisiana’s coast, had washed up along Mississippi and Alabama barrier islands, and was found for the first time on a Florida barrier island, at Pensacola Beach, with part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore.
Websites such as If It Was My Home are trying to help the environment recover from the damage we have caused it. You should visit the site and share it with your friends.
Check out “If It Was My Home”
Safari 5 Improved The Way You Surf The Web
During the keynote at WWDC, Steve Jobs did not mention much about Safari. But Apple made up for it by releasing a press announcement centered on Safari.
The new Safari version is Safari 5. The browser’s new features includes Safari Reader, strong HTML5 support, better performance, Bing Search, Enhanced Keyboard Navigation, Acid 3 Compliance, Nitro JavaScript Engine, Hardware Acceleration for Windows, support for extensions, Geo-location service, Improved Web Inspector. Before discussing it further, I won’t mind to rate Safari 5 as smart, powerful, beautiful browser For Mac and PC.
Bing has been added one of the preloaded search engine options. This will obviously save Safari users a lot of time since they will be able to execute Bing searches from within a webpage. Google and Yahoo searches can also be used on the browser.
One of the most important additions is the support for extensions. Safari is finally jumping on the addons / extensions bandwagon. Hopefully it will attract developers the same way Chrome and Firefox did. 3rd party extensions will surely beautify and simplify the Safari experience.
Safari 5 is considerably faster than its previous versions. Apple boasts a 30% performance improvement over Safari 4. Apple also claims that Safari 5 is 3% faster than Chrome 5.0 and over twice as fast as Firefox 3.6 when it comes to running JavaScript.
The new browser version will handle HTML5 in a better way. For example, full-screen view and closed captions for will now be supported for HTML5 video.
Safari 5 includes support for location services and whenever you visit a Geo-location website, Safari will ask for a confirmation before sharing your position (just like in Chrome).
The most hyped new feature in Safari 5 is Safari Reader. This feature allows users to exclude online ads from any webpage and obtain a simplified view for easier reading. Certainly this will speed up page loading times and be a convenience to users.
You can test all these features yourself because the browser is up for public download. Get Safari 5 by clicking here.
BlogRadio: A Tool To Convert RSS Feeds Into Audio
RSS feeds are a great way to catch up on website updates. You can simply have the RSS feed view all the latest material on a site without having to look for it manually. However reading many RSS feeds can get a little too tiresome for the eyes because of the extensive reading. To ease your management of RSS feeds, give BlogRadio a try.
BlogRadio is a freeware desktop application based on Adobe Air. The tool gathers your RSS updates and reads them out for you. It uses great text-to-speech techniques to produce almost natural male / female reading voices.
To get started with BlogRadio you will first need to download it. Since it is based on Air, it is multiplatform and can be used by Windows, Mac, and Linux computer users. After installation this is what BlogRadio will look like:
(* You can resize the window to suit your monitor’s resolution and view all BlogRadio’s buttons.)
Initially, BlogRadio’s main pane will be empty. You will need to use the “Add” button under the left pane of RSS feeds add new feeds.
After you have successfully added the feed, the updates will be shown in the left pane.
You can highlight any entry and its corresponding updates will be shown to the right, in the middle pane.
In this pane, you can click on any entry and use the button under this pane to start the reading.
Each entry will take a short amount of time to load up before it can be played so you might have to wait a while, depending on the speed of your connection.
To change the voice the feed is being read in, use the “Test the Voices!” button in the top row of buttons.
This button will show you options of voice which you can test out and select.
In conclusion, if you use RSS feeds and are looking for a way to improve their convenience level, BlogRadio will not disappoint.
Visit BlogRadio @ www.podblogr.com and get its desktop application.
Actual Multiple Monitors:What You Need Right After Attaching A Second Display
Right after installing a second monitor, each and every Windows user quickly discovers the following simple things:
- More screen estate – more windows opened at once.
- More windows opened at once – more time spent on managing them.
- More time spent on windows management – less time spent on actual work.
Looks frustrating, isn’t it? You bought the second monitor to increase your productivity and make your work faster, not to shuffle numerous windows between monitors! Attaching the third monitor doesn’t help – even more screen estate, opened windows and time lost on routine window manipulations.
The right answer is following: to be efficient, multi-monitor computing requires specially designed user interface tools and utilities. Historically, Windows user interface was designed in a single-monitor era and haven’t changed significantly since then. Even the latest Windows 7 system, though introduced many smart updates in its UI, provided nothing new regarding the work with multi-display desktops.
Actual Multiple Monitors, a software utility by Actual Tools, has been developed to upgrade Windows user interface with all necessary tools and means and make the work with multiple monitors fast, pleasant and efficient.
Multi-monitor Taskbar
The first thing you notice on a second display is its “emptiness”: there is no taskbar, no icons, no windows. Okay, windows can be dragged and new icons can be created there, but what about the taskbar? Your short research ends up with a disappointing result: Windows has no task management options on secondary displays. Yes, each time you need to activate a window minimized on a secondary monitor, to launch a new task from the Start menu, to access a background service’s icon in the notification area – you have to drag the mouse to the primary display and back.
General Windows Taskbar in a multi-monitor environment
Actual Multiple Monitors can emulate Windows Taskbar on all secondary monitors you have. Each such taskbar looks and works like a full replica of the main taskbar: it has the Start button, notification area and clock, it can display toolbars (like Quick Launch), it can be locked or hidden, and it even supports the new abilities presented in Windows 7: Pin and Peek.
Besides the regular features of the main taskbar, Multi-monitor Taskbar offers some advanced abilities.
Most of them are available in each secondary taskbar’s context menu:
First, each taskbar (including the primary one) can display just the tasks running on its host monitor (so-called individual mode).
Multi-monitor taskbar (individual mode)
In other words, you can use each monitor for a separate activity, and applications from different monitors won’t be mixed up in the taskbar. However, if you need to manage all running tasks despite which monitor you are currently working with – each secondary taskbar can mirror the contents of the primary one (the mirror mode).
Second, you can move groups of windows between monitors in a single click using the special commands in the taskbar’s context menu. There are two basic actions: transfer all windows from one monitor to another (“Get…” and “Send…” commands) and collect windows from all monitors onto a certain one (“Gather all…” command). This may be useful for those who attach/detach certain displays frequently.
Finally, there are some usability features for versions older than Windows 7 or for visual themes other than Aero:
- you can make all taskbars semi-transparent of any desired level
- you can drag task buttons and notification area icons with the mouse, arranging them as you like
- you can stretch the Start button out to the multi-row taskbar in such visual themes as Windows Classic or Windows XP Blue/Green/Silver (so it can be hit easily)
Multi-monitor Task Switcher
This small window is invisible most of the time and appears only when you press Alt-Tab, but it’s almost as important as the taskbar. Despite this, Windows displays the Task Switcher on the primary display only, too, as in case with the taskbar. That means you need to switch your attention from the display you are currently working with to the primary one and back. Though it’s faster than moving the mouse (as in taskbar case), but it’s also annoying and distractive.
Using Actual Multiple Monitors, you can clone the Task Switcher window on secondary displays and switch between tasks smoothly and conveniently on any monitor.
Multi-monitor Task Switcher
Advanced Window Manipulations
When you have more than one monitor displaying your Windows desktop, there appear some opportunities that were impossible or had no mean for a single monitor.
Move to Monitor
The first thing that immediately becomes obvious is the fast transfer of a particular window from one monitor to another. Dragging it with the mouse isn’t fast enough (at first; later, it becomes tedious and annoying). With Actual Multiple Monitors, you can put an additional button 
onto each window’s title bar: click it – and window will jump instantly to the next monitor! Right click on this button pops up a menu with the list of monitors so that you can transfer a window to the exactly required one; the same menu is available in window’s context menu.
Move to Monitor title button Move to monitor submenu
Also, the program provides special hotkeys – Move to Next Monitor (Win-/ by default) and Move to Previous Monitor (Win-Shift-/ by default).
Maximize to Desktop
The second thing is the ability to expand a window quickly to entire composite desktop, as the regular Maximize button does for a single monitor (in a multi-monitor desktop this button maximizes a window to its current monitor only). Actual Multiple Monitors offers you another special title button – 
Maximize to Desktop. It works exactly as its name implies: first click on this button expands a window to desktop’s extent; second click restores window’s size and position.
This button also has the corresponding item in window’s context menu and the hotkey combination (Win-Num* by default).
Multi-monitor Desktop Extensions: Background Wallpaper and Screen Saver
No matter how large picture you put as desktop background – Windows still displays its top-left corner on each monitor; there are no options to make this picture span all monitors, as well as to set different backgrounds on different monitors. The same is true for screen savers: although some of them are able to span the entire multi-monitor desktop, there are still many screen savers that know nothing about multiple monitors.
Actual Multiple Monitors comes to the rescue in this situation too: with its help, you will be able to either set a single picture as background for the entire desktop or put different background pictures on different monitors.
The same extension is available for screen savers.
Multi-monitor Wallpaper Slideshow
In addition, the background wallpaper extension supports the slideshow mode: you create a “playlist” of individual images and image folders, set the delay between slides – and the program will automatically rotate pictures from the playlist on the entire desktop’s background or just the backgrounds of specified monitors.
Multi-monitor Desktop Management
Sometimes the number of monitors connected to your system may vary. This situation is quite common for mobile computers (notebooks, netbooks, Tablet PCs) that can be connected to an external display, and for home media center PCs that are usually plugged to a high definition TV. Also, in some cases the need arises to change the entire desktop configuration: arrange monitors differently, alter their properties (resolution, color depth, etc.) and so on. Each time such need arises, you have to open the Display Settings dialog and adjust all required options separately. The more often it happens – the more time you spend on changing your desktop configuration.
Actual Multiple Monitors gives you the tools to make such changes in about two clicks. Right-click the program’s icon in the system tray to invoke its context menu:
The “Manage Secondary” submenu lets you switch secondary displays on/off either one at a time or all at once (please note that “Disable all…”/”Enable all…” commands have their corresponding keyboard shortcuts). In the related “Set Primary” submenu you can quickly switch the primary display. And the “Desktop Profiles” submenu lets you activate or configure so-called desktop profiles.
Multi-monitor Desktop Profiles
Desktop profiles are named groups of various settings applied at once when the profile is activated. Each profile includes the number of displays, their relative layout and per display information: resolution, color depth, refresh rate, is display enabled, is display primary.
You can create as many profiles as you need and switch between various desktop configurations in a flash: either via above-mentioned context menu or by pressing the keyboard shortcut to invoke the “Desktop Profiles” submenu at the mouse pointer.
Multi-monitor Desktop Icons Manager
If you often change the configuration of your desktop, you may notice that sometimes Windows fails to keep the order of desktop icons: their habitual layout becomes garbled, and you have to restore it manually. The more icons you have – the more annoying each such situation is. Actual Multiple Monitors can save the current layout of your desktop icons for the current desktop configuration and then restore this layout automatically in a single click – see the “Save/Restore desktop icons order” commands in the context menu above (both commands also can be invoked via hotkeys).
Conclusion
Windows user interface for a multi-monitor environment is incomplete and may significantly reduce the actual benefit from the expanded screen real estate. Actual Multiple Monitors supplies it with all goods (multi-monitor taskbar, advanced window manipulations, extended options for wallpapers and screen savers, special desktop control utilities) and hence, appears to be a must-have program for any user who wants to use multiple displays at full extent.
The Social Media Effect [Infographic]
I have recently came across to really interesting infographic about “The Social Media Effect”. This graphic was beautifully executed to drive the flow from when the content was created to the ultimate level of viral marketing. It was never this much easier before but after coming of social media in our lives anyone can go to the highest level of content distribution in very short span of time. Obviously the content needs to be really excellent and viral in nature to achieve this. To acknowledge this amazing work I want to give 5 stars to Infographic World who created this infographic.
We would love to know what you are thinking while viewing this inforgraphic. In future we are going to release/share these types of more amazing inforgraphics with you. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter. Click on the image for larger view.
Click on the image for larger view.
