Google Saves My Internet from Itself

Yesterday Google made public its Measurement Labs series of sites, designed to analyze your internet connection and determine whether your ISP is throttling you or not.

This news makes it even harder to hate Google; with these tools the average joe can keep an eye on his ISP and make sure its not trying to sneak anything by him, and will help to keep those sneaky ISPs honest. Google may be the most massive company in the universe, but they sure are helpful.

This comes at the perfect time for men, because I’m beginning to suspect that our ISP is throttling us.

Religious Networking Sites

In this series we have been looking a variety of social networking sites that have been aimed towards specific interests such as writing, the arts, and music but the field of specialized social media is ever growing and a lot of religious communities and organizations are starting to get in on the popularity of the social media craze while trying to fill a gap for many users whose needs are not, or can not, be met by some of the larger mainstream social networking sites.

With some of the larger, more popular social network sites you have several problems that are of concern to some users including the lack of family friendly content and the risk of exposing yourself or your child to offensive or harmful material that may be of particular concern to many families. Additionally, with such large sites it may often be difficult to find others in the crowd who share your particular religious or philosophical views. For these reasons, among others, we are seeing a few religious or ideological themed social networking sites springing up. After scouring the web for such communities these sites proved to be worth a look:

Jewish Social Networking Sites:

Jew Crew: http://www.jewcrew.org/home.php

A social networking site that helps users connect to other Jewish members from around the world.

My J World: http://www.myjworld.com/

A community web site and for personal networking or growing your business by connecting to a Jewish community where you can join clubs, explore videos, or just meet some interesting new people.

Frum Chat: http://www.frumchat.com/home.php

A great site for the Jewish community with easy to use features and over 800 members on an easy to use site.

Christian Social Networking Sites:

Tangle: http://www.tangle.com

A unique social networking site for the Christian community where you can find churches and new ministries, submit and review prayer requests, and read the Bible online.

Holy Pal: http://www.holypal.com

A fairly large christian social network with all the standard features, share videos, upload your photos, create groups, and connect with others.

My Faith Haven: http://myfaithhaven.com

Easy to use Christian site that not only includes some of the traditional social networking features but also features a daily Bible verse and arcade.

My Godly Place: http://www.mygodlyplace.com

Another site that aims to be a christian alternative to myspace boasting hundreds of members along with polls, forums, etc.

Shout Life: http://www.shoutlife.com

Another great alternative to the other sites that offer a “safe and clean” environment for all of your social networking needs.

Generation JC: http://www.generationjc.com

Blogs, music, chat, and more make this site an interesting choice for those looking for christian communities online.

Life Space: http://www.lifespace.cc

A small but growing christian social network that is offering a family alternative to some of the more well known sites out there.

Messianic Social Networking Sites:

The Nazarite Site: http://the-nazarite-site.ning.com

A social networking community for messianic believers as well as others in the religious community of Sabbath observant followers. Nice design and great features make this one a good choice.

Moshiach Now: http://moshiachnow.ning.com

Another small messianic social network worth checking out with customizable profile and easy to use features.

Messianic Evangelicals http://messianicevangelicals.ning.com

A teaching ministry and social network combined that describes itself as a “Union of Two House Messianic Israelite and Evangelicals”.

Messianic Torah: http://messianictorah.ning.com

A small but interesting social network for those in the messianic community.

One to Watch: Another up and coming social networking site for the Messianic community is Kehila which is a brand new site accepting members now but plans to official launch at the end of the month so it might be worth checking out: http://kehilaonline.ning.com

Other:

Buddhist Network: http://www.buddhist-network.com

Christian and Jewish communities are not the only one getting into social networking as you can see with this popular Buddhist community with forums and plenty of interesting people to meet.

Whether it is offering a family friendly environment that you can feel good about your children using, giving you a chance to promote your ministry or service that is of interest to the religious community, or simply giving you an opportunity to connect with like minded individuals, these specialized social media networks are seeing some success and may be worth checking out.

Specialized Social Media: Part 3- Social Media for Religious Communities

In this series we have been looking a variety of social networking sites that have been aimed towards specific interests such as writing, the arts, and music but the field of specialized social media is ever growing and a lot of religious communities and organizations are starting to get in on the popularity of the social media craze while trying to fill a gap for many users whose needs are not, or can not, be met by some of the larger mainstream social networking sites.

With some of the larger, more popular social network sites you have several problems that are of concern to some users including the lack of family friendly content and the risk of exposing yourself or your child to offensive or harmful material that may be of particular concern to many families. Additionally, with such large sites it may often be difficult to find others in the crowd who share your particular religious or philosophical views. For these reasons, among others, we are seeing a few religious or ideological themed social networking sites springing up. After scouring the web for such communities these sites proved to be worth a look:

Jewish Social Networking Sites:
Jew Crew:
A social networking site that helps users connect to other Jewish members from around the world.

My J World:
A community web site and for personal networking or growing your business by connecting to a Jewish community where you can join clubs, explore videos, or just meet some interesting new people.

Frum Chat:
A great site for the Jewish community with easy to use features and over 800 members on an easy to use site.

Christian Social Networking Sites:
Tangle:
A unique social networking site for the Christian community where you can find churches and new ministries, submit and review prayer requests, and read the Bible online.

Holy Pal:
A fairly large christian social network with all the standard features, share videos, upload your photos, create groups, and connect with others.

My Faith Haven:
Easy to use Christian site that not only includes some of the traditional social networking features but also features a daily Bible verse and arcade.

My Godly Place:
Another site that aims to be a christian alternative to myspace boasting hundreds of members along with polls, forums, etc.

Shout Life:
Another great alternative to the other sites that offer a “safe and clean” environment for all of your social networking needs.

Generation JC:
Blogs, music, chat, and more make this site an interesting choice for those looking for christian communities online.

Life Space:
A small but growing christian social network that is offering a family alternative to some of the more well known sites out there.

Messianic Social Networking Sites:
The Nazarite Site:
A social networking community for messianic believers as well as others in the religious community of Sabbath observant followers. Nice design and great features make this one a good choice.

Moshiach Now::
Another small messianic social network worth checking out with customizable profile and easy to use features.

Messianic Evangelicals:
A teaching ministry and social network combined that describes itself as a “Union of Two House Messianic Israelite and Evangelicals”.

Messianic Torah:
A small but interesting social network for those in the messianic community.

One to Watch: Another up and coming social networking site for the Messianic community is Kehila which is a brand new site accepting members now but plans to official launch at the end of the month so it might be worth checking out.

Other:
Buddhist Network:
Christian and Jewish communities are not the only one getting into social networking as you can see with this popular Buddhist community with forums and plenty of interesting people to meet.

Whether it is offering a family friendly environment that you can feel good about your children using, giving you a chance to promote your ministry or service that is of interest to the religious community, or simply giving you an opportunity to connect with like minded individuals, these specialized social media networks are seeing some success and may be worth checking out and they are just the tip of the iceburg, so if you did not see your particular religion of choice featured here be sure to do some searching and you are sure to find a community that will fit your need for specialized social media. And do not forget that these communities can be a great way to promote your products or services that migh be of special interest to religious communities.

Top Seven Tips For Great Blog Design

1. Content: Great blogs have great content. Ensure that the blogs overall design and theme coincide with the content. Make any navigation through the content simple by utilizing simple terms and easy to read fonts. Keep your content easily readable by ensuring good contrast between the background and the foreground. Typically white background with black font will have the most contrast and therefore be easiest to read. Whatever colors you choose, be sure to use a very light color with a very dark color to ensure readability.

2. Ease of Use: Readers of your content may never come back if you make your otherwise great content difficult to see or get to. Horizontal scrolling is a huge obstacle for readers, so take that into consideration when designing your blog.

Look at the smallest screen you are targeting and design for that resolution. Many blog creators decide that their blog should have animation or utilize heavy amounts of Flash.

Avoid this urge. Using animation of any kind can be distracting, annoying, and can cause your site to load very slowly.

3. Good Header Graphic: A good header graphic is like a good billboard for a business. It will tell you everything you need to know. Use high quality photos or professional looking logos. First impressions are the most important and a strong, yet non-obtrusive header will be your best tool.

Think of your header as your calling card. Don’t overcrowd it and don’t shroud it with advertisements.

4. Obvious Comment Section: Blogs are all about interaction with your audience, so to encourage this, make sure that the ability to comment on your posts is very obvious. Comment areas are like mini forums with the posts as the header.

Making commenting difficult or not intuitive can be the death of your audience interaction. And since an involved audience is more likely to become a loyal audience, the comment area can be a Make or break section of your blog design.

5. Tie into Social Media: Utilize the existing infrastructure like Digg, delicious, twitter and Facebook to allow your readers to forward link to their family and friends who may also be interested. This can help grow your audience and increase your traffic. Likewise, posting updates from your blog to these social media sites can help drive traffic which will expose your site to more readers.

Be careful not to overload your blog with too many options. Stick with the social media sites you are aware of. This will ensure your posts don’t look like an old suitcase with hundreds of stickers on it. Clutter kills.

6. Illustrate Your Content: If a picture says 1000 words, then you better take heed. Photos and graphics can be your best friend in a blog post. It will help the reader’s visualize your content and make your posts more interesting. Be careful not to over-saturate your posts with too many images. Less high quality images are better than many poor quality images every time.

7. Don’t Overcrowd Your Content: I have said it before and I will say it again, Clutter kills. Ads can play an important role, but don’t sacrifice your entire site design just for a few bucks.

Be very cautious where you add advertisements and other extraneous content. If it isn’t directly related to the content or the blog, it would be better to leave it out.

You don’t want to read a newspaper and have to hunt for the content. Don’t do that with your blog either.

Hopefully these 7 simple tips will help you as you design or redesign your blog for maximum benefit and foster loyal readership.

Chi.mp vs. Storytlr vs. FriendFeed: Lifestream Battle Royale!

As we grow our online personas and login to one of many powerful tools, we spread ourselves thinnerliterally. Posting on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, delicious, Digg, YouTube, StumbleUpon or even your personal blog, we spread our lives across many servers and many sites. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were one place where my friends and family could see all of those nuggets of me? Ask and you shall receive, but like the numerous sites you populate already, there are also numerous sites that do exactly what you want. Lifestreams.

This article will take three lifestreams and compare them, bring out their pros and cons, and then let you decide which one may be right for you.

1. Chi.mp. (http://www.chi.mp) A slick web site that allows you to amalgamate Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and RSS feeds. The interface is clean and setup is fairly easy. The one stand out feature is the ability to select a custom domain name, for free, to point to this new collection of your internet life. Chu.mp or Pi.mp could be your chosen domains, or the simple BillSmith.mp can make that address much easier to remember. The downfall of the site for me was the use of the site. Once I set it up, I never went back. For my use, Chi.mp had no traction for me. No big payoff.

2. Storytlr.(http://www.storytlr.com) . I am growing more and more fond of this site. Storytlr has access to your accounts on Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Stumbleupon, Twitter, Vimeo, Youtube, and many others. Besides the broader reach of Storytlr, it also brings sidebar widgets similar to Wordpress, comments, and pre-made themes to skin your site. Antoher feature that I find useful is the ability to crosspost, so if you post onto Facebook, you can have it update your Twitter account and link to that post.

3. FriendFeed .(http://www.friendfeed.com) . FriendFeed taps into delicious, StumbleUpon, Digg, Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, Gmail/Google Talk, Twitter, Amazon, and RSS feeds. There are 58 services in total at the time of this writing that they support, and I see just about everything I need. It also has premade themes to transform the look of the site. FriendFeed also added the ability to friend people within FriendFeed, adding another layer to the site complete with direct messaging that can cross over to Twitter. Lastly, and I think possibly one of the most valuable features is the live updates. No site refresh needed, so I can set up FriendFeed and let it spin all day and I can always catch new updates. Of the three sites, FriendFeed is by far the most likely to grow and catch on. If you don’t have a FriendFeed account, go get one now.

Will these sites revolutionize how we use the internet? Probably not, but they will make our daily lives a little easier and maybe they could spark innovations in how we communicate with friends, family and colleagues.

What we can learn from some UGLY sites!

First up, http://noodle-house.blogspot.com/ Much like getting dressed in the morning, putting black and navy blue together is not always a wise choice. The various blocks seem to sit uncomfortably on the blue background and seem unintentional. The goldenrod borders around everything, including boxes within boxes, stare at the reader like a bad blind date.  Thankfully, the fonts are white on black background, so I have an opportunity to read the content. Let us not forget the Sylvester the cat graphic with a white background sitting on the dark blue background. The only thing I think Sylvester is missing is possibly a goldenrod border.

 

 Next, http://happymomiam1.bravejournal.com/. I love that this blog resembles the exact table cloth my grandmother used so we wouldn’t spill food on her table.  Unfortunately, the color scheme of baby blue, red, grey, acid green, electric blue, and orange says I don’t understand hex notation so I just guessed.  The badges for several other sites sit haphazardly under the horrifying animated gif logo at the top of the site.  The Beauty of Life?  The travesty of design.

 

 I have to include this one because it is SOOOOO ugly.  http://cmdshiftdesign.com/ilovesmekitty/

This blog follows the rule, if one animated gif is good, then six is better.  Everything is animated on this site, but it has NO content.  Just pictures of her cat, a terrible cat background along with ANOTHER cat background in the left column.  Visible table holding links that are barely legible, visible hit counter AND my browser got a warning that a Windows Media Player was trying to start.  As if there wasn’t enough going on in this site that is the equivalent of a 12 year old girls messy room. 

 

http://www.hammerdowndesign.com/ugly/ is the next blog that makes my design brain physically hurt.  Having only four animated gifs on the page, the designer, and I use that term loosely, has decided that a repeated image of Sarah Palin is the best background for any blog.  Unfortunately, one of the graphics is broken, most likely it was an animated gif of me scratching my eyes out.  The most appauling thing is that the domain name, HammerDownDesign, alludes to someone who thinks they are actually good at this.  Less is more, Hammerdown. 

 

 Lastly, http://jayj.dk/grim/.  Blogs typically want people to read their content, but this site seems to be hell-bent on the opposite.  With barely readable text on tie-dye-inspired backgrounds and badly executed animated gifs, this site verges on abominable.   The structure of the page seems to be two columns occupying 50% of the width each combined with NO content.  What surprises me most is that someone, somewhere thought this site would drive people to their door asking them to design a site for them as well.  Sort of the philosophy of a wedding photographer advertising the business with blurry dark photos of someone’s cat.

 

So, keeping those sites in mind the next time you set off to design a web site, avoid the busy backgrounds, make your design seem intentional, avoid animated gifs, make sure the site has purpose and valuable content.  Choose colors that contrast well with each other and limit your color choices to prevent the site from looking like confetti.  Lastly, if your site ends up in an article like this, it’s time to rethink your design and career choice as a professional web designer.

Specialized Social Networking: Networks for Artists & Writers

Social networking giants like MySpace and Facebook have proved useful for a variety of general purposes for both professional and social networking as well as business promotion. However, that generalization can only go so far and for people with more specialized areas of interest or business focus. For this reason, a number of social networks have emerged catering to special niches that allow users to make more useful connections. After all, what is the point of networking with a million people on a large, generalized social network if none of those connections are interested in your particular product, service, or area of interest?

In this multi-part series on specialized social networking, I will scour the digital world and take a look at some great social media sites that are addressing the needs of the niche market in social networking including everything from sites for writers and artists to off the wall social network sites for vampires and the gothic scene. To start the series off, here is a great list of social networking sites for Writers and Artists.

One of the biggest groups that social networking specialty sites are catering to include writers, painters, and other artists. These sites are a great way to showcase your talents, network with potential clients or collectors as well as other artists that can help you discuss your art, and to find great information for improving and expanding your natural talents.

Ten great sites dedicated to this genre include the following:

Art Slant:

A great network site for contemporary artists, Art Slant is where you can show off your latest creations, write a review, announce a showing, or contribute to their array of general content while networking with other contemporary artists.

Art Break:

This is one of my favorite artist’s communities. Not only do you get the benefits of networking with members of the art community but you can also showcase your work and even make arrangements to sell it to potential buyers at Art Break with no commission charges of any kind from Art Break. You can get an account with them for free, or if you prefer an ad free experience they do have a premium option available.

My Own Verse:

For those that feel like waxing poetic, My Own Verse, which describes itself as a poet’s playground, is a great choice. Set up your profile and connect with other poets to share and critique one another’s work which can help you to grow your own talents or simply satisfy your love of the written word by discovering fresh new voices in poetry.

My Art Info:

My Art Info is a social network for artists, art students, and collectors. The site allows artists to show off their talents while giving collectors an opportunity to find new artists or discover a great piece to add to their collection.

Artition:

This is a new but interesting community for the creative types. At Artition you can upload a gallery of your art work, music, videos, or even written works so it offers a little something for everyone in the art world.

The Outpost:

If you are looking for a young and hip creative community, then check out The Outpost, a fairly active community for music, arts, fashion, and culture.

Writer Face:

Next we have a social network designed specifically for writers. With all of the standard trimmings of a traditional social networking site, Writer Face is a great way to connect with other writers.

The Art Review:

A great place for finding the latest artists and art related news and blogs now offers a network feature to allow you to post your own profile, network with other artists, and show case your talent to Art Review visitors.

Peer Scribe:

Another choice in social networking geared towards writers. Post your profile and upload a portfolio or attend online workshops to help you fine tune your writing skills at Peer Scribe.

Art Log:

Art Log provides a great way for artists to announce their events while networking with other artists and commenting on various pieces of work highlighted on the site. They also have a regular newsletter and tons of great info on art events around New York.

The Writer’s Network (Frome OnceWritten):

The folks over at OnceWritten.com now have a social networking service to help you find and connect with fellow writers. Hosted on the Ning network it has all of the standard social networking features such as blogs, customizable profiles, and a friends list.

My Art Space:

My Art Space is another great choice for artists who are looking to show off their current work and get inspired by networking with other like minded and creative souls.

Writer’s Digest:

Of course, no list of writer’s social networks would be complete without the long standing authority in the world of writing, the Writer’s Digest. This magazine which is devoted to the craft and business of writing now has its own social networking community which provides an excellent community for networking with other writers.

 

 

There’s more than one way to Skin your Tweets – A Twitter Client Round Up

As Twitter has matured, the Twitter clients have appeared, and they have flourished.  Being a twitter addict, I felt compelled to check into some of these for you so you wouldn’t have to install them only to find out that they are incredibly painful to use. 

Here’s my list of Twitter Clients:

The Web interface : (http://www.twitter.com)  It would be a disservice to leave out the twitter.com site itself.  In fact, many people only use the web interface to update their tweets.  It’s simple, it’s fast, and it gets the job done.

 

TweetDeck:  (http://tweetdeck.com)  TweetDeck is the dark alpha dog of twitter clients.  It is feature rich with the ability to monitor multiple twitter accounts, Facebook,, and MySpace.  You can also quickly see replies, direct messages, topics, saved searches, and it has a built-in spam monitor. 

 

Twhirl:  (http://www.twhirl.org) The cheery twitter client, twhirl is a bright, well designed interface that allows you handle all your usual twiter needs, but also includes the ability to send photos to TwitPic, automatically shorten long URLs, and cross post to Jaiku. 

 

Twitterfeed: (http://www.twitterfeed.com)   Sign up and enter your blog RSS feed and Twitterfeed will publish your blog posts onto your twitterfeed.  You choose how often it published the new blog content. 

 

Tweetie: (http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-iphone/)  Strictly for iPhones, Macs and iPod Touches.  It has a super clean look and lets you post to multiple Twitter accounts.  It allows you to follow tweets, replies, direct messages and trends on Twitter.  It is super easy to set up and will help tweeting on your iPhone, Mac or iPod Touch easier and more powerful.

 

Twitterberry: (http://www.orangatame.com/products/twitterberry/)  one of the best twitter applications for the Blackberry platform.  Twitterberry separates the replies, direct messages and the posting tof tweets, but makes it very usable on the Blackberry.  Currently there is not integration to TwitPic within the application, but that would be a nice addition¢â‚¬â€(wink wink).

 

Ping.fm: (http://www.ping.fm/) What Ping.gm brings to the table is how it centralizes updates of Twitter, but also Facebook, Jaiku, Bebo, Friendster, and Myspace.  The interface is simple and straight forward.  I’ve experienced a bit of a lag on the cross-posting, but  the ease of use to update all those sites at once may be enough to lure you over to this site. 

 

HootSuite: (http://hootsuite.com/) Tweetdeck can tend to be a bet wide especially on netbooks, but that’s where HootSuite comes in.  It allows you to create custom columns to store searches so you can keep an eye on people talking about your store or brand name.  HootSuite was one of the first to incorporate multiple twitter accounts as well. 

 

Seesmic: (http://seesmic.com/) Available in a web application, a desktop application and rumor has it, a mobile application soon.  Seesmic is one of the dominant twitter clients and it’s easy to see why.  They are continually pushing the envelope of features including a single column interface that resembles the familiar e-mail interface.  They also allow an unlimited number of columns to be added, a simple way to watch search terms, direct messages, and @ replies.  They included all the follow stats and complete profile view of your followers.  Not bad for a company that started as a vlogging site.  Seesmic is making tweeting on any platform easier and more intuitive.

 

Destroy Twitter: (https://destroytwitter.com/) An unusual name for an application, but in a sea of weird twitter clients, it needs to be this odd to stand out.  After all, it would be a little different if you were building an application for your Mac called Kill Apple.  I am digressing.  Destroy Twitter is eerily similar to Tweetdeck (imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?)  What appears to be Destroy Twitter’s strong suit is configuration.  You can choose when to ping twitter, font size, column size and a plethora of other settings to make your tweeting more enjoyable

 

Every person has different likes and dislikes, but if I were to recommend three to look into, they would be Tweetdeck, Seesmic, and HootSuite for their attention to detail, ease of use and over all usefulness in daily tweeting.  No go forth and tweet!

GeoCities Shuts It Doors and Thousands of Sites Could be Lost,But There Are Other Options

GeoCities has long been one of the big names in the world of free web host providers, but as of October 26, 2009 the free service provider shall be no more. Yahoo!, who fully took over the company in May of 1999 made the decision back in April of this year to discontinue the free service in favor of only offering their paid hosting plans.

Since its conception in 1995, GeoCities has offered free hosting for thousands of people who needed to get online in a quick and easy way. From fan sites to hobbyist and school projects to small business owners who needed a simple way to put their business online for the world to see; they all found their way to GeoCities. This service provider was also a gateway for many when they were first getting into the world of web building and while many of those self proclaimed geeks have since moved on to bigger and better ways of building an internet presence, the closing of GeoCities will still result in the loss of thousands of sites.

When it was originally launched, GeoCities had a very unique community directory format where each site was listed by a city name, for example, sites about entertainment would have been listed in Hollywood, etc. But when the company was taken over by Yahoo! it lost a lot of that edge and community feel. This combined with the rather large and annoying amount of space that yahoo took up for ads made it a bit unpopular with many users. All the same, there are thousands of users who will now have to relocate their web sites or watch them go the way of the dodo.

So, if you happen to be one of those webmasters being affected by the closing of GeoCities, not to worry, there are still a few good web site providers left out there that will not end up costing you an arm and leg to get started. Here is a quick list of some great alternative free web host providers:

Webs: This has perhaps become the new standard in free web host providers and was certainly one of GeoCities big competitors. They offer a quick and simple web editor with tons of features including blogs, counters, and easy to use web forms. It is advertiser supported of course, but the ads tend be tastefully placed as a single banner ad along the top or a boxed ad on the side depending on which template you are using. They do offer affordable paid hosting plans that remove the ads and can even include your own domain should you prefer to go that way.

Weebly: Weebly is another easy to use free web host provider for creating quick and professional looking sites without any technical knowledge. There are not a ton of ads spread all over your page and they have some nice features to offer. You can also edit the html code directly for more advanced users.

UCOZ- For more advanced users looking for a complete CMS (content management system) on a free host, uCoz might be a good choice. They offer several top quality templates and an interesting user interface.

There are also domain providers that are offering free web site hosting with purchase of a domain, such as dot easy. It seems that some of the current free providers, both in standard web hosting and the world of blogs, are not going away any time soon. As the economy is making its slow recovery, and advertisers are realizing the power of the internet, it does not appear that users will be left without at least some options for the time being.

Ten best free applications that you probably didn’t know about.

I’m a big fan of FREE STUFF, so it should be no surprise that I gravitate towards free software. Sure much of it is junkie, but there are some realy diamonds out there that haven’t hit the mainstream yet. Here’s my favorite 10.

1. Logmein (https://secure.logmein.com)

Ever find yourself away from home and wishing you could e-mail yourself something? Or maybe you have a mother-in-law who lives 4 states away and is always having computer problems, and instead of loading up the kids in the family trickster for a marriage-trying trip, you could just log in to her computer remotely¦.without her needing to do anything? This is where Logmein comes in. There are lots of products out there that will do this, but very few will do all these things as well as Logmein ds for free.

2. Mesh (http://www.mesh.com)

Microsoft has a knack of not promoting some of the apps that they offer. Mesh is one of those apps. Another computer sharing application, but Mesh displays all the computers in a 3-D rotating ring and also offers a Web Desktop that syncs with all the computers on your Mesh. There is a promise of making Mesh work on Macs, but I haven’t yet seen it work. Mesh is super responsive and I really like how it feels while using it! The interface is clean and intuitive and I think the reason Microsoft ds not promote it is too many people would use it!

3. PhotoStory 3 (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/PhotoStory/default.mspx)

Yet another non-marketed gem from Microsoft. Photostory 3 is one of the easiest ways to create a very professional photo slideshow complete with background music (MP3 or you can create your own with the built-in music generator) and narration. The application is super easy to use and the results are far superior that some softwares that I’ve paid to use. The only downfall is that it dsn’t have a built-in burning application to burn the slideshow to CD or DVD.

4. Orb (http://www.orb.com)

Like many people, I don’t get to stay at home with my vault of audio and video goodness at my disposal. This is where Orb steps in. Orb allows a simple way to put your audio, photos and video online and accessible to your little antsy fingertips. One of my favorite features is the ability to stream webcams live on the internet, so if I miss my dog, I can log in and see and hear him. Very slick and very easy to set up!

5. Dropbox (http://www.getdropbox.com/)

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a storage cloud of your own to store items and further more wouldn’t it be nice if it synced with your other computers? That’s Dropbox. I use it to store keepers or documents and small apps that I want in multiple places or to ensure I don’t lose it. Dropbox installs easily and creates a folder on your computer. Drag the files you want to sync into the Dropbox and dropbox takes care of the rest. All the other computers you log into the dropbox with can now access and upload their own files. A great solution for simple collaboration or small off site back ups.

6. MWSnap (http://www.mirekw.com/winfreeware/mwsnap.html)
If you need to do lots of screenshots for websites or manuals, this is a great tool. It has a nice zoom tool to enlarging parts of the screen to draw focus to it, a ruler for measuring the size of items in the shot, and can export in BMP, JPG, TIFF, PNG and GIF.

7. Camstudio (http://sourceforge.net/projects/camstudio/files/)
If you need to create a screencast, this a a great free tool. Comparable to Camtasia or Adobe’s Captivate, it’s not as feature-rich as those, but it will get the job done. It will record whatever you do on your screen and produce and AVI or SWF output. Plus you can narrate as you go through a microphone. This is the easiest way to convey complex techniques or just a way of communicating step by step instructions.

8. DimDim (http://www.dimdim.com)
A tool similar to WebEx, DimDim allows you to create free webinar-style sessions where you can share screens, whiteboards, presentation, web pages and even voice and video. I have been super impressed with DimDim in that it supports up to 20 people, it dsn’t require any installation and it handles the voice and video, unlike some other pay-for softwares. Sure, it isn’t as ubiquitious as WebEx (I’m certainly not going to tell someone to DimDim me, but for free, this is a wonderful offering.

9. Ning (http://www.ning.com)

If you’ve ever wanted a web site for your church group, scouting group, or maybe even class reunion, then Ning is the place to go. It’s a DYI social networking site that allows you to roll your own blog/forum/event feed/calendar/whatever. I’ve used Ning for several side projects to collaborate with large and small groups of people. I also use Ning for a special interest web site-BisManPhoto.com, which is a site devoted to camera lovers in the Bismarck/Mandan North Dakota area. The sites scale wonderfully and gives me the freedom to worry about content rather than functionality.

10. Qik (http://qik.com)

Everyone carries their cellphones with them all the time. Ever wanted to stream live video from your phone? That’s what Qik ds and it ds it beautifully. Great for budding independent journalists wanting to stream live to the web (and post an alert on twitter simultaneously) and it’s equally great to share part of your vacation with people at home. The stream is recorded from your phone and saved for posterity so people who couldn’t see the live stream can watch it archived on the Qik site.

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