Archive for ‘ Informative ’

2008 100 Most Popular Photoshop Tutorials 27 December 2008 at 4:41 am by BigDaddy

The 100 Most Popular Photoshop Tutorials 2008

original Link:
http://www.photoshoplady.com/the-100-most-popular-photoshop-tutorials-2008/

Sometimes, you may find it difficult to look for some of the highest quality photoshop tutorials using search engines. As most of time, almost all tutorials would label themselves to be good, high quality or even the best photoshop tutorial you can find. When searching through all these tutorials, your time is wasted.

In order to save your time, Photoshop Lady has been spending almost a whole year to search for the best photoshop tutorials for you. Eventually, we come up with The 100 Most Popular Photoshop Tutorials of 2008. These are selected from our published tutorials, with over 1 million votes and views from our Photoshop users and readers. Enjoy.

Smokin’ Woman

In this tutorial, it is going to show how to create one smoking woman using a couple source pics, and just a few of the features associated with Phoenix. So follow along. With the magic of Phoenix, you’ve created the smoking woman of your dreams.

Turning a Image into a Beautiful Paint

In this tutorial, it will show you how to turn a photo into a beautiful paint. This process is required to implement part by part. You need to define the image by different color parts. And you may use pen tool to do it. In order to turn the paint becoming more realistic, adding shadow into the image is necessary.

Photoshop Beauty Tutorial

In this tutorial, it will show you how to edit and improve a image to become more pretty and wonderful. To edit and enhance the beauty of image, there are different ways to achieve this. It is worthwhile to learn it as this. (Downloading the tutorial is required.)

Create Amazing Photomontages

In this tutorial, itshows you how to make a splash, blending two very different images to create this amazing underwater effect, complete with a dissolving figure of a man. At the end, the last adjustment is to draw focus to the centre by blurring the edges a little. Hope you enjoy!

Age Progressio

In this tutorial, it is going to show you how to basically go about aging a woman’s face in photoshop. It may not be the most technically detailed tutorial but it gives you a good idea of the process to get the job done.

3D typographic effects in Photoshop

In this tutorial, the type-effects shows how to create the above image. The key is to create the letters in a 3D package first as individual characters, then bring them into Photoshop for further post work.This example has a few more details, but you can take it much further.

Creating Energy Spheres in Photoshop

In this tutorial, you need to find a nice photo. This stock photo is found in the website Stock Exchange. For this tutorial you will learn some photoshop techniques to create a energy sphere effect. Hope you enjoy!

Fantasy Light Effects in Photoshop

In this tutorial, it will show you how to add the fantasy light effects on your photos. what does look like, you can see the sample from the thumbnail. You can just create this fantasy scene using brushes and blur effects.

Swirl Mania in Photoshop

in this tutorial, it will show 4 ways to create swirls, and by mixing them you will learn some very powerful techniques that will allow you to easily make tons of different styles of swirls and crazy sperm vectors. The tutorial is all about combination. Nice to have a try!

Create an Awesome Grass Texture

In this tutorial, it will show you how to create a text pattern in the grass field. Of course, you can create the pattern you like by the same method. The field off by playing with the levels are finished by increasing the contrast and cropping the image to make it more horizontal.

Smoothing & Softening Edition for Imag

In this tutorial, it will reveal you how to edit a photo and make it into a high quality photo. To begin with, you need to remove unwanted object from the photo. Then the object will be edited to become more grant and elegant by adding the color on the fore part of the face.

Fantasy Art in the Lake

In this tutorial, it will show you how to create some special art on the existing photo. And, here the author give this a name called “Plasma” (Star, not the TV!). Hope you like it!

A Slick Supernatural Text Effect

In this tutorial we’ll be creating a smokey night effect on text to give it an eerie supernatural sort of feel. Finally to give it a more eerie feel I added a layer above all the others and with a large brush painted some green on top, then set the layer blending mode to Colour to make it so that the image is a blue-green colouring. And we’re done!

Turn Your Image into Statue

In this tutorial, it will show you how to turn your image into a statue. To create this, you are required to prepare 2 photos. One is your image, another is rock. Using photoshop, it is very amazing to do such combination.

Transparent Glass Lettering in Photoshop

In this tutorial we’re going to use some super layer effects and a bit of extra magic to make a lettering style that looks transparent and stunning. It’s best to place them on the most highlighted parts of the Q to make it look like they are sparkles from those highlights.

Photo Enhancement Tutorial

In this photoshop tutorial we will take an image of a woman and enhance photos with the use of simple photoshop tools such as the lasso, color correction, and we will enhance the photograph using simple photo manipulation techniques. After you are happy with your artwork, adjust brightness contrast to add depth. You are done!

Create a Brand New Car

This tutorial will show you how to create a vector car.

Airbrushing – Natural Smooth Skin

In this tutorial, it will show you how to smooth the face in the photo. A lot of photoshop skills such as tuning the brightness & color adjustments are involved in this. You will find out more and apply the same idea for your photos.

Pop Art

The pop art that you will create using this tutorial will look fantastic if you get it printed at your local print shop. The final step for creating the dots is to create a Clipping Path between the new layer and the “dots” layer. Hope you found this Photoshop tutorial helpful.

Create a Spectacular Grass Text Effect

In this tutorial, it will show you to create a rather cool looking grass-text effect using a photo of grass, the pen tool. One neat little composition featuring text made out of grass! It is nice to have a go!

Luminescent Lines

In this tutorial, it will explore you the technique of using brush tool and you will also learn how to create custom brushes and use them effectively, combined with some interesting layer styles. Have a go!

Deep and Moody Woman

In this tutorial, it will show you to create a “simple” moody image using loads of simple effects to create an image with depth and composition. This is simpler than you think but can demand a lot from your system. Thank you!

3D Cartoon Painting Tutorial

The tutorial is initiated with the scanned art. This tutorial will show you how to paint an art and make it like a 3D cartoon. The process is complicate, as it is related to add the shadow and a lot of art works. You will be familiar with the photoshop brush after finishing this tutorial. Since you need to frequently use the brush to process this.

Create a Natural Scenery

Readers need to download the tutorial. In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a beautiful natural scenery. Firstly, you need to find a few scenery photos to do this combination. Then turn the scenery color as this.

Black Website Desig

In this tutorial, it will show you how to create an elegant black website template. To create a user friendly and simple web, you may not find it struggling with. However, the differences between an elegant web and a simple web are the background and navigation button designs. To begin with your own webpage, you can have a go with this to learn.

Text Art – Frilly Bits Typography

In this tutorial, it will show you how to create your text art. The first thing to do is to find the elements we will use. There are lots of websites where you can find nice vectors. And the techniques can also be applied on some other texts as well.

Turn a Beauty into a Zombie

In this tutorial, it will display the process about how to turn a beauty into a Zombie. In the final part, using overlay, soft light and color burn layers and soft red and black brushes to add more shadow and bloody parts.

Create a Layered Glowing Text Effect

In this tutorial, it will show you how to create this effect using very basic tools in photoshop and layering effects. This tutorial covered some simple steps and effects to achieve stylish results. The final image is as thumbnail.

Stunning 3D Effects for Text

In this tutorial, it will show you how to create a awesome 3D text. You will be able to pick up the skill very quickly. The text, of course, can be adjusted the color you like with the same style.

Create Cool Neon Effects

This tutorial will show you how to use warping, layer masks and simple colour tweaking for a high-tech look that’s out of this world. It is nice to apply this effect to your favourite photo. Have a go!

Creating Smoke

This article shows you how to create a smoke effect in photoshop, and to achieve that I used a photo of smoke and some photoshop filters. The best thing to do is to play with the brushes and with the tools to achieve the desired effect.

Exploding Text

For this tutorial we’re going to use a little bit of 3D Studio Max, so make sure you have it and that you know your basics before you start. And there you have exploding text. Hope you enjoy.

Trendy Geometric Lines Design Tutorial

In this tutorial, it will show you how to create a trendy poster in a special way. With this idea, you can rough them up with brush textures in Adobe Photoshop resulting in a cool and trendy design style. Have a go!

Blue Glow Dreamy Portrait

There are thousands of effects which can apply to the photo. The main purpose is to make it more elegant. And this tutorial, it is going to show you how to adjust your portrait with blue glow effect. The process will involve lots of layer adjustments as well as color tuning skills.

Fire Lines Tutorial

In this tutorial, it will show you how to add a special effect on a stock photo. This is quite a good example to demonstrate an general idea turning your normal photo into a elegant picture like a poster. Of course, making the fire lines on the photo can increase the attractiveness in a black and white picture background as this. You can apply the same idea on your personal photo.

Hair Highlights

In this tutorial, it will teach you the steps of highlight someone’s hair and if you want a dramatic makeover in your photographs in just few minutes, Then this tutorial is really help for you.

Glamour Style

In this tutorial, you will learn how to photo retouch the skin of a model in a few steps. Better results can be obtained by using a graphic tablet instead of a mouse.

Design a Cartoon Grunge Website Layout

This tutorial will let you learn how to add a worn look that works well with cartoon style graphics. Different flavors of grunge styles are popular all over the web right now. Add in three images of your choice. Mask them to fit within the boundaries of the white rectangles.

Expressive lighting effects

In this tutorial, it will show you the ways of bringing originality to digital lighting by introducing and vectoring traditional sketches, as well as examining some nifty Illustrator-based stroking techniques. Hope you like it!

Professional header design for your website

This photoshop cs3 tutorial will teach you how to make a nice-looking and professional header for your website easily. For the final result, add some text, rss icon image and simple reflection text.

Design a Professional Laptop Advert

In this tutorial, it will show you how to manually create your own vanishing points, and how to use these techniques to create an awesome ’screen demonstration effect’. You can use this technique to adjust the angle of the views.

Slow shutter text effect

This tutorial is done on CS3 but the main screen should be pretty similar. Finally select the burn tool from the tool menu and select a large soft brush (bigger the better) on a 35% opacity and rub around the lower edges of the canvas so the overall glows seems to be coming all from the middle.

Create Your Own Planets

The “Polar Panorama Effect” is a photoshop technique which is eligible to turn the image into unique pieces of art. It takes a panoramic photo and uses the Polar Coordinates filter of Photoshop or The Gimp to create a circular image that seems to wrap the panorama around a planet. Have a go!

Transform a Photo into Pencil Sketch

In this tutorial, it will show you how to transform a photo into pencil sketch. You will have a chance to experience some photoshop techniques such as using brushes, adjusting the colors & level adjustments to make this.

Quick and Effective Facial Photo Retouching

In this tutorial, it will lay down the basics of retouching and take you through the entire process, applied, layer by layer. When you actually see the process take place, the person seems to look fake afterwards, therefore, some adjustments are required.

Professional Modern Web Layout

In this tutorial, it will show you how to design and create a modern web layout. To design a good layout, it could be very simple, but time consuming. As you may spend a few hours to design one nice navigation button.

Design a Cool Blue Text Effect

In this tutorial, it will show you how to decorate your text with a cool blue effect. Here in the thumbnail, another motion blur design is added to be finalized with the same layer style settings just below the text designs.

How to Create Brilliant Light Streaks

In this tutorial, it will show a simple technique for creating brilliant light streaks which can be used in different ways to add motion and brightness to your designs. By using Wave, you can achieve some very nice looking irregular paths for your light. Very nice!

Create a Trendy Typographic Poster Design

In this Photoshop tutorial, you can produce some great looking contemporary designs that fit well as impact posters, by stripping back the tools to creating an interesting and eye-catching poster with a single typographic word. This is a simple way to make your wording looks attractiveness.

Creating a Cool Website Header in Fireworks

In this tutorial, it shows you how to create the Spectrum that is a default style in Fireworks. After that change the Blend Mode to Overlay. This rectangle will be on top of the other elements. The result will be as the thumbnail.

Photo Transfer Edge Effect

In this Photoshop tutorial, it will show you how to create a cool old photo transfer edge effect using a piece of stock photography, an alpha channel, the burn and dodge tools. Now you have a chance to turn your photo into aged treasure one.

Sparkling Hot Girl in Photoshop

In this tutorial, it will show you how to add the abstract effect on an image. It is very useful when you want your photo to be special. It is nice that you add something on the background. Of course, you can use the same sort of idea for your personal picture.

Lighting effects Photoshop Tutorial

This is my first tutorial in over a year and a half. It will show you the lighting effect!

The New Way to Create Super 3D Text

You have to download the tutorial. In this tutorial, it shows you how to create super 3D text in Photoshop. To begin with, you need to create the 3D text. Then, put the special texture for the text. It may not be necessary to follow this tutorial exactly, you can change it into the way you want.

Windows Vista Aurora Effect

In this tutorial, it will demonstrate you to create “Vista Lighting Effect”. You can really transform an ordinary wallpaper to something extraordinary. For add effect, you can add some extra color into it using Color Balance Layers.

Dramatic Text on Fire Effect

In this tutorial, it will show you how to use a photograph of fire to set text to the match. We’ll render the look on a nice dark background with a gorgeous text effect to complete the image. Finally we’ll add a last highlight. So create a new layer above all the others and draw in a white to black radial gradient.

Create a Wavy Blackberry Style Wallpaper Design

In this tutorial, it will show you how to create an abstract background image using Photoshop. The design has a cool wavy pattern with interesting lighting effects. This is a combination of design effects. You will find it very useful to create another design pattern.

Hand Drawn Design Pattern for an Image

There are several ways to create hand drawn images. User can create it from draft and scan an actual hand drawn sketch. And, most of tutorials would like to initiate it from a drafting and then paint it.

Digital Composting & Enhancing

In this tutorial, it will show you the steps of turning an ordinary digital photo into something vibrant and fanciful may be easier than you think. You can also apply the same skills to your photo.

Special Purple Lighting Effect Design

In this tutorial, it will demonstrate you how to design a special purple lighting effect scene. It is like our previous abstract effect tutorials. A lot of brushes functions are involved as you may be aware that, brushes can be used to create lots of shapes and sharpen image.

Matte Painting

This tutorial is actually a “making of” where explain how to proceed & achieve this matte painting. The last step is to create a Levels adjustment layer to get the final contrast of the matte painting.

Portrait Painting Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to start from drafting and end with painting.

Create a Garden on the Human Head

In this tutorial, it will basically take you through the process of converting a man’s head into a garden. The first part will be showing you how to prepare the image then add a waterfall coming out of his head with a pool at the bottom, as shown on the thumbnail. Have a go!

Texturing of Old Paper

In this tutorial, you will be able to learn the techniques to create a texturing old paper. It is preferably creating an old paper using photoshop to consume your time looking for it from archieves.

The Making of a Robotic Frog

In this tutorial, it will show you some of the steps. Our image is complete! A robotic frog created using only the very basic tools of photoshop!

Digital Painting Toys

This making of showing how to create ‘’so, you really think. Finally a ‘‘fitting“ background colour is picked and simply draw a gradient. After that the animals are masked and on a layer under the animals shadows are painted.

Seriously Cool Photoshop Explosion Effect

In this tutorial, it will show you how to create an Explosion effect in a photo. It will let you know how to create a break apart, explosion effect and add some awesome lighting and glow to finish the image off.

Turn A Photo Into A Collage Of Polaroids

In this Photoshop tutorial, it will let you learn how to take a single photograph and turn it into a collage of polaroids, with each polaroid containing a small section of the overall image. Your support goes towards keeping this site running and keeping new tutorials coming!

Strange High House

In this tutorial, it will show you how to initiate the paint of strange high house from draft to paint. Or you can draft whatever object on paper first, then scan your object. After that, you can apply the paint through photoshop featuring. Usually from drafting to painting, it takes at least 1 or 2 hours.

Impressive Colour Spectrum and Rainbow Tutorial

In this tutorial, it will show you how to create some line patterns. Sometimes, it will be nice to create your background with this kind of style. Easy, fast & simple! To create this, user has to be aware of contrast and brightness.

Professional Dark Header

In this tutorial, it will show you how to create a “Professional Dark Header” for your web site. In fact, web sites can succeed with their simple designs. In our previous tutorials, you may have experienced many different kind of creations. And this time, you can try another simple one!

Making of Fire Dragon

This tutorial is going to teach you how to make a nice fire dragon. The design process is very time-consuming. Hope you enjoy it!

6 Quick’n’Dirty Photoshop Text Effects

In this tutorial, it will show you how to make 6 different effects using just layer styles. But, we just focus on the golden text. It uses an Outer Bevel on top of a fat Stroke to create the highlights. Then when we place the other layer on top they come together to make a lovely gold effect!

Orange Porsche with Fruit Skin

In this tutorial, it will show you how to re-decorate the Posche with fruit skin. This time, orange skin is used for making the skin. Then use the color adjustment plus other special effect to complete this tutorial.

Special Spectrum Design for CD Cover

In this tutorial, it will show you how to create a CD cover with special spectrum design. Some useful methods of enhancing workflow and efficiency are shown like using smart objects. The image we are creating will be in the style of some of the Ministry of Sound CD’s. Take your time to make one!

Make a 3D Color Explosion

In this tutorial, it will show you how to take command of layer blending modes and masks, and employ simple but highly effective tricks to generate light sources, shadows and add depth to your work. This style is a bit special, as lots of art elements have been added. Very nice!

Create a Realistic Blueprint Image From a 3D Object

In this tutorial, it will show you how to create a a mock-up of a 3D car blueprint. After that, an image will be placed on a drafting table. Using Photoshop Extended CS3’s 3D tools, you can base on a simple and fast technique to create blueprints of real objects.

Creating Old Paper With Custom Brushes

In this tutorial, it will show you how to create a Custom Brush using a folded piece of paper and then how to use that brush to create an old piece of paper. To begin with, a plain white piece of paper will be taken, folded it in fours and left it in my pocket for a few hours. Next you need to scan the paper using the Grayscale setting on my scanner.

Create an Energy Drink Ad Design

In this tutorial, you will be able to learn how to feature a soft drink product. It really relies on a combination of using difference blending mode and radial blur filter to achieve unique colors, contrast, and lighting to emphasis the effect.

Reflective Liquid type

This tutorial will show you on creating metal type abound online, as do variations on simple liquid effects.Tutorials on creating metal type abound online, once you have an idea of how different techniques fit together in a piece.

MacBook Air

This tutorial will contain 20 steps and explain how to make the MacBook Air ad.

Design a Simple Rounded Content Box

In this tutorial, it will show you how to design a simple rounded content box. To make a nice interface design, you need to create a box and then, put a tab on the top.

Create an Amazing Nike Logo

This tutorial is about creating a Nike Logo. It looks very simple. But, it is nice. It is always good to apply a little change on the existing logo or design as I mentioned in our previous tutorials. And, the your adjustment can, sometimes, make the original design to be surprising.

Leopard Aurora Borealis

In this tutorial, it will show you how to create the light stream picture. The original picture is from NASA site. Take a smallish hard brush and just scribble in different colours. Basically just play around until you come up with something you like. Here is mine with a few more light streams added. Have a go!

How to Create Product Labels in Photoshop

In this tutorial, it will show you how to create a “Product Labels” in Photoshop. And this demonstrates you how to create a green tea label with a ninja character in background. Of course, you can use the same idea to present your products with different character. And our example is as shown in the thumbnail.

Create a Powerful Mental Wave Explosion Effect

In this tutorial, it will show you how to create a explosion effect for a human, like a mix of Magneto’s ability with Peter Petrelli’s power. We will use images and filters to produce this wave explosion effect. Have a go!

3D Pixel Stretch Effects

In this tutorial, you will learn a good 3D effect which can also apply to lots of areas. Stretching a single line of pixels is an easy way to create special digital effects in graphic design. By taking this technique a step further, you can create elegant image, drawing, or pattern as you like.

Light Beam

In this tutorial, it will show you how to use the photoshop tools to make this Light Beam as the thumbnail. To complete this, you will need to use the skills such as blur filters: Motion blur, Radial blur, and Gaussian Blur.

Make a Realistic Star Field

In this tutorial, it is going to show you how to create a realistic star field. Firstly, you need to initiate it with a background in black. Then you can create a the stars. To make this in a realistic way, you have to put more effort as there will be lots of photoshop techniques involved.

Creating an Abstract 3D Design

In this tutorial, it will demonstrate you how to create a 3D abstract design. To begin with, you need to extract the image first. Of course, you can pick an image you like. Then following the steps about image adjustments. At the end, using the brush to draw the colorful line and add the words design in the centre.

Design Watercolor Effect Menu

In this tutorial, it will show you how to create an artistic and un-typical CSS list menu as seen on Web Designer Wall. In this article, you will learn how to design a watercolor effect menu and how to slice the menu and code in CSS. Have fun!

Water Drops in Photoshop

This is a video tutorial. It will show you how to create some realistic water drop in 5 mins. The basic idea of how to create water drops is that they are a bit complex, they have highlights, shadows, transparencies, inner shadows and inner highlights. The best thing is that we can create all of those effects using the Layer Styles in Photoshop.

Magic, Fire, Light & Others in Photoshop

Under Abstract Effect, Photoshop Tutorial

Enhance Your Ad Designs with 3D Splashes

In this tutorial it will show you a creative process. The workflow for creating the splashes involves taking photographs of thrown paint. In the final, you can add anything you want to your advertisement design. You can add a logo and some text in the image you want.

Create a Glowing Light Painting Effect

In this tutorial, it will show you how to create taking photos with long exposures. It would be a nice idea to do that in Photoshop. If the background is too dark the blend mode won’t work. You’ll probably have to use another one with a outer glow.

Quick Grungy Poster

In this tutorial It will show you how to create a sort of grunge poster. We will learn how to make some elements look a bit dirty, create textures and add some depths to the elements using shadows and blend modes. This time we use that filter to create stains in our design a totally different approach like when we used it creating light effects.

The Making of Mystic

In this tutorial, it focuses on the big picture steps taken to create this image. You’ll learn some incredible techniques in this tutorial, and get a view into how the designer creates beautiful photo-manipulation based images. That is very

Red Gamble Dice Icon 8,378 views

This tutorial will display the procedure about how to make an icon of a red dice. Other advantage – stuff mentioned here can be used in almost any type of graphics you’ll do in a future, so we get the dice in its beauty.

Space Lighting Effects in 10 Steps 8,371 views

In this tutorial, you will be able to learn to create the space lighting effects within 10 steps. Creating Stars is something really easy. Create a new layer, fill it with black, and change the Blend Mode to Screen.

How To Create a Stunning Vista Inspired Menu 8,369 views

This tutorial will show you how to make a semi-transparent vista inspired menu, using gradients, shadows and blurring to produce a stunning modern effect. This menu produces a stunning effect when coupled with a bright scenic background. It uses transparency to great effect as well as modern gradients. The use of highlights is a great trick to providing a cutting-edge modern look to pictures.

Under : Informative, Photoshop, Useful

+ Most Popular Top 10's of 2008 By BigDaddy 06 December 2008 at 4:45 pm and have No Comments

From: http://lifehacker.com/5099979/most-popular-top-10s-of-2008

Almost two years later, our weekly listicle, the Lifehacker Top 10, still proves to be one of the most popular posts that publishes here. Since our top 10-making bot is off this weekend, take a gander at 20 of the most popular Top 10’s that have published in 2008 so far.

Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks
“Dozens of Google search guides detail the tips you already know, but today we’re skipping the obvious and highlighting our favorite obscure Google web search tricks.”
Top 10 Harmless Geek Pranks
“Since the dawn of time, geeks have been playing harmless pranks on their beloved (but unsuspecting) associates, and it’s up to all of us to carry the torch forward.”
Top 10 Ways to Stay Energized
“You can overcome a late night of net surfing, a rough morning, or just the post-lunch stupor without becoming an over-wired mess.”
Top 10 Software Easter Eggs
“The best easter eggs aren’t painted pink and stuffed with jelly beans—they’re the undocumented and unexpected fun features hidden deep inside various software apps.”
Top 10 BitTorrent Tools and Tricks
“BitTorrent is the go-to resource for downloading everything from music and movies to software and operating systems, but as its popularity continues to grow, so do the number of tools available for making the most of it.”
Top 10 Firefox 3 Features
“The newest version of our favorite open source web browser, Mozilla Firefox 3, offers dozens of new features and fixes, but only a handful will make the most dramatic difference in your everyday browsing.”
Top 10 How To Videos
“Your crafty older relatives used to have to mail-order their video tutorials or wait for “This Old House” reruns to get their DIY on, but the age of streaming video has been good to those who like to tinker and try out neat tricks.”
Top 10 Things You Forgot Your Mac Can Do
“From pure eye candy to outright productivity-boosters, read on to get reminded of some of the more obscure things you can do with your Mac, fresh out of the box.”
Top 10 Telephone Tricks
“When getting things done involves making phone calls, you want to spend the least amount of time and money on the horn as possible—and several tricks and services can help you do just that.”
Top 10 Computer Annoyances and How to Fix Them
“Computers are supposed to make our lives easier, but too much of the time they can be frustrating, time-wasting, stubborn machines.”
Top 10 Ways to Get Cables Under Control
“When you finally decide it’s time to do something about that rat’s nest of cables that’s spreading like kudzu, you don’t have to spend a lot of time and money to get it under control.”
Top 10 Modern Life Survival Skills
“Avoid everyday problems and modern mini-calamities by arming yourself with the right know-how before you head out into the world.”
Top 10 Ways to Trick Out Your Desktop
“For something that you look at every day of your working life, your computer desktop doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves.”
Top 10 Conversation Hacks
“A whole lot more than just words passes between people who are talking, so a few simple conversational skills can help you recognize what’s really being said and help you lead the discussion your way.”
Top 10 YouTube Hacks
“Summer’s ending, and with it goes a certain sense of taking it easier, relaxing a bit at the office—you know, caching up on all that YouTube browsing you skip when there’s real work to be done.”
Top 10 Office Supply Hacks
“Given some spare time and a few neglected items in the office supply closet, anyone can make their workspace more functional, create a cool tools for their home and office, and even rescue seemingly ruined stuff.”
Top 10 Easy Ways to Look Sharp
“In a perfect world, it wouldn’t matter what a genius JavaScript programmer or top-flight professional looked like. In this world, though, coming across as an unkempt schlub won’t do anything good for your career, your social life, or your luck with that cute guy or gal from marketing.”
Top 10 Apps Worth Installing Adobe AIR For
“While many of them are simply desktop translations of web interfaces that were easy to use already, a handful of AIR apps truly make work and play easier, or just more interesting.”
Top 10 Underhyped Webapps
“Even in this golden age of Big Internet Companies Acquiring Everything In Sight, there are still a few independent, small webapps out there that don’t get the attention they should for their useful functionality.”
Top 10 Things to Look Forward to in Windows 7
“While the next iteration of the ubiquitous Microsoft desktop operating system, Windows 7, isn’t a dramatic overhaul of its predecessor Windows Vista, it does fix several sore spots and add a few welcome features.”

+ The 101 most useful websites By BigDaddy 31 March 2008 at 6:23 pm and have No Comments

Original Site: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2008/03/30/sv_101websites.xml&page=2

There are tens of millions of sites to visit.
Not forgetting telegraph.co.uk, here are the only ones you actually need.Compiled by David Baker

TECHNOLOGY

1 Google
www.google.com

The powerhouse of the internet and the only place many people go for information. But if you thought Google was a still a mere search engine, look again. Click on ‘more’ at the top of the homepage to discover the work of ‘GoogleLabs’ – more than 50 free tools and web pages that could change your internet life.

GoogleDocs lets you create documents, spreadsheets and presentations, store them online, share them with others and access them from wherever there’s an internet connection.

Googlemail is probably the best email program – it has virtually limitless capacity and you don’t need to change your email address to use it. The Google calendar is a powerful searchable diary that you can allow others to access, so family members can make appointments together.

SketchUp could be just the tool you are looking for to design that conservatory extension and see what it will look like once the builders have gone. Add to that databases for searching academic journals and books in the public domain, the powerful GoogleMaps, with its engaging satellite imagery, a finance page with live stock quotes and an easy-to-use online messaging system, and you can see why some people say Google is taking over the world – and, with GoogleMoon and GoogleMars, the rest of the galaxy, too.

2 Anonymouse
www.anonymouse.org

Surf the web without disclosing who or where you are.

3 iLounge
www.ilounge.com

Hints, tips and troubleshooting for your iPod and associated software.

4 Only2Clicks
www.only2clicks.com

If you use just a few websites, this lets you create a home page that has links to them all. Simple, free and practical.

5 Zoho
www.zoho.com

A suite of free business programs. From word processing and presentation software to tools for taking notes in meetings, planning projects and creating databases.

6 Backpack
www.backpackit.com

To-do lists, notes, ideas and calendar. Excellent for juggling projects and much more versatile than a ring folder.

7 GetNetWise
www.getnetwise.org

All you need to know about keeping the net safe – protecting children, preventing spam, avoiding viruses and stopping others accessing your personal details.

8 DaFont
www.dafont.com

More than 7,500 free fonts (for Mac and PC), so you can at last stop using Copperplate for your party invitations.

9 Pando
www.pando.com

The superfast way to send large files over the web. Don’t attach that family video to an email, Pando it instead.

10 FlipClips
www.flipclips.com

Turn your home videos into animated flip books. Much more appealing than another DVD.

ENTERTAINMENT

11 Digital Spy
www.digitalspy.co.uk

Entertainment, media and showbiz news. Plus, a surprisingly good forum for technology-related problems – a great place to sort out your broadband.

12 BBC iPlayer
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer

13 Whatsonwhen
www.whatsonwhen.com

Events, attractions, openings and exhibitions from around the world. Enter a location and dates and the site will show listings.


Up in lights: a guide to London’s Theatreland is online

14 London Theatre Guide
www.londontheatre.co.uk

What’s coming on and what’s making an exit in London’s theatre world. Especially good for seating plans, so you can see where the box office staff are putting you.

15 The Internet Movie Database
www.imdb.com

The world’s biggest (and still growing) reference for actors, directors, locations, plots…

16 Rotten Tomatoes
www.rottentomatoes.com

A round-up of what the critics thought of films on general release.

17 Screenonline
www.screenonline.org.uk

The British Film Institute’s definitive guide to the British film industry. Plots, features, statistics and news from the film world.

18 Good Reads
www.goodreads.com

Expand your reading. Catalogue your books online and others make recommendations based on what you seem to enjoy.

19 TV Guide
www.tvguide.co.uk

News, features and listings for Britain’s terrestrial and cable television. Customisable interface so your favourite channels are always at the top.

20 Football365
www.football365.com

The authentic (and often tangential) voice of the Britain’s ‘real’ football supporters.

21 CricInfo
www.cricinfo.com

Everything you want to know about the world of cricket.

22 Beijing Olympics
en.beijing2008.cn

The official Olympics site, with news, scheduling, features and a countdown to the games themselves.

23 Radio Locator
www.radio-locator.com

From shock jocks to orchestral baroque, thousands of internet radio stations to listen to on your computer.

24 Live Plasma
www.liveplasma.com

Expand your music and movie tastes. Enter the name of a song, band, movie, actor or director you like and Live Plasma will return some pretty intelligent recommendations for further investigation.

25 Blinkx
www.blinkx.com

A clever way of searching for video clips on the internet – from uploaded episodes of your favourite soap to comedy home-video moments.

26 Lulu
www.lulu.com

Self-publishing made smart again. Write, design and then print your own books – though you’ll still have to persuade others to buy them.

27 VideoJug
www.videojug.com

28 Wonder How To
www.wonderhowto.com

29 Instructables
www.instructables.com

DIY projects from zombie make-up to LED balloons. Excellent selection of rainy-day projects for bored children (and adults) at home.

30 Flash games
www.k2xl.com

Addictive series of Flash games including the hypnotically soothing Boomshine.

31 GameSpot
www.gamespot.com

News, reviews, hints and tips for virtually every console game on the market. Essential if you are still up at 2am trying to find a way into the castle on Zelda.

32 Anagrammer
www.anagrammer.com

Online anagram machine for Scrabble players and crossword enthusiasts. Also solves Sudoku.

ADVICE AND INFORMATION

33 Newsmap
marumushi.com/apps/newsmap

A wonderfully graphical – and customisable – display of news stories from around the world. Click on an item to see the full story.

34 The Eggcorn Database
eggcorns.lascribe.net

Continually updated guide to modern-day Malapropisms, misunderstandings and other manglings of language. From ‘high dungeon’ to ‘wreckless driving’, Eggcorn names the culprits and nudges them in the right direction.

35 Arts and Letters Daily
www.aldaily.com

World-class articles from intellectual and influential journals around the world. Browse the day’s selections. Like The Week for eggheads.

36 Ask Philosophers
www.askphilosophers.org

The academy comes to cyberspace. A panel of mainly American and British philosophy scholars answers questions sent in by the public. Search the database, from Abortion to War, or send in a question of your own.

37 When Is
www.when-is.com

Shows you the dates of Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu and American holidays from now to 2010.

38 Rhyme Zone
www.rhymezone.com

For when the muse has gone, a rhyme and synonym generator to help you towards the perfect mot. You can also search for Shakespeare quotations, biblical references and other literary inspirations.

39 Nationmaster
www.nationmaster.com

Giant but easily searchable database of statistics, maps and profiles for every country in the world.

40 Digg
www.digg.com

The people’s approach to news and features, Digg brings together items from across the net, ranked according to how many people have felt them worth recommending. Sometimes a little techie-heavy, but excellent for discovering what the cyberworld is getting worked up about.

41 They Work For You
www.theyworkforyou.com

A powerful way of keeping tabs on MPs and peers: attendance records, voting patterns, recent statements and more.

42 Time Bank
www.timebank.org.uk

Volunteering opportunities for young people, sorted by region, interest, skills and need.

43 Wikipedia
www.wikipedia.org

Controversial, democractic and sometimes error-strewn encyclopaedia that has brought Darwinism to the world of knowledge. Make it your first port of call for looking something up. Just be sure to check somewhere else that what you find makes sense.

44 Wiktionary
www.wiktionary.org

Wikipedia’s online multilingual dictionary. Immensely powerful and far less controversial than its encyclopaedic forebear.

45 Motley Fool
www.fool.co.uk

The original – and still the best – personal finance site on the web (the American version is at www.fool.com). For savers, borrowers, stock spotters and day traders, sound, independent advice that cuts through the jargon.

46 Martindale’s ‘The Reference Desk’
www.martindalecenter.com

From the arts, business, science and technology, a dry but authoritative conglomeration of data from around the world.

47 PubMed

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed

Free and authoritative database of more than 17 million medical research papers. Not always easy to understand if you are not a medic, but a far better place to look for information than the random sites that come up on Google.

48 About.com
www.about.com

The internet’s version of that clever uncle who always seems to know the answer to your questions. There are few subjects the site doesn’t tackle, though the coverage can be superficial. A good starting point for idle research.

49 NHS Direct
www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk

Online information and advice about health and illness, run by Britain’s National Health Service. The site includes a useful self-diagnosis tool that can reassure you that your hangover is not in fact meningitis.

50 Legal Services Shop
www.freelawyer.co.uk

General legal advice relating to housing, family law, employment, motoring, consumer issues and personal injury, plus wills, conveyancing and divorce. Good starting point to see where you stand. Will also, for a fixed fee, answer questions and put you in touch with a solicitor.

51 How Stuff Works
www.howstuffworks.com

Engaging encyclopaedia of the modern (and not so modern) world, with good illustrations and clear text. Can suffer sometimes from an ‘it’s amazing!’ tone of voice..

52 XE
www.xe.com

Currency converter covering every world currency. Azerbaijan new manats to Cayman Island dollars? Just a click away.

53 Advice Guide
www.adviceguide.org.uk

Find where you stand legally with the Citizens Advice Bureau’s online information resource.

54 Need2Know
www.need2know.co.uk

Advice and information for young people, including health and fitness, drugs, problems with bullying, how to study and applying for jobs.

55 Royal Horticultural Society
www.rhs.org.uk

Advice and suggestions from the world’s leading gardening organisation. A good ‘how-to’ section and seasonal tips for the time of year.

56 Babelfish
babelfish.altavista.com

Automatic translation to and from most European languages and Chinese. The results are sometimes a little strange, but you will usually get your message across.

57 eHow
www.ehow.com

How to do just about everything, from getting stains off curtains to buying a second-hand car.

58 Eat the Seasons
www.eattheseasons.co.uk

Updated weekly, information, tips and recipe ideas on British seasonal food.

59 Age Concern
www.ageconcern.org.uk

Website of Britain’s leading charity for the elderly, packed with advice about maintaining an active life.

60 Weather.com
www.weather.com

The queen of weather sites, with more information than you would possibly imagine you might need, from pollen counts to surf forecasts.

61 Uncyclopedia
uncyclopedia.org

Spoof Wikipedia-style encyclopaedia where nothing is true, but a good deal is very funny indeed. Idle away an afternoon or, even better, hone your comedy skills by making a contribution yourself.

62 Kiva
www.kiva.org

An easy way to lend small sums (from $25) to business projects in the developing world. Kiva keeps track of your investment, updates you on progress and repays your loan as the business grows.

63 Embarrassing problems
www.embarrassingproblems.co.uk

From bad breath and piles to cold sores and beyond, Dr Margaret Stearn dispenses invaluable advice.

HOUSE AND HOME

64 Noise Mapping England
www.noisemapping.org

Click on an area of the map to find out how noisy a street, or even a section of the street, is – handy for light sleepers planning a move. At the moment only London is mapped, but the rest of England will follow.

65 Prime Location
www.primelocation.com

One of the best sites for finding property. It is UK-based but has a good international presence.

66 Rated People
www.ratedpeople.com

User reviews on local tradesmen. You describe the job you need done and how quickly and suppliers contact you with quotes – with previous customers rating them.

67 Zoopla
www.zoopla.co.uk

Possibly the most dangerous site on this list, Zoopla gives sale prices of recently sold homes and – the tricky bit – estimates the value of the rest. We dare you not to look.

68 Money Saving Expert
www.moneysavingexpert.com

Subtitled ‘Consumer Revenge’, this is where you find the discounts, tricks and tips to save money. The weekly email is essential reading for canny consumers. It caters only for Britain, but every country should have one.

69 MetaEfficient
www.metaefficient.com

Practical guide to making your home more environmentally friendly, from low-flow showerheads to 12V lighting. US-based, but many of the products are available elsewhere.

70 Design My Room
www.DesignMyRoom.com

For budding Laurence Llewellyn-Bowens everywhere, it provides the ability to redecorate your home in cyberspace. Choose colours, furniture, accessories and finishes and then publish the results online.

71 Up My Street
www.upmystreet.com

Neighbourhood information based on postcode: schools, shopping and, juciest of all, how much the house down the road sold for recently.

72 Home For Exchange
www.homeforexchange.com

One of many sites where you can swap homes with someone else for a period. This is less cluttered than some of the others and has a good geographical spread.

73 SimplySwitch
www.simplyswitch.com

The fast way to compare utility suppliers and other services, from broadband to home insurance. Enter your postcode and the site comes back with the best deals.

74 101 Cookbooks

www.101cookbooks.com

Enchanting recipe and foodie blog from a Californian cook who believes in good food. Subscribe to the email alert service and transform your cooking repertoire.

SOCIAL

75 Facebook
www.facebook.com

The most grown-up (just) of the social-networking sites that are fast taking over the world. Excellent for staying in touch with far-flung friends, though pretty good too for re-establishing contact with those you hoped you had lost.

76 Wordpress
www.wordpress.com

The quickest and easiest way to create a blog of your own.

77 Ringsurf
www.ringsurf.com

Like an online Mothers’ Union meeting (though sometimes a little more risqué), Ringsurf is a chatroom where people exchange ideas about anything from politics to relationships. The quality is not always high, but users have been known to discover new (real-life) friends with interests they thought no one would share. A tribute to the information-sharing capability of the net.

78 bubbl.us
www.bubbl.us

Organise your thoughts by creating mindmaps online and sharing them with others.

79 Technorati
www.technorati.com

An intelligent, intuitive and inspiring way to read entries from some of the millions of blogs that dot the internet. You can browse by subject or area of interest, read the postings that are catching the world’s attention and bookmark blogs that catch your attention. And if you want to join in…

80 Flickr
www.flickr.com

The website you graduate to once you’ve discovered how to put your holiday snaps on the net. Here, everyone’s photos are linked by using tags, such as ‘Spain’, ‘beach’ or ‘happy’, which sets you off on an exploration of others’ uploads.

81 BabyCentre
www.babycentre.co.uk

There are plenty of great parenting forums out there – Netmums, Mumsnet – but this is still the best source of considered, authoritative, often soothing advice on everything from colic to tax credits.

82 Friction TV
www.friction.tv

YouTube for debaters. Upload a short video about an issue close to your heart and others reply in kind or by text.

SHOPPING

83 GiftGen
www.giftgen.co.uk

Gift ideas for when you can’t think what to buy someone. You enter their age, sex and interests and how much you want to pay and it scours the net for ideas.

84 eBay
www.ebay.co.uk

Online shopping for (nearly) everything you might want to buy. The original auction formula is still going strong, but plenty more features have been added since it began. Take a look at non-UK sites, such as ebay.fr and ebay.de, too, for bargains others may have missed. The layout is the same even if you don’t speak the language.

85 Who What Wear Daily
www.whowhatweardaily.com

Fashion tips, advice and suggestions. Includes Ask a Stylist for those tricky co-ordination problems and a What Was She Wearing? inquiry service to help you track down your favourite celebrity’s fashion choice.

86 Gumtree
www.gumtree.com

Unabashedly straightforward classified ads site, for everything from new homes to online romance.

87 AbeBooks
www.abebooks.co.uk

The Amazon of the second-hand book world. More than 13,500 booksellers selling 110 million books. If it’s not here, it’s not worth looking for.

88 Kelkoo
www.kelkoo.co.uk

There are plenty of price-comparison sites on the web, but this one seems to get it right more often than most. Type in what you want to buy and Kelkoo will come back with the cheapest prices it can find.

89 Endgadget
www.engadget.com

A (digital) finger on the pulse of the technology world. All the newest developments, discoveries, gadgets and toys – before they hit the shops.

90 Cork’d
www.corkd.com

Discover more about wine by reviewing what you’ve enjoyed and receiving tips and suggestions from others.

91 I Love Jeans
www.ilovejeans.com

Find the right jeans for your fit before you even leave home. A cheeky but revealing ‘body type’ guide takes you straight to the brand you should be trying. Search by style, body type or brand. Women only.

TRAVEL

92 Sky Scanner
www.skyscanner.net

Monitors prices and destinations for all the low-cost airlines so you just type in where you want to go and when to find the best deal.

93 The Man in Seat 61
www.seat61.com

Routes, tickets, tips and advice – the only guide you need to travelling by train from Britain to Europe and the rest of the world.

94 Walk It
www.walkit.com

Online pedestrian routefinder for London, Birmingham, Newcastle and Edinburgh that shows you the best route to walk from A to B. Includes calorie counter, CO2 savings and points of interest on the way. Other cities coming soon.

95 Transport for London Journey Planner
journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk

Indispensable and almost always spot-on guide to negotiating the capital’s public transport system. You enter your starting point and destination and it gives you the best bus, tube, cycle and even boat routes to get you across town.

96 ViaMichelin
www.viamichelin.com

A hi-tech hark-back to the days of leisurely motoring. ViaMichelin gives you maps, routes and directions throughout Britain and continental Europe with added panache. The maps have a pleasant printed quality about them and, naturally enough, your route is accompanied by gastronomic highlights to be found along the way. There’s also information about destinations.

97 Carbon Neutral
www.carbonneutral.com

Information on your carbon footprint and how to cut it down. Includes an online calculator to measure your effect on the world.

98 Expedia

www.expedia.com

Excellent all-round travel site. Use it for good prices on flights and holidays, but click on ‘Destinations’ for some well-researched and up-to-date travel guides.

99 SeatGuru
www.seatguru.com

Aircraft seating plans, showing you the prime seats, possible annoyances and seats you should avoid.

100 Airline Meals
www.airlinemeals.net

A consumer guide to what you can expect to eat on board. There are news and features from the airline catering world, but the best part is a gallery of photos of on-board meals sent in by passengers and listed by airline.

101 World Hum
www.worldhum.com

+ what is svchost.exe and why is it running? By BigDaddy 25 January 2008 at 8:28 pm and have No Comments

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/what-is-svchostexe-and-why-is-it-running/

You are no doubt reading this article because you are wondering why on earth there are nearly a dozen processes running with the name svchost.exe. You can’t kill them, and you don’t remember starting themâ€¦ so what are they?

So What Is It?

According to Microsoft: “svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries”. Could we have that in english please?

Some time ago, Microsoft started moving all of the functionality from internal Windows services into .dll files instead of .exe files. From a programming perspective this makes more sense for reusabilityâ€¦ but the problem is that you can’t launch a .dll file directly from Windows, it has to be loaded up from a running executable (.exe). Thus the svchost.exe process was born.

Why Are There So Many svchost.exes Running?

If you’ve ever taken a look at the Services section in control panel you might notice that there are a Lot of services required by Windows. If every single service ran under a single svchost.exe instance, a failure in one might bring down all of Windowsâ€¦ so they are separated out.

Those services are organized into logical groups, and then a single svchost.exe instance is created for each group. For instance, one svchost.exe instance runs the 3 services related to the firewall. Another svchost.exe instance might run all the services related to the user interface, and so on.

So What Can I Do About It?

You can trim down unneeded services by disabling or stopping the services that don’t absolutely need to be running. Additionally, if you are noticing very heavy CPU usage on a single svchost.exe instance you can restart the services running under that instance.

The biggest problem is identifying what services are being run on a particular svchost.exe instanceâ€¦ we’ll cover that below.

If you are curious what we’re talking about, just open up Task Manager and check the “Show processes from all users” box:

Checking From the Command Line (Vista or XP)

If you want to see what services are being hosted by a particular svchost.exe instance, you can use the tasklist command from the command prompt in order to see the list of services.

tasklist /SVC

The problem with using the command line method is that you don’t necessarily know what these cryptic names refer to.

Checking in Task Manager in Vista

You can right-click on a particular svchost.exe process, and then choose the “Go to Service” option.

This will flip over to the Services tab, where the services running under that svchost.exe process will be selected:

The great thing about doing it this way is that you can see the real name under the Description column, so you can choose to disable the service if you don’t want it running.

Using Process Explorer in Vista or XP

You can use the excellent Process Explorer utility from Microsoft/Sysinternals to see what services are running as a part of a svchost.exe process.

Hovering your mouse over one of the processes will show you a popup list of all the services:

Or you can double-click on a svchost.exe instance and select the Services tab, where you can choose to stop one of the services if you choose.

Disabling Services

Open up Services from the administrative tools section of Control Panel, or type services.msc into the start menu search or run box.

Find the service in the list that you’d like to disable, and either double-click on it or right-click and choose Properties.

Change the Startup Type to Disabled, and then click the Stop button to immediately stop it.

You could also use the command prompt to disable the service if you choose. In this command “trkwks” is the Service name from the above dialog, but if you go back to the tasklist command at the beginning of this article you’ll notice you can find it there as well.

sc config trkwks start= disabled

Hopefully this helps somebody!

+ The 70 coolest free applications in existence By BigDaddy 03 October 2007 at 6:58 pm and have No Comments

The 70 coolest free applications in existence

Source: http://www.seopher.com/articles/the_70_coolest_free_applications_in_existence

At the end of August I created a list of the 40 coolest free applications around which proved quite popular. As with all lists of this type the wisdom of the crowds brought forward numerous other suggestions that I’d overlooked for one reason or another – so here is the revised list.

As with the original list, the purpose is to collate some of the best free applications (and sometimes online services) that can be found on the Internet. I spend a lot of time on the Internet (through my work as a web developer) so it’s always worth pooling a decent list of resources to those who are more fortunate to have time away from computers. See below for a brief list of what’s covered:

Image, Image Editing and Graphics
Office
Web and web development
Development Applications (IDE’s)
Operating Systems
Video Playback
Audio
Anti-Virus and Security
Downloading and Download Managers
Remote Access
Useful Applications that don’t get their own category
Games

Image, Image Editing and Graphics

GIMP â€“ http://www.gimp.org
The GNU Image Manipulation Program is a Photoshop replacement that doesnâ€™t have “quite” as much functionality but itâ€™s excellent for free. It comes installed by default on many Linux distros and is also available in Windows. Worth a look.

Inkscape – http://www.inkscape.org/
Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Paint.net – http://www.getpaint.net/index2.html
A really good, lightweight alternative to Photoshop. It offers layers, unlimited undo, special effects and a wide variety of useful tools. The download is around 2mb too so absolutely worth a look â€“ I use this when Photoshop is playing up.

XnView – http://perso.orange.fr/pierre.g/xnview/enhome.html
XnView is software to view and convert graphic files, apparently really simple to use and supports more than 400 graphics formats.

ImageMagick - http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php
A lesser known application but it offers the ability to “create, edit, and compose bitmap images. It can read, convert and write images in a variety of formats (about 100)”. Use it to “translate, flip, mirror, rotate, scale, shear and transform images, adjust image colors, apply various special effects, or draw text, lines, polygons, ellipses and B?zier curves.”

Blender – http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/
A 3D Studio Max alternative, very comprehensive and full-featured.

Artweaver – http://www.artweaver.de/index.php?en_version
Artweaver is a simple Freeware program for creative painting, i.e. Artweaver offers you all artistic effects which you need for your work. You can create sketches from photos and experiment with a wide range of brushes. The brush simulation is thereby so realistic as possible.

Office

OpenOffice â€“ http://www.openoffice.org
Itâ€™s basically Microsoft Office so you need little else with this installed. It has MS Office support (in both reading and writing) so this fantastic suite is fully compatible.

Scribus – http://www.scribus.net/
Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of “press-ready” output and new approaches to page layout. Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.

Google Documents – http://docs.google.com/
Google documents is a free service that simply requires registration in order to use it. You create Microsoft-Office-esq documents in an online environment and they store them on their servers. You can export them and save the files to your hard drive too. In addition, Google allows multiple user collaboration which means numerous people can all be working on the same document at the same time and it will update in real time. Very cool stuff.

Foxit – http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
Foxit Reader is a free PDF document viewer and printer, with incredible small size (only 2.1 M download size), breezing-fast launch speed and amazingly rich feature set. Foxit Reader supports Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003/Vista. Its core function is compatible with PDF Standard 1.7.

Web and web development

Andrew Sellick covered this in his comprehensive list Top 15 free and open source web developer tools so this part of the list is mostly his (he’s a friend so this content use was agreed).

Firefox – http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/products/firefox/
Firefox is arguably the second most popular browser available (sitting behind Internet Explorer 6). It’s extendable, customisable, secure and massively popular. You can develop plugins for it, other people develop plugins for it – it’s just worth having.

Opera – http://www.opera.com
This is my personal browser of choice, sexy tabbed browsing, customisable, standards complient and fast. As they put it themselves: “The award-winning Opera Web browser The coolest, fastest, and most secure free Web browser available.”

Opera web developer toolbar – http://operawiki.info/WebDevToolbar
The web developer toolbar is a menu and toolbar setup for Opera which brings together functions related to web development, validation services and links to standards and other documentation.

Amaya – http://www.w3.org/Amaya/
Amaya is a Web editor to create and update documents directly on the Web. Browsing features are seamlessly integrated with the editing and remote access features in a uniform environment. This follows the original vision of the Web as a space for collaboration and not just a one-way publishing medium. Amaya started as an HTML + CSS style sheets editor. Since that time it was extended to support XML and an increasing number of XML applications such as the XHTML family, MathML, and SVG. It allows all those vocabularies to be edited simultaneously in compound documents.

Notepad++ – http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm
Notepad++ is a free source code editor (and Notepad replacement), which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment.

Kuler – http://kuler.adobe.com/
A very powerful colour-picking tool, allowing for the easy creation of colour schemes.

Aptana – http://www.aptana.com/
The Aptana IDE is a free, open-source, cross-platform, JavaScript-focused development environment for building Ajax applications. It features code assist on JavaScript, HTML, and CSS languages, FTP/SFTP support and a JavaScript debugger to troubleshoot your code.

Color Cop – http://www.colorcop.net/
A very handy tool for capturing colours anywhere on your screen. Color Cop makes it quick and easy in those situations where you need to know what colour is being used.

Firefox web developer toolbar – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60
The Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools. It is designed for Firefox, Flock, Mozilla and Seamonkey, and will run on any platform that these browsers support including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Internet Explorer Toolbar – [another long url]
The Microsoft Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar provides a variety of tools for quickly creating, understanding, and troubleshooting Web pages. This version is a preview release and behavior may change in the final release.

Firebug – http://www.getfirebug.com/
Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

Watchfire WebXACT – http://webxact.watchfire.com/
WebXACT is a free online service that lets you test single pages of web content for quality, accessibility, and privacy issues. It is very similar to Bobby and usefull to anyone wishing to check the accessibilty level of their templates/site.

JsUnit – http://www.jsunit.net/
JsUnit is a Unit Testing framework for client-side (in-browser) JavaScript. It is essentially a port of JUnit to JavaScript. Also included is a platform for automating the execution of tests on multiple browsers and mutiple machines running different OSs.

Xenu – http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html
Xenuâ€™s Link Sleuth (TM) checks Web sites for broken links. Link verification is done on “normal” links, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds, local image maps, style sheets, scripts and java applets. It displays a continously updated list of URLs which you can sort by different criteria. A report can be produced at any time.

Vischeck – http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/vischeckURL.php
Vischeck is a way of showing you what things look like to someone who is color blind. You can try Vischeck online- either run Vischeck on your own image files or run Vischeck on a web page. You can also download programs to let you run it on your own computer.

Feng GUI – http://www.feng-gui.com/
Find out how people View your website or image and which areas are getting most of the attention. The ViewFinder Heatmap service, is an artificial intelligence service which simulates human visual attention and creates an attention heatmap.

Fiddler - http://www.fiddlertool.com/fiddler/
Fiddler is a HTTP Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP traffic between your computer and the Internet. Fiddler allows you to inspect all HTTP Traffic, set breakpoints, and “fiddle” with incoming or outgoing data. Fiddler includes a powerful event-based scripting subsystem, and can be extended using any .NET language.

browsershots.org – http://browsershots.org/
Browsershots.org is a free open-source online service providing screenshots of your web site in a multitude of different browsers. It is not as advanced as BrowserCam but a fantastic tool none the less.

Expresso 2.1 – http://www.ultrapico.com/Expresso.htm
Expresso is useful tool for learning how to use regular expressions and for developing and debugging regular expressions prior to incorporating them into your code. It provides a very cut down version of RegexBuddy but most importantly it is simple to use and free.

ColorJack - [very long url]
ColorJack is an amazing online application providing users with the ability to match colours that work well together. Perfect for those developers who struggle to get a good colour scheme together.

Development Applications (IDE’s)

Eclipse – http://www.eclipse.org/
Eclipse is an open source community whose projects are focused on building an open development platform comprised of extensible frameworks, tools and runtimes for building, deploying and managing software across the lifecycle. Itâ€™s quite hardcore in my personal opinion so certainly not one for beginners.

NetBeans – http://www.netbeans.org/
All the tools software developers need to create cross-platform Java desktop, enterprise and web applications. Runs on Windows, Linux, MacOS, as well as Solaris. I never got on well with NetBeans but it is a good application, just not one I choose.

Geany – http://geany.uvena.de/
Geany is a text editor using the GTK2 toolkit with basic features of an integrated development environment. It was developed to provide a small and fast IDE, which has only a few dependencies from other packages. It supports many filetypes and has some nice features

Code::Blocks – http://www.codeblocks.org/
A free c++ IDE built to meet the â€œmost demanding needs of its usersâ€.

SharpDevelop – http://www.sharpdevelop.net/OpenSource/SD/Default.aspx
A free IDE for C#, VB.net and Boo projects on Microsoftâ€™s .NET platform.

Operating Systems

Ubuntu – http://www.ubuntu.com
The most popular Linux distro at the moment – offering astonishing performance, usability and support (from a massive online community) all for free.

PCLinuxOS – http://www.pclinuxos.com/
One of my favourite Linux releases; PCLinuxOS is very different to Ubuntu but powerful and usable in equal measures. I find it a lot more intuitive but purely though personal preference. It too is supported by a healthy community.

Fedora – http://fedoraproject.org/
I’m not a Fedora user but there are an awful lot of them. Fedora was the daddy long before Ubuntu appeared on the scene and therefore it inherits a lot of excellent features from how long these guys have been doing it. Excellent software, strong communities and worth a look. This is Linux too incase you didn’t know.

openSUSE – http://www.opensuse.org/
Quoted as being one of the more fully featured, usable editions of Linux – openSUSE has a lot of users and is one of the major players in the scene today.

Lots more Linux! – Distrowatch has info on lots more
Linux is free and it is becoming a viable alternative to Windows these days; here is Distrowatch – a site that links to reviews on each release as well as offering a brief description, background and links.

Video Playback

Media Player Classic – [long url]
Amazingly lightweight and incredibly durable – MPC succeeds where most others fail. It really will play anything and doesnâ€™t even need installing.

VLC Media Player – http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
A very popular application; a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats. It will play just about anything too.

Youtube – http://www.youtube.com
Youtube is maybe an odd choice to put into the video playback area but there’s a good reason for it. You can upload your videos to Youtube quite happily for free and there are hundreds upon thousands of hours of footage on there. From the illegal to the completely random Youtube has more video playback options than your wildest dreams.

Audio

Audacity – http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.

Winamp â€“ http://www.winamp.com
While not open source, it is free and very good indeed. Far better than iTunes in my personal opinion.

Amarok – http://amarok.kde.org/
This is one of the best media players I have ever encountered, unfortunately it’s purely limited to Linux (KDE environments only) so it’s beyond the reach of Windows users and the “Ubuntu mainstream”. It’s amazing though and I highly recommend it.

Foobar2k – http://www.foobar2000.org
Foobar2000 is an advanced audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include full unicode support, ReplayGain support and native support for several popular audio formats.

Anti-Virus and Security

AVG - http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1
A popular and comprehensive, free anti-virus application. I use it. Simple.

Avast! Home edition – http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html
Also quite popular and available for free.

Antivir – http://www.free-av.com/
A free antivirus application (although it doesn’t detect spyware). It apparently has one of the best detection rates out of the free antiviruses on offer.

Clamwin – http://www.clamwin.com/
A free antivirus with a high detection rate for infected files. It’s not very invasive because it doesn’t do on-access virus scanning – you specifically need to say which folders to scan. This is both good and bad – good if you’re IT savvy because you don’t need on access scanning because you’re not stupid enough to do “dodgy” things unprotected. It’s bad if you’re not because it won’t tell you that there’s a problem until you tell it to look.

Comodo Firewall – http://www.comodo.com/products/free_products.html
Comodo Firewall, rated by PC Magazine Online as an Editor’s Choice, constantly monitors and defends your PC from internet attacks. It’s easy to install and use and passes the industry’s most stringent firewall “leak” tests.

Windows Defender – http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx
Windows Defender is a free program that helps protect your computer against pop-ups, slow performance, and security threats caused by spyware and other unwanted software. It features Real-Time Protection, a monitoring system that recommends actions against spyware when it’s detected and minimizes interruptions and helps you stay productive. It’s Microsoft though, but good enough I suppose. Not my sort of thing but a lot of people use it.

Spyware Terminator – http://www.spywareterminator.com/
Does exactly what it says on the tin. Spyware gets terminated. End of.

Arovax Antispyware – http://www.arovaxantispyware.com/
Another free antivirus, another one that does what it says on the tin.

Downloading and Download Managers

Orbit – http://www.orbitdownloader.com/
Orbit Downloader, leader of download manager revolution, is devoted to new generation web (web2.0) downloading, such as video/music/files from Myspace, YouTube, Imeem, Pandora, Rapidshare. And to make general downloading easier and faster.

Utorrent – http://www.utorrent.com/
The single best torrent application available. I’ve used many many alternatives and this is the single greatest one around. It has a tiny footprint (only a few Kb of RAM) and doesn’t need installing. Excellent.

Azureus – http://azureus.sourceforge.net/
One of the most popular torrent clients available, this Java built monster does the job very well. My gripe with it is that it munches it’s way through your RAM at an alarming rate (being a Java application). Good though, just a bit hungry for machines are left online 24/7/365 like mine is.

Flashget – http://www.flashget.com/en/download.htm
FlashGet is a leading download manager and has the highest amount of users on the internet. It uses MHT(Multi-server Hyper-threading Transportation) technique, supports various protocols and has excellent document management features. FlashGet is a freeware without any adware or spyware.

Freedownloadmanager – http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/
FDM is a powerful, easy-to-use and absolutely free download accelerator and manager. Moreover, FDM is 100% safe, open-source software distributed under GPL license.

Remote Access

rDesktop – http://www.rdesktop.org/
rdesktop is an open source client for Windows NT Terminal Server and Windows 2000/2003 Terminal Services, capable of natively speaking Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) in order to present the user’s NT desktop. Unlike Citrix ICA, no server extensions are required.

LogMeIn – https://secure.logmein.com/home.asp?lang=en
Their website states “20 million users trust LogMeIn solutions for remote support, access & backup” so that probably says enough.

Useful Applications that don’t get their own category

CDBurnerXP – http://cdburnerxp.se/
This is an amazingly useful, free burner application. Although I don’t believe it works on Vista yet…

Notepad2 – http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html
It’s basically notepad but more helpful for doing code and stuff in. It’s just notepad with more functionality; which makes life a bit easier. Code highlighting is handy and it doesn’t need installing and it doesn’t touch your registry. It’s safe, simple and very useful.

Thunderbird – http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/products/thunderbird/
Mozilla’s alternative to Outlook. It’s just brilliant, possibly the best email client I’ve ever used; which I use on a day-to-day basis.

7Zip – http://www.7-zip.org/
WinRAR and Winzip need paying for (eventually), 7zip is free and does the same thing. That’s it really.

Google Desktop – http://desktop.google.com/
This is a surprisingly useful application to have. It has desktop search (it searches through all your files and folders for what you’ve searched for, including your email – which is VERY useful). It will also do RSS updates straight to your desktop, news updates, weather information, to-do lists, notepads, you name it. It does it all.

Games

FreeCiv â€“ http://www.freeciv.org/index.php/Freeciv
A free development of the popular Civilisation games created by Sid Meier.

FreeCol – http://www.freecol.org/
Exactly the same but for Colonisation.

Also here is a massive list of open source games for Windows that’s absolutely worth checking out.

+ 75 + Email Services By BigDaddy 06 September 2007 at 4:17 pm and have No Comments

Email Services Source: http://mashable.com/2007/09/06/email-toolbox/

30Gigs.com – A free email provider that gives you 30GB of storage.AIM Mail – From America Online comes this email address anyone can use and get the power of AOL behind you.

Aussie Mail – A free email service provider based out of Australia, but can be use from anywhere.

BigString.com – Not only is it an email provider, but you can recall/erase an email after itâ€™s been sent, eliminating sender regret. 2GB to 20GB of storage depending on account type.

Bluebottle.com – Heavy spam protection, even to the extent of only accepting email from â€œtrustedâ€ persons.

Boarderemail.com – A no bells-and-whistles email service that is open to anyone.

Canada.com – Just in cased you ever wanted an email address that sounds like you speak for a whole nation.

Canoe.ca – Another Canadian based free email providers.

Care2.com – A free email service with a heart as 5% of all revenues go directly to charities.

DCEmail.com – Washington D.C. centric free email service.

DBZMail.com – Powered by Outblaze, all the Anime fans out there can get themselves a Dragonball Z email address.

DidaMail.com – Supports bilingual English/Arabic interface and has the ability to collect email from external POP3 accounts.

EmailAccount.com – Hard to get more memorable than that for an domain name!

Fastermail – Another free email service powered by Outblaze.

FastMail.fm – Anywhere from 10MB to 2GB of storage with your account depending on what level of membership you go.

Gawab.com – 1GB of storage, support for 12 languages.

Graffiti.net – Free email service offering 100MB of storage and powered by Outblaze.

Hotpop.com – 100MB of online storage, bt you wonâ€™t it as they also give you free POP3 Acces.

Hushmail.com – Encrypted email and document storage.

ICQmail.com – Free accounts and up to 2GB of storage for premium accounts.

Inbox.com – 5GB for online torage or 2GB if you want IMAP access.

India Times – Free email available in 11 Indian languages as well as English, a calendar and reminder service and much more.

InMail24.com – 16MB of storage, free POP3/IMAP access for you to download your mail.

Jubii.com – Offers email and integrates it with chat, Voice over IP, uploading and sharing files.

LinuxMail.org – Another specialized email service powered by Outblaze.

Litepost.com – Currently in alpha testing, but makes promises of a more flexible online email experience.

Lycos Mail – Up to 3GB of mail storage and no size limits for attachments.

Mail.com – Over 250 domain names to choose from and lots of the standard features you expect.

Mail2World.com – Unlimited storage and over 2,000 domain names to choose from are just a few of their services.

MailSnare.net – 40MB to start you off, upgradeable to as high as 10GB for premium accounts.

MerseyMail.com – Provided by the University of Liverpool

MSN Hotmail – One of the, if not the, oldest free email providers.

MuchoMail.com – Free version has 25MB of storage, premium has 1GB.

MyWay.com – Believes in nothing but text ads to help your load times.

Opera Mail – In support of the Opera browser, has 3MB of stoage.

OutGun.com – Another site for email powered by Outblaze.

Postmaster.co.uk – Free UK Based email service with 1GB oo storage.

ProntoMail.com – 25MB of storage with support of attachments up to 2MB.

Rediff.com – Free accounts get 1GB of storage and attachments of 10MB,larger sizes available at a price.

Runbox.com – 10GB of email storage, 1GB of file storage, ad-free and a lot more features.

SacMail.com – 25MB of storage and 3.5MB attachment limits.

Safe-mail.net – Only 3MB of storage, but their big selling point is heavy encryption for emails sent between members.

UReach.com – Giving you a taste of their UOrganize service for free.

VFEmail.net – Free storage has 15MB, and you canupgrade to larger accounts with more storage.

Yahoo Mail – Another of the oldest/biggest free email providers.

Zilladog.com – Email specially designed for use by kids with extra safeguards, games, and more.

Email Tools

Fuser.com – Lets you view all your email and social network messages in one convenient location. Supports systems like Yahoo mail, Gmail, Hotmail, and more.

Grab Mail – Check multiple email services from one convenient login.

Jump2Email.com – A web-based email retrieval service that allows you to check your company email from virtually any computer in the world.

Mail2Web.com – Allows you to check virtually any POP3/IMAP email account from anywhere.

MyEmail.com – Letâ€™s you check your POP3/IMAP email from any computer and has 100MB of storage.

Tamadaa.com – Manage multiple email accounts from a web based email client. Can handle private domains as well as the likes of Yahoo and Gmail.

Techemail.com – 25MB of storage for free and you get the nifty address of â€œ@techemail.comâ€.

Miscellaneous Email Services

EarthClassMail.com – View scanned images of your snail mail, say which ones you want opened and scanned, have the originals destroyed, shredded or forwarded on to you.

FutureMe.org – Write yourself an email to be delivered on a dat of your choosing.

hoaxMail – Allows you to send anonymous fake emails and SMS text messages as pranks.

L8r.nu – Write yourself an email to be delivered up to five years in the future.

Postful.com – Write a normal email, type the persons address in the subject line, send it in and they print and send your letter via snail mail for you for $.99.

Pranketh.com – Make an email look like it came from someone else, no malicious use allowed.

ShinyLetter.com – Type up your email, choose a font and style, send it, and theyâ€™ll handle the snail mail portion for you.

Spam Fighting & Temporary Email Providers

2Prong.com – Just visit the site and a disposable address is auto-generated and saved to your clipboard for easy pasting.

Dodgeit.com – For creating receive-only fake email addresses to help you fight spam.

E4ward.com – Reusable aliases that you can get rid of at anytime you want.

Emailias.com – Create as many disposable email addresses as you think you may need.

GishPuppy.com – Create aliases as you please, have them forward to your normal address, figure out who is giving out your info.

GuerrillaMail.com – Spam fighting email address that last only 15 minutes.

MailExpire.com – Set up a temporary email address for anywhere from 12 hours to 3 months to keep spam out of your normal inbox.

Mailnator.com – Donâ€™t even have to sign up before creating an address, make any email address you like, use it where you fear spam, and check the inbox from their page.

PookMail.com – Create a email address for 24 hours, and then never think of it again as it auto-deletes.

Spam.la – Throw away addresses for site registrations.

Spambox.us – Create a disposable address for 30 minutes to 1 year that will forward registration info to your normal inbox.

Spamex.com – A highly regared site for generating disposable addresses for you to use to keep your real email address safe.

Spamgourmet.com – Disposable email addresses to help in the non-stop war on spam.

TempInbox.com – A free, receive-only temporary email address for you to use.

ZoEmail.com – With a bit of management, you can make this disposable email account virtually spam free.

+ 13 step guide to buying a car By BigDaddy 06 September 2007 at 4:15 pm and have No Comments

SOURCE:Â Keter posted a completely kick-ass 13 step guide to buying a car

1. Pick the exact make and model of car you want.

2. Call around first anonymously (such as calling from work on your lunch hour), and get prices. Tell them you are calling everybody, and the best deal wins. Write down the prices you are given, and note any difference in packages.

3. Pick the dealership you think you want to do business with based on the results of this phone call. Price should not be the decider — demeanor and gut feel should be….

4. Go to the dealership you absolutely NEVER want to do business with. Nail down the details on the options — go for “loaded,” then whittle it down to find the approximate prices for each option. Make a detailed list with prices. Mark the options you must have and those can do without.

5. Do your research online and compare your pricing research with others and experts. Set an “ideal price” and an “I can live with it” price for the car you want with all the options you want, and again for the car you want with the minimum options you want. You now have a low and high figure for the car.

6. Go get cash or a a pre-approved car loan for something less than the upper amount. Put the cash or check in a blank sealed envelope. Find out ahead of time how to deal with the pre-approved loan if the negotiated amount is less than the amount on the bank check. You do not want to have to leave the dealership to get a new check for a smaller amount, so try to arrange something in advance for this contingency.

7. Call your insurance carrier and tell them you are buying a new car. Do as much of the paperwork ahead of time as possible and determine the hours they can service you so you can avoid delays or surprises at delivery time. (Any delays benefit the dealer.)

8. Go to the dealer you want to deal with — on a weekday, in the morning. Get dropped off or, ideally, have a friend or significant other go with you. (It always helps to have a witness.) Bring a sack lunch and drinks with you. You’re not leaving or letting your attention wander until you have a car.

9. Find the exact car you want. Use your list…this shows you’ve done your homework. Don’t be surprised if your salesman suddenly has to handle an emergency and hands you off to someone else. This is a good sign that you have the upper hand already.

10. Show them the envelope. Tell them you have cash/a pre-approved loan check, and three chances to get it from you if you can drive out by an exact time (by 3 PM is usually good), all paperwork done, taxes paid, and every other fee under the sun taken care of for less than the amount in the envelope. Do not give any hints about the amount, make them name heir price. If it’s way out of sight, don’t say anything. Just laugh and head for the door. They’ll chase you down and give you a much better number. If they don’t, go elsewhere.

11. Read everything. Twice. Have your friend do the same. Line out anything you don’t agree to or doesn’t apply, initial and date this and have the dealer rep do the same. Do not leave any blank spaces. Count the papers and make sure you get copies of all of them. Ask if there are any programs you need to opt out of to avoid being automatically signed up for them. Do whatever is required to opt out.

12. If at any time they give you attitude or BS, walk out. They will chase you down. Tell them they have only one chance left because they gave you attitude. Now they will deal. If they don’t, go elsewhere.

13. Try another city if yours is full of slime balls.

Good luck. I don’t buy new, but I helped friends buy using this technique, and it really works…but it works only if you truly are willing to walk away…and then refuse to bend when they try to put you off or change the terms. Stay civil, do not let any emotion in. You are on a mission, Marine!The same technique works for buying a used car, but tell them that you will not talk price until YOUR mechanic looks over the vehicle and gives you a report on it. Watch how much the squirm. I also learned the basics of car inspection, and perform my own pre-inspections right there on the lot — 90% of used cars have a defect so serious they don’t pass 5 minutes of my inspection! The best one (if any) goes to the mechanic.Have the mechanic lined up for the time you will be needing the car checked out. I prefer to have my mechanic pick up the car from the dealer directly. The mechanic should be one you have had good experiences with previously. NEVER use a mechanic who is near the dealership. I tell my mechanic “check this car like you would if your 16 year old daughter was going to have to drive it to Alaska and back — alone.”

Go back to the dealer with a list of all defects and an estimate to fix them. Negotiate a price adjustment. In some cases, you may agree to let the dealer do the repairs, BUT specifically put in writing that these repairs will be accepted only after a re-inspection by your mechanic and no crappy used or after-market parts will be used.

Figure on devoting at least a month and looking at 200+ cars to find a good used car.

I’ve bought three truly excellent used cars this way — all for less than $5000 — all required minor repairs prior to delivery, and all lasted more than 100K miles with minimal repair costs afterward.

+ Take Any College Class for Free By BigDaddy 13 June 2007 at 7:21 pm and have No Comments

Take Any College Class for Free: 236 Open Courseware Collections, Podcasts, and Videos

Published on Tuesday 12th of June, 2007

SOURCE:Â http://oedb.org/library/features/236-open-courseware-collections

If you’re interested in specific open courses, you can find a variety on the Web (or through this list of 100 courses). Usually, those single courses will contain all the materials you need to learn one subject for free. But, if you’re after more than a single focus or if you need a deeper perspective on a subject, this list of open courseware collections may be just what you need. Each resource listed below contains a collection or collections of educational materials. You’ll find digital archives, a variety of courses, Podcasts, videos and sometimes a mix of everything you can imagine so you can learn any given subject in depth.

Before you get started with any course in depth, you might need a few items from the top 25 Web 2.0 apps to help you learn or something that will improve your productivity. While the courses, videos, and audio files below won’t help you achieve a degree because they’re not credited, you can still practice completing online assignments appropriately. Once you gain significant skills in any given subject, you might be able to translate those skills into credits for an undergraduate degree.

Broadcast Learning

Turning off the television has become a mantra. But, when it comes to educational TV, maybe too much isn’t enough. The following broadcasting companies maintain Web sites that carry Podcasts, videos, and articles. Some sites maintain special sections expressly for students and teachers.

ABC Australia â€” This site offers various educational categories, including archives and the Big Ideas Wisdom Interview Podcasts.
BBC Learning â€” Online learning, support, and advice. This site offers internal and offsite links to a vast amount of materials.
BBC Video Nation â€” Current news in many categories.
Biography â€” The site holds videos to past interviews and biographies on people in topics that range from Black history to women’s history.
Book TV â€” This is the companion site to Book TV on C-Span2. The site holds some current interviews with authors, many past interviews, opinions, reviews, and featured programs through online video.
CBC Archives â€” Relive Canadian history through thousands of available radio and television clips.
Discovery â€” This channel is home to several different networks that focus on the military, animals, travel, etc. The Discovery site offers a “Video of the Day” from its home page, a separate online video section, and a Discover Education center where teachers can accumulate materials for K-12 teaching. It’s impossible to list all their offerings here, so go discover!
History Channel â€” Visit the Video Gallery for a selection on historical topics. Like the Discovery Channel, this network provides many opportunities for you to gain access to information and reference materials.
NOVA â€” Watch current science shows or browse by category. PBS sponsors this channel.
PBS â€” The Public Broadcasting Service brings great shows to television (other than Nova, listed above), and they also offer research capabilities, information, and Podcasts to their viewers online.
Research Channel â€” Speakers, researchers and professors present revolutionary thoughts and discoveries. Use their Webstreams and an extensive video-on-demand library for research.
TVO â€” Canada’s largest educational broadcaster brings Podcasts, video, educational television, and a special program entitled, Learn with TVO for parents and teachers of K-12 students. For older learners, TVO offers “course connections” listed at bottom left on the home page.
Weather Channel â€” You can learn about weather all over the world, but the Weather Channel also offers dynamic content based upon seasons and special conditions and a special multimedia and education section.

Back to Index

Directories & Searches

Some of the items below, like Google, are fairly familiar to most Web enthusiasts. Others, such as “Archives Made Easy” might come as a surprise. You can find just about anything you need for your research and learning through the following directories and search engines. You can also learn more about how to search the “invisible Web” to find resources for your projects. Plus, you can use our list of 119 resources beyond Google to find more authoritative guides. Each resource below leads to educational materials:

A World of Ideas â€” This site catalogues video and audio lectures on academic topics according to discipline, theoretician and topic.
Academic Blog Portal â€” This wiki serves as a portal of the “Invisible College” – the academic blogosphere full of serious scholarship and quirky, erudite commentary. Blogs are organized by discipline and by university.
Archive Grid â€” Search through thousands of libraries, museums, and archives that have contributed nearly a million collection descriptions to ArchiveGrid.
Archives Made Easy â€” An on-line guide to archives around the globe that includes tips on how to navigate various repositories. Hosted by the International History department at the London School of Economics and Political Science
British Academy Portal â€” The British Academy’s directory of online resources in the humanities and social sciences.
DMOZ â€” The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory for the Web.
DOAJ â€” Directory of Open Access Journals covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals.
Economics Network â€” Economics Network of the UK’s Higher Education Academy provides a range of services that support university teachers of economics in the UK. Their resources section carries many online directories to materials, notes, lectures, etc.
Google Scholar â€” Search for peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.
Infomine â€” Search for databases, electronic journals, electronic books, bulletin boards, mailing lists, online library card catalogs, articles, directories of researchers, and many other types of information.
Lecture Webcasts â€” A swicki (cross between a search and a wiki) for lecture Webcasts at the Internet TV Search Engine.
Intute â€” A network of UK universities and partners created this free online search service with access to education and research resources.
Librarian’s Internet Index â€” Categorized index to Web sites.
Merlot â€” Find peer reviewed online teaching and learning materials.
NetSerf â€” Links to all things Medieval.
Open Courseware Finder â€” Find a course online through a search or with tags.
Repositories of Primary Sources â€” The University of Idaho has compiled primary sources by international area. Dig deeper to discover the repository, where you can gain access to primary sources online.
World Lecture Hall â€” Find a lecture – written, video, audio, or course notes. Search by topic or by area. Brought to you by the University of Texas at Austin.
Voice of the Shuttle â€” A database that serves content dynamically on the Web for the arts and humanities.
Windows Live Academic Search â€” Search for scholarly journal articles, conference proceedings, dissertations and academic books.
Yahoo! Humanities Collection â€” Search for anything on the Web under the humanities heading.

Back to Index

eBooks & eTexts

You don’t need to shell out big bucks for textbooks when most ancient texts and other public domain materials have been digitized. The following sources can help you save dollars while you learn. Some resources listed below may contain audio files rather than readable text and some sites may contain both text and audio files.

Audio Books for Free â€” Free files when you choose MP3 files at tolerable quality. Higher quality audio available at inexpensive prices.
Authorama â€” Completely free books from a variety of different authors in the public domain.
Bartleby â€” Bartleby contains many classic American and English texts searchable by author, title, and genre.
Economics Textbooks â€” A categorized list maintained by John Kane.
Electronic Text Center â€” This University of Virginia collection features 70,000 electronic texts that range across many topics and languages.
eMedicine â€” The original open access comprehensive medical textbook for all clinical fields with 10,000 contributors and 6,500 articles.
European Literature â€” Electronic text collections in western European literature. Compiled by the University of Virginia Library.
FreeTechBooks.com â€” Free online computer science and programming books, textbooks, and lecture notes.
Internet History Sourcebooks Project â€” This project was designed to provide easy access to primary sources and other teaching materials in a non-commercial environment. It was developed and is edited by Paul Halsall at Fordham University and is divided into Ancient, Medieval, and Modern history along with several “sourcebook” selections.
Learn Out Loud â€” While many choices are free by membership only, Learn Out Loud also offers free audio and video.
LibriVox â€” LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net.
Literal Systems â€” A small but growing classic audio book collection.
Making of America Books â€” A digital library of primary sources in American social history primarily from the antebellum period through reconstruction.
Many Books â€” Free eBooks for your PDA, iPod, or eBook reader.
Manuscript Reading Room â€” The Library of Congress’s Manuscript Division’s current holdings, nearly forty million items contained in ten thousand separate collections, include some of the greatest manuscript treasures of American history and culture.
Online Books Page â€” This project indexes online free books rather than hosts them, but it’s an easy resource to use.
Online Mathematics Textbooks â€” A list created by George Cain, School of Mathematics at Georgia Institute of Technology. You might also try the more comprehensive Textbooks in Mathematics compiled by Alex Stef.
Oxford Text Archive â€” This site hosts arts and humanities literature, languages and linguistics texts that you can download in various formats.
Perseus Digital Library â€” Tufts University’s evolving digital library.
Philosophy â€” Canonical texts necessary for basic philosophy.
Project Gutenberg â€” The first producer of free electronic books, there are over 20,000 free books in the Project Gutenberg Online Book Catalog.
Religion Online â€” More than 6,000 articles and chapters. Topics include Old and New Testament, Theology, Ethics, History and Sociology of Religion, Communication and Cultural Studies, Pastoral Care, Counseling, Homiletics, Worship, Missions and Religious Education.
Text Archive â€” Internet Archive’s open source text directory.
WikiBooks â€” Since their founding in 2003, volunteers have written about 25,292 modules in a multitude of textbooks.
World Public Library â€” This repository maintains a public access eBook and eDocument collection.

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Encyclopedias

While most colleges won’t allow citations from encyclopedias in your research papers, these resources can lead you in the right direction to find more information.

Columbia Encyclopedia â€” Offered by Bartleby.
Counterbalance Interactive Library â€” Offers new views on complex issues from science, ethics, philosophy, and religion.
e-Podunk â€” Want to know information about a certain state, county, or city? e-Podunk maintains a site for this information and it’s growing to include cemeteries, libraries, museums, and newspapers.
Encyclopaedia Britannica â€” Free trial offer for full version, free access to concise version.
Encyclopedia Smithsonian â€” Each entry contains materials within the online Smithsonian and through other resources.
Highbeamâ„¢ Encyclopedia â€” Search through more than 57,000 frequently updated articles from the Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition.
InfoPlease â€” Information Please is part of Pearson Education, the largest educational publisher in the world.
LoveToKnow 1911 â€” Based upon the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, first published in 1911. While many of the science and health articles are obviously outdated, many of the biographical and historical articles and more complete and in-depth compared to materials available elsewhere.
Microsoft Encarta â€” Gain access to 16,000 articles and more than 2,200 photos, illustrations, maps, charts, and tables for free, with ability to upgrade.
Open-Site â€” Open-Site is edited by volunteer editors and accepts content submissions from the public to provide accurate information.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy â€” Each entry is maintained and kept up to date by an expert or group of experts in the field.
Wikipedia â€” A multilingual, Web-based, free content encyclopedia project.
World FactBook â€” Part of the Bartleby collection, this project provides the U.S. governmentâ€™s complete geographical handbook, featuring 268 full-color maps and flags of all nations and geographical entities.

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Open Courseware Collections – University

The list below contains courseware offered by various colleges and universities. This list is by no means all-inclusive, so you might want to try a search for a specific college to see what you can find. The colleges below offer more than one course or, like “Berklee Shares”, a broad perspective on one topic.

Columbia University Interactive â€” A gateway to selected electronic learning resources developed at Columbia University.
Berklee Shares â€” Free music lessons that you can download, share and trade with your friends and fellow musicians.
Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative â€” OLI courses are designed to support you to learn a subject at the introductory college level.
Duke Law Center for the Public Domain â€” News, lectures, links to various other resources within the site and on the Web. Projects range from the arts to international law issues.
Fulbright Economics Teaching Program â€” FETP is a resource for people who work or study in policy-related fields to increase their knowledge and explore new approaches to learning and curriculum development.
Harvard Extension School â€” Course-related materials are supported by videotaped lectures.
Gresham College â€” Find lectures in various topics that are also available as audio and video files.
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health â€” This project provides access to content of the School’s most popular courses, from adolescent to refugee health.
MIT â€” Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers a wide variety of open courses from aeronautics and astronautics to writing and humanistic studies.
Open University â€” Originating from the U.K., this collection ranges from arts and history to technology.
Tufts University â€” Six separate schools, from dentistry to the School of Arts and Sciences.
United Nations University â€” UNU promotes the idea of a Global Learning Space for science and technology.
University of California, Irvine â€” This college offers the California Subject Examination for Teachers (CSET) and a few other courses.
University of Notre Dame â€” From Africana studies to theology, students can take advantage of options within numerous Notre Dame departments.
University of Washington â€” This one is a bit tricky, as they offer free online courses through this link, but you can also find free materials through various departments outside this official online learning program.
Utah State University â€” Available departments online range from anthropology to wildland resources.

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Open Courseware Collections

The following courseware isn’t always labeled as “open courseware,” but they qualify because each site contains collections filled with lectures, visuals, audio, video and other educational materials. This list contains sites that aren’t hosted or generated by universities.

BBC Training & Development â€” The British Broadcasting Corporation brings training and online broadcast and new media courses online for anyone interested in media courses.
Connexions â€” A place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc. You can find 3993 reusable modules woven into 219 collections at Connexions.
Digital History â€” An interactive, multimedia history of the United States from the Revolution to the present.
Exploratorium â€” View Webcasts and visit the digital library. You’ll find lectures, lessons, and more.
Music Theory â€” This site is a compact set of lessons, trainers, and utilities compiled by Ricci Adams.
NASA â€” The National Aeronautics and Space Administration maintains updated and archived materials and several modules. They also maintain the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where a researcher can find many materials including university lectures.
National Geographic â€” While not as generous with online free videos as some sites, the work they offer is always stunning. They also offer an educational resource for K-12.
Nature â€” This international weekly journal’s online resource provides Podcasts, streaming video, gateways and databases for all things in nature.
Open Educational Resources â€” Internet Archives’ collection of educational content including coursework, study guides, exercises, and recorded lectures.
Smithsonian â€” Learn through online museum exhibits, recordings, research, and Journeys.
Sofia â€” Content for eight courses is now available online for free through the Sofia open content initiative.
W3Schools â€” Web-building tutorials, from basic HTML and XHTML to advanced XML, SQL, Database, Multimedia and WAP.
Wikiversity â€” This project comprises a community for the creation and use of free learning materials and activities.

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Podcasts – University

Georgia College & State University (see # below) was among the first of many campuses to put together an academic program using iPods when it launched a few pilot programs in 2002. Today, there are active iPod programs on many other campuses around the country. Therefore, the list below is limited when compared to how many campuses will take on this technology by this upcoming fall quarter/semester.

Alleghany College â€” News and events, conferences, etc.
American University â€” Podcast collections from this university’s Washington College of Law.
Apple + iPods @ GCSU â€” Georgia College & State University provides a virtual learning community, courseware, and technology advances through this site.
Arizona State University â€” Lectures and speakers.
Berkeley on iTunes â€” Listen to events about the arts, education, politics, science and technology – extensive collection..
Buffalo State College â€” Lectures, forums, events, and more.
Cambridge University â€” Popular science broadcasts, including Science Festival Podcasts presented by Carol Vorderman.
Center for International Studies â€” University of Chicago’s Chiasmos, a source for international events.
Chicago GSB â€” Chicago University’s Graduate School of Business thought leadership on current topics affecting companies and organizations around the globe.
Classics Podcasts â€” Ever want to hear the news in Latin? Visit more links to readings of Latin and (ancient) Greek texts, brought to you by Bryn Mawr’s Haverford College.
College of DuPage Codcasts â€” Classes, lectures, arts & leisure, and special topics.
College of St. Scholastica Podcasts â€” Visit the links on this page to find numerous course-specific lectures and speakers.
Distance Learning Podcast â€” Western Kentucky University’s Podcasts for students and teachers.
Drexel CoAS Talks â€” Podcasts, Screencasts and Vodcasts(for video iPod) of talks or seminars in the College of Arts and Sciences at Drexel University.
Educator’s Corner â€” The Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders lecture series takes place every Wednesday during the academic quarters at Stanford University. Listen to archived materials.
Front Row â€” Boston College offers free access through streaming media to tapes of cultural and scholarly events.
Georgetown University Forum â€” A weekly radio program that highlights Georgetown University faculty’s research and expertise.
Harvard Business Online â€” A free Podcast featuring breakthrough ideas and commentary from leading thinkers in business and management.
Havens Center â€” The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s audios that are focused on the study of social structure and social change.
Insead Podcasts â€” Knowledgecasts and Leadercasts from one of Europe’s elite business programs.
Johns Hopkins â€” Audio recordings from Johns Hopkins’ faculty and alumni.
Knowledge@Wharton â€” Podcast archive for news and lectures at the University of Pennsylvania.
Lewis & Clark Law School â€” Events and speakers on law.
London School of Economics â€” Podcasts of public lectures and events.
Montclair State University â€” Interesting list from English department – mostly Noam Chomsky, but other lectures on Medieval literature to Vietnam War here as well. Some video.
NOVA â€” Nova currently offers four different Podcasts.
Perdue Boilercast â€” List of various Podcasts.
Princeton University Channel â€” A collection of public affairs lectures, panels and events from academic institutions all over the world.
Princeton University’s Event Streaming Media â€” Special events, lectures, sports, etc.
SAIS â€” The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C., part of Johns Hopkins University, offers news and events.
Southwest Tech’s CourseCasts â€” Various course topics.
Stanford on iTunes â€” Download faculty lectures, interviews, music and sports.
Swarthmore College University Lectures â€” Lectures on various topics.
Times-Online MBA Broadcasts â€” Ten of the world’s leading business thinkers provide the latest thinking in economics, management, finance, strategy, and marketing.
UCLA Bruincast â€” Course topic Podcasts.
University of Arizona College of Law â€” Lectures and Seminars.
University of Bath â€” “BathPods” from a public lecture series where leading names from the worlds of science, humanities, and engineering talk about the latest research in their field.
University of British Columbia â€” UBC offers a wide variety of UBC-related digital content, from public lectures and talks to student-created music and more.
University of Connecticut â€” Podcasts about general psychology.
University of New South Wales â€” Podcast lectures that relate to health and fetal development.
University of Nottingham â€” Browse through current issues, latest research and events.
University of Oregon UO Channel â€” Interviews, documentaries, lectures.
University of Virginia â€” Podcasts and Webcasts for news, events, and lectures.
University of Warwick â€” Hear university experts comment on important issues, their research and events.
University of Washington TV â€” This university project offers their “premiers” as Podcasts. You can also watch these shows as video.
Vanderbilt University â€” Interviews, lectures, news, and events.
Weber University â€” Lectures and speakers.
Yale University â€” A diverse collection from Yale’s many schools.
York College Podcast Lectures â€” Current focus on philosophy and psychology from City University, New York (CUNY).

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Podcasts – Other

This list of Podcasts are not hosted or generated by any school of higher learning. But, they contain collections that can turn your brain on to the world around you.

Evolution 101 â€” Dr. Zachary Moore offers Podcasts along with other resources on this topic.
Global Voices â€” Global Voices is an international, volunteer-led project that collects, summarizes, and gives context to some of the best self-published content found on blogs, Podcasts, photo sharing sites, and videoblogs from around the world, with a particular emphasis on countries outside of Europe and North America.
Listening to Words â€” Find, listen to, and discuss free lectures from around the Web.
Logically Critical â€” Don’t be afraid to think. Visit this site, listen to the Podcasts, and agree to agree or disagree.
Ludwig Von Mises Institute â€” Use the links on this page to gain access to Podcasts and video.
Maria Lectrix â€” Six days a week of audiobooks – mystery, history, adventure, devotion – for people with Catholic tastes.
NPR â€” National Public Radio offers several venues to learn about various topics through articles and Podcasts.
Open Source â€” Christopher Lydon brings hot topics to online listening through Public Radio International (PRI).
Neo-Latin Colloquia â€” Graduate students and faculty associated with the UK Institute for Latin Studies are creating a variety of materials for the renewed study and enjoyment of neo-Latin colloquia scholastica, texts that date primarily from the 16th century. This is housed at STOA, the Consortium for Electronic Publication in the Humanities.
Point of Inquiry â€” Point of Inquiry is the premiere Podcast from the Center for Inquiry, drawing on CFIâ€™s relationship with the leading minds of the day including Nobel Prize-winning scientists, public intellectuals, social critics and thinkers, and renowned entertainers.
Scientific American â€” Enjoy 60-second science Podcasts or longer interviews with leading scientists and journalists.
The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe â€” A weekly Podcast talkshow produced by the New England Skeptical Society (NESS) in association with the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) discussing the latest news and topics from the world of the paranormal, fringe science, and controversial claims from a scientific point of view.
Shakespeare by Another Name â€” MP3 audio files that discuss some of the stories, themes and characters in the book, Shakespeare By Another Name.
Sound of Young America â€” Public radio’s “funniest, most fascinating interview program,” available free on the air, on the Web or by Podcast.

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Research

Whether it’s at the library, through videos, Podcasts, or online, research is easier when it’s free. Plus, you can ease some headaches if you know how to take copious notes. Check out Fifty Ways to Take Notes to pave your way, and use the following list to forge ahead.

Elements of Style â€” Visit Strunk & White at Bartleby.
Episteme Links â€” Search for over 19,000 categorized links to philosophy resources on the Internet.
HighWire Press â€” HighWire Press is a division of the Stanford University Libraries, which produces the online versions of high-impact, peer-reviewed journals and other scholarly content. Some sites are free to peruse through trial periods or through archived materials.
In Other Words â€” A lexicon for the humanities. Learn the terminology of a new discipline and come to understand the generally accepted reference of terms.
Internet Public Library â€” Search through online collections in numerous categories.
LitSum â€” Free literature summaries and study guides.
Mayo Clinic â€” This site contains databases for diseases and conditions, drugs and supplements, and treatment decisions.
SparkNotes â€” Free online study guides.
U.S. Government Manual â€” The official handbook of the Federal Government.

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Videos – University

The list of video collections below are either hosted or generated by a school of higher learning. Some resources also include Podcasts or other educational materials, so look around when you head to a specific site.

Berkeley Multimedia Research Center â€” Six videos that mainly focus on the university’s multimedia presentation capabilities. You’ll also find a chemistry lecture.
Butte College â€” Televised courses and events such as workshops, meetings, and conferences. All sent to you via streaming video.
CalTech Today â€” “Streaming Theater” for science and technology, society and culture, and campus life.
Carleton University Television (CUTV) â€” Two courses only: Introductory Chemistry, CHEM 1000 taught by 3M teaching award winner Robert Burk, and Natural History, BIOL 1902, taught by highly respect naturalist and wildlife photographer Michael Runtz.
Case School of Law â€” Lecture series dating from 2001 to current year.
Dartmouth Chance â€” Chance is a quantitative literacy course, and Dartmouth offers video lectures and more to help conduct your own Chance course.
Duke University Multimedia â€” Classroom video archives produced in the Duke University Mathematics Department Multimedia Classroom.
Georgetown University Webcasts â€” Current critical intellectual and social issues debated and discussed.
Harvard@Home â€” The mission of Harvard@Home is to provide the Harvard community and the broader public with opportunities for rich in-depth exploration of a wealth of topics through Web-based video programs of the highest caliber.
Harvard Law School â€” Events and lectures online.
Homeric Odyssey and the Cultivation of Justice â€” If you want to get to know this classic in depth, this is where you need to go. Online text, video lectures, the works. Brought to you by Professor Gregory Nagy is the Francis Jones Professor of Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University.
Kennedy School of Government Video Archive â€” From Harvard University.
Landon Lecture Series â€” Gain live access on day of lecture or view archived lectures on public issues, thanks to Kansas State University.
Mathematical Sciences Research Institute â€” MSRI streaming video lectures.
MIT World Video Index â€” Search, or sort by title, date, or MIT host for videos on the sciences and arts.
Oxford Internet University Webcasts â€” Live and on-demand Webcasts of prominent speakers from events and conferences organized or recorded by the Oxford Internet Institute.
Princeton University’s New Media Center â€” Student and faculty projects, including lectures, speakers, interviews, etc.
Princeton University WebMedia â€” Includes events, lectures and a small selection of Podcasts.
Rice University Webcasts â€” Live and archived events, speakers, and lectures at Rice.
Rockefeller University â€” A small collection of Flash videos.
St. Edward’s University â€” Philosophy audio and video lectures.
Stanford University Audio and Video â€” Selections from the Graduate School of Business.
UC Berkeley Resources â€” Links to many resources online and at Berkeley. Some resources for students only, others open to the public.
UCLA Webcasts â€” UCLA Instructional Media Production (IMP) provides live Webcasts of important and interesting campus events, archives them, and makes them available for on-demand viewing.
University of California TV Video on Demand â€” Lectures, seminars, and talks on a variety of topics.
University of Connecticut â€” A video lecture series from this university’s School of Medicine.
University of Texas at Dallas â€” UTDallas brings a list of online neuroscience lectures to the table.
Webcast Berkeley â€” Courses and events offered by the University of California (UC) Berkeley. Also offered as Podcasts.

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Video – Other

The following list contains collections that are not maintained by a school of higher learning. But many of these resources offer great opportunities to learn through videos that range from short-shorts to entire movies.

2007 Exploring Space Lectures â€” Brought to you via Smithsonian Institute.
Atom Film Documentaries â€” Short film genre.
Center for Economic Studies (CES) â€” Lecture series from 2001 forward.
Cern Webcast Service â€” CERN lectures and seminars to universities, schools and to the general public.
Exploratorium â€” This is a Webcast archive filled with selected videos that date back to 1996.
Free Documentaries â€” Mostly political films.
Free Movies and Documentaries â€” Videos embedded from other sites, but worth a look for various categories under documentaries, news items, etc.
Free to Choose â€” TV series by economist Milton Friedman along with interviews.
Google Video â€” Educational lecture options from Google. Search for other genres, like documentaries.
Howard Hughes Medical Center Lectures â€” Gain access to information on everything from evolution to RNA.
Indymedia â€” The San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center is a non-commercial, democratic collective of bay area independent media makers and media outlets. This site also serves as the local hub for the global Indymedia network, and offers archival materials as well.
Lifesign â€” A short list of medical genre videos. It appears that this site, funded and maintained by the Department of Creative Technologies, University of Portsmouth, intends to grow.
Link TV â€” Current perspectives on international news, current events, and diverse cultures, presenting issues not often covered in the U.S. media.
Moving Image Archive â€” Internet Archive’s collection of classic full-length movies, daily alternative news broadcasts, and user-uploaded videos of every genre. This is a mega-source.
National Archive â€” Over 250 titles collected by the NASA Office of Public Affairs between 1962 and 1981.
Nobel Prize Lectures â€” Provide a wealth of background to every Nobel Prize since 1901. You can find biographies, interviews, photos, articles, video clips, press releases, educational games and a great deal more information about the Nobel Laureates and their work.
ScienceLive â€” Free popular science videos.
The Royal Society â€” Video lectures on topics from biology and climate science to physics. They also maintain a short list of Podcasts.
Vega Science Trust â€” The Vega Science Trust aims to create a broadcast platform for the science, engineering and technology (SET) communities. Learn from seminars, lectures, and more (they have four priceless archival recordings delivered by Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman at the University of Auckland, New Zealand).
Webcasts â€” From the Library of Congress.
WGBH Forum Network â€” The WGBH Forum Network is an audio and video streaming Website dedicated to curating and serving live and on-demand lectures given by some of the world’s foremost scholars, authors, artists, scientists, policy makers and community leaders.

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Video Directories & Searches

Finally, this is a short list of directories and search engines dedicated to free online videos.

Ethics Videos on the Web â€” Compiled by Lawrence M. Hinman from the University of San Diego.
Mathematics Videos â€” A list of online lectures and videos compiled by Jean-Marc Gulliet and hosted at New York University.
Open Video Project â€” This repository provides video clips from a variety of sources, especially various video programs obtained from U.S. government agencies such as the National Records and Archives Administration and NASA.
Web Lecture Archive Project (WLAP) â€” Browse through lectures by category, or conduct an advanced search.

+ top 100 Sci Fi Books of all time By BigDaddy 08 June 2007 at 6:56 pm and have No Comments

Old	Rank	Author/Editor	Title	Year	Amazon
1	1	Frank Herbert	Dune [S1]	1965
2	2	Orson Scott Card	Ender’s Game [S1]	1985
3	3	Isaac Asimov	Foundation [S1-3]	1951
4	4	Douglas Adams	Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy [S1]	1979
5	5	George Orwell	1984	1949
6	6	Robert A Heinlein	Stranger in a Strange Land	1961
7	7	Aldous Huxley	Brave New World	1932
10	8	Robert A Heinlein	Starship Troopers	1959
9	9	Isaac Asimov	[C] I, Robot	1950
8	10	Ray Bradbury	Fahrenheit 451	1954
13	11	Arthur C Clarke	2001: A Space Odyssey	1968
11	12	William Gibson	Neuromancer	1984
12	13	Larry Niven	Ringworld	1970
14	14	Philip K Dick	Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?	1968
15	15	H G Wells	The Time Machine	1895
17	16	Arthur C Clarke	Rendezvous With Rama	1973
16	17	H G Wells	The War of the Worlds	1898
18	18	Robert A Heinlein	The Moon is a Harsh Mistress	1966
19	19	Dan Simmons	Hyperion [S1]	1989
20	20	Arthur C Clarke	Childhood’s End	1954
22	21	Joe Haldeman	The Forever War	1974
21	22	Orson Scott Card	Speaker for the Dead [S2]	1986
24	23	Kurt Vonnegut	Slaughterhouse Five	1969
23	24	Ray Bradbury	[C] The Martian Chronicles	1950
25	25	Niven & Pournelle	The Mote in God’s Eye	1975
26	26	Neal Stephenson	Snow Crash	1992
27	27	Ursula K Le Guin	The Left Hand of Darkness	1969
28	28	Orson Scott Card	Ender’s Shadow [S1]	1999
29	29	Isaac Asimov	The Caves of Steel	1954
30	30	Roger Zelazny	Lord of Light	1967
32	31	Madeleine L’Engle	A Wrinkle In Time	1962
31	32	Frederik Pohl	Gateway	1977
33	33	Jules Verne	20,000 Leagues Under the Sea	1870
35	34	Stanislaw Lem	Solaris	1961
36	35	Philip K Dick	The Man in the High Castle	1962
34	36	Robert A Heinlein	Time Enough For Love	1973
37	37	Anthony Burgess	A Clockwork Orange	1962
39	38	Isaac Asimov	The Gods Themselves	1972
38	39	Neal Stephenson	Cryptonomicon	1999
40	40	Michael Crichton	Jurassic Park	1990
42	41	Daniel Keyes	Flowers for Algernon	1966
41	42	Alfred Bester	The Stars My Destination	1956
48	43	Kurt Vonnegut	Cat’s Cradle	1963
47	44	John Wyndham	The Day of the Triffids	1951
44	45	Philip K Dick	UBIK	1969
43	46	Mary Shelley	Frankenstein	1818
45	47	Walter M Miller	A Canticle for Leibowitz	1959
46	48	Isaac Asimov	The End Of Eternity	1955
49	49	Vernor Vinge	A Fire Upon the Deep	1991
50	50	Kim Stanley Robinson	Red Mars [S1]	1992
52	51	Niven & Pournelle	Lucifer’s Hammer	1977
55	52	Carl Sagan	Contact	1985
51	53	L Ron Hubbard	Battlefield Earth	1982
53	54	Michael Crichton	The Andromeda Strain	1969
54	55	Ursula K Le Guin	The Dispossessed	1974
56	56	Jules Verne	Journey to the Center of the Earth	1864
57	57	Neal Stephenson	The Diamond Age	1995
59	58	Kurt Vonnegut	The Sirens of Titan	1959
58	59	Iain M Banks	Player Of Games [S2]	1988
61	60	Harry Harrison	The Stainless Steel Rat [S1]	1961
60	61	Gene Wolfe	The Shadow of the Torturer [S1]	1980
64	62	Iain M Banks	Use of Weapons [S3]	1990
63	63	Alfred Bester	The Demolished Man	1953
62	64	Greg Bear	Eon	1985
65	65	Philip K Dick	The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch	1964
66	66	David Brin	Startide Rising [S2]	1983
68	67	Peter F Hamilton	The Reality Dysfunction [S1]	1996
69	68	Philip Jose Farmer	To Your Scattered Bodies Go	1971
70	69	Robert A Heinlein	The Puppet Masters	1951
71	70	Robert A Heinlein	The Door Into Summer	1956
67	71	Robert A Heinlein	Have Space-Suit – Will Travel	1958
73	72	John Wyndham	The Chrysalids	1955
72	73	Arthur C Clarke	The City and the Stars	1956
75	74	Connie Willis	Doomsday Book	1992
74	75	Margaret Atwood	The Handmaid’s Tale	1985
78	76	H G Wells	The Invisible Man	1897
77	77	David Brin	The Uplift War [S3]	1987
79	78	Robert A Heinlein	Citizen Of the Galaxy	1957
76	79	William Gibson	[C] Burning Chrome	1986
80	80	Ursula K Le Guin	The Lathe of Heaven	1971
81	81	Mark Twain	A Connecticut Yankee in KA’s Court	1889
82	82	Robert A Heinlein	[C] The Past Through Tomorrow	1967
83	83	Dan Simmons	Ilium	2003
84	84	Clifford Simak	Way Station	1963
92	85	Edgar Rice Burroughs	A Princess of Mars [S1]	1912
90	86	Clifford Simak	[C] City	1952
95	87	C S Lewis	Out of the Silent Planet [S1]	1938
85	88	Philip K Dick	VALIS	1981
86	89	David Brin	The Postman	1985
89	90	Theodore Sturgeon	More Than Human	1953
87	91	Greg Bear	Blood Music	1985
98	92	Lois McMaster Bujold	Barrayar [S3]	1991
88	93	Stanislaw Lem	[C] The Cyberiad	1974
96	94	Arthur C Clarke	The Fountains of Paradise	1979
93	95	George R Stewart	Earth Abides	1949
91	96	John Brunner	Stand on Zanzibar	1969
94	97	Audrey Niffenegger	The Time Traveler’s Wife	2003
101	98	E E ‘Doc’ Smith	Grey Lensman [S4]	1951
97	99	John Varley	Titan	1979
100	100	Edwin A Abbott	Flatland	1884

+ How To Save Thousands On A New Car By BigDaddy 31 May 2007 at 6:11 pm and have No Comments

From: ryanshamus.com

First of all, I want to say that I am pleased to be able to write this article on some insider tips and tricks to use when buying a new (or used) car. This article will contain information that over the course of your lifetime, could very possibly save you tens of thousands of dollars! Iâ€™m not kidding here. Most people walk in to a car dealership and get punked. Not anymore.
Guess what happens when an ex-car salesman gets disgruntled? *wink*

In this article I will list 10 ways to save you money and beat the dealership every time you buy a car. Again, just from reading (and printing) this material and using the simple tips and strategies I recommend, I will even go as far as guaranteeing savings of hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on a single car purchase.

So if youâ€™re wonderingâ€¦yes, Iâ€™m a former car salesman puke. I ripped people off for a living. I didnâ€™t do it very long for that reason alone. I couldnâ€™t stand putting people in cars they couldnâ€™t afford, just to get a little extra money on the commission check at the end of the month. It wasnâ€™t worth it to me. Keep in mind, car salesman are there to earn a paycheck, I understand this. But most of them go to far, and will take advantage of you the moment they catch you off guard.

One of the first things a salesman is taught is how to take control of a conversation from the start. That explains why you can hardly ever get a word in when talking to one of these sales â€œmachinesâ€. As long as they control you and the conversation, then they also control your checkbook. One of the key things I will focus on is knowledge! Know what you want to buy before you walk in. This is very, very important. If you walk in to a dealership showroom and have no idea what you want, the joke is on you, because youâ€™re going to get royally screwed, EVERY TIME. We used to love the unsuspecting, wondering shoppers because we would end up putting them in a â€œbonus carâ€. (Certain cars each month are listed as bonus cars, meaning the salesman gets a bonus if they sell it, often a very large bonus) Most often bonus cars are ones that have been on the lot forever, and are hard to sell. Anytime a salesman calls a car a â€œprogram carâ€, or â€œManagers demoâ€, it is usually a lie, but you the customer believe it every time! I used to laugh at the special terms they would coin for these hunks of junk that otherwise couldnâ€™t be sold.

Okay letâ€™s get to the good stuff. I will list each tactic/strategy and describe in detail if necessary.

1. Research, research, research. This is the most important step of the whole system. Without reasearch on the vehicle, youâ€™re done. You will lose. You see, car salesmen are more scared these days because there are more internet savvy customers than ever before. Every piece of information on the vehicle you want is available on the internet. Even the invoice prices! PICK OUT THE VEHICLE YOU WANT, AND RESEARCH THE HELL OUT OF IT! This will work to your advantage in several ways during the sales process. Get every piece of relavent pricing information on the vehicle and print it out, stick it in a folder and be prepared to bring it with you to the dealership. When you walk in and show the salesman this, you will score points from the get-go, and you are already ahead of the game. The salesmans level of confidence will drop instantly (trust me, I know this feeling!). Find the invoice price on the vehicle at a website like Edmunds.com Bring this invoice with you to the dealership. This alone will save you a mountain of money! You already know the price, so this will cut down on the BS level of the salesmans pricing game.

2. Confidence. Walk inside that dealership showroom like you designed the car and own the dealership. These kind of people used to piss me off because I knew right away that I wasnâ€™t going to â€œknock them in the ditchâ€ moneywise. An educated buyer is the worst case scenario for salesmen. Bring some attitude to the table. This alone will also lower the salesmans confidence level right away, and combined with step #1, you are miles ahead of him. This goes from him selling you the car, to you selling him the deal. And this my friend, will put you on the right track to mega savings. Be sure youâ€™ve done the research and know everything about the vehicle youâ€™re going to buyâ€¦most likely you will know 10 times more than the salesman, and youâ€™ll catch him/her stuttering to answer your questions.

3. Coupons. This is another good piece of paper to bring in to the dealership. Most of these car dealers always have some kind of promotion going on, and you can usually find out about it on their websites. Most of these dealer websites will have a coupon that you can print out and get a few hundred bucks off the price. Take this coupon in, as it could very well knock the price below invoice by a few hundred dollars. It might not save you thousands, but a couple hundred dollars is a car payment. Bring in every coupon you can find that is valid at the dealership you choose. You can often find free oil changes and car wash coupons on their website as well. Bring them all in and demand that you get credit for them.

4. Time of the month. This really should be #1 on the list. I canâ€™t stress to you the importance of â€œtimingâ€ when it comes to purchasing a new vehicle. You see, everyone in the car business works on quotas. All the way from the brand level down to the salesman level. In order to take advantage of all of these levels, you need to time your purchase just right. The absolute best time of the month to buy your car is on the last, and I mean dead last day of the month. No matter what month it is, the last day of the month will be a very simple way to save crap tons of cash. Let me explainâ€¦.most dealerships pay their sales force a percentage of what they make (over cost) on each car. Hereâ€™s the kickerâ€¦the commission percentage you get paid as a salesman rises significantly per number of cars you sell per month. For example, if you sell 5 cars = 18%, 10 cars = 24% 20 cars = 30%â€¦etc. So as you can see, the salesmen stand to make much, much more when they hit these different levels, and you can take full advantage of this by strolling in to the dealership lot on the last day of the month, because the whole sales force (including the managers) will be scrambling to meet quotas, and will often suffer losses in profit on the car just to get that next sale. (Dealerships get kickbacks from the makers at the end of the quarter for each unit sold, so they make up for some of the losses with this, among other things) Now if you absolutley donâ€™t have the option to shop on the last day of the month, then my second choice would be the beginning of the next month, as the salesmen want to boost their numbers early on, so they can get a head start on any contests or car specific incentives they are entitled to. What am I talking about? Read onâ€¦

5. Negotiate extras. Here is something that a lot of people donâ€™t know. Each month, there are sales contests held to boost the sales of a particular line or model of vehicle. For instance, last year at this time, for each Nissan Quest minivan I sold, Nissan sent me a check for $250 as a â€œbonus perkâ€. So if a customer didnâ€™t know what they wantedâ€¦guess what I put them in? Yes, a Nissan Questâ€¦why not? Thatâ€™s extra cash, and I was so, so greedy at the time. Not only will an actual maker hold these contests, but so will the dealership. In order to get everyone geared up and motivated, the Sales Manager will often announce that for each car sold that day, he will fill up the gas tank of the salesman, or give them a gift certificate to Best Buy (or something similar). Here is where you can save a little more money. Talk to your salesman, and tell him that the only way you will buy this vehicle is if he tells you what kind of bonus perk he is getting from it. When he tells you, then proceed to tell him that if he splits his kickback, you will buy the car (assuming youâ€™re planning on buying the car anyway). I guarantee that if you make it sound like a dealmaker or dealbreaker, he will split all the bonuses he gets, if not give you the whole thing! Iâ€™ve done this with a few customers in the past, and even if it was an extra $50, it would often save the deal on my end. Youâ€™d be highly surprised at all the extras you can squeeze out of a salesman if you stress that it will make or break a deal. (Cargo nets, paint chip touch up, car washes, oil changes, keychains, money, gift cards, etc..)

6. Know your credit score. Another important aspect of the sale is to know your financial situation through and through before you start having them pull numbers. Spend the $20 bucks the day before and find out your credit score. This way, you know what to expect finance wise. A lot of dealerships will try to screw you on finance rates, and they do this because they assume you donâ€™t know your credit worthiness. Study your credit report, and find out what you qualify for. Knowing this will save you money in the long run, as well as help you guage how much money you will need to put down. Donâ€™t walk in and expect them to tell you your credit info, as they have very tricky ways of telling you anything that involves your finances. They will turn it around on you right away, and make you feel vulnerable. With a credit report in hand, you can prevent this from happening. Trust me on this one.

7. Test drive. When a salesman has been on the job for a while, they think they can judge customers and â€œfeel them outâ€. Because of this, they wonâ€™t always offer or go on the test drive with you. Here is a crucial step that will put you in control. Demand a test drive, and demand that they ride with you! If you have to go this far, then your salesman sucks, as most good salesmen will offer to go on the test drive every time. Anyhow, once you are on the test drive, start hammering them with questions. Be relentless, donâ€™t give them a chance to take control. Then ask for an extended test drive. Once you do this, they will be tired and ready to get back to the dealership. At this point, combined with the above steps, you are in total control, and you will basically tell them what price you want to buy the vehicle at. You are almost a winner!

8. The deal. Now of course, if you followed this guide at all then you wouldnâ€™t be at the dealership unless you are ready to buy. Obviously, donâ€™t let the salesman know this. Appear to be ready to buy, but donâ€™t lay the money on the table just yet. You see, the salesman has a two part job here. When you sit down at his desk and start to talk numbers the salesman will be thinking about a few things. Not only does he have to sell you on the price, he also has to sell his Sales Manager on the price! This is 100% true. Remember the last time you bought a new car, and the salesman went back and forth 10 times to the sales desk? This was most likely because his sales manager was giving him a hard time on the price he is trying to sell the car at.

Here is where it all comes together. Pull out your folder with the invoice price on the vehicle, and any other competing dealerships prices, coupons, and anything else relavent to the sale and slap it down on the desk. Tell the salesman that you are willing to pay x amount of dollars for the vehicle, and that if he has to make more than two trips back and forth to the sales manager, that you will part as friends and youâ€™ll head down the street to the next dealership. If you followed the guide and went to the dealership on the last day of the month, I guarantee they will nearly give the car away to you. All they care about at this point is getting the sale. They know youâ€™re serious, and they know youâ€™ll walk if they jack around for too long. Make sure you tell them that youâ€™re not there to play games, youâ€™re there to buy a car, case closed.

9. Finance office. If you got this far, the congratulations on the deal! You probably saved yourself several thousand dollars (cough, cough, thanks to me) and you are ready to sign the papers. This is a quick reminder that in the finance office, where the loan papers are signed, is where they will usually try to hit you with extended and dealer warranties. Be very careful with these, as you could easily find your car payment of $300/month skyrocket another 20-50 dollars. Read the fine print VERY carefully, and make them explain each warranty package to you in FULL detail. See, this is the last place in the dealership that they can screw you. If you make it out of here, then you are golden, and youâ€™ve won the day! Remember, get details, and have any agreements well documented and signed off on by a manager. This will be important for any issues that may arise in the future.

10. After the deal. Again, congratulations on your new vehicle! You successfully turned the tables on them, and are about to roll out in a shiny, new car. You made it out of the finance office with your ass still attached, and you are ready to get the hell out of dodge! (No pun intended) Before you leave, here are a few things you need to do.

A. Ask for a tour of the service department, and shake hands with one of the service managers. He might remember you when itâ€™s time for a tune-up, and this can only be helpful.

B. Make sure the tank is full. Most salesman will take care of this because a gas ticket is issued for each new car if it needs gas. Some salesman steal these from the customer if they can, and will use them for personal use. Make sure your tank is full, or that you get a gas card/voucher.

C. Make sure there are no scratches/dents on the car before you leave the lot. If you donâ€™t discover them for a few days and you try to bring it back and demand they get fixed, they donâ€™t have to because you canâ€™t prove that it didnâ€™t happen on a parking lot or the street somewhere. Do a thorough inspection of the body AND the interior before you leave. This is very important.

D. Make sure you have any agreements that the salesman made with you ON PAPER. This might include the free window tinting that you got (yes you can request that!) or maybe even new tires or wheels. This will also include any agreements you made in step 5. A simple printed, dated and signed document will hold up well in court if it ever comes to that.

There you have it! You can now go out and successfully save a serious amount of money on that new car or truck youâ€™ve been drooling over. Again, as a former salesman, I am telling you everything you need to know to do this. If I were still in the industry, I would get fired for telling people information like this. But I donâ€™t care. I couldnâ€™t stand seeing people get taken advantage of several times a day. Iâ€™m a good person, and so are most other people. You buying the car alone will keep them in business, why not save some money and get some â€œextrasâ€ in the process?

Now go make that deal! (Just donâ€™t tell them who sent ya!)

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