It’s sort of a morbid thought to think of, but what would happen to your “social profile” if you were to become unable to communicate or worse, died?  Many of these types of websites have no or very little ways to allow the immediate family or beneficiaries the ability to “re-claim” these profiles on behalf of the person who created them.

Now there’s a new web app on the block that aims to fix this hole in social networking. Legacy Locker aims to protect your online assets the same way you would with your physical ones like your savings account, retirement account, etc. Having a will, estate or even a trust protects all of your things including your house, accounts, and all other assets. Legacy Locker comes in to protect all of your “internet assets” the same way.

Think about it for a moment, do you have accounts like email, eBay, Amazon, Paypal, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, iTunes, etc? Normally, all of these would be lost upon your passing, but Legacy Locker takes them, protects them for you and ultimately puts them in the hands of those you’ll list as your beneficiary.

If we were to think about how much time and effort we put into our online profiles and identities these days, it makes sense to protect that and have them safeguarded in the event that something was to happen to you.

Ease your Mind

Using this service obviously isn’t the only method to save and store your online information. You could write everything down on a piece of paper and secure it in your desk drawer at home/work or even write it to a file on your computer. You could also just always use the same login/password for every site you’re a part of. These scenarios often happen, but we know that these are not good ideas to protect your identity.

This service is easy, safe and convenient when it comes to storing, tracking, and updating your account information and they promise to only provide the data to the right people at the right time. Of course you can easily update, change, or modify not only your accounts but the beneficiaries at your whim. You can also have Legacy Locker send you reminders to update old passwords, or to add new assets occasionally.

Ease of Use

This app is simple to setup; they boast that setup takes less than 60 seconds! As soon as you’re logged in, you can begin inserting your “assets”.

For each account, you can assign a beneficiary to that account who will have access when the time is right. Plus, since this is a web app, all data can be added/edited from anywhere in the world. Think about it as life insurance for your online identities.

Legacy Locker is easy to use and understand. First things first, you must create an account and fill out your profile with your basic information. Then you start the simple step-by-step process.

Security Questions

Security questions here are just the same as in any other online web application.  Just things that you have knowledge of and those close to you do as well. Here are some of the available security questions:

Verifiers

Then you should enter what they call “verifiers” or the people whom you have complete confidence in to handle this information in the unfortunate event of your passing. For most of us, its our spouse or other family member that quite frankly you think might just outlive you.

Legacy Locker likes two verifiers, but will allow you to continue using only one. After you enter these verifiers, Legacy Locker will email them to verify once again that you are who you say you are and they are indeed your “verifiers.”

Online Assets

Thirdly, you need to identify all your online assets, entering the Website, username, and password for each of them. On each one you enter, you’ll assign one beneficiary to whom will have this sensitive information.

Think of your Legacy Locker as being similar to a safety deposit box – it’s a secure place to store important assets – only online.

Upon your Demise

Mortality isn’t fun to talk about, but its real for all of us and to truly give this app justice, you have to mention what happens next (with Legacy Locker, not death).

Basically, its very straightforward. When a Legacy Locker customer passes away, one of their verifiers must report the death. Then the service uses something called “human oversight with secure technology” to ensure the user’s assets are passed off correctly and to the right people. Emails are then sent to the beneficiaries with secure links to the site that contains the secure assets.

Pricing Options

It wouldn’t be on MakeUseOf if there wasn’t a free option. The free option gives you one beneficiary and three online assets to protect. This is free for life. If you need more, they have a very reasonable price for two more tiers of pricing. $29.99 annually, or the one-time fee of $299.99 and with both of those you have unlimited assets, beneficiaries and legacy letters.

Are there any other services like this out there?  Do you use a service like this yourself? Let us know in the comments…

While we’re always looking for neat web applications and such here at MakeUseOf, recently I found this little site called Filtermusic and it really has made my enjoyment of music that much greater. There’s tons of other great music apps/web apps here on MakeUseOf, but here’s yet another.

I realize that there are some great other web apps out there, what with LastFM really grabbing some market share of streaming music and the great Pandora, but there’s just something about hearing something “fresh”. And that’s exactly what I feel that I’ve found in Filtermusic.

What is it?

Essentially, Filtermusic is a listing of Interweb radio stations that stream in high quality (128Kbps) and feature uninterrupted play. That’s one of the greatest features. To listen to their streams, they just require that you have either iTunes, VLC, or Winamp. With some additional tools you can record streaming music as MP3 files as well.

Currently, this site is translated into a ton of languages: Greek, English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Romanian, Turkish, Serbian, Polish, Dutch, Hebrew, Danish, Albanian, Bulgarian, Latvian, Slovak and Swedish with more coming as listeners offer up appropriate translations.

Styles of Listening Pleasure

Filtermusic’s got all kinds of styles. Here’s a rundown of what’s out there:

• Easy Lounge, Groove tunes
• HipHop, R&B
• Funk, Soul, Disco
• House, Dance
• Progressive, Techno, Trance
• Electronic sounds, Industrial
• Breaks, Drum ‘n’ Bass
• Downtempo, Dub, Ambient
• Independent, Freestyle
• Hits, Mainstream
• 60′s, 70′s, 80′s and 90′s
• Rock, Alternative
• Popular, Eclectiv
• Jazz
• Classical
• Reggae, Dancehall
• Latin, Salsa, Tango
• International, Ethnic

Each one of these sections has tons of available stations to listen too, that’s the beauty of it. It seems like just about whatever your preference of music is, they’ve got you covered.

Mobile Access

If you feel the need to jam out on your mobile, they’ve got a page dedicated to that too with direct links to the playlist files for easy grabbing and play. That makes it easy to streamy internet radio stations on iPhone, BlackBerry or Windows mobile phones.

Just insert the “pls” file into your mobile phone streaming music app and you’re in business.

Love it? Hate it? Sound off in the comments and let us know if there’s more out there that we’ve just not covered yet.

Weather Watcher Live is your personal, real-time Windows desktop weather station. View real-time weather conditions in your neighborhood from WeatherBug weather stations, or as reported by NWS.

Weather Watcher Live is able to automatically retrieve current conditions hourly forecasts even severe weather alerts. You can even always view the current conditions by hovering your mouse over the Weather Watcher Live system tray icon.

Like most weather applications you can set it up to automatically retrieve weather data at set intervals and even change what you’re system tray icon shows at any given time. This great application even has a ton of contributors livening up the interface by supplying icons and skins.

Weather Watch Live currently only works on later builds of Windows. 98 and above.

Features

• Weather as reported by WeatherBug and NWS
• Forecasts available for thousands of cities world-wide
• Current weather conditions
• 60-hour forecast
• 7-day day/night forecast
• Severe weather alerts from NWS (US only)
• 700+ weather maps
• Easy access to weather news, cameras and photos
• 18+ weather unit conversion choices
• Locally export and log weather data
• Skinned interface/forecasts
• Customizable system tray icon/tooltip
• Dual tray icons for temperature and condition image
• Proxy server support

You can check on skins, plugins and random support by checking out the forums on The Singer’s Creation website.

What other good weather applications do you use? Let us know…

DestroyFlickr is a new application that was built for beauty and functionality. DestroyFlickr does its magic by giving you a whole new way of exploring Flickr images. The user interface is absolutely beautiful, with its dark neutral backgrounds, you can view pictures in a new amazing way.

Getting Started

First off, you’ll have to download DestroyFlickr (& Adobe AIR if you don’t already have it).

Of course the first time you launch DestroyFlickr, Flickr requires you to authenticate this program with your account. Once you agree that you trust the application, you’ll be taken to a success page and DestroyFlickr is awaiting your response. Just login at that point and you’ll be rockin’.

One note: You have to have two settings turned to “No” in your Flickr account. On the Privacy & Permissions area of your settings page, you have to have “Hide your stuff from public searches” and “Hide your profile from public searches” turned to “No”.

User Menu

You can use the personalized user menu to view the current user’s photos as well as their contacts and the ever popular Flickr Interestingness photos.

The “interestingness” factor is one worth mentioning. Flickr constantly goes through looking at photos to determine this factor. Things like where the clicks are coming from, who comments and when, its tags, who marks it as a favorite, etc. This makes for a very interesting view of photos out in the Flickr world. Yahoo! has even filed for a patent on this.

Landing Page

When we open up our profile page, we see a page like this which loads up a few of our recent photos as well as recent photos from contacts.

Where the fun begins

While browsing through your lists of photos, you can easily see a close-up by hovering over the images. This makes it very easy to see a slightly larger view of the photos before clicking on the actual photo. Believe me, you can spend hours browsing through all of the photos you can find.

It wouldn’t be great if you couldn’t search. DestroyFlickr gives you the ability to search all of Flickr for a specific term or you can search just the particular user profile you’re viewing at the time. This makes it easy to find that one picture from your friend that’s buried deep in his Flickr photostream or any relevant Flickr tag you’re looking for.

Once you find one you would like to see, click on it. You’ll see a small loading screen while DestroyFlickr pulls all the data down, and bam…there you have it.

Zoomed in photos look great. You’ve got all the data right there at your finger tips. You can see everything about the image. All the EXIF information is pulled down making the photo speak for itself. You can see when it was taken, what type of camera, exposure, aperture, etc…

DestroyFlickr is great in another way too…the ability to leave Flickr comments right there on the photo. Since you’re already logged into Flickr, just click “Post a comment” and you’re ready to leave your mark. You can also add this photo to your favorites in Flickr.

Download & Upload

Another amazing feature of this application is that you’re able to download the largest photo automatically just by dragging the thumbnail into your “Downloads” box. It’ll prompt you where you want it, and just like that, you’ve got it.
This makes it extremely simply to download numerous images for your personal collection or use.

So you want to upload some Flickr photos now? Not a problem, DestroyFlickr is here for you. You can either add files by clicking “Add” or just drag-n-drop them into the window. DestroyFlickr then starts queueing your new photos to be added to your Flickr photostream. Just click “Submit” when finished, and DestroyFlickr will upload for you.

Overall, I’ve been quite thrilled with this application. Its good looks and ease of use make it a staple application for anyone who loves the Flickr world of photos and the ease of Adobe AIR apps.

[rating=5]

Do you agree? Let us know in the comments.

(By) Travis is a husband, engineer, entrepreneur, technology swami, visual communicator, WordPress lover and writer in his spare time. You can check out his personal blog at TQuizzle.com.

At Make Use Of, we’ve covered a ton of tools to make your Twitter better. From 4 Tools for More Productive Twittering, to other Tools and Apps to Improve your Twitter Experience. All you really have to do to see everything we’ve listed on Twitter is to check out the “Twitter” tag here on the website.

Today, I bring you a new service for Twitter. It’s called TwitterFone. TwitterFone is unique in that it offers users of their free service the ability to send Twitter messages using their voice. Yeah, that’s right…your voice.

Twitter….over the phone?

Yes, that’s right. Tweet to your heart’s content without internet access. Really, all you need to do is call TwitterFone, say what you want to “tweet”, and then hang up. Just a minute or two later, your Twitter page will update. Magic!

How does TwitterFone do this?

TwitterFone transcribes your voice message into text, then posts the message to your Twitter account. It’s free to sign up or the Make Use Of team wouldn’t bother with reviewing it. However when you call up Twitterfone, you are charged the normal cost of a national call in your own country.

They’ve also got numerous numbers in many countries so a lot of Make Use Of readers should be able to use it in their country.

As the name suggests, this service is for Twitter only. This is not some multi-purpose “voice lifestreaming” service.

One thing I hope they improve on is the ability to do Twitter replies and direct messages. Currently, only personal tweets are possible.

Cool, what do I need?

Just a Twitter account, a private beta code, an email address, and a mobile phone fone.

To get setup with the TwitterFone service, you’ll need an invitation code (don’t worry, I’ve secured some so you can register). Once you have that, you’ll register for your account. This is just your basic signup form with fields for your email address, Twitter info, and your mobile number. For security’s sake, they’ll send you a text message with another code in it and this must be entered for the service to enable. After that, you’re ready to tweet using your mobile phone.

Once you’ve tested the TwitterFone service, you’ll see something akin to this. You’ll see by the tweet here on the right, its not perfect. But it has gotten all of my words correct.

Invitation Codes

If you’d like an invitation code to join TwitterFone, please fill out the form below and I’ll send you one. Once they’re all gone, I’ll remove this form.

Update: Unfortunately, TwitterFone invites are all gone. But not all is lost. You can request one here.

So if you’ve used Twitterfone, what do you think about it? Let us know in the comments.

(By) Travis is a husband, engineer, entrepreneur, technology swami, visual communicator, WordPress lover and writer in his spare time. You can check out his personal blog at TQuizzle.com.

Videos are everywhere these days. They flood your inbox, they find their way into social media sites. They even allow you to watch them at the most convenient time for you. But none of them on the mobile front, can mess with vTap.

vTap is different. While on YouTube or other video sites, you often get overloaded with content. Before you even know it, you’ve spent hours there. With vTap you can find perfect small videos designed to stream to your device. Since most of the web sharing services out there are basically desktop based, they simply weren’t designed for mobile usage. They might boast that they have those capabilities, but none really break the mold in that department.

vTap is able to quickly, and easily, search and find web videos that are exactly what you’re looking for. You can even keep the videos for later viewing from nearly any source on the Internet and nearly unlimited topics. If you decide to go ahead and sign up for a free account, you can build vTap Feeds that will allow you to customize their preferences and receive more relevant videos from the vTap interface.

This great product runs on a myriad of mobile devices:

A great feature they’ve implemented is the ability to have this active search feature in their mobile client, so basically as you type…the search results start appearing below.

So run out there and download this free gem at http://m.vtap.com from your mobile phone.

(By) Travis is a husband, engineer, entrepreneur, technology swami, visual communicator, WordPress lover and writer in his spare time. You can check out his personal blog at TQuizzle.com.

GmailAssistant allows you to completely customize your notification options. You can choose to have it find all mail, unread in the Inbox, and even mail with specific labels. You can even choose different alert methods…i.e. popup message, chime, blink keyboard LED.

Features

Single-File – GmailAssistant is launched from just one file. All you need to run it is contained in that one executable .jar file.
No Installation – GmailAssistant is packaged into one executable .jar file, which means it runs on any Operating System.
Leave It – GmailAssistant does not modify any system settings in any way. Everything needed for it runs in the .jar file.
Convenience – Always on top, SOCKS proxy, save/load program and account settings in encrypted profiles, automatic profile loading, adjustable mail check frequency, persistent and navigable popup messages
Updates – Easily update GmailAssistant with one click.
License – GNU General Public License version 2.

What it looks like

Here is the GmailAssistant Main form. From this page you can configure your various Gmail accounts.

Listed below is the “Account Form” where you specifiy your specific details for your various Gmail or Gmail for Domains accounts. This is where you’ll also set up the specific privileges about how you want GmailAssistant to notify you and alert you to your accounts.

Last but not least, is the view from the system tray. Here you’ll see the small GmailAssistant icon where it will display your alerts.

(By) Travis is a husband, engineer, entrepreneur, technology swami, visual communicator, WordPress lover and writer in his spare time. You can check out his personal blog at TQuizzle.com.

If you’ve used the web-based version of Gmail on your mobile browser you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. Like when you open an e-mail, read its contents, then decide you want to archive or delete it; you usually have to scroll nearly all the way down to the bottom and click on the appropriate link or whatever other link you were trying to click. This can be quite awkward if you’re reading an e-mail that your sister sent you that’s 45 pages long and you’re just trying to easily delete or archive it. In last month’s Gmail podcast, Chuck Tomasi talked about a feature he calls “Speed Dialing”.

Instead of scrolling all the way to the bottom of the screen to click one of the common links, think of them as an ordered list and assign numbers to them in your head.

1. Reply
2. Reply to all
3. Forward
4. Archive
5. Marked unread
6. Add Star
7. Delete

So now when whizzing through your e-mail there’s no need to aggravate yourself by having to scroll all the way the bottom to perform one of these common actions. Simply press the number, and your browser will do the rest.

Remember: these numbered options are not the same in the very popular Gmail Java applet… except delete.

(By) Travis is a husband, engineer, entrepreneur, technology swami, visual communicator, WordPress lover and writer in his spare time. You can check out his personal blog at TQuizzle.com.

WinRoll easily takes care of that for you.

Before

After

WinRoll was made so that it could “roll up” the current window into its title bar. Thus producing a very small window of an open application.

You can minimize, maximize and even close all visible windows at once. You can even minimize to the system tray and make the window semi-translucent on Windows 2000 and above.

The best part about WinRoll is that it was written in 100% assembly language making its speed and response super fast and has a tiny footprint.

Of course, it wouldn’t be on Make Use Of if it wasn’t free.

You can choose to download either the recommended setup file (89k), the binaries (9k) or the source code (41k)

They currently also have support for English, Russian, Italian and German.

I use WinRoll on all of my PCs (work and home) due to its ability to quickly and easily “roll up” the windows I’m working on in order to see or find something that’s behind it.
WinRoll gets a huge thumbs-up from this guy!

Anything else out there similar to WinRoll? Lets us know in the comments.

(By) Travis is a husband, engineer, entrepreneur, technology swami, visual communicator, WordPress lover and writer in his spare time. You can check out his personal blog at TQuizzle.com.

In comes a great site called CodecGuide.com with two great alternatives for these two aggravating applications.

QuickTime Alternative

QuickTime Alternative is a slim and trim version of the popular QuickTime. It only contains the essential portions of the program crucial to playing QuickTime content that might be embedded into web pages you visit. I mean, who wants to load that QuickTime package only for it to add itself to the startup every time you boot up and trying to check in with Apple’s servers?

From the site:

Advantages of QuickTime Alternative are:

• Quick and easy install
• Ability to make an unattended installation
• No background processes
• No unwanted stuff and other nonsense
• Smaller size

There is also another variation of the QuickTime Alternative known as QT Lite. The only real difference is that the QT Lite version does not contain the Media Player Classic.

OS: Windows XP/2003/Vista

RealPlayer Alternative

The “Real Alternative” allows you the ability to play RealMedia without requiring you to install the dreaded RealPlayer. Even though RealNetworks really doesn’t have a foothold on the internet media war that they used to, this is a perfect solution to that one site you visit that still streams audio/video in RealPlayer format.

All the “Real” file formats are supported including the ability to view streaming content.

Formats:

• .ra
• .rm
• .rmvb
• .ram
• .rpm
• .rv
• .rp
• .rt
• .rnx
• .smi
• .smil

From the site:

Some advantages compared to RealPlayer:

• Quick and easy install
• It’s easy to make an unattended installation
• Proper uninstallation
• No background processes
• Use a player of your own choice
• Low on resources
• No advertising, no registration forms, nothing annoying

As with the Quicktime Alternative above, the RealPlayer Alternative includes a Lite version without the Media Player Classic.

OS: Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista

(By) Travis is a husband, engineer, entrepreneur, technology swami, visual communicator, WordPress lover and writer in his spare time. You can check out his personal blog at TQuizzle.com.