There are open source free desktop applications, then there are free cloud-based applications. Microsoft has been working on a free version of its popular Office franchise as well. The free version would be available online. Microsoft recently launched a tech preview. It is an invite-only preview, however you just need a Skydrive account and some URL tweaking to try out the Microsoft Office Web Apps Preview.

Here is how:

• The following steps seem to work only if you have ?mkt=en-us appended to the Skydrive URL. So click here.
• Create a Skydrive account (Windows Live Account) if you don’t have one, or log into your existing one. It gives you 25GB of online space you can use to store/backup your files. We wrote about it some time back.
• Make sure there is a Word/Excel file in your Skydrive. If there isn’t, you can upload one.
• You will see an option to join the tech preview to edit the file.

• Click on the link, read and choose to accept the terms. Silverlight should be installed for you to use Office Online. Don’t worry, you will be given instructions to download and install in case it is not found on your computer.

With all that done and completed you are in and ready to test out the latest in cloud office apps.

So how good is it?

Well to begin with – the Microsoft Office web apps have the same ribbon interface of Office 2007 and Office 2010. So if you were hoping to get back to the Office 2003 like menus and buttons, you will be disappointed. The similar look definitely makes it easier to find your way around. All the icons, menus and options (though few) resemble the ones you would find in the desktop version of the software.

As for the file format, Microsoft Office Web Apps uses Office Open XML formats (i.e. the .docx, .xlsx, .pptx formats). However, you can still use the older formats, only they will be converted to the newer OOXML formats before Office Web Apps allows you work on them.

Overall, it is limited and don’t expect to see all the functionality of the desktop version or something reasonably close to it. You would be better to make a comparison with some of the web-based office suites instead, in which case the functionality seems respectable, no amazing over-the-top stuff that would overthrow Google Docs.

Collaboration is the key feature, as is often the case with most cloud-based applications. You can share files with others, make your files public, choose whether they would be able to edit documents or not. People can leave comments as your file gets edited, re-edited and refined.

Go ahead check it out and let us know what you think. Do you think Office Online offers the features you need to do your day to day work? Or is it too stripped down to be used for any decent job? Give it a thorough spin and sound off in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too.

• Use OfficeTab To Give Microsoft Office Firefox-Like Tabs (44)
• Top 3 FREE web-based Office Suites (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) (12)
• OxygenOffice Pro: Enhanced Version of OpenOffice (5)
• How To Make Microsoft Office 2007 Look Like Office 2003 (7)
• How to Fix Microsoft Office Problems with MS Office Diagnostics (6)

Usually I rely on my friends now. The word of mouth. It’s amazing how many voluntary test-animals walk this earth, and they’re my primary source of information. That is, until recently.

What’s truly great these days, is the intelligence of technology. No, Skynet is not upon us, but new algorithms are being written and tweaked everyday, to further dissect our characteristics and our very behaviour. Imagine it, a website that knows your every taste in movies. Now that is what I call technology!

Jinni

Jinni is a movie recommendation site, a spontaneous and intelligent search engine constantly trying to quantify your tastes. One might call it StumbleUpon for movies, but it’s much more than that. Jinni isn’t the only one competing in this league, so a little scepticism is allowed, but it’s the only one that works this well.

My account was set up in no time. After we broke the ice a little, and talked about movies I liked, it took over control. Now instead of questions, it’s showing me movie recommendations – and good ones at that. Jinni’s like that movie-geek from college, only this one knows what you’re after better than you do.

Building a Profile

The first thing you have to do after signing up is getting familiar with the interface, and letting the interface get familiar with you. If you want to get something out of this service, you need to demonstrate what kind of person you are – a rather small pain.

Start by searching and rating movies you’ve seen, the great ones as well as the bad ones. Meanwhile, if you encounter any interesting titles, you can tag them for later reference.

Easier still is to take the movie quizzes. There’s one for every taste type – Introspector, Hero, Individualist, Drama Addict, Social Animal, Extremist, Alternate Realist, Escape Artist, Master Mind, Idealist, Strategist and Social Philosopher. Honestly, a lot of my own scores came as a surprise, but that was mostly because I hadn’t thought about it before.

You will be presented with a number of genre-specific movies and you have to rate the ones you know. The other ones, you can tag as ‘likely to see’ or ‘not for me’. Based on those ratings, Jinni will then calculate how big a part of your taste type mix the genre is. The scores are dynamic, which means they will automatically adjust as you continue to rate movies.

Last but not least, you can specify which genres and plot types you like, and further tweak your recommendations. I recommend you not to limit yourself to only one of these possibilities, as we want the recommendation engine to be as accurate as possible.

Recommendations

Once you’ve provided enough information to the website, it’ll start making movie recommendations. You’ll be surprised how many times they hit it right on the head. I almost had to delete the first page in its entirety because it was full of great movies I’ve enjoyed in the past.

You can rate or neglect movies in your list, at which point they’ll disappear from your list. When you click on the titles, you can see more information, as well as an embedded trailer.

If you’ve got an online NetFlix account, you can team it up with Jinni. Head straight from your recommendations to the rental, or even filter out movies that aren’t available on NetFlix yet.

Intelligent Searches

Nevertheless, one of the best features of Jinni is the intelligent search engine. It’s yet another great way of discovering movies.

When indexing movies, Jinni doesn’t only look at the obvious stuff like genre, actors and producers but also assigns tags of meta-data. Each film will have some of these tags, defining the mood of the film, the type of plot and ideal audience. Using these tags, Jinni can make connections between movies that share certain grounds, or even ambience.

In your inquiries, you can specify if you want to perform content- or title searches. The interesting thing about content searches – which will browse films’ characteristics – is that you can find great stuff without knowing what you’re looking for.

Sample inquiries include ‘Like: title’, which will only show you results somehow related to a specified movie, or ‘Plot: assassination’ which will only return a certain type of movie plot (in this example, films focused on an assassination).

This search lingo is really very intuitive, and not even necessary in most cases, Linni speaks fluent English. Type in ‘movies with animals’, or ‘thought-provoking sci-fi’, and the semantic search engine will provide you with results. If you’re still not happy with the results you’re getting, you can filter them down by assigning other characteristics to the movie you’re looking for, like mood, genre, attitude and time period. That ought to do it!

Private Beta? – Here are 500 invites!

Jinni is still in private beta at the moment. This means it’s still closed for the public and you can’t get in without an invitation. But fear not, because the nice people at Jinni have supplied an invitation link for our readers to sign up right now!

Register via this link to get into the Jinni private beta (500 invites)!

The invites are limited, so be quick! If they’re done for, perhaps you can share a few of yours in the comments section below, because every member gets 10 additional invites!

If you manage to get an invite, please do come back and let us know what you think of the site. How accurate is it for you? What did the site recommend you watch?

MakeUseOf had some other great websites for movie addicts, Aibek’s post on What Movie Should I Watch Next? is one of them. Other articles related to movies can be found here.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too.

• Get Bite-Sized Reviews Of Everything With Blippr (4)
• Create Your Own Top Movies of All Time List with Flickchart (FREE Invites!) (12)
• What Movie Should I Watch Next? (29)
• User Generated Content (Episode II) (2)
• The Filter: How ‘Discovering’ Media Should Be! (4)

Opera, today, is closed source and distributed as freeware. It has a very clean and simple interface, while still supporting a wide range of extensions which enhances its default capabilities. Accessing the ‘Panels’, which contain bookmarks, history, widgets, notes and transfers, is a single click affair to the main bar ‘wrench’ icon. If you’re used to keyboard shortcuts like ‘Ctrl+B’, don’t worry, Opera supports most of them.

Opera Turbo is faster at start-up than Firefox 3.1, with an average 5 tab cold start-up at 3.1 seconds compared to 3.9 seconds. Chrome 2.01, by far the fastest, started in just 2.1 seconds. Testing was done 3 times on a Windows XP SP3 machine with a 2,4Ghz single core AMD Turion 64 and 1GB RAM.

Looking at the release notes for this build of Opera Beta, I can tell you that if you’re looking for cutting edge innovation and performance, you might not find it here. The so-called ‘turbo’ mode is just an implementation of their mobile web caching technology that is used for Opera Mobile to slim down download sizes for web pages. And the result isn’t exactly usable in some cases. Graphics intensive websites are literally transformed into something not very eye-catching. While this may help in low bandwidth situations, it’s not where the world is going.

Other features worth mentioning are:

• Speed Dial, familiar to Chrome, IE8 or Safari 3 users, shows thumbnails of your most visited websites when you open a new tab. Opera let’s you manually choose which pages you want to appear.
• Opera Link, similar to Foxmarks, synchronizes your bookmarks, Speed Dial and notes over multiple desktops or mobile devices. “In Opera write a note – copy directions, create shopping lists or jot down anything you need to remember – and access it on any Opera browser by simply logging in.”
• Security also gets a boost, with a 3 step authentication method for websites and phishing/malware protection from 3 providers: NetCraft, PhishingTank and Haute Secure.
• 100/100 score in the Acid 3 test. An improved javascript engine to come in a future version.

Opera, like its open source counterpart, Firefox, is very customizable: extensions, themes and now widgets. However, I think the Opera Widgets should be removed because it duplicates the functionality of more advanced, versatile software, which is integrated into virtually every mainstream operating system.

Opera has come a long way since I first met it, version 6, I remember. It survived on the market for 13 years, and still does have some marketshare. I think it will gradually lose those die-hard fans to Google Chrome or to Firefox. Why? Because it seems to me that they’ve been treading water more or less for the past 2 years, not bringing true innovation to the table. But Opera will still be there as long as OEM’s integrate it in their mobile phones, gaming devices and set-top boxes. An estimate puts mobile versions of Opera at 40 million devices.

It’s your turn now, so tell us in the comments what you think about Opera and how could the developers improve it to win you as a fan.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too.

• Useful Widgets for the Opera Browser (11)
• Six Things I Love About The Opera Browser (33)
• Safari 4 Beta Browser: Why Is Everyone Hating It? (32)
• Opera Unite – File Sharing, Messaging, Note Taking & more Right in your Browser (8)
• Opera 10 Browser Review: 6 cool features that make it stand out (106)

So this is when you stumble upon an add-on that conveys the following message to you: “This add-on is for older versions of Firefox”.

Fix Incompatible Add-ons

Since your sights are set on using Firefox extensions that keep telling you they’re incompatible with the version you have, and downgrading a version or two isn’t an option, now you can discover a nifty tool called Nightly Tester Tools.

Ironically this is a Firefox add-on that will help you make all other incompatible extensions compatible with the browser version you’re running.

What’s Next

The first step you need to take is to download Nightly Tester Tools here, if you haven’t already.

Next if you still have the extension that was disabled when you upgraded to a newer version of Firefox in your add-ons menu, then you will go to Tools/Add-ons and right-click on your disabled extension, then choose Override Compatibility.

Now it will ask you to confirm your selection by clicking Force Install.

The last step involves restarting Firefox to have your add-on fully working.

Bonus Features

Here you thought it was the end of this add-ons story but actually there are a few other features that this extension allows you to take full advantage of.

With Nightly Tester Tools you’re also able to take screenshots of any webpage and save them in JPEG format. You can easily restore tabs from a previous session if it just so happens that your PC froze and you didn’t have time to properly close your browser window.

Feel free to test all other Nightly Tester Tools features and let us know how you like them in a comment below!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too.

• Zigtag – A Web App For Extreme Tagging (BETA Invites Included!) (4)
• Three Firefox Security & Privacy Add-ons that can Co-exist (23)
• The Must-see “New Tab King” Addon for Firefox (Windows) (20)
• SmarterFox Makes You More Productive in FireFox (5)
• QuickWiki– Wikipedia & Wiktionary Addon for Firefox (2)

Well today I’m going to play devil’s advocate and tell you what I actually liked about Safari 4.

First of all, there’s nothing wrong about copying features from competitors – once and for all – we should establish that this actually improves the experience for end-users. It is how the tech industry has worked for years and this ‘tradition’ isn’t about to change anytime soon. Everything from mobile phones to operating systems are being knocked off and implemented and at the end of the day the innovator gets the geek cred; the user doesn’t care. He’s just happy using the Top Sites feature.

Safari 4 brings us improved performance all around, from startup times to page loads and some changes in the user interface. Safari now uses the latest version of WebKit, and improved script interpreter, and puts the tabs in the title bar – a very good design choice that saves space especially on small resolution devices. Why isn’t this better? I can’t understand why people are so upset about a change in design that is clearly beneficial.

The Top SItes feature, as you probably know, was one of the new things Google Chrome brought to the table. Chrome’s implementation of the feature is admittedly barebones – I actually like the curved view in Safari, which brings me back memories of Minority Report; all we need now is the touchscreen.

There are a couple of tweaks they made to the interface since the last iteration: no more grey gradient menus and OS X background for the configuration windows and notifications.

Performance-wise we see an improvement – it uses just slightly more resources than Firefox. You can try this too; I opened Google, Google Reader and Yahoo. 3 tabs for each browser.

Apple haters – close that Gmail window, don’t send me hate mail – but I actually would switch to Safari 4 if I would be able to port 4 extensions I can’t live without: Customize Google, StumbleUpon, AdBlock, and NoScript. I got spoiled – I didn’t see an ad since last year – and I couldn’t take it. An even bigger issue is not having NoScript to protect me from scripting exploits.

As always, I love to read your comments and reply, so don’t be shy and tell me what you think about Safari 4 browser; what’s bugging you, what could be better.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too.

• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• The two week Safari challenge (24)
• Opera 10 Beta ‘Turbo’ – Does It Still Have What It Takes? (85)
• Check Your Website Design In Different Browsers With Adobe BrowserLab (6)
• A Review Of The Internet Explorer 8 RC1 Browser (7)

If you are interested in the latest version of Internet Explorer, but don’t want to download the RC version, here is a screenshot Internet Explorer 8 review of some of the newest features in IE8.

Accelerators

One of the best features of IE 8 are the Accelerators. As its name implies, Accelerators lets you get more things done quickly and easily. Whenever you highlight a word (or a paragraph) on a page, the Accelerators icon will appear to allow you to access various services.

For example, you can highlight a phrase on a webpage and select the “Search in Google” to immediately search that term in Google.

The default Accelerators comes with services mainly provided by Microsoft. You can also add third-party Accelerators services via the Accelerators Addon site.

InPrivate Browsing

Ever since Google Chrome introduced incognito browsing, many browsers started to include the private browsing feature in their latest version. In IE8, the InPrivate Browsing is the equivalent of Incognito browsing. When you are in the InPrivate Browsing mode, all your data (temp Internet files, web address history, cookies, password etc) will be removed when you close the window.

The InPrivate Browsing mode can be accessed via the menu (Tools -> InPrivate Browsing) or as a link in the new tab. In InPrivate Browsing mode, an icon will appear beside the address bar telling you that your current session is private. To deactivate the InPrivate Browsing mode, simply close the window.

Web Slices

Web Slices is a function that allows you to easily keep track of a particular item that change frequently. It can be your email inbox, the weather report, sport scores, stock quotes or an eBay auction item. It has a similar concept to subscribing to a RSS feed – you subscribe (add to the Favorites Bar) to the Web Slices for the thing that you want to monitor. Whenever the Slice is updated with new information, it will become highlighted and you can click on it to see a preview. You can then decide if you want to click on it to go to the actual site.

Web Slices does not work with any sites by default. Developers/Webmasters have to insert a few lines of code to their Web pages before their users can monitor their site with Web Slices.

Compatibility view

In case you come across any site that is not compatible with IE 8 and all the text and images are misaligned, you can now use the Compatibility View to view the site with the IE 7 rendering engine instead. The Compatibility View button is just located to the right of the address bar, so you can turn on the IE7 view mode easily and quickly.

You can also maintain a list within Internet Explorer 8 for sites that should be displayed in Compatibility View so you don’t have to switch to Compatibility View mode every time you visit the sites.

Enhanced Tab Management

If you open too many tabs, IE8 comes with a Quick Tab that allows you to find and go to a particular tab easily. The Quick Tab button is located at the left of the tab bar. When you click on it, it will open up a popup canvas showing the thumbnail preview of all the tabs.  You can then find the tab that you want and go to it quickly.

The concept of tab groups are also introduced in IE8. Whenever you open a new tab from a link within a page, the new tab is considered as the child of the current tab. When you close the new tab, the tab focus will return to its parent tab, rather than the adjacent tab. Also you can choose to close a single tab, or all the tabs within the same group.

Suggested Sites

Like Stumbleupon, the Suggested Sites feature in IE8 recommends sites based on your browsing habits and interests. When you turn on Suggested Sites, your web browsing history is sent to Microsoft where it is saved and compared to a frequently updated list of websites that are similar to the ones you visit often. The closest result is then sent back to your browser for your viewing. If you are seriously concerned about your privacy, you might want to turn this feature off.

SmartScreen Filter

On the security side, IE8 comes with a Smart Screen Filter that prevents you from visiting any sites, or downloading any files that could potentially cause harm to your computer. When you visit a site that is not considered safe, you will see the following splash page:

In addition, you will also find that the domain name in the address bar is now highlighted while the rest of the URL is greyed out. This helps you to avoid any deceptive and phishing sites that attempt to trick you with misleading addresses.

Conclusion

If you are a seasoned user of Firefox, Chrome or Safari, you will find that most of the ‘new’ features in IE 8 are not really that new after all. My sense is that the IE8 development team took the best feature from each browser and integrated them all into one place.

So instead of using Google Chrome for the Incognito browsing mode or domain highlighting feature, installing the Stumbleupon toolbar for site browsing, Safari for its superb Search and Find features and Firefox for its addons flexibility, you can now use them all in IE8. The Compatibility View is also a welcome addition to the browser, giving you the flexibility of viewing your site with the IE 8 or IE 7 rendering engine.

So is Internet Explorer 8 good enough to replace your default browser? I don’t know about you, but I would still stick with my Firefox for the time being.

For those of you who want to try out Internet Explorer 8 RC1, you can download it here.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too.

• Zigtag – A Web App For Extreme Tagging (BETA Invites Included!) (4)
• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• Test Your Site In Multiple Versions of Internet Explorer (6)
• Safari 4 Beta Browser: Why Is Everyone Hating It? (32)
• Opera 10 Beta ‘Turbo’ – Does It Still Have What It Takes? (85)

As you may be aware, Windows 7 build 6801 was handed out to 8000 PDC (Professional Developers Conference) attendees.  A few days later I got hold of a copy myself.

I’m going to assume that for you the main issues you have with Vista are the following:

• Performance (both perceived and real)
• User Account Control (UAC)
• Bloat and bundled software

Well I can say that all three have been the main focus for the Windows 7 development team and all have received substantial changes and improvements.

Performance

The big one. With updated drivers, Windows Vista performance is actually equal or better than Windows XP regardless of what you hear.  However Microsoft wanted to do a lot better than that with Windows 7.

I’m finding startup times (from turning the computer on until you get to the login screen) is improved but only by a few seconds over Vista.  From the login screen to a usable desktop however is hugely improved, down from around 30-40 seconds to closer to 10 seconds. Shutdown time is similarly reduced, two thirds faster by my estimates.

RAM usage is down slightly, but this doesn’t necessarily indicate any differences in performance. In general the desktops seems slightly more responsive than Vista, although that could also be from other factors such as Windows gadgets not loading up from the first login.

Battery performance is substantially improved as well, in fact my notebook has gone from squeezing one and half hours from Windows Vista on power saver to nearly 3 hours using Windows 7. That’s a huge improvement and Windows 7 running on power saver is also much faster and more responsive than Windows Vista.

User Account Control

UAC never particularly bothered me much, except for when I was trying to delete things and UAC denied access to me, even if I was the administrator.

In Windows 7 the major changes involve UAC prompts no longer graying out the desktop, no longer appearing for basic system tasks like changing the time and date and generally only popping up during software installations.

It’s a huge improvement and one everyone will be happy with. Also included as you can see in the following screenshot is a slider control for no UAC prompts, or even more for extra security.

Bloat and Bundled Software

You may have heard that Windows 7 is going some of the way towards removing the ‘bloat’ which is present in Windows Vista. Well, in many ways this isn’t true. Windows 7 comes with nearly as much as Windows Vista does, perhaps more considering the number of new features.

I personally don’t have a problem with Microsoft bundled software because I actually use just about all of it, however I can see why some people would have a problem.

What Windows 7 does do is remove some of the duplicate functionality which was present in Vista such as between Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Live Photo Gallery. Instead now we just have Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center and you can choose if you want to download Windows Live Photo Gallery or not.

What is interesting is that Windows Explorer is now almost as good an organizer of media as the dedicated programs themselves.  Perhaps this is the way Microsoft is headed? I know they have announced their intention of bringing the concept of an OS back to just the platform between the hardware and the software and this is a way in which Microsoft could achieve this while still retaining many of the same features and functions.

In particular the new displays of music within Windows Explorer is fantastic.  You’ll never have to worry about folder hierarchies again for your music collection.  Using the meta-data, Explorer can display the files as Artist > Album > Song which is great for instant organization.

Anyway I hope this was interesting as a preview of the upcoming release of Windows 7.  You should be able to download a public beta within a few months.   In the meantime, let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too.

• How To Get an Early Preview of Microsoft Office Web Apps (18)
• Zigtag – A Web App For Extreme Tagging (BETA Invites Included!) (4)
• Your Easy Guide to Windows 7 Themes (16)
• Windows Live Skydrive & 3 Alternative Online Storage Services (40)
• Windows Live Mesh: Get your Data on any PC from any Device (16)

Example time:

Let’s say that I want to sign up for PossiblyShadySite.com but don’t want to give out my real email address, potentially passing it to spammers. Instead, I register with the address

For those who prefer to use their own domain, that option is also available. All messages to my custom address will fall into its own folder in your OtherInbox, where you can read, archive, search, and reply to them in a nice Outlook-style layout.

Note to self…see if “PossiblyShadySite.com” is taken. Now where was I?

You can do this with a seemingly-infinite number of sites.

- save your Amazon receipts in amazon@myusernname.otherinbox.com
- filter your eBay auto-searches into eBay@myusernname.otherinbox.com
- use separate email just for signups, say em>signups@myusernname.otherinbox.com
- etc.

Best part about this is that there are no filters to set up; you do not have to go to the OtherInbox site ahead of time to create the address. For instance, right after signing up (got username makeuseof) I sent myself 3 emails to following addresses:

- test1@makeuseof.otherinbox.com
- test2@makeuseof.otherinbox.com
- test3@makeuseof.otherinbox.com

When I logged in to OtherInbox I saw each of those emails in its own Inbox. Sweet.

In the event that you begin to receive unsolicited mail in a particular inbox, you have the option of hitting the big “Block All” button, which disables that address. You’ll never see mail from them again. The option to turn a disabled inbox back on is there if needed.

Checking multiple sites for your mail is a chore, and OtherInbox seems to understand that. Additional options allow you to auto-forward all incoming mail to another address, or (my favorite) read your messages via RSS.

The same options are available for individual inboxes, along with the vice-versa option, importing an RSS feed to an inbox.

OtherInbox can also import messages from any IMAP account, auto-saving and organizing receipts, coupons, etc. I’m told that there is currently no limit to the amount of messages that can be saved in your OtherInbox account.

Being a beta, it can be prone to the occasional hiccups, but I have no real complaints about the service. I believe that once you have been using OtherInbox for just a few days, you will wonder what you did without it.

I’m also happy to announce that the nice folks at OtherInbox have opened up their beta to the first 100 Make Use Of readers to sign up through this link. You may also follow their Twitter account for the chance to score an invite, or simply to send them feedback.

So why not set up an account and then come back here and let us know what you think? Do you see this as the new weapon against email spam?

Make Use Of has written a lot on email spam but here are a couple of posts you might want to check out

- Get a Grip on eMail Spam Before It Gets A Grip On You
- Quickly Create Temporary Email Addresses with Yopmail.

Enjoy!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too.

• Create An Automatic Email Response With Gmail’s New Filter (3)
• Zenbe – All Your Emails In One Place (20)
• Top 5 Yahoo Mail Classic Tips & Tricks (22)
• Technology Explained: How Does An Email Server Work? (14)
• Save Time with Gmail Email Templates using “Canned Responses” (20)

That’s the theory anyway. Since GAI is a Labs product at the moment, everything is still a little rusty and doesn’t quite go 100% as planned. While I’m using it, I half-expect Beaker from Sesame Street to come out and go “meep-meep!!” at me! But it’s still a good product, you can see the vast potential in it and it won’t be long before it becomes completely perfect.

Right now, Google is limiting the search results to the US presidential elections. After the election is over, they should hopefully expand it to the rest of YouTube, provided the Audio Indexing service works as planned.

So to use the service, just go to the page and enter the search term you are looking for. Since it is just confined to the election right now, let’s say you are looking for the candidates’ position on gas prices. Just enter “gas prices” and hit enter. You’ll then get a list of YouTube videos where the words “gas prices” come up.

If you see one that fits your query, click on it and it will open up in the right hand side of the page.

Now, see those little yellow squares in the blue bar? They signify where your keyword is mentioned in the video and if you mouse over those squares, a little window pops up showing you the context of your keyword. You can use your mouse to click and jump directly to your keyword, instead of watching the whole video if you’re in a hurry or if you’re not inclined to listen to long windy speeches!

As you can also see, you can “search inside the video”. So you can make a new search with a new keyword inside that one video.

Right now, if politics isn’t your cup of tea, Google Audio Indexing probably isn’t a whole lot of use to you. But once they open it up to other non-political YouTube videos, then it will become VERY useful to EVERYONE. For your videos to be indexed by GAI, it just needs to be on YouTube, nothing more or less. So if you have say speeches on YouTube or screencasts, tutorials, anything which is heavily tilted towards you talking a lot then GAI is going to be your best friend. Simply because your voice is going to be turned into words and then indexed on Google Search.

So now is the time for you to get all those other videos uploaded to YouTube. So when GAI is finally taken out of Labs and opened up to other videos, your work is sitting there ready and waiting to be transcribed, converted, indexed and searchable for people to find on Google.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too.

• Jump Into The Sandbox & Play With The New iGoogle (7)
• How To Extract Audio From FLV Files [Mac Only] (18)
• Google Maps Rolls Out Spanking New Features (39)
• Get Any Youtube Video to Your iPhone/iPod Touch in 2 Clicks [Mac] (5)
• Boxee – Cool Media Center for Mac and Ubuntu (88)

Zigtag is currently in private BETA, yet the wonderful folks at Zigtag have given MakeUseOf readers exclusive BETA invites. The only other thing you need is their Firefox/Internet Explorer Add-On which allows you to add tags, share pages, etc. (You are also able to simply drag and drop a bookmarklet if you are unable to install the add-on.)

After that you should be ready to start tagging! To do so, simply click on the Zigtag logo in your web browser to allow it to load in your sidebar. You should then receive a certain number of suggested tags that Zigtag believes are directly related to the page you are currently viewing. You may then click on one of the tags to add it to the page and/or add your own by typing it in the box. All of which are used to describe the page you are currently viewing, and make them available to the rest of the world – somewhat like Digg or del.icio.us in that sense.

Let me give you an example:

I picked the “Powersurf Through Friendfeed with StumbleRead” article by Mark. I added some keywords and “favorited” it. I then decided to share it with the group I created by clicking “Share,” and “Group.” The article then showed up on the group page, which I created. Even more options arise including the availability to: comment on pages, tag them further, view other pages with the same tag(s) – which I may add includes even more options.

Of course, as you can see, groups are a major part of Zigtag. You are allowed to create your own group or join another (there are tons of them). Groups range from computers to being existent, so I am sure that you could find many different groups. Furthermore, in groups you may discuss different things on the group page and see updates on your Zigtag homepage regarding your groups.

One really neat feature of Zigtag is the option to import del.icio.us bookmarks. You may do so by clicking “My Account,” then clicking “Import/Export Bookmarks.” You are as well allowed to import existing bookmarks from different web browsers, including: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera (sorry Flock users). Once your bookmarks are imported you should receive an email indicating that they were successfully imported.

Zigtag is definitely a great resource for finding sites related to anything and possibly could be the next level of Digg? I highly recommend trying it out as you will most certainly enjoy using it.

If you like, you may even add me as a friend here, or join my group here.

What do you like – or not like – about Zigtag? Grab your beta account, test it out then come back and tell us what you think in the comments!

Will Mueller is a computer nerd and geek that has been working with computers for far too long. He currently works on one of his blogs at FirefoxGeeks.

Will Mueller is a computer nerd and geek that has been working with computers for far too long. He currently works on one of his blogs at FirefoxGeeks.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too.

• The Winners of ‘Extend Firefox’ – Best Firefox Addons (14)
• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• Take Screenshots From Your Browser with Kwout7 (8)
• Securely Organize Your Notes Online With 3tags (7)
• NetRocket Beta – Mission Control For Your Bookmarks (5)

Boxee is basically XBMC on steroids because it has social networking features so that you can view what your friends are watching and listening to on Boxee, as well as plugins that are written in Python so you can really customize Boxee a lot. Boxee also gas a skinning engine so if you get bored of the default look of Boxee then you can always download other skins or make your own.

Get on Boxee

Because Boxee is still in alpha there is a very limited amount of invitations that they’re going to give out so the best thing to do is to get to Boxee.tv as soon as you can and enter your email address so that you can get on Boxee as soon as possible.

Once you’re emailed your invitation and go to their website you’ll be asked to enter a few details such as username, email, etc and it shouldn’t take anymore than 20 seconds to complete. After you’ve signed up you’ll be logged into your account.

The first thing that you will see when you login is a feed of your friends. Within the feed you will see the latest movies that they have watched and the latest music that they have listened too. If they rated it and liked it a thumb up will appear but if they didn’t like it then a thumb down will appear on the feed next to that movie or song. Whatever they listened to or watched will also linked to the imdb or last.fm page depending on if its a movie or music.

Under the Profile page is information about movies you’ve watched and music you’ve listened too.
The Friends page displays all your friends and also allows you to invite and add new friends.
Under the account page you can change your personal information and who you want to share your information with such as the world, your friends or nobody. Here you can also change your picture that is displayed throughout your profile.

At the bottom of the account page you have services. Here you can enter your twitter, friend feed and tumblr information and decide what information to share.
With these services you can twit, post and share.

Download and Installing Boxee

To download Boxee simply press the Download Boxee link once you’ve logged into your account then choose either the Mac OS X version or the Ubuntu Linux version. Support for Windows will most likely be added soon.
If you want to see the code behind Boxee then just simply download the source from the download page and play about with it.
If you’re on a broadband connection then Boxee should download fairly quickly as its only 30mb. The OS X version downloads as a package so you double click the package and click agree then click next then once the installation has finished Boxee will be in the Applications folder.

Using Boxee

When you first load up Boxee you will be presented with a window like the one shown above. From here enter your username and password for Boxee and you’ll be logged in.

This is what Boxee will look like the first time you login. In the top right corner is the weather and the time. Down the left side is what’s new, video, music, pictures, profile, downloads, settings and exit.

The main content that you see is the what’s new content and this is videos and music that your friends have recently listened too and watched.

When you select Video and hit enter you’ll see two more options My Videos and Internet Videos.
My Videos are movies that you have on your computer locally and Internet Videos are videos that a streamed from the internet and updated automatically via an RSS feed.
When you load up the Internet Videos for the first time the RSS feeds for sites that are there is blip.tv, CNN, Revision3, Cnet and Youtube.

For music it is the same but for the music streaming websites its jamendo, muxtape, shoutcast, bbc, last.fm and NPR. You can also listen to music that is on your computer or in your iTunes library.

Pictures allows you to look at pictures that you have on your computer or you can search for pictures on Picasa and Flickr.

Under Profile you can see the latest content that you and your friends have viewed on Boxee.

Downloads allows you to view content that you’re currently downloading.

Under the Settings tab you have options for video, music, pictures, network, appearance, system, media sources, general and the credits of the people who made Boxee.

I think that Boxee is a really good media player and that it is a lot better than Front Row.

Want An Invite?

If you want to give Boxee a try we’re giving out invites to the first 20 people who ask for them in the comments.

[rating=5]

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too.

• Top 5 Internet TV Players + TV freebies (26)
• Hulu Desktop: Instant TV Shows and Movies on Large Screen (9)
• 4 YouTube Tools you Probably Don’t Know About (46)
• Using Your Linux Computer As A Media Center (Part 1) (66)
• Transmission, The Lightweight BitTorrent Client (11)

It appears to be organized this way: each of your tabs appear in the left navigation and listed under each tab are the gadgets included in that tab. When you click the link for a gadget, it appears on its own in the main portion of the window. Click the tab name and all the gadgets appear as before. The switching between gadgets and tabs is very fast, almost instantaneous, so when you open the Gmail gadget on its own, for example, it’s much faster than opening Gmail itself. Of course, you’re not getting all the Gmail features, only the ones that are part of the gadget. Google calls this feature, canvas view and you can also access it by clicking on the maximize button on the gadget itself when viewing an entire tab.

It all appears to be very much in the experimental stage. Things don’t seem to work even as Google’s Help page describes. For example, the Help page shows a screenshot of a feed in canvas view, which looks an awful lot like Google Reader.

When I try it though, I get what appears to be a single gadget on a page, with no extra functionality and a “you might also like..” list of suggested gadgets.

The new iGoogle also includes Google Chat right there in the left navigation column.

Are you salivating yet? Dying to try it? Well sorry, it’s only open to developers. But wait, can you keep a secret? OK don’t tell anyone but if you go and sign up to play in the iGoogle sandbox, you’ll instantly have access to the new test version.

You do have to give them a few pieces of information about yourself but it’s mostly stuff Google knows about you already (email, name etc.)

Don’t want to play with it anymore? Go back to the same link and the experimental version will be turned off. (But remember, if anyone asks, you’re a developer, right?)

The full rollout of the new iGoogle is expected next month.

(By) Jason Mayoff is a radio newscaster, tech geek and the Make Use Of Podcast Editor. If you’re ever in Montreal, Canada you can hear him on CJAD 800. You can also find Jason at Podcasters4Hire.com and pleasantnights.com, where he talks about keeping an organized and clutter-free home.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too.

• Make Your Own Personalised iGoogle Gadgets (8)
• Ten Cool Gadgets You Must Add To iGoogle (15)
• Make Your Own iGoogle Theme With ThemeMaker (15)
• Google Introduces Video Audio Indexing to Labs (2)
• Google Gadgets To Download For The Fun Of It! (6)

Here’s my list of some of the popular and most anticipated Web 2.0 sites that are still in private beta, but already have a pretty large following!

	Hulu is probably the one site I’ve heard the most about lately and that looks to have the most promise. Imagine being able to watch any of the most popular TV shows online for free including Heroes, Bones, 24, and the late night shows also! Plus all of the shows are in pretty good quality. It’s video on demand plus video sharing. It will also include shows from Bravo, Sci Fi, Sundance, etc
	Jooce is another very cool looking service that will help bring the desktop to the web, also called a web operating system. Basically, it’ll look just like your local desktop, but all of the processing, software installation, etc will take place on the server, thus freeing your local computer resources. As of right now, they have an IM client, file uploader, file sharing features and a few media players. Eventually, though, it will have photo editing apps, and office suite, and more! Jooce came out of private beat only couple of days ago.
	Adobe Cocomo is are components being developed by Adobe that will allow for real-time collaboration across web apps. If you haven’t played around with Adobe Buzzword, definitely check it out because Cocomo will add cool features to that such as real-time chat while you write documents and a shares real-time whiteboard.
	Lifestrea.ms is a powerful new lifestreaming service from Germany that aggregates all of your inbound and outbound activity online and manages it in one place. Other services like this are Tumblr and FriendFeed. It’s like an RSS reader and a social network rolled into one product. As more information is gathered from your online activity, a fuller profile is created.
	Xobni takes the effort out of organizing, searching, and navigating your email. It extends your IM (MSN, AIM, etc.) program and email client (Microsoft Outlook, etc.) by adding additional sidebar menu. View sender profile for each email (contact details, phone nr., social networking profiles, sent attachments, etc.), threaded conversations, extremely quick search, and more. [Video Demo]

Are you looking out for some other site to come out of private betta that you think will be even better? Go ahead and post a comment to let us know!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too.

• 6 Unique Web Communities That You Won’t Forget (54)
• Zigtag – A Web App For Extreme Tagging (BETA Invites Included!) (4)
• Zenbe – All Your Emails In One Place (20)
• Watch Free TV Channels On The Go With KitePlayer (18)
• User Generated Content (Episode II) (2)