You submit your site and it puts the request into a queue. You can return to the site later to view the screenshots it makes of your URL using 30 different browsers.

An interesting way to organise your PC desktop more like a table top with paper documents floating around on it. Practical? dunno. Looks very cool though.

NB. check out the ring on the guys hand in the first few frames 🙂

Creating an XP CD with predefined answers to all those questions and drivers for printers, as well as applications fully automated without user intervention is not a quick chore, but will save time in the future. At least it is fairly trivial. This guide tells all. (NB. navigation on the left side, not in any of the articles, which is annoying).

The Daily WTF is a site that has a daily example of programming gone completely awry. Some are hilarious, others are just sad, and some are too deep for me to figure out – if you’re a programmer, this site will most certainly have you in tears.

OGLE is a project that captures 3D objects on your computer (eg. in games) and then allows you to re-use them for other purposes.

There are a few ways to visualise internet and the traffic on it.

One way is to map it. The BBC has a good article on this.

The following programmes take a starting point and use linking for distance. The amount of links to and from a place is used for size.

I/O/D 4 (the webstalker) is one of my all time favorites, but lacks 3D representation, scaling and movement.

Surf 3D has several different viewing modes, and allows you to move through the map. Unfortunately the interface is a bit cluncky, allthough it gives you loads of options.

Here is a large list of links to mapping projects

The above can lead to complex maps, usually starting from a single point (a URL).
More simply, smaller datasets can be mapped.

3D Traceroute turns a traceroute into a complex grapical representation.

Xtraceroute shows a 3D globe and shows the path of the packets over the globe.

There’s a visual whois programme which alsow plots queries over a 3D globe and shows the information next to it.

Another method is to browse traffic and see what it’s doing.

Swarm shows what other swarmers are doing, with the page with the most traffic in the centre.

Driftnet displays the graphics being surfed on websites (and there is an enhancement which also displays mpeg and audio streams) over the network (install on the router)

Webcollage randomly pulls images from internet and throws them up on the screen.

Then there are more freeform methods of viewing the internet.

Driftnet ver.0 (not to be confused with the driftnet above) starts with a URL and displays in hexadecimal and screenshots, using waves to decide where to go next.

A bit late, but apparently due to some patent issues, MS launched an update on April 11 which breaks Flash object interactivity in IE: you have to click the object before it will do your lovely mouseover type stuff. Well done Eolas, you’ve broken a large segment of Internet. This is yet another example of the ridiculousness of the US patent system and another reason to fight it here in Europe.
The link contains a discussion on the subject and fixes for developers.

Huge list spanning spyware, audio, business, and a whole load more types of software – all freeware

This little program turns the windows hotkey into a slider for your volume control. You press the hotkey and use the mouse scrollwheel to change the volume. Small and neat.

So maybe these maggotboxen will be good for something: comparing them with PCs running the same OS… Has Apple finally seen the light? Their new bootloader, Boot Camp, allows users to run MS Windows or OSX in a multiboot configuration.

Using NASA’s Blue Marble, you can recieve high resolution updates often on the state of the earth on your destop.

Because every so often it would be nice to just have Windows turn itself off. Or on. This is a lovely little scheduler for system tasks, not limited to powering up and down.

Nice article running through the features of Vista which make it a quantum leap away from Windows XP.
It’s nice to see that the OS2 Warp desktop has FINALLY been incorporated into windows. And if you don’t know what that means, you’re a n00b.

Microsoft has been using those dance dance dance mats to (among other things) stamp out (literally) spam. Apparently stamping with two feet to delete that email is a satisfactory thing to do. Also healthy! They will present it sometime soon – give it to meeeeeeee! (Link = PDF file)

This site has a large list of programmes to manage your windows processes, memory, cpu etc etc etc.

This is the list of programmes I thought might be usefull:
Sysinternals Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded

Informer shows the time, processor load, amount of processes and threads and the available memory in a tiny free floating moveable display.

Cyberlat RAM Cleaner frees, optimizes and defrags the systems wasted RAM. It should cause less crashes due to leaky memory.

Statbar shows a skinneable bar across the top of the screen with processor information etc. in it.

Yup, become a virtual machine for free!

Download
and
VMWare product comparison here

Don’t forget to pack a few extra Gigs of RAM!

Google has a calculator built into its search engine. Apart from the basics it can also be used for unit conversions, etc. Usually I’d say that’s very nice and can be handy considering just about everything has a google query form attached to it these days.

However..

What do you think would be the result of

1 - 0.9 - 0.1

?

Depending on the order of evaluation you’d say either 0 or 0.2, right? Well, you’re wrong. It’s -2.77555756 × 10e17. Because Google says so. Try it.
http://www.google.nl/search?q=1+-+0.9+-+0.1

It gets the answer to 1 – (0.9 + 0.1) right, but anything else is off.

1 - (0.9) - (0.1)

(1 - 0.9) - 0.1

etc.

A mountain full of PhDs and what do you get? A variation on pi = 3.

Engadget has a nice feature showing how easy it really is. On any platform.

A UK company – Discount Licencing – has figured out that there are some software licences that are, in fact, transferrable through sale. Currently, they have approached MicroSoft and asked them if they would raise a stink if they went and brokered these second hand licences and MS agreed! Anyway, you have to buy in bulk as they get packages from insolvent companies, but if this works out well, they could have enough supplies to start selling individually at some time!

These guys are coming out with a new browser: Flock – it integrates galleries, blogging, online bookmarks with descriptions, etc – they say there’s more to browsing than just looking at websites. Which is fair enough, I guess.

With Opera being free, the triumphant march of Firefox, IE bending its back to get better, does anyone smell browser wars again?

These guys are offering free calls from PC to landline (no, not mobile) using their software. I couldn’t find out how or why, but I didn’t see any weird stuff in their terms or privacy statement…

With my compulsion for graphical representations of space, I found this programme, which takes a drive and graphically represents the space useage on it. You can zoom in on folders, view and delete file etc – it’s really very good at showing how a drive is utilised and it’s free!

Using the SBS-1 module from Kinetic Avionic Products Limited, you can track all aircraft in their radar coverage on your PC, if they’re Mode-S/ADS-B equipped. How long will this stay legal? 🙂

Google Earth puts a planet’s worth of imagery and other geographic information right on your desktop. View exotic locales like Maui and Paris as well as points of interest such as local restaurants, hospitals, schools, and more.

I wouldn’t go so far as to call Paris exotic, but it really is a pretty fantastic piece of software. It’s free, but unfortunately Windows only (no linux or osx clients, grrr).

http://earth.google.com/index.html

Ian Murdock (of Debian fame) has written an excellent article on the Commoditization of Open Source Software.