Tinypic.com lets you upload a picture that you can then share on Facebook, MySpace, eBay and other sites. It will have a unique web address. It compresses the picture, which makes it much faster. They also have TwitGoo.com, for sharing photos on Twitter.
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GiveForward.org lets you create a personal fundraising page for any person, cause or non-profit and solicit donations from all over the world. If you create a non-profit organization in the U.S., you’ll need a federal tax identification number.
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Two new Kindles are replacing the old one. For $139, you can get a Wi-Fi only Kindle that downloads books in AT&T hotspots. For $189, you pick up wireless 3G signals plus Wi-Fi, which means you don’t have to be near a hotspot. Both versions have a lot of new features and are thinner and lighter than the old one.
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When you upload a video to the web, you might naturally wonder how many people watch it. “iPlay” from TubeMogul.com is a free service that tells you how many people are watching and for how long. If you want to find out how many people are visiting your website, try Google Analytics, also free.
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Ever wonder how fast your Internet connection really is? Many techies recommend going to speedtest.net to find out. It will check the connection and deliver the news. But there’s a better way, recommended by our favorite tech person at crossloop.com/kennys.
Go to filehippo.com and get “FlashGet,” a free download manager. Next try downloading something big, like the Ubuntu operating system from ubuntu.com. You don’t have to really want it; it’s just for the test. As FlashGet sees it come in, you’ll see your speed. Ours was about 75 KB, which is not much faster than dialup, although we have a supposedly “high speed” DSL connection. The trouble is, our building uses shared DSL, so if other people in the building are downloading movies, our share slows to a crawl.
“Broadband” speed should be about fifty times the speed of a fast dial-up connection. A 4G connection should be five times faster than that, and under the right conditions it can be 25 times faster. Check your download speed and see what kind of service you’re getting. You can compare your speed to dialup, Bluetooth, and fast Internet at tinyurl.com/not2fast.
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Nixty.com is a new site makes it possible to take college courses online for free. You can take the courses for college credit and use them to transfer to a physical college.
The site has 200 courses from MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, IIT, Berkeley and other top schools. The courses cover many subject areas, and the site also has test preparation exercises for the SAT and GMAT. The lectures come in as YouTube videos. For some of them there’s a transcript, so you can read the lecture as well as watch it. Look over the lectures before deciding whether to join the class.
Most courses are free, though you can also pay for tutorial services. We looked at an American Literature course from Yale and a chemical engineering course from Stanford. Both looked great and we thought it was neat that they were captured on video, since, in the case of the engineering course, it was that teacher’s last year in the classroom. There are also some continuing education classes for adults.
The site offers course-building software for teachers, so they can easily add videos and lectures. It also lets you post your resume and letters of recommendation.
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“Jackpot Slots” is a free app that turns your iPhone or iPod Touch into a slot machine. The app is free, but the dock is $40.
You can play alone or in online tournaments. The company that makes this also makes an app that turns your iPhone into a TV remote control. More info at newpotatotech.com.
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A pilot program in Connecticut will transfer all of a hospital’s paper records into electronic form, courtesy of Sage Healthcare Intergy.
It’s a tech subject that allows us to rant on one of our favorite pet peeves: that something as vital as health care is still in the dark ages. You can rent a movie 24 hours a day, get email notifications from any company, and get lower prices on better products every time you visit an electronics store. But when it comes to medicine, prices continually rise and problems abound. There are at least three reasons: Read more »
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“The Celebrity Tweet Directory” is a new book by Jeanne Harris; $10 from wiley.com.
If you want to find a celebrity on Twitter, try Twitter.com/celebrity name, where you fill in the name of anyone you want to follow. But often the celebrity isn’t there because a squatter has taken the site first. This book lists most of the biggies.
The really surprising thing is how few celebrities have interesting tweets. There’s J.K. Rowling, writer of the Harry Potter series, who tweets at twitter.com/jk_rowling. Don’t bother going there. Despite over 181,000 followers, she has just three tweets. Tom Hanks and Anne Hathaway are also disappointing, and Hilary Duff’s account has been suspended twitter.com/MissHilaryDuff.
Twitter.com/dameElizabeth is Elizabeth Taylor’s site. Very personal.
Twitter.com/MrDannyGlover has links to a few short films and his favorite causes.
Twitter.com/RealHughJackman shares his travel schedule. Read more »
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“Where’s Waldo,” is probably the best known “hidden object” game for kids. There are also hidden object games for adults. A new Agatha Christie “Miss Marple” program, “The 4:50 from Paddington,” lets you uncover clues as hidden objects, and solve puzzles along the way. Sometimes the game won’t let you visit a new location until you find it on a map.
The game will be in retail stores this fall, but you can play an hour for free at iplay.com. To download the whole game costs $10 if you buy a game a month for two months. The price is lower if you join the game club for a longer period. Or you can get it alone at pogo.com for $15.
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