The “Superstars” competition for budding songwriters will award $50,000 in prizes in the categories of Rock, Pop, Country, Singer-Songwriter, Urban and Latin. It’s sponsored by Cakewalk music software, Intel and OurStage.com.

The Grand Prize is $10,000 cash. It’s free to enter but limited to residents of the United States. Go to facebook.com/intel and click the “Superstars” tab to submit a song. The deadline is August 31.

Click here to view the full press release:

No matter how far we’ve come in this digital age, we still stick notes on our computer. Unfortunately, they sometimes get unstuck and drift away. Virtual sticky notes never drift away, if you get our drift.

Windows 7 users can click the “start” button and type “sticky notes” into the search bar to have their virtual sticky notes ready to use. Right-click a note to change the color from basic yellow.  Windows  XP users can download Sticker Lite at  sticky-notes.net. Click “free download.” Once installed, click “notes” and then “new note.” In your new note, right-click and choose “body” to change the color.

If you haven’t bought a Kindle for $259 or an iPad for $500, the $149 Aluratek Pro Reader looks like a good option. It comes with 100 free books: These include The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Frankenstein, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, etc. You can get over one million more free titles from ebook sites like books.google.com and gutenberg.org.

The Aluratek has a slot for an SD memory card – the same kind used with digital cameras. (The iPad and Kindle do not have an SD card slot.) That means you can have separate libraries to plug in and out as you choose. It can handle cards with a capacity of up to 32 gigabytes (a little over two gigabytes would hold the entire Encyclopedia Britannica). It can even play music while you read. Find it at Aluratek.com.

– HeyItsFree.net has links to free Blockbuster rental codes, gallons of chocolate milk, and coupons for a variety of products. Like AbsurdlyCool, it’s also on Twitter.

–BestFreeTraining.com has links to free online training in a variety of subjects. We looked at free training for Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Microsoft Office. Some links, like yogadownload.com, offer mostly un-free stuff, but we found free videos when we clicked “podcast” under the “our classes” tab.

–SocialBuy.com offers deep discounts on everything from cupcakes to tanning. It was just launched and so far serves only the west coast of the U.S.

Many scripts are harmless, however. So if you’re on a site you trust and you get a warning from “NoScript,” you can temporarily allow the script or add that site to a list of trusted locations.

Another good add-on is PhishTankSiteChecker, which prevents Firefox users from being swept off to a malware site that looks like the one they thought they were going to. Instead it’s a phishing site, so naturally it’s called a “phish tank.”

There are hundreds of these add-ons and you can see all of them at addons.mozilla.org.  Bob likes Scrapbook, Screengrab and Cool Previews, which lets you view a web site before actually going there. Almost all these add-ons are free; a few ask for a small contribution to the author. As we’ve mentioned here before, you can have as many browsers as you want in Windows.

If you have the latest version of Firefox, you’ll see icons for all of your add-ons in a mini taskbar at the bottom or top of your Firefox screen. If you didn’t see your add-ons, go the “View” menu at the top of the screen and check “status bar.” To get the latest version, go to “Help” at the top of the Firefox display screen and choose “check for updates.”

If you don’t have an iPhone, you can get promo codes sent to your email address or cell phone, at redbox.com.

Redbox offers$1 video rentals from kiosks, typically found in  U.S. grocery stores and pharmacies. The iPhone app works by giving you promotional codes that you enter into the machine to get  free movies or discounts.  You start off with one free movie, which  pays for the 99 cent app.

After installing the program from Stardock.com, you can start with the default settings. When we did that, our documents were immediately grouped on one side of our desktop. Our folders were in a separate area above that, and our web links above that. We also had a fenced-off area for “quick links,” “recent things” and “programs.” When we saved a new document to the desktop, it went straight into the right corral. There aren’t any drawings of fences around your clips, just shaded areas that group them together.

If you want, you can drag your mouse to create your own fences and apply your own labels. Double-click to hide all the icons except those you want to stay in view, then double-click again to get them all back.

The Flip is a pocket-sized camera that’s hugely popular because it’s so easy to use. Push the big red button to start a video. Take up to two hours worth at a time. Then push a button and a little USB arm flips out, allowing you to plug the whole camera into your computer. The Flip software starts right up, and shows you how to trim your video, email it, upload it to YouTube, etc.

DigitalWish.com is a site where teachers can ask for the technology they need for the classroom. Visitors donate small amounts until there’s enough money for the purchase.  Or teachers can buy directly on the site.