Here’s how. First attach a microphone to your computer if it doesn’t have one. Click “start” then “programs,” then “accessories.” Click “Sound Recorder.”  Click “start recording.” Say your piece and Windows will prompt you to save it. Attach that recording to your email. Viola! You’ve done it.

A free service at FotoBabble.com offers what they call “talking photos.”  You upload a photo, record your message, and share it. Click on a Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter icon to have it posted there, send it in an email, or embed it on your web page. The talking photos can be public or private. Sound clarity depends on your microphone.

The new PDF Reader from Nuance PDF is free and opens PDFs better than Adobe.  PDFs are documents that retain their formatting. The process was developed by Adobe, which has long offered a free PDF Reader.  However, the new Nuance program has more features and does it better.

Nuance PDF Reader will convert PDFs to other formats, such as Word or Excel, for example.  This makes it possible to edit them. You can also annotate the PDFs. Along the way, the Nuance Reader has addressed a growing security issue, turning off “JavaScript processing,” which can make computers vulnerable to hackers. A recent report from McAfee, a leader in anti-virus products, predicted Adobe would become the primary target for hackers and virus writers this year. In all fairness, Adobe is working to correct the problem. We won’t find out if it works till the next hacker attack

Nuance PDF Reader has a built-in SharePoint Connector, so users can save PDFs directly to Microsoft’s SharePoint storage.  Get the program at nuance.com/PDFreader.

Annotated videos joined together could be made for business, but it’s mostly pure fun and an excellent way to make a movie at no cost. We see no reason why you can’t string segments together for a full length feature. After all, that’s the way Hollywood does it.

Speaking of accessibility options, Windows has half a dozen built in, but you have to  turn them on. For instance, Bob says he often turns the caps lock key on by mistake. An alert reader wrote in to say that you can get a beep when you turn it on and another sound when you turn it off.

Here’s how: In Windows XP, click “Start,” and then “Control Panel.” Double-click “Accessibility Options.” Select “Use ToggleKeys.”  Or, if you’d rather get a visual cue, instead of an audible one, click the “Sound” tab and select “Use SoundSentry,” and choose from the visual warning menu.

In Windows 7 and Vista, click “Start” and then “Control Panel.” Then click “Ease of Access Center.” Click “Change how your keyboard works.” Then click “Turn on Toggle Keys.” To get a visual cue, go back to the “Ease of Access Center” and choose “Turn on visual notifications.”

Windows  has a lot of other accessibility features you may want to explore. To find them, click “start” and “help and support.” Then type  ”Accessibility.” You’ll learn how to turn on the magnifier, change the font size, or, in Windows 7 and Vista,  hear text read aloud.

• 3D computers: You can get a 3D laptop from Acer for only $70 more than their standard $700 laptop. Before you say “gee whiz,” co-columnist Bob Schwabach first saw 3D computers at Argonne National Laboratory 35 years ago. Those cost a few hundred thousand dollars of course, and were the size of a dorm refrigerator. The Acer 5738 DG is mainly for gamers, and you have to look at the screen at a 120 degree angle or it’s blurry.
• Spotify is a new music site that comes to the U.S. later this year. Why is it so talked about? It appears to have all the features of Pandora, LastFM, Slacker and Jango in one, and then some. You can make 10,000-song playlists, choose radio “stations” based on a single artist or composer, etc.
• 

  Making an Alice in Wonderland poster from your photo

  Fiverr.com -hire yourself out or hire someone else for $5 a job. Someone is offering to make a personalized work of art from your photo. Another wants to make you an Alice in Wonderland poster. There’s also a translator from English to Finnish. And hundreds more.

• DocVerse: a universe where you can share Microsoft Office docs online.Google just bought it. It’s more convenient than Google docs, if you have Word and Excel documents you want others to collaborate on.
• Tawkon is a would-be iPhone app that Apple hasn’t approved yet. It tells you how much radiation is being emitted from your iPhone. But you don’t need this app if you remember a couple of things. Don’t hold your cell phone too tightly; a headset is better. The harder your cell phone has to work to keep a connection going, the more radiation it emits. So don’t try to call from an elevator or a restroom deep inside a building.
• Google Chrome, the web browser, already has about half as many add-ons or extensions (around 3,000) as Firefox does (6,000). That’s because developers don’t have to get them approved first, unless they do things like share the content’s of a user’s computer. Take a look here.
• adrive.com Free 50 gigabytes of online storage. Hard to beat that.

Among  female social gamers, 38 percent play several times a day, versus 29 percent for men. Sixty-one percent play more than half an hour. One in ten say their average session lasts three hours or more. About a quarter are new to gaming.

Facebook is by far the most popular gaming destination. We read a study recently that said the amount of time spent on Facebook exceeds Amazon, YouTube, Google and Wikipedia put together. Wow!  The most popular games are Farmville, Bejeweled Blitz, Texas Hold’em Poker, Café World and Mafia Wars.

– TinyChat.com is allows you to create your own chat room while you’re online, a place where you and people with the same interests can interact. They have video and audio chats and whiteboard drawing. You can bring in your Facebook friends, or — click “TinyChat Next” to enter a chat room with others, categorized by topic, such as “technology” or “humor.”

– Go to jimspages.com to quiz yourself on U.S. geography. Click “Do you know your states?”

“Glue” provides free recommendations on movies, music, books, gadgets, TV, restaurants, etc. The recommendations “stick” to the bottom of your screen in a narrow panel when you’re at major sites, like Amazon.com, IMDB.com, (the Internet Movie Database), and iTunes.  Click “disable” to turn it off.

When Joy was on Amazon.com, Glue suggested “The Adolescent” because she liked “The Brothers Karamazov” by Dostoyevsky. On IMDB, it suggested “Sabrina” because she liked “Roman Holiday.”

Glue has small prizes each month for the “gurus” of the site. These are people who rate things often, comment often, and are passionate about a subject. This month they’re giving away the book “You Are Not a Gadget,” by Jaron Lanier, who, ironically, is intensely critical of the kind of social networking site that Glue represents.

The new Opera version 10.5  is lightning fast with fun features.

As we’ve said before, when it comes to web browsers, the more the merrier. We’ve tried them all: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and Chrome and each has different strengths.

There are too many new Opera features to go into here,but one of the neatest things about Opera is “Opera Unite,” a way of sharing photos, music and videos on your computer without having to attach them in an email. You get a special link to share, which can be password protected.

When you install Opera, you get a left-hand panel on the side of the browser window with a series of icons. Some are pre-installed and there are  hundreds more you can add. Clicking on “Notes” opens up a note-taking area.  Click on  ”the fridge” for your reminders. There’s also an icon for “contacts,” “bookmarks,” and “history,” showing  where you’ve been on the web recently.

You can get Opera 10.5 from Opera.com. You can learn more about Opera Unite at unite.opera.com.

When you enable “aerial imagery,” you immediately get a list of spots with aerial photos. We looked at the Pittock Mansion in Portland, Oregon and the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. (This is a crazy place built by a crazy woman, who in her time was the richest widow in America. Her husband invented the Winchester rifle.) They don’t have many aerial views yet, and we found that a bug turned it off every time we revisited the maps page, but it’s still interesting.

Google Maps will soon be adding “In Store” views to their “Street Views” feature. Instead of just seeing what a storefront looks like, you’ll be able to go in.