Performance Tests Show Windows 7 "Marginally" Faster than Vista [Who Cares]

From Lifehacker

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Windows 7 will officially be released on October 22, but PC World has already given the new operating system a side-by-side spin with Vista and concluded that it's only 'marginally faster' than its older sibling.

In their performance test, the site 'found an increase in speed, though the overall improvement [over Vista] wasn't dramatic.' One area where 7 did see significant improvement over Vista was in disk performance.

For example, in our hard-disk-intensive WorldBench 6 Nero test—in which we create a series of images of an optical disc and then save them—every PC we tested showed an improvement [in Windows 7]. In our comparison of the 64-bit versions of Vista and Windows 7, the IdeaPad Y530 performed the test twice as quickly with the newer OS. Meanwhile, our Gateway T-6815 was almost two and a half times faster, going from a time of 1648 seconds to complete the test on Windows Vista to a time of 667 seconds on Windows 7.

As for boot-up and shutdown speeds, the tests saw mixed results—depending on the hardware used, sometimes Vista booted faster, other times Windows 7 did.

Browse the full post for the complete results. Despite PC World's tests, most new Windows 7 users at least perceive speed improvements over Vista, which is what most users will care about anyway. If you've been using Windows 7 RC or Beta, let's hear what you've felt about its relative speed in the comments.

Windows 7 Performance Tests [PC World]

Twitter’s New ‘Lists’ Feature Finally Introduces Grouping, Offers An Alternative To The SUL

Twitter’s New ‘Lists’ Feature Finally Introduces Grouping, Offers An Alternative To The SUL: "

Twitter has just announced a new feature that is sure to excite anyone who has been waiting for the site to offer an alternative to its Suggested User List. Appropriately called ‘Lists’, the new feature will allow anyone to make a list of other Twitter users and label it appropriately (for example, I could make a list called ‘TC Staff’), then share that list with other members. Twitter writes that the feature is still in limited testing, but that it will eventually be rolled out to all users.

By default any lists you create will be public, though you’ll also be able to hide them. If you choose to leave them publicly viewable, other Twitter users will be able to hit a button to “Follow this list” so they can add everyone at once. This is a big deal — until now the only convenient way to start mass following people on Twitter has been to use its own curated SUL. I won’t be surprised if we see some users vying to become the best ‘list makers’, offering comprehensive lists of celebrities, news portals, bloggers, and more. It will also be interesting to see if Twitter aggregates the most comprehensive Lists and includes them as part of the signup process (which would effectively just be the SUL in a different form).

Twitter’s post describing the new feature isn’t particularly detailed, but it seems like this may have a larger impact than just discovery — it could also potentially be used for Grouping, a feature that some third party apps have offered but that hasn’t been officially supported by Twitter. In short, this will let you group the people you follow into different list (say, one for News, one for close friends, and so on), and then quickly jump between them. Twitter will be supporting the new listing feature through its API, so we can likely expect this functionality to be extended to most third party applications that don’t already support grouping.

Also worth noting: a logical extension to grouping will be to support search within groups, which could help users weed out spam. Of course this is Twitter we’re talking about, so it could still be quite a while before we see this happen.

‘Lists’ may compete with sites like WeFollow that specialize in listing top Twitter users in various categories (on the other hand, these sites could actually become even more popular if they become the best places to find the most comprehensive Lists). It’s also likely going to replace TweepML, the open standard format for sharing groups of Twitter users.

Tweetalarm Keeps an Eye on Twitter Keywords for You [Twitter]

Tweetalarm Keeps an Eye on Twitter Keywords for You [Twitter]: "

If you're fond of using Google Alerts to keep an eye on web searches and wished there was an equivalent for Twitter, you're in luck. Tweetalarm tracks keywords and updates you via email.

The service has a simple signup template. Visit Tweetalarm, input your email, a password for the service, your twitter account name—so that it will be ignored when you use one of your own keywords—and the keywords you want to use.

You can login at any time and add or remove keywords, add Twitter accounts to a blacklist, or change the frequency of alerts. The default is daily, but you can change it to weekly, twice per day, or as often as they occur.

Tweetalarm [via MakeUseOf]

BlackBerry Desktop Manager Hitting the Mac Oct. 2

BlackBerry Desktop Manager Hitting the Mac Oct. 2: "

We reported earlier that BlackBerry would be delivering its Desktop Manager software for Mac in September of this year. Keen readers will note that, in fact, that was not the case, since it is now the last possible day for that software to appear, and that software isn’t coming.

It is, however, going to arrive just a little outside of the originally announced release window. On Oct. 2, which is this Friday, BlackBerry customers who are also Mac users will finally be able to enjoy equal status with their PC counterparts. About time, RIM. Be honest, you were just holding a grudge about the iPhone’s success, weren’t you?

As of this Friday, you’ll be able to use BlackBerry’s own software to sync contacts, calendar items and appointments, notes and task from sources such as iCal, Address Book, and Entourage, among others. You can also add and remove software downloaded via BlackBerry’s App World using the Desktop Manager, which is good news for people who’ve been trying to manage their fledgling collections all via the device itself.

BlackBerry users will also be able to sync playlists from iTunes, so long as the format is compatible. Last time I checked (just last week), the Tour still didn’t play back .m4a files. It recognized them and was able to retrieve track information, but it wouldn’t actually play them.

People with RIM devices will also be able to schedule and encrypt backups for their phones, and install software updates from the desktop. BlackBerry Desktop Manager is designed to run on OS X 10.5.5 and above. BlackBerry devices used with Desktop Manager for Mac must be running OS 4.2 or higher. Set your alarm for 10 a.m. PDT on Friday, because that’s when the download goes live at the official BlackBerry site.

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Subscribe to GigaOM Pro and gain access to our Webinar, 'Biggest Opportunities in the Smart Grid,' on Oct. 7, 2009.

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DIY Indestructible Thumb Drive

From Lifehacker

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We love carrying handy little thumb drives everywhere we go, but at times they can be delicate little fellows. Blogger Dmitry Brant—having lost too many thumb drives to his washing machine—set out to make his thumb drive impervious to harm.

His solution: epoxy.

At the office where I work, I had found a supply of epoxy that the hardware engineers use for various purposes. This epoxy comes in little packets, with each packet composed of two pouches containing different substances that, when mixed together, produce the hardening epoxy. I knew about the supply of epoxy for a while, but I hadn't made the connection between the epoxy and the flash drives until one day, in a moment of total enlightenment, I held up my flash drive in one hand, and an epoxy packet in the other, and began to laugh uncontrollably.

That same day, I took an ordinary USB flash drive, removed the plastic case so that the PC board was completely exposed, mixed up some epoxy, and poured it onto both sides of the board, making sure that all the electronic components were fully covered, and only the USB connector exposed. After about 5 minutes the epoxy hardened, and the result was even better than I hoped. The flash drive became indestructible!

Hit up Dmitry's post for the full rundown on how to turn your regular thumb drive to an indestructible epoxy drive. Got your own methods? Let's hear 'em in the comments.

Make your USB flash drive indestructible! [Dmitry Brant]

There's an App for That!

Original Post Apps For Everything: Apple Continues To Try To Improve App Discovery: "

Apple today has rolled out a new series of pages on the iPhone section of its website called “Apps For Everything.” The idea here is to create an easy way for consumers to find apps based around certain categories that they may be interested in.

The categories are:

• apps for cooks
• apps for keeping current
• apps for the great outdoors
• apps for music
• apps for work
• apps for music
• apps for students
• apps for moms & dads
• apps for working out
• apps for going out
• apps for managing money
• apps for traveling
• apps for fun & games

As you can see, all of these seem geared towards your average consumer across varying demographics. That’s hardly surprising seeing as with 2 billion app downloads (and counting) now, Apple clearly has a very wide reach.

But app discovery has been a problem for Apple in the past. It’s a good problem to have — it exists because there are so many apps (85,000) — but Apple is clearly realizing it needs to do something about it. The App Genius feature was one step, this hand-picked curation is clearly another.

I’ve asked Apple how it picked the topics for these apps, as well as the apps themselves, and will update if I hear back. But I suspect that just like the other areas where Apple highlights certain apps (such as in the App Store itself), it is doing so based on (what it deems to be) merit and the ability to show off some cool functionality of the iPhone and iPod touch.

As Jonathan points out in the comments below, this is also a great way for Apple to expose apps to the broader web, for users who don’t have or don’t want to load up iTunes to learn about some apps.

Much of the apps featured seem to be ones that Apple has featured in the past in the App Store or even in its commercials. It should be no surprise that developers who have been a part of this attention in the past say that the spotlight has helped drive sales through the roof.

Consumer groups blast banks' card 'tricks'

From Redtape Chronicals by Bob Sullivan

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If credit cardholders feel worse off since the passage of the law designed to protect them from banks, that's because they are. An avalanche of new fees, interest rate hikes and other costly changes since the law was signed in May suggest the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act, or the CARD Act, has backfired.

The consumer advocacy group Consumer Action on Monday released a list of such changes since passage of the CARD Act.

Call them CARD tricks, but most consumers aren’t amused.

Consumer Action says since spring, banks have engaged in arbitrary interest rate hikes, increased fees on balance transfers, added annual membership fees and dramatically raised minimum payment requirements.

"The ink was barely dry on President Obama’s signature of the CARD Act when banks started hitting consumers with higher fees and charges,” said Travis Plunkett, legislative director of the Consumer Federation of America. “Congress can’t write laws fast enough to keep up with these tricks and traps."

Consumer Action published on its Web site a gallery of what it said were the worst offenders. Here's some that made the list:

* Bank of America’s Platinum Plus Visa, which increased interest rates by up to 46 percent.

* Capital One, which increased its penalty interest rate by 6.25 percent.

* Citigroup, which began collecting annual fees ranging from $30 to $90.

* JP Morgan Chase, which increased its balance transfer fee to 5 percent.

* JP Morgan Chase, which increased minimum payments from 2 percent to 5 percent. When consumers call asking for relief, they are told the only way to reduce their monthly payment is to accept a higher interest rate.

* HSBC, Chase, American Express and Bank of America, all of which have all closed accounts without warning.

Many issuers also have lowered consumers' credit limits without warning. This limits their purchasing power and hurts their credit score.

When it passed the law, Congress gave the banking industry nearly a year to implement the changes mandated by the CARD Act. Some in Congress now feel that was a mistake. Rep. Barney Frank, D.-Mass., has introduced legislation that would move up the effective date of the remaining provisions to Dec. 1.

Linda Sherry, a spokeswoman for Consumer Action, said the bank changes have turned the CARD Act on its head.

"Unfortunately, people are in a worse place than they were before because of the time period, the window of opportunity the banks had before the law takes effect," she said.

The consumer group released the research this week to lobby for creation of the Consumer Financial Safety Commission, a new federal regulatory agency that has been proposed by Democrats in Congress. The proposal gets a hearing in the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday.

"This is an example of why we need the (new agency)," she said. "Congress felt it was doing a good thing in giving banks time to get their ducks in a row before the changes, and look what happened." A new agency could step in more quickly than Congress and address allegations of unfair changes in credit card terms, she said.

'Congress knew'
But Nessa Feddis, sp okeswoman for the American Bankers Association, said that higher interest rates and new fees were to be expected after passage of the sweeping new credit card law.

"Congress understood that the new law would mean rates would go up across the board for everyone and it would be harder for small businesses to get credit cards, and they made the decision that this was an acceptable trade-off for consumer protection," she said.

But she added that some criticism of the credit card industry is unfair. For example, consumer groups are being "hypocritical" when criticizing increased minimum payment rates, she said.

"For years they have complained that minimum payments weren't high enough," she said. "Banks have been encouraged to do this by consumer groups and regulators, and now they are being criticized for it."

She also said she didn't understand why banks continue to be criticized for raising interest rates in advance of the Feb. 1 CARD Act final implementation date, because Congress required most CARD Act provisions dealing with rate hikes to kick in Aug. 20.

"Banks have been losing money since late 2008 and are projected to lose money into 2010," she said. There's no way Congress could have taken away revenue sources -- such as certain kinds of fees and rate hikes -- without anticipating others would appear. "To stay in business, revenue has to exceed expenses. That's basic economics," she said.

Bill Hardekopf, who runs credit card comparison site LowCards.com, also said that banks had warned Congress about higher fees and rates when the CARD Act was under discussion.

“It sounds funny to say, but credit card issuers lived up their word,” he said.

He disputed the idea that a consumer protection agency would have made a difference during the past few months.

“If card issuers want to cut back on rewards programs, what could a government agency do? If they want to add membership fees, what could an agency do? All these things the card companies are doing are within the law,” he said.

But Sherry said such an agency would be able to act quickly when there are changes in terms and conditions, and stem unfair, unclear or deceptive practices by banks.

“Right now there is nowhere for individual consumers to go and get their complaints addressed,” she said. “That’s what this agency would be.”

Use Google Docs to Convert Images to Text [Documents]

Original Post: Use Google Docs to Convert Images to Text [Documents]

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It's not an official feature (yet), but Google Docs can perform OCR image-to-text conversions on high-resolution files you upload to it. They have to be pretty darned clear and crisp, but it's a nice freebie.

Those with webapps or services that upload to Google Docs can use this URL parameter to accept PNG, JPG, and GIF files for conversion, listed as an 'experimental' feature at the moment.

Users, in the meantime, can try out a conversion using their own accounts at the Google Code Samples link. I tried uploading PNG screen grabs of Lifehacker and Wikipedia to Google Docs for conversion. Docs returned nothing with Lifehacker's text, and a somewhat muddled take on the Wikipedia entry for 'life hack' with both PNG and JPG uploads (the full-quality JPG conversion, not pictured, fared just a bit better). Those were taken using nothing more than Ubuntu's screen capture tool and GIMP, however, so if you've got a better screen capture tool, or an actual camera shot of some relatively clear text, you'll probably do better.

Tell us how automatic Google Doc OCR might help you out in the comments.

DocList API OCR Demo [ via Digital Inspiration]

How To Get Data Off A Dead Hard Drive

Original Post: How To Get Data Off A Dead Hard Drive

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It happens to us all, sooner or later. We boot up our computer and *BAM* that’s it. Blue screen of death (BSOD). The hard drive has failed. But the baby shower pictures are on there! But my doctoral thesis is on there! But my fan fiction of Harry Potter Meets Captain Kirk is on there! But you’ve been making regular backups, right?

Fear not. You may be able to learn how to get data off a dead hard drive, all by yourself. Now a word of warning, if the hard drive has already physically failed and the disks in it won’t spin, then there isn’t much you can do but contact a data recovery specialist. I suppose you could order an identical hard drive via eBay and carefully take the platters out and put them into the new hard drive. However, if you are that technically inclined, this article is way beneath you!

If you get a BSOD then something may have happened to make your hard drive not boot, or start the operating system. This could be because of a faulty hard drive driver (the software that tells the computer how to use the hard drive) or it could be because of a loose connection. If you feel adventurous, you could check to make sure the connection is good inside the computer.

With some luck, that won’t be the case. If your computer continues on to give you some start up options in white text on a black screen, try choosing Last Known Good Configuration. That will start the computer into a backed-up version of Windows when life was good. It may be missing some recently added files and settings, but at least you’ll get the majority of your work back. At this point, it would be a good idea to perform a ScanDisk or CheckDisk task.

Your computer doesn’t take you to the start-up options page? Hmmm. Well, what you can do is try booting your computer from the Windows disk that came with your computer. Hopefully you have that still.

You may need to go into your BIOS settings and change the start-up disk setting to CD-ROM Drive.

Once your computer boots into the Windows disk,you’ll have some options. One of them will be the Recovery Console. Choose that by pressing the R key.

Chances are you only have one installation of Windows on your computer, so that’s the installation you’ll choose to work with.

When asked for your Administrator’s password, enter it and continue. If you didn’t set up an Administrator’s password, just hit enter to continue.

Now, you’ll be presented with a black screen with white text. At the prompt, type chkdsk /r. What this does is run the Check Disk utility on the hard drive and repairs any problems it might find. If this does the trick, your computer will reboot and work fine. Note, however, that now would be a VERY good time to make a back up of your hard drive and look into buying a new one. If this happens again, you’ll be very lucky to recover it once more.

If that doesn’t work, boot into the Recovery console again. There are two other commands you may want to try: Fixboot,which rewrites the startup sector on your hard drive, and Fixmbr, which repairs the Master Boot Record.

Those are pretty advanced commands to use, so you may not want to run them. Run at your own risk, is all I can say.

There is also a device you can buy, which is pretty inexpensive, that allows you take your hard drive, connect it to this device, and then plug it into the USB port of another computer.This does require you to remove your hard drive from its current computer.

What happens is that the computer you plugged it into, treats it as a slave drive. That means that it doesn’t need to access the operating system, so you should be able to transfer over your files from the failing hard drive. The defunct hard drive shows up as an external USB drive in Window’s Explorer so you can simply drag and drop from it.

I have used one of these many times. What I have found is that as long as the platters spin, I’m able to recover the data.

Do you know of any other simple ways how to get data off a dead hard drive? Know of any good freeware? Has this article helped you? Help your Internet friends out and let us know about it in the comments.

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

VLC Issues Security Update, Support for 64-bit OS X - Update Monday

Original Post: VLC Issues Security Update, Support for 64-bit OS X [Updates]

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Windows/Mac/Linux: VLC—the most popular video player among Lifehacker readers—just released an update to version 1.0.2. The update addresses a serious security issue, adds 64-bit support for OS X, and fixes several bugs. The full changelog mentions a completely reworked interface for OS X (though we're not seeing any major differences anywhere except the preferences), as well as integration with the Windows 7 taskbar (which again doesn't seem all that changed to us). Still, grab it for the security update, and let us know if you notice any significant changes in the comments. [VLC 1.0.2]

iWork '09 Update 3 is ready and waiting

Original Post: iWork '09 Update 3 is ready and waiting

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Filed under: iWork, Software Update

Fresh off Software Update, it's iWork 09 Update 3 which addresses a ton of issues in Keynote, Numbers, and Pages as well as the iWork.com beta. It's recommended for all iWork 09 users.

General fixes include:

• General compatibility issues
• Updating help
• Adding a link to online resources in the help menu
• Improving image handling when reducing size with Instant Alpha applied
• Improving file size management when inserting movies.

The full list of improvements to Keynote, Pages and Numbers, and the iWork.com beta can be found in Apple Support article HT3681

Thanks to all who sent this in.

TUAWiWork '09 Update 3 is ready and waiting originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:30:00 EST.

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Turn a Soap Dish into a BlackBerry Cradle [DIY Creations]

Original Post: Turn a Soap Dish into a BlackBerry Cradle [DIY Creations]

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The ergonomics of BlackBerrys make them difficult to fit into a stand-up dock or charging cradle, as evidenced by scant appearance in our roundup of nine non-iPhone docks. Modified soap dishes, however, make for a nice fit.

One crafty BlackBerry owner looked at a 99-cent Molger bamboo soap dish and thought its shape and size made for a nice fit with his phone. With a bit of sticky velcro, Hrishikesh modified his desk to keep a charger plug off the ground and keep the nicely wood-matched cradle in place when his phone wasn't present and charging. The soap dish can, of course, hold phones other than BlackBerry models, but its wide base seems like a very good fit.

Bamboo blackberry cradle [IKEA Hacker via Lifehacker AU]

Mint for iPhone Brings 3.0 Features to the Personal Finance App

Original Post: Mint for iPhone Brings 3.0 Features to the Personal Finance App [Downloads]

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iPhone/iPod touch only: Popular personal finance webapp Mint released their iPhone app last year, but today they've unveiled a new and improved version, introducing support for push notifications for important alerts and editable transactions.

While the push notifications are a nice touch (you can define push-worthy events via the web interface), the more substantial feature is probably the addition of editing capabilities. The new Mint for iPhone lets you examine and edit transactions to add notes or tags, change the spending category, date, or even description. Mint may now be the property of Intuit/Quicken, but it's good to see they're still charging ahead with innovative features.

Mint is freeware, iPhone and iPod touch only.

Mint.com Personal Finance [iTunes App Store via CNET]

Show Gmail Labels with Unread Messages

Original Post: Show Gmail Labels with Unread Messages

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If you have a lot of labels in Gmail, it's difficult to see all of them without scrolling down. In July, Gmail added an option to hide some of your labels, so that the most important labels are always visible. Unfortunately, if you receive a message that's automatically labeled using a filter and the label is hidden, you'll miss the message.

A new feature from Gmail Labs solves this problem: enable Hide read labels and 'the visible labels in the navigation bar will be hidden under the 'more' menu when they don't contain any unread conversations'.

Since the feature only hides visible labels, you can go to the label management page and click on 'show all' next to your labels. If all your labels are visible and Hide read labels is enabled, Gmail will only show the labels that include unread messages.


Google Reader has a similar feature: if you click on the arrow next to your subscriptions and select 'show updated', you'll only see the folders and the feeds with unread items.

{ via Gmail's blog }

DIY Water Bottle Carrying Strap [DIY]

Original Post: DIY Water Bottle Carrying Strap [DIY]

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Looking for a better way to carry your water bottle? Instructables user hpstoutharrow shows how to make a clever carrying strap using camp cord, ingenuity, and some knot-tying skills.

Whether on the trail or on the train, being able to hang your bottle so your hands are free, but still have it within reach is a convenient way to take your water on the go. Store-bought water slings can get pricey, but with material you may already have on hand or a small investment if you don't, you can make a capable carrier yourself.

Hpstoutharrow recommends camp cord, but also mentions that shoelace could also work (almost any cord or twine of a reasonable size and strength should do). Beyond the basic knot tying required, the instructions also include modifications for adding a tethered cork stopper and a full bottle sling.

AT&T Selling Refurbished 3G iPhones for $49 [Dealhacker]

Original Post: AT&T Selling Refurbished 3G iPhones for $49 [Dealhacker]

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If you're looking to get your hands on an iPhone 3G, AT&T is offering refurbished ones for $49 (8 GB) and $99 (16GB) while supplies last. Not bad, but you'll still have to pay full price for the privilege of a data plan.

iPhone 3G Refurb Devices [via Gizmodo]

Top 10 Underhyped Webapps, 2009 Edition

From Top 10 Underhyped Webapps, 2009 Edition [Lifehacker Top 10]

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As with rock music, video games, and other awesome pursuits, great web applications often don't get enough credit for what they do well. We're revisiting and updating our favorite underhyped webapps to give a new crop of contenders their due.

Photo by thievingjoker.

10. Freckle

Like previous underhyped champ Remember the Milk, Freckle doesn't require you to learn a new set of rules or input methods to track how you spend your time working for clients. If you type 'Writing copy for Benderson Corp. 1h45m,' it assigns a 1-hour-and-45-minute billing for Benderson. Want to make something non-billable, but still tracked? Add an asterisk after it. Freckle offers visually appealing reports about how you're spending time for clients, but also how you're spending your own time, giving you the chance to assess how you're spending your time. A plan with one account and one project is free, and any of Freckle's other plans can be tried for 30 days free, so if you don't find yourself addicted to its charts and graphs, you can return to your spreadsheet. (Original post)

9. TinyChat

Setting up a live video, audio, and screen-sharing chatroom for up to 12 people at once seems like something that might require a dozen software installations and point-by-point walkthroughs. If you aren't pitching a client so much as just trying to get folks talking, TinyChat handles the task admirably, and nobody has to do a thing but follow a link and turn on a mic or webcam. The rooms aren't password-protected unless the chat owner has a paid account, but you can require chatters to sign in with a Twitter handle to verify identity, and control just who gets to jump in with their video or audio feeds. Pretty impressive stuff for a free web service. (Original post)

8. ScreenToaster

Your boss asks you to demonstrate exactly how 'that thing you do with that program works,' but you're at work without screen recording software installed. Fire up ScreenToaster's site, load its Java-based applet, and you can record surprisingly decent quality screencasts and demonstrations, with audio voice-overs, at the push of a single button. When you're done recording part of your desktop or the whole thing, you can have ScreenToaster upload the finished product to YouTube or ScreenToaster's own site, download your screencast as a QuickTime or Flash file, and re-record audio if you didn't hit it the first time. Here's our own quick ScreenToaster test. Tell your viewers to hit the full-screen button for your screencasts and it's like you're hovering right over their shoulder, semi-patiently showing them just how it's done. (Original post)

7. Lovely Charts

Sure, it's a pretty presumptuous name, but Lovely Charts succeeds at what it promises. The Flash-based webapp produces very clean-looking charts for all kinds of purposes, be it a flowchart to describe a process, a diagram describing a network setup, conference seating, or whatever you might want to sketch out on the back of a napkin. You only get to save one chart at a time to edit later with a free account, but you can export any number of charts to JPG or PNG as often as you'd like. (Original post)

6. Instapaper & Read It Later

It's a really cool article or blog post you just stumbled across, but at the moment—right this second—you don't have time to read it. If you had a bookmarklet or browser plug-in for either the Instapaper or Read It Later service, you'd be able to quickly send that web page to your account for bookmarking. Once there, it can be stripped of all but essential text for reading, saved for offline reading in your iPhone, marked as read when you're done with it, shared with others—you get the idea. Read It Later offers a Firefox extension for offline reading, easy saving, and a lot more functionality in general, but Instapaper keeps it clean and simple on purpose. Both are great services that quietly do similar, and extremely useful, things. (Original posts: Read It Later & Instapaper)

5. YouMail

Not everybody can swing a smartphone, many smartphones don't offer visual voicemail, and very few people (at the moment) get to play with Google Voice and its transcribed voicemails. For those feeling like their phones are under-powered, there's YouMail. Sign up, follow YouMail's instructions on setting up your phone to hand over your phone's voicemail duties to its service, and you'll be able to listen to or download voicemails from its web site or smartphone apps. With the limited free or paid unlimited transcription plans, the halfway decent speech-to-text versions of your messages are emailed or sent by SMS right away. If you want different voicemail greetings for different contacts, YouMail can do that, too. Whether you're rocking the cheapest phone they had at the store or an iPhone, YouMail's a great add-on. (Original post)

4. PDF to Word

If you need to grab elements from a PDF, edit part of its text, or cut down its size, you might try converting it to a Microsoft Word file. For doing that task, PDF to Word is more than just adequate—it's darned impressive. We were kind of amazed at how well even the most complex of PDFs we had access to (an invitation to a snooty art installation opening) were flipped into almost exact facsimiles in Word format. Simply upload a PDF, provide an email address, and your document is on its way to you. Maker NitroPDF has other free PDF tools worth checking out, and paid software to entice you with, but PDF to Word is a webapp that does exactly what it says, no catches or gimmicks. (Original post)

3. drop.io

It's hard to say that drop.io doesn't have a fairly persistent marketing push behind it, but for all the helpful functions it offers, the service doesn't get enough notice. Besides giving anyone 100MB of temporary file-sharing space without any sign-up required, drop.io can handle the rare faxing job, record voice memos by telephone, set up quick multimedia presentations, and more as developers hack on the open API. Having recently been assigned as Yahoo Mail's default large attachment handler should bring drop.io out of semi-obscurity, though its deeper functionality still deserves a bit more attention.

2. Fonolo

If calling a company's customer service line and dealing with automated answering systems fills you with a certain kind of dread, you need a Fonolo account. The free service has diagrammed the customer service phone trees of more than 500 major firms, letting you click the point in the call you want to be at ('Press 4 to cancel an account ...'), then taking care of the tedious number-punching up to that point, calling you to connect exactly where you want to come in. With its latest update, Fonolo can even record your call, giving you the power to get better customer service with detailed records. (Original post)

1. The Aviary suite

Aviary is a webapp maker that specializes in fully-featured Flash apps, and they're seemingly engaged in a dare to see how much users can get done entirely in a browser. Jackson West called Phoenix the best online image editor, and our readers agree. They've got a lighter, faster version dubbed Falcon, and if you want to annotate an image that's already on someone's server, you can paste its URL after http://aviary.com and it'll quickly import the image for your editing pleasure. Most recently, and most impressively, they've launched a full-featured audio editor that we totally geeked out over. If you can remember their name, you can benefit from Aviary's host of impressive in-a-pinch tools.

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What underrated webapps are making life easier for you? Which smaller-scale sites do their jobs better than the big guys? Trade your tips in the comments.

Mikey Review: Fine-Tuning the iPhone's Audio Recorder [Review]

Original Post: Mikey Review: Fine-Tuning the iPhone's Audio Recorder [Review]

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Mikey is an external microphone for the iPhone/iPod with three sensitivity settings that allow you to record everything from lectures to rock concerts.

The Price

$80

The Verdict

Mikey is a nice, solid-feeling little mic for the iPod or iPhone. When used as a voice notes recorder, holding it up to your mouth, the standard setting of sensitivity doesn't offer much of a difference versus the built-in mic. The ability to set the sensitivity for other uses, however, makes a big difference.

Setting it on a table to record an interview or conversation, for example, results in distant-sounding and quiet audio using the built-in mic. With the Mikey set to the most sensitive setting, however, the audio comes across clearly and loudly. For louder recordings, such as concerts, it'll do its best to keep things from getting overblown. If you use that low-sensitivity setting for normal use, of course, you won't be able to hear a thing.

At $80, it's tough to recommend for casual users, but for people who want to turn their iPod or iPhone into a more versatile portable audio recorder, it's pretty great.

And a note: while the Mikey isn't certified for use with the iPhone, and will prompt you to put it into airplane mode if you plug it in to an iPhone, it works just fine. Blue Microphones tells me that the next version will be certified for iPhone and will lose the prompt. [Mikey]


Sensitivity settings work great for various types of recordings

Looks and feels really solid

$80 is too expensive for an accessory like this