Few web applications you need to Bookmark!!!

Useful and Unknown Web Applications you need to Bookmark!!!!!!

At Maximum PC, computer hardware is our bread and butter. I review it, preview it, and just generally love to talk about it. Unfortunately, hardware becomes less important with each passing day, as more and more software moves onto the internet. We're not looking forward to the day that our PC's become Chrome OS-style thin client, but we have to admit, some web apps are pretty awesome.

So to help you prepare for a future in the cloud, I've put together a list of our favorite web apps and services. I've tried to keep them on the lesser-known side, but a few of the classic have snuck their way in. Check out the list, and then hit the comments and share your favorites.

ScreenToaster

ScreenToaster is a web app designed to make life a whole lot easier for every family’s “computer expert.” And since you’re reading Maximum PC, we’re assuming that’s you. Rather than torture yourself trying to explain to a clueless relative how to perform a simple computer task, use ScreenToaster to capture a video of yourself doing it and automatically upload it to the web. You can also record an audio track for your tutorial. Best of all, you don’t have to install any software, and the whole.

Readitlater

Have you ever found yourself wanting to read an online article or blog post, but without the time to actually read it? Readitlater is made for people in your predicament—it’s like TiVo for your blogroll, allowing you to queue up articles to read later, from your Readitlater account page. Saving an article to read later is easy: you just add a bookmarklet to you bookmarks bar, and click it whenever you find something worth saving.

ConvertCenter

Did you know that one bushel is equal to 101.9716 hectoliters? How about that one sthene is equal to 0.3637 kiloponds? ConvertCenter is a webapp that does know both of those, as well as pretty much everything else when it comes to unit conversion. Just hit up convertcenter.com, select the kind of conversion you want to perform (volume, length, etc), select your units and enter your value. With hundreds of units to choose from, even the strangest conversion can be done in a flash.

Issuu

We may be a print magazine, but we all know the future is digital. Issuu is a webapp that offers a clean and simple interface to view and subscribe to your favorite digital publications. Just open your library and peruse your bookmarks on Issuu's bookshelf-like viewer. You can manage it all in folders, like 'inspiration' or 'technology,' view your subscriptions via RSS, and share your own publications. Our favorite part is the sleek graphical interface that's sure to integrate with your favorite multi-touch device in the future.

FillAnyPDF

FillAnyPDF is a fairly simple web app which allows you to upload a PDF file, then easily write on it wherever you want. This allows you to easily fill out any form, even if they’re not in an editable PDF form. You can also share your blank form with others, so you can collect forms from a group easily. FillAnyPDF also supports electronic signatures and has a repository of free forms.

Google Wave

“What is Google Wave?”

That was the question a lot of people asked when Google launched its email-replacement-slash-collaboration platform Wave, and to a large extent, the question remains unanswered. What we do know is that it’s a online platform for users to participate in “Waves,” documents that can be edited in real-time by any invitee. Some uses are obvious (Waves are great for collaborating on articles and presentations) while others are more contentious (is a Wave better for regular communication than an email?). Despite the uncertainty, Wave is a web app with enormous potential, and we recommend everyone give it a try.

SpeedTest

Everyone wonders sometimes why their ISP’s claim of Blazing Fast Internet doesn’t seem to translate to faster downloads or lower pings. But both of those situations involve a second party’s connection as well, so it’s difficult to tell exactly how fast your connection is. That’s where SpeedTest comes in handy. By letting you select a server near you, and showing you ping readings and download speeds to that server, SpeedTest gives you a quantifiable measure of your connection speed.

Grooveshark

What makes Grooveshark special enough that we recommend it over the dozens of other music streaming web apps? Well, the biggest thing is the size of its library. You can find virtually any song on their site, ready to be played instantly, included in a playlist, or added to your personal library. Your library (available with a free account) allows you to select any number of songs from their larger list, which you can then browse through with an iTunes-like interface.
Grooveshark has licensing agreements with some record companies, but its legality has nonetheless been called in to question. In other words, enjoy, but don’t get too attached.

Vuvox

Vuvox is a rich media creation app that allows you to quickly turn your photos and audio into a moving web collage. A set of simple editing tools allow you to crop and rotate your pictures and when you’re done you can embed your collage into any webpage, or share links to a larger version on Vuvox’s website.

Aviary

Who needs Photoshop these days. Well, some of us probably do, but when you're looking for something simpler than Photoshop or are away from your home computer, Aviary offers just the ticket for editing your photos. In fact, Aviary edits more than just basic images - it lets you edit audio, vectors, and even color palettes. We love that Aviary's image editor has layers, masks, and an undo history, just like Photoshop. You can even collaborate with other artists in the community!

YouSendIt

If you want to send a file to somebody that’s too big for your office’s email server, and you don’t want to mess with the wait times associated with one-click hosting services like RapidShare, look into YouSendIt.
YouSendIt lets you upload a file (up to 100 MB for free, or up to 2 GB with a paid account), then email a link to that file to the intended recipient.

Wolfram|Alpha

You’ve probably heard about Wolfram|Alpha. It was, after all, supposed to be the Next Big Thing™ in search, providing curated data in response to a wide range of semantic queries. And although it never quite hit the mainstream, it still has some very interesting capabilities. Our favorite is its ability to answer complex algebraic question in a clear, readable fashion. For instance, type “minimum of 13x^2 - 25x +7” into the search bar and Wolfram|Alpha will return the minimum value of the equation, as well as the associated value for x and a graph.

Evernote

Can't keep track of all your wish-lists, recipes, notes, and scribbles? We recommend Evernote, a handy webapp that helps you organize it all. Evernote offers both web and desktop interfaces to organize your text, pictures, and audio, as well as a web clipper to grab the things that interest you online. And, best of all, it all syncs to the Evernote cloud which you can also access via your smartphone. All your posts are taggable and searchable. Make a notebook titled "life" and clip that fancy camera you or your special someone wants to a note titled "wish-list." You'll never run out of gift ideas again!

Google Voice

Google Voice finally brings voice over IP to where it should be. This free web app not only lets you make calls over the internet, but actually assigns you a phone number (or you can pick your own) with voicemail that you can access both online and though any actual phone. The interface, which will be familiar to Gmail users, shows you transcripts of your voicemail, lets you make calls for no charge within the United States, and send text messages. You can even record custom greetings for your contacts and avoid people you don't want to talk to by marking them as spam.

Bing Maps

Ever since Microsoft rebranded their search efforts “Bing,” they’ve been churning out one improvement after another to catch up with their rivals. One place that this has been most noticeable is in Bing Maps, which has grown from the also-ran Live Search Maps into a real contender for the title currently held by Google Maps. Features that set it apart include silky-smooth zooming and panning with Microsoft’s Silverlight-based web client, and a suite of “Map Apps” which add all sorts of functionality to the map, including integration with Photosynth and Flickr.

Gmail

As far as web apps go, it’s hard to get more famous than Gmail, the favorite webmail client of the technologically in-the-know. When it launched, it was immediately famous for its immense storage provisions (1 GB at a time when Hotmail offered a whopping 2 MB of storage), revolutionary thread-based email display, and controversy surrounding the privacy ramifications of advertisements based on your emails’ contents. Now, the novelty’s worn off, but Gmail is still best webmail client around.

Meebo

If you’ve ever used omni-IM service Digsby, you know that its greatest feature is the ability to log in to all your IM accounts from any computer with Digsby installed. Well, why not take that convenience a step further by signing up for a Meebo account. Meebo, like Digsby or Pidgin is a multi-service IM client. Unlike its competitors, it’s a webapp, meaning it’s useable from absolutely anywhere. While we wouldn’t give up our dedicated desktop client for Meebo, is an excellent solution for when you want to get in some messaging on the go.

Pandora

No list of webapps is complete without everyone's favorite internet radio service, Pandora. Pandora allows users to create radio stations based on their favorite artists, and generates playlists comprised of similar sounding artists. Like Hot Chip? You can start with Over and Over, and Pandora will follow with someone like The Whitest Boy Alive. If you don't like them, you can skip to another one of Pandora's suggestion. It's the easiest way to find new artists based on your already superb tastes.

Invisible Extraterrestrials?

Invisible Extraterrestrials? One of World's Leading Physicist Says "They Could Exist in Forms We Can't Conceive"

The intriguing remark was made by Lord Martin Rees, a leading cosmologist and astrophysicist who is the president of Britain’s Royal Society and astronomer to the Queen of England. Rees, who last month hosted the National Science Academy’s first conference on the possibility of alien life, said he believes the existence of extra terrestrial life may be beyond human understanding.

“They could be staring us in the face and we just don’t recognize them. The problem is that we’re looking for something very much like us, assuming that they at least have something like the same mathematics and technology."

“I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can’t conceive. Just as a chimpanzee can’t understand quantum theory, it could be there as aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains.”

During the conference entitled ‘The Detection of Extra-terrestrial Life and the Consequences for Science and Society’, Rees asked whether the discovery of aliens would cause terror or delight on earth, the Telegraph reported.

However, Frank Drake, the founder of SETI and Drake's Equation, told the conference that satellite TV and the “digital revolution” was making humanity invisible to aliens by cutting the transmission of TV and radio signals into space. The earth is currently surrounded by a 50 light year-wide “shell” of radiation from analogue TV, radio and radar transmissions. According to Drake, digital TV signals would look like white noise to a race of observing aliens.

Although the signals have spread far enough to reach many nearby star systems, they are rapidly vanishing in the wake of digital technology, said Drake. In the 1960s, Drake spearheaded the conversion of the Arecibo Observatory to a radio astronomy center. As a researcher, Drake was involved in the early work on pulsars. Drake also designed the Pioneer plaque with Carl Sagan in 1972, the first physical message sent into space. The plaque was designed to be understandable by extraterrestrials should they encounter it.

Milan Cirkovic of the Astronomical Observatory in Belgrade, points out that the median age of terrestrial planets in the Milky Way is about 1.8 gigayears (one billion years) greater than the age of the Earth and the Solar System, which means that the median age of technological civilizations should be greater than the age of human civilization by the same amount. The vastness of this interval indicates that one or more processes must suppress observability of extraterrestrial communities.

Since at this point, there is no direct and/or widely apparent evidence that extraterrestrial life exists, it likely means one of the following:

We are (A) the first intelligent beings ever to become capable of making our presence known, and leaving our planet. At this point, there are no other life forms out there as advanced as us. Or perhaps extraterrestrial life does exists, but for some reason extraterrestrial life is so very rare and so very far away we’ll never make contact anyway—making extraterrestrial life nonexistent in a practical sense at least.

Or is it (B) that many advanced civilizations have existed before us, but without exception, they have for some unknown reason, existed and/or expanded in such a way that they are completely undetectable by our instruments.

Or is it (C) There have been others, but they have all run into some sort of “cosmic roadblock” that eventually destroys them, or at least prevents their expansion beyond a small area.

Since Earth’s placement in space and time appears to be unremarkably random, proposition “A” seems fairly unlikely. Assuming humans evolved like other forms of life into our present state due to natural selection, then there's really nothing all that mystical, special or remarkable about our development as a species either. Due to the shear numbers, there are almost certainly other planets capable of supporting at least some form of life. If that is so, then for Earthlings to be the very first species ever to make a noticeable mark on the universe, from a statistical perspective, is incredibly unlikely.

For proposition “B” to be correct would defy all logic. If potentially thousands, or even millions of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations exist in the known universe, then why would all of them, without exception, choose to expand or exist in such a way that they are completely undetectable? It’s conceivable that some might, or perhaps even the majority, but for all of them to be completely undetectable civilizations does not seem likely either.

Proposition C in some ways, appears to be more likely than A or B. If “survival of the fittest” follows similar pathways on other worlds, then our own “civilized” nature could be somewhat typical of extraterrestrial civilizations that have, or do, exist. Somehow, we all get to the point where we end up killing ourselves in a natural course of technological development and thereby self-inflict our own “cosmic roadblock”.

Top 10 Google Settings You Should Know About

10. Turn off auto-displayed pictures from Gmail contacts

By default, Gmail hides images embedded into emails from chain letters and unknown sources—and that's a smart move, given spammers' tracking tactics and malware tendencies. But it still shows images from contacts you've previously sent mail to, which can be a pain if you've got relatives who just love hi-larious forwards. Head to your Settings page, and look for the "external content" setting, which you can switch off to always ask you to confirm showing images in any email. If you've got just a handful of offenders, open up one of the egregious emails, hit the "Show details" link near the bottom of the to/from/subject details, and click the "don't display from now on" link. (Original post)

9. Fine-tune Google Apps for your domain
Google Apps, formerly know as Apps for Your Domain, has a lot of goodies tucked inside it for anyone who owns their own site, runs a family name domain, or operates a small business. Unlike Gmail, however, the new features and disabled offerings aren't as apparent (or blogged about). Gina gave us a great tour of Google Apps, showing how you can control privacy and access, choose which Labs features make it into your domain's email, and otherwise set up your site to your liking.

8. Prevent Android from automatically signing into Gchat
Simple and easy, but also easy to miss: If you've got an Android phone and have launched Google Talk from it just once, you might notice that you seem to catch any and all chats throughout the day. That's because Talk can sit in the background upon launching, ready to pick up messages. That's fine if that's what you want, but if you want a choice in the matter, head to the Google Talk app, hit your Menu key, and choose Settings. Un-check the "Automatically sign in" option, hit your back button, and then hit Menu and sign out of Google Talk. You'll need to sign back in if you're downloading apps from the Market (odd pairing, indeed), but you're otherwise free to chat when you want to. (Original post)

7. Turn off Buzz, Chat, and Labs in Gmail
Not big on Buzz? Chat more distracting than useful? Gmail Labs making your inbox feel lag-ish? You can kill all of them, if you'd like, and get back just a plain vanilla inbox. Scroll all the way to the bottom of any page inside Gmail, and at the bottom, you'll see two links to turn Gmail's chat sidebar and Buzz inbox on or off. Actually, you don't really "turn off Buzz" so much as remove it from your inbox, so be sure and check your Buzz settings at your Google Profile, if you have a Google Profile. If Labs features seem to be slowing down, or even breaking, your Gmail experience, you can turn them off entirely by loading Gmail from this URL: https://mail.google.com/mail/?labs=0#. Bookmark it as your main Gmail link, or title it "Gmail (Safe Mode)" if you'd like to still venture into all the goodies on occasion.

6. Disable SafeSearch (or lock it in semi-permanently)
Google's SafeSearch isn't an entirely comprehensive solution to preventing impressionable eyes from the worst realms of the internet. It is, however, a good stopgap until they learn to grow up and install other browsers, wipe out cookies, and customize user scripts. Whether you don't have any young ones in the house and want to turn SafeSearch off altogether or you want a complete SafeSearch lockdown on your computer, head to your search preferences, scroll down to the SafeSearch section, and find the setting that fits you. (In Google Image Search, they've helpfully placed the control right under the search box on your first result.) If you want to permanently enable SafeSearch, click the "Lock SafeSearch" link—and repeat for any browsers the little ones use. Now when they're performing a Google search, you should see some giant Google-colored balls in the upper-right corner—or else they've gotten too smart.

5. Set your default SMS location
For those without web-connected smartphones, or at least a decent data connection, Google's SMS service is seriously helpful—it's how I (used to) get by with just an iPod touch and a standard phone. To make it even more helpful, text set location, followed by the city and state or ZIP code where you spend the most time. Now you can just text "weather" or "pet store" to get the skinny on what's happening. (Original post)

4. Link and integrate your apps
Taking off the privacy and preference hat for a moment, Google's apps have a lot of neat settings just beneath their surface that make using them all together a tight experience. You can turn emails into tasks, and then map those tasks on your calendar. You can send voice messages and SMS from Google Voice to Gmail, and mark them as read when you open them there. Gina previously ran down seven easy ways to integrate your Google apps, and even more seem to come along every week.

3. Turn off Search History, logged in or not
If you're logged into Google for Gmail or any other service, there's a good chance Google's keeping tabs on all your searches, months after you made them. If you aren't logged in, Google's probably still tracking and personalizing your searches based on what you previously typed in. This one-stop solution should work for most users, but if it doesn't, log into Google and head to google.com/history. A notice at the top will tell you if you've "paused" or otherwise stopped your search history, or else you'll see your recent searches listed with dates and times. You can clear out this history by hitting the "Remove items" link on the left. If you aren't logged in, look for the "Web History" link in the upper-right corner. From there, you can choose whether Google tracks your searches via cookie and IP address and customizes your results.

2. Back up Google apps' data
For all you've heard about Buzz, privacy, and Google this week, you still can't fault them too much for their efforts to let you take your data with you if you decide to leave their app ecosystem. The Data Liberation Front site, a pet project from Google's engineers, explains how you can pull your information, documents, and other data out of nearly any Google product. Gina's also covered some of Google's apps in a cloud backup feature, and Adam tackled the best-at-that-time tools for Google backups in 2007. (Original Data Liberation Front post)

1. Control what Buzz says about you on the web
Google's new social service Buzz showed up suddenly in everyone's Gmail accounts this week, and right away it wanted to get you connected with the people you contact over email and chat the most. Before you let it turn you loose, though, consider whether you want the world to see exactly who you "follow." Google has since improved the on/off visibility, but if you want to make sure you're not broadcasting your inbox to the web at large, we suggest visiting your profile and checking your follower counts. If you don't see a profile at all, or don't see the followed/following numbers, you're likely in the clear, but as with many aspects of Buzz in this early stage, you can't be too careful. And when you actually start using the thing, be careful not to broadcast private email addresses yourself. (Original posts: Buzz update, private emails).

Open Source Open World

Open source is a concept of free sharing of technical information that has been around for much longer than most of us would imagine. When we think of open source today, we usually think of software. As wonderful and widely used as open source software is, according to Linus Torvalds, "the future is open source everything." From foods and beverages to scientific and health research studies and advanced technological innovations, the world has turned to open source.

Top 10 Reasons The World Won’t End on December 21, 2012

No doubt about it, 2012 and doomsday prophecies are big nowadays. According to the Mayan calendar, the world as we know it will end sometime around December 21st, 2012. Of course, if it doesn’t, that won’t mean we’ll be out of the woods. According to the Bible, Jesus Christ may return at any moment to destroy the armies of the Antichrist and reestablish his throne in Jerusalem, thereby ushering in a thousand years of peace. And if that doesn’t occur, there’s always the chance that the Mahdi will arise to institute a kingdom of justice and, alongside the returned Isa Al-Maseeh (Jesus), will fight against the Dajjal, the Antichrist of Islam. Then, of course, there’s always the chance that—at least according to the Hopi Indians—a blue star will suddenly appear in the sky to signal the start of a great atomic war which will destroy the white man and other ancient races.
Sounds like there’s quite a few ways we might catch it, but what are the chances that any of these things might actually happen? Of course, there is no way to prove that something won’t happen, but below are the top ten reasons why one would be ill-advised to believe the end is coming in 2012 or any other time soon.
Because a reversal of the magnetic poles would not be catastrophic.

It seems that every few hundred thousand years or so, the Earth’s magnetic field dwindles to practically nothing and then gradually reappears with the north and south poles flipped. Now this flipping of the magnetic poles—which appears to have last happened about 780,000 years ago—isn’t particularly dangerous, but this brief period—about a century or so in duration—of decreased magnetic fields could threaten life on the planet, for without magnetic protection, particle storms and cosmic rays from the sun, as well as even more energetic subatomic particles from deep space, would strike Earth’s atmosphere, eroding the already beleaguered ozone layer and causing all sorts of problems to both man and beast (especially among those creatures that navigate by magnetic reckoning). Further, scientists estimate that we are overdue for such an event and have also noticed that the strength of our magnetic field has decreased about 5 percent in the past century, possibly signaling that such an event may be in our immediate future—within a few centuries if not sooner. However, in being so gradual, should scientists in the future discover that such a shift is in the works, there should be plenty of time to take the necessary precautions to avoid the most destructive effects by moving underground or off planet, or perhaps strengthening the planet’s atmospheric defenses through the use of exotic, futuristic technologies. In any case, it isn’t something we need to worry about in the short term—though it could be a concern for those living a few hundred or even thousands of years from now.


9. An increase in sunspot activity in 2012 will not have any particularly detrimental effect on the planet.

As every schoolchild knows, our sun is constantly shooting gaseous plumes of white hot plasma thousands of miles into space which our atmosphere generously shields us from. Sometimes these plumes are much larger than normal, however, and are what we refer to as solar flares (more properly known as coronal mass ejections). Fortunately, these enormous magnetic outbursts that bombard Earth with a torrent of high-speed subatomic particles are also largely negated by the planet’s atmosphere and magnetic field, so we seldom feel the effects of these plasmic bursts, beyond creating havoc for ham-radio users and increasing the luminosity of the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights. They are of concern mainly to space explorers, who really would have a problem if they are caught in orbit without suitable shelter when one of these things go off. The sun goes through a natural twenty-two year cycle when such storms increase significantly for a time before decreasing again. Such a period is scheduled to occur in 2012, which has some folks all atwitter. For those who are expecting the worst, it might be beneficial to realize that the sun reached similar period of solar activity in 1990, 1968, 1946, and it will again in 2034, 2056 and 2078. While these periods can produce large solar flares that can effect satellite communications and, in a worst-case scenario, adversely affect the flow of electrical energy through the power grids, it is unlikely to do more than produce some especially spectacular light shows in the northern skies and make people onboard the International Space Station a little nervous.


8. Because the poles cannot shift or the planet’s orbit be otherwise altered.

Some well-meaning but scientifically challenged individuals maintain that the planet’s physical poles are on the verge of reversing (that is, the planet is flipping over onto its top) or that gravitational forces from the other planets or from the galaxy itself could affect Earth’s orbit and, hence, dramatically alter its climate and environment. Fortunately, however, the gravitational forces that effect our planet and its place in the solar system are mandated by Newton’s laws of planetary mechanics and cannot be changed without some extremely rare (think one chance in ten billion over the next three billion years) and dramatic event taking place—such as a collision with a small moon or a massive black hole making its way through the solar system, both of which would be noted well in advance or whose effect would be so gradual as to take centuries to have any great impact. As far as we know, there are no such cosmic events known to be on the horizon—at least for the foreseeable future (and well beyond 2012).


7. Because Earth climate change is a gradual process and one easily adapted to.

Some take a more hand-on approach to the end, claiming that humanity will perish as a result of human-caused weather changes, which, it is claimed, will melt the polar ice caps, raise the ocean sea levels, and change weather patterns over large portions of the planet. Even if the science holds together, however—which many claim it does not—such a process would be felt over a period of years or even decades, giving human beings time to adapt to the changes (relocate, create shoreline reclamation technologies, etc.) It is even possible that a warmer planet might ultimately be beneficial by, for example, increasing arable land in Siberia and North America as the permafrost layer retreats northward. In any case, the year 2012 has no particular significance in regards to any Earth changes that may occur over the next few decades.


6. Because the people who suggest the end is coming don’t know what they’re talking about.

Unfortunately, human beings have a tendency to invest great authority in people who can convince them they are prophecy “experts” or have some sort of hidden knowledge others do not possess that allows them to read the future. Many of these people are sincere individuals who simply misinterpret ancient bible texts, while others are deluded crazies who only want to include others in their fantasy world. A few are even unscrupulous charlatans out to make a quick buck. The bottom line is, however, that nobody really knows what the future holds regardless of who they are or what methodology they use. There simply is no evidence that anyone has ever successfully prophesied some future event (beyond some short-term political or military events easily surmised by gauging current international trends) with anything approaching clarity or accuracy.


5. Because the Bible Code is a parlor trick.

Using a complex type of cryptographic code called Equidistant Letter Sequencing (ELS), journalist Michael Drosnin, author of The Bible Code, contends that one can find meaningful and related patterns of words and dates in close proximity to each other within the words of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament and the heart of the Jewish Torah) which would seem to go beyond mere chance. One of these, he says, suggests the planet will be struck by a comet in 2012, with all the unfortunate consequences that would entail. However, critics dismiss Drosnin’s methodology as little more than a parlor trick, demonstrating that meaningful words and phrases can be produced using his method on any similar sized manuscript. For example, Australian mathematician Brendan McKay, an ardent critic of Drosnin’s process, demonstrated that a computer search of Herman Melville’s nineteenth century classic Moby Dick found a number of meaningful phrases in close proximity to each other (specifically having to do with the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination in 1995), suggesting that just as the eyes can be tricked into seeing familiar faces in random patterns of light and shadow, so too can the mind be tricked into finding meaningful phrases in random collections of letters where none exists. And if that’s not enough, Drosnin has been proven wrong about other “significant events” he claims were contained in the Bible, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much.


4. Because the Earth isn’t that easy to destroy.
Sure, there are things that could do the planet in, but Earth is a lot hardier a place than many give it credit for. After all, it’s been here for four billion years now, had its clock repeated cleaned by asteroids and comets, endured climactic changes of biblical proportions, and even survived a collision with another planet that created our own moon, and yet it keeps on ticking. And you think a few melting ice caps and puny nuclear weapons are going to do it in? Please…


3. Because doomsday prophecies have consistently been proven wrong.

Literally hundreds of dates have been picked by various religious leaders and self-proclaimed prophets over the last two thousand years as being the end of the world and not a one of them has ever even come close to being accurate. So why do we believe these same people today when they tell us the end is coming in 2012 (or whenever they imagine it to be coming)? Listen, you wouldn’t believe your doctor if it has been repeatedly demonstrated that he has never once correctly diagnosed a patient, so why give these guys the benefit of a doubt?


2. Because Nostradamus never picked 2012 as the end date.

It has been popularly believed that Nostradamus, the famous sixteenth century French mystic, suggested the end would come in 2012, perfectly coinciding with the Mayan date, which, if true, would be very spooky indeed. However, in reading through Nostradamus’ many quatrains, nowhere does he specifically mention the year 2012 or even suggest that the end would come around that time. In fact, his predictions extend all the way to the year 3797, making it seem we have some time yet before the end is neigh. Additionally, his writings are so obscure as to make any interpretation little better than a guess. Most of them are likely referring to events that took place in his lifetime, with the rest being so vague that they can be made to fit any time frame the reader so desires.


1. Because the Mayans never claimed it would.

The Mayans had many calendars they used, one of which was known as the “long count” calendar, which measures very long periods of time. According to this calendar (which has been known to archeologists for decades, by the way) the Earth’s “fifth sun” would end at the Winter solstice, December 21, 2012, at which point a new, sixth 5,125-year cycle would begin. What significance this had to the Mayans is a source of some debate, but it is the general consensus that they did not attribute to it any catastrophic events. Most likely, they simply considered it a time for spiritual renewal or introspection, which doesn’t sound all that dangerous to me. The teaching that the Mayan’s believed it was the end of time, then, appears to be a largely westernized misreading (or deliberate misrepresentation) of the significance of the Mayan calendar and Mayan beliefs associated with it.

Now Google's New Desktop OS
In case you haven't noticed, Google now has its well-funded mitts on just about every aspect of computing. From Web browsers to cell phones, soon you'll be able to spend all day in the Googleverse and never have to leave. Will Google make the jump to building its own PC operating system next?
What is it? It's everything, or so it seems. Google Checkout provides an alternative to PayPal. Street View is well on its way to taking a picture of every house on every street in the United States. And the fun is just starting: Google's early-beta Chrome browser earned a 1 percent market share in the first 24 hours of its existence. Android, Google's cell phone operating system, is hitting handsets as you read this, becoming the first credible challenger to the iPhone among sophisticated customers.
When is it coming? Though Google seems to have covered everything, many observers believe that logically it will next attempt to attack one very big part of the software market: the operating system.
The Chrome browser is the first toe Google has dipped into these waters. While a browser is how users interact with most of Google's products, making the underlying operating system somewhat irrelevant, Chrome nevertheless needs an OS to operate.
To make Microsoft irrelevant, though, Google would have to work its way through a minefield of device drivers, and even then the result wouldn't be a good solution for people who have specialized application needs, particularly most business users. But a simple Google OS--perhaps one that's basically a customized Linux distribution--combined with cheap hardware could be something that changes the PC landscape in ways that smaller players who have toyed with open-source OSs so far haven't been quite able to do.
Check back in 2011, and take a look at the not-affiliated-with-Google gOS, thinkgos in the meantime.

Make your chatting window invisible!!!

Stop being a victim of chatting in office!!!!!
Use ChaosCrystal.2.0.001 software which makes your Gtalk, Yahoo messenger or even any social networking site transparent by reducing the alpha of that window.
Apply transparency by pressing and dragging the target (Dot next to Window Title field) crosshairs over the target window. You can also apply transparency by selecting the application from the dropdown menu.
You can downlaod it from: http://www.elgorithms.com/downloads/chaoscrystal.php