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Gallery of Other People’s Desks

Galleries of Desktop Setups

It might sound a little strange to say it out loud, but I like to see pictures of other people’s desks.  Thankfully though, this is the Internet – where people have other odd traits like odd obsessions with furry anime characters – so when you stop and think about it, checking out other people’s desk setups might not be that odd.  Deskography is a website dedicated to showing the world where you work and has tons of interesting desktop setups that might even inspire you to change your own corner nook around a little ‘bit.

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Better Twitter Search with Topsy

Twitter Search Done Right!

Twitter’s search tools might be nice, however it does not really leave me wanting more.  Rather than it, I have turned towards Topsy.  If you want to know what other people are tweeting about, sharing with friend or anything else this search engine is the best of the best. 

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Free SFTP and FTP Browsing for Windows

The WinSCP program (for Windows users) is a great alternative FTP client you should really try out.  Totally open source, this program makes it safe when copying files between a local and remote computer.

FTP Browsing in WinSCP

I really like it when any FTP program can give me better integration with my operating system, and WinSCP does do that and more.  You can create your standard shortcuts to it, add it to Window’s “Send To” context menu, and it can also be setup to be the default handler for SFTP and SCP URL addresses.

The WinSCP installer can also install drag&drop shell extension to improve WinSCP capability of downloading files using drag and drop.

Not sure where to start, after you downloaded it?  They have a plethora of guides and useful tutorials to help get you setup. So next time you are looking for a free FTP program, and you have tried the other popular names out there, give WinSCP a shot.  It might be the free FTP program experiance you’ve been looking for.

Bonus: Need more help? Check out the FTP FAQ from the Web Hosting Show!

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Free Photo Editing Bliss in Photobie

Now you can often hear me singing the praises of Paint.net, because it is an awesome free alternative to some of the most expensive photo and graphic editors out there.  Another good one you should try is Photobie.  It is a free download for photo editing, scrapbooking, animation, screen capturing and more.

Here is a screen shot of the program’s interface:

Free Image Editor - Photobie

Here is a little more about the program from the developers:

Photobie is built upon .NET framework 2. It contains all general photo editing and painting features. It is a perfect screen capture tool for you to do screen capture and editing in one place. It is also a perfect digital scrapbooking tool that allows you to apply embellishment, masking and templating easily and efficiently. And it is a perfect animation tool that allows you to create GIF animation efficiently. It supports many embedded filters as well as Photoshop free 8bf filters. It supports user customized brushes, textures, masks and regions.

Now that might look like a lot of bells and whistles to play with.  Thankfully, they have a lot of tutorials too. Here a few of my favorite Photobie tutorials I have found thus far out there (I’m sure I’ll find many more later!).

You can pick up this free image editing tool at Photobie.com.  How do you think it stacks up to some of the other free image editors out there?

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Play, Download and Watch Flash Videos on the Desktop

There are some really amazing Adobe Air applications out there.  One that most recently caught my eye was the FLVPlay HD video player.  It is a free video player to get local control of remote videos.

FLV Play HD in Action!

By clicking on the bottom tab, or from File > Search, you can search for users on YouTube, you can select one of many feeds to check out, search by keyword and sort by several different methods.  After you have watched a video you can download it, mark it as a favorite or add it to a playlist.  If you have any .flv files you have downloaded, and don’t have anything else that will play them – FLVPlay HD will do that job too.  Just go to File > Open, and open it from there.

So if you are looking for a great lightweight application to browse online videos, or watch some that you have saved to your PC, PlayFLV HD is definitely worth downloading for free to see if it meets your needs.

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Do Not Attempt to Adjust the Picture

Recently, I’ve spent more than my fair share of time turning away from the TV and looking towards the Web for entertainment.  Now, I know how horribly the sounds like a Web 2.0 cliche, but before you search for your proverbial mallet to whack my with first let me show you what it is I’ve been watching.

Cinemassacre Productions

Cinemassacre.com Web Videos

I got my first taste of the awesome content that Cinemassacre delivers by finding (and then later watching) a few episodes of the Angry Video Game Nerd.  By far, it is probably my favorite series from the web site – but some of the miscellaneous content like Board James and You Know Whats Bull Sh*t is just as funny and entertaining to watch.

Be sure to watch…

ScrewAttack

ScrewAttack.com Web Videos

How could a web site named after the famous Metroid attack go wrong?  It can’t.  Looking at both new and old school games, ScrewAttack has your classic reviews, top ten lists and even submissions from their fans that make it onto the site.  If you’ve grown up as an 80’s child, and still have a love for both new and old games – this site is definitely one worth checking out.

Be sure to watch…

That Guy with Glasses

ThatGuyWithGlasses.com Web Videos

This is the most recent one I have stumbled upon and started watching.  Once again, we kind of go to all of our loves of watching something old, with the most popular series from the site being the Nostalgia Critic.  The entire web sit though is filled with videos that are well thought out, well produced and will leave you wanting to watch more.

Be sure to watch…

Might also be a good idea for me to point out that not all of these are family friendly “G” rated entertainment, so please keep that in mind. 

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Use Paint.NET to Edit and Create Icons

Logo3I had an idea to customize a few of my default Vista icons, but had no way of doing so.  I had the icon files, but no way to edit them.  So after doing some browsing around I did come up with a solution to my icon editing woes.

First Step?  Get Paint.NET!

First step was to pickup Paint.NET.  This is an awesome free image editor with all the bells and whistles of your hundred-dollar programs.

Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It  features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help,  tutorials, and plugins.

Grab the Paint.NET ICO Plugin

Well worth having, just as a backup image editor if nothing else.  Since Paint.net does not have .ico support built in by default, I picked up this page:

http://paintdotnet.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1152

To use it, all you need to do is unzip and then put it in the “FileTypes” folder in the Paint.NET directory.

Startup Paint.NET and try dragging and dropping an .ico icon onto the canvas.  Thanks to this neat plugin, it will open just as any other image would open.  With saving as an .ico, I had a few errors at times but doing it again or changing the name of the file seems to have helped.

So there is a totally free way to edit and create custom desktop icons for your next design project or desktop redecoration.

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Turn Search Results into RSS Feeds

FeedMySearch is offering a new service that is sure to please some of us out there who keep an eye on search results.  Using their web site you can turn your Google searches into tiny RSS feeds.  This is helpful when it comes to getting instant updates whenever a new result appears on Google.  Another perk about this would be that you only get what is new when it comes to your search item.

feed-my-search

To use it, all you do is type in your keyword into the search box, then select from these types of searches:  web, news, video, blogs, local, books and patent.  Hit the “Feed my Search!” button and away you go.  Next you are given a preview of the search results and you can subscribe using a variety of different services or just grab the RSS feed itself.

If you spend a lot of time watching Google and how the results come up, FeedMySearch promises to save you time giving you the latest results instantly.

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Pixojo – Wallpaper Pushing Social Stream?

Desktop Backgrounds
In the search for some new desktop wallpaper? If your a fan of finding new wallpaper or you want to release your recent creation to the world, Pixojo is a great place to do both. This is a new (yet highly awesome) resource that has a lot of potential when it comes to finding and sharing the best wallpaper from around the Web.

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Super Mario Icons in Action!

Browsing around Deviant Art I found some of the best looking Super Mario icons I have seen in a long long time.  With all the Super Smash Bros Brawl I’ve been playing in the past few weeks – looks like Nintendo is invading my desktop too.

Super_Mario_Icons_by_ph03nyX

Another awesome detail about these icons are they were all designed by hand by a fantastic Deviant Art artist, ph03nyXDownload them for yourself and make your own desktop look like the Mushroom Kingdom!

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