Tag Archives | best-of

25 Favorite Ways to Make Your Desktop Wooden

Decorating my PC’s desktop with a simple wood-like wallpaper seems to help me clear the clutter, and focus more on the task at hand.  Well, that and I just think the wood look and feel just looks awesome on any computer monitor.  With that in mind I have collected 25 of my favorite wood-related wallpapers to share with you here.

Have a favorite that didn’t make it onto the list?  Be sure to let me know. Also, feel free to spread the list around to see if we can find even more great wood wallpaper.

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3 Best Free Ragdoll Games Online

Games that have fun with ragdoll physics have always been fun for me to play.  Here are three of the best games that you can play online for free, right now, that excel in being really fun.

Ragdoll Cannon

This one is pretty simple.  Ragdoll Cannon has you shooting your men out of a cannon to hit the target.  As the game progresses, the targets get harder and harder to reach.  If you master this one, you might also try Ragdoll Cannon 1.5 and RagDoll Cannon Remake.

Ragdoll Avalanche II

Ragdoll Avalanche II will have you dragging your ragdoll man back and forth using the arrow keys to dodge the falling spikes.  Hit a spike and you get sliced up.  The point of the game is to see how long you can last.

Double Wires

Ready for crappy graphics, but great game play?  Check out Double Wires.  This game lets you pretend you’re Spiderman, but without any of the copyright infringement.  Use the left mouse button to swing, but don’t fall – cause then it will be game over for you buddy.

Know of another? Add it to the list – or better yet, let me know how far you got on each of these games.

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Mitch’s Guide on Sharing Great Web Content

I love to share.

I have three tools I like to use to help promote my stories and posts after I have gotten them written up.  If you follow me on Twitter or have befriended me on Facebook, you might have seen a do a lot of self-pluggage.  Want to know how I get my socializing done? 

Ping.fm – This has quickly become one of my favorite tools to use when it comes to all the various networking sites, micro blogs, and everything else I have joined.  From Ping.fm I can micromanage updates to over 30 different online sites.  That means instead of going to MySpace to update there, and Facebook to update there, then Twitter to update over there, I can save time and plug myself one place – and it gets sent into all the ones I am a member of. 

AddThis – For the left-overs that are a little harder to promote via Ping.fm (like leaving bulletins on MySpace) I use AddThis.  This is more of the public’s way of sharing my posts, but I love to use it to.  AddThis simply makes it easy for your visitors to bookmark and share your content with others.

ConveyThis – Also worth giving a shout-out to is ConveyThis.  Working much in the same way as AddThis does with bookmarking, Convey this lets you pick from a number of different translation services to translate the web page you are looking for.  This way, my wonderful foreign readers have a quick and easy way to get anything I have posted roughly translated into something they can read.  Now I am aware that no online translator is perfect – however with the multiple choices, ConveyThis will at least let you try a few to see which one you like best. 

Have a favorite socializing or sharing tool I might have missed?

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Best of December 2008

Wow, so this is the last best of post for 2008!  It was one heck of a good year here at Mitchelaneous – where we saw both subscriber and visitor numbers grow by leaps and bounds.  Here is a look back at the best December 2008 had to offer via your number one stop for geek candy, Mitchelaneous.com.

Hope you all have a great new year, and 2009 brings you all the good things you, want, need and love.  I’ll keep doing my thing here, day after day – doing my best to deliver you the best random geek candy from around the Web.

Also, be sure to check out the best web hosting podcasts of 2008 too!  Great list of great shows!

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Best of November 2008

Time to take a look back of the best of the best Mitchelaneous.com had to offer in November.  Did you favorite story make the cut?  I have tons of geek candy here for you to enjoy…

Happy to deliver on a weekly basis.  As we round out the year, hopefully December will be an even bigger and better month for getting your geek on here.

Bonus: Check out podcast #173 of the Web Hosting Show, my web development and hosting podcast side project.  Totally free, and updated every week.

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Top Web Apps Mitch Actually Uses

lilcoloredmitch I am like a kid in a candy store when it comes to new tools and applications out there.  I love to try them all.  When push comes to shove though, only a few survive the cut as far as making it to the list of applications I actually use day to day.

Google Calendar – It might not be the prettiest girl at the dance, but boy does she know how to get down with her bad self.  Google Calendar has never won points for beauty, but is more functional than anything else out there today.  I use this one for just about every date reminder there is, from invoice due dates to birthdays.

MooURL – I probably could close my eyes and pick a link shortener out of a hat and come out with a winner.  I won’t lie, I like MooURL.com just because the name makes me giggle.

Gmail – My e-mail situation is kind of oddly setup.  I have all my external POP3 e-mail accounts plugged into Gmail, and then connect from Gmail to Thunderbird via IMAP.  This way I can easily access my mail via the web or desktop, and a few other perks such as double spam filtering (counting what the server side Spam Assassin does, then put Gmail’s spam filtering on top of that).

Google Docs – Google Docs is one thing I just started using again, not too long ago.  I needed to have a few documents easily accessible to me, no mater where I was – and Google Docs made that an easy thing to do.

Instapaper – This awesome site replaced my “read later” bookmark folder in Firefox.  Using a simple bookmarklet, you can save any link to read later and the site itself gives you a neat list of links and the ability to “skip” (mark it read) or to mark the link unread.  Very simple, and because of that, very effective.

Ping.fm – I use this web site to socialize myself.  I can post a message out to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and every other social network under the sun in one go.  Great for promoting your work, or just to say hello on all the social networking sites  out there.

Google Notebook – This I use a little differently than most.  I store a lot of the information from work on this site, such as FAQ’s and hard to find information.  That way I have it all in one spot (and it is searchable).

Google Reader – Boy, this is turning into an “I love Google” list, isn’t it?  The reason I use Google Reader for all my RSS reading is due to the fact that I can make it “wide view” very easily, and all I need to do to browse the news is scroll down.  Don’t need much else for news reading.

I’m always looking for something new to add to the list.  I think the major problem is there isn’t anybody doing anything drastically new or different.  It is just the different spin on the same idea (no mater what that idea might be).  However, I could just be a picky person.

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9 Google Reader Add-ons for Firefox

google-reader

Looking for an easy way to get through your Monday morning feeds?  Use these add-ons for Firefox, mix them up with Google Reader and then recover the rest of your morning.

  • Google Reader Notifier – This shows you how many unread items you have in your Google Reader account.
  • Google Reader Watcher – Afraid your updates are getting away from you?  Google Reader Watcher will check your Google Reader for unread news.
  • feedly – Feedly is a new kind of RSS start page which weaves Google Reader, Digg and Delicious into a more fun, magazine-like user experience.
  • Better GReader – Preview web pages inline in Google Reader, collapse the header and sidebar for more reading area, get a Mac OS X like skin, add favicons to feed subscriptions and more with Better GReader.
  • Shareaholic – Shareaholic allows you to quickly share, bookmark, and e-mail web pages via a very wide array of your favorite web 2.0 social networking & bookmarking sites such as Google Reader!
  • IntenseDebate in Google Reader – Add IntenseDebate comments to Google Reader.
  • Google Reader Toolkit – Adds a few more browser utilities for use with Google Reader.
  • Integrated GMail – Allows you to make the Inbox Collapsible and loads your choice of Google Calendar, Reader, Notebook, Groups etc… seamlessly into the gmail interface. Works w/Google Apps Accounts.
  • gReader Comments – gReader Comments is a Greasemonkey script-turned-extension for Firefox that brings all Disqus conversations into Google Reader.

Know of anymore good ones?  How have you super-charged Google Reader?  Be sure to share!

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Need Some Halloween Wallpaper?

Well, now that my birthday is over with – time for my second favorite holiday in October, Halloween!  To help you get in the spirit – I have found some of my favorite Halloween wallpaper out there today.  Now, just to find enough PCs around here to use ‘em all.

Wallpaper__Halloween_Pumpkin_by_Noko Halloween_by_PL_Jarod vladstudio_midnightforest_halloween_thumb vladstudio_halloween_thumb vladstudio_ghosts_blue_300x225 7097 7144wide Apple_Halloween_by_bioeraser Halloween_Pumpkins_Wallpaper_by_Lethorgius Apple_Happy_Halloween_1_by_edenprojects Scared Pumpkin Halloween_by_mofotoo Happy_Happy_Halloween_Hallowee_by_TwisterMc Happy Halloween Moonlight_Reaper_2_by_heinrisch Mmm_Pumpkins_by_athaliah

Have another favorite?  Feel free to share!  Happy Halloween!

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For the Love of Great Wallpaper

I love great wallpaper as much as the next guy.  Want proof?  Here is every single wallpaper suggestion I have ever made to all of you.

Have a wallpaper you love or a resource to share?

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This Week in Mitch (Mail mixed with Saturday Morning Fever?)

Shame on you for missing out on some great post this week?  Want that link again?

  Mixing POP3, Gmail and Thunderbird for E-mail Anywhere!

Watch as I explain my confusing, yet practical e-mail system I have in place.

  Mitch’s Favorite Thunderbird Add-ons and Themes

Here are some of the few Thunderbird goodies worthy of being shared.

  Different Quote Level Colors for Thunderbird

My absolute favorite tweak for Thunderbird usage. Helps with seeing who said what.

  OneNews – Create a List of News

Looking for a way to clone popurls.com?  This is the perfect WordPress powered solution.

  Captain N: The Game Master

This has to be one of the greatest Saturday morning cartoons ever… at least for me.

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