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4.0 OTHER USEFUL STUFF

4.1 How to Stop Your Cell Phone or iPod from Sliding Around

I recently broke my cell phone when it slipped off a glass table that was on a slight slope. I looked around for a solution and came up with these non-slip, transparent stick-on pads. They are reasonably priced and work like a charm. I liked them so much I now have them on my phone, iPod and digital camera

http://www.egrips.com/

4.2 How to Measure Your Typing Speed

Here's a web site that offers a free program to monitor your typing. Once you've installed the program and pressed the "record" button, just load up a word processor or text editor and start typing. Then look at the Speedometer program to discover your speed in words per minute, as well as other interesting statistics such as the number of corrections you needed to make. My thanks to Stephan Hodges for recommending this.

http://www.customtyping.com/speedometer.htm

4.3 Print Your Own Digital Posters

This is a simple idea, but one that's perfectly executed and which produces absolutely stunning results. And thankfully it's not as rude as the name suggests. The Rasterbator turns a digital picture into a multi-sheet poster. Just upload an image file (1 MB or less) from your PC onto the Rasterbator web site, then choose from various options such as whether you want color or black and white, and how many sheets of paper you want the finished poster to occupy (it'll happily generate a 100-page poster if you want to let it). Once the processing has finished you'll see a link to a PDF file which you download and print. It's that easy, and the results look superb on an office or bedroom wall. Just make sure you have plenty of paper and ink in stock.

http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator

4.4 How to Remove JPG Metadata

Chances are your digital camera saves images in .JPG format. What might surprise you, though, is just how much data is contained in the .JPG file in addition to the actual picture. Depending on your camera, and whatever application you might have used on your computer to edit the file, there might also be a reduced thumbnail image as well as a whole host of metadata. The metadata contains details of your camera, the date and time that the picture was taken, the exposure settings, and other facts that are often irrelevant (not to mention a privacy breach) if the picture is to be put on a public web site. JPG Extra allows you to remove unwanted data from .jpg files, in order to improve your privacy and to reduce the amount of space that they occupy. It'll also make them download faster from your web site too, of course. The evaluation version is free. If you intend to keep the program, you're asked to make a donation of whatever you think the program is worth. Windows XP/Vista.

http://www.fieggen.com/software/jpgextra_get.htm

4.5 How to Type Foreign Characters and Accents

Ever wanted to write to someone called Andre but didn't know how to create the accent over the "e". Actually it's quite possible to type all sorts of fancy foreign language characters using a standard keyboard. You'll find out how from this site.

http://www.starr.net/is/type/kbh.html

4.6 Improve your Vocabulary and Help the Hungry

Free Rice is a web-based vocabulary game with a simple goal. Guess the meaning of each of the words that is presented, from a choice of four options. For each word you guess correctly, it allows the United Nations to give another 10 grains of rice to a hungry person somewhere. The site is so popular that it's currently giving away some 130 million grains of rice a day, paid for by the companies that advertise on the site.

http://www.freerice.com

4.7 Useless Waste of Time Department

The ultimate PC download: a program [1] that's compact, portable, operating system independent and bug free. Thanks to subscriber "Bob" for the link. If you have even more time to waste try these Flash games [2], [3] suggested by regular contributor Tony Bennett

[1] http://www.bernardbelanger.com/computing/NaDa/

[2] http://members.iinet.net.au/~pontipak/redsquare.html

[3] http://flightsimx.archive.amnesia.com.au/?id=Cd5GmOnSypp5

Part 1 - 1.0 TOP TECH SITES AND RESOURCES

Part 2 - 2.0 TOP FREEWARE AND SHAREWARE UTILITIES

Part 3 - 3.0 SECURITY PATCHES, SERVICE RELEASES AND UPDATES

Part 4 - 4.0 OTHER USEFUL STUFF

Part 5 - 5.0 TIP OF THE MONTH - Back UP Data Online