Jing Project - Free Visual Communication Assistant

Jing Project was included by PCWorld in the list of the 100 best products of 2008. In fact, it was placed at the final rank -100 - in the featured listing. However, if I would be compiling the list of the best products personally, I would give it the higher ranking due to its functional characteristics users get for free.

What is Jing Project?
Jing Project allows users to create instant screenshots and little narrated movies (called "screencasts") of anything that’s happening on your PC desktop, and then share them with friends.

How Jing Project can help me?
Think of Jing as a supplement to all your chat discussions, email threads, forum posts and blog entries. You download a freeware installation file on your computer, and, upon installation, it sits nicely on your desktop, ready to capture and share your stuff at a moment’s notice. Simply select an area of your screen, capture it as an image or record it as a video, and then click Share. Jing conveniently places a URL to your content which you can paste instantly into any of your conversations.

Where does Jing send my images and videos?

• Screencast.com
• A local folder
• A network drive
• Copy to your clipboard (images only)
• An FTP server
• Flickr

Is it true Jing is free?
Jing is an officially free product offering, including a complimentary Screencast.com account with 2 GB of storage and 2 GB of transfer bandwidth per month.

Developers Web Site: http://www.jingproject.com/faq.asp

Direct downloading link for the application: http://www.ziddu.com/download/2496006/jing_setup.exe.html

Nice video presentation:

Jing Project Presentation

100% Free - Too Good to be True

Remember old movies, when the successful policeman, lawyer, or businessman, coming after vacation, was always greeted with huge pile of letters and other correspondence. Just think for a second, how much information exchange transferred from snail mail to other types of communication: landline phones and mobile phones, email and instant messaging, even video messaging.

But, regular post mail is not completely dead. Once a while, you have to write (probably, type and print) a letter, put it in the envelope and drop in the mail box. Really, you cannot beat the tactile pleasure of opening actual mail and reading its carefully written contents. eSnailer (http://www.esnailer.com/) has brought a nice service offering, presenting interesting combination of the snail mail with internet capabilities.

On the homepage you will find an envelope, where you need to fill the address fields and verify them. Next, you can write your letter on the blank page provided. eSnailer will print, envelop, stamp, and then send your letter with proper US postage to the addressee. And it is all free of charge, while user is required to pay nothing for this service.

eSnailer Free Snail Mail Services

How can it be free? According to eSnailer “it is supported by ads, after you write your letter you will be asked to accept one of our free offers. This is at no cost or hassle to you and takes truly no time”. Sounds good, but the last sentence rang a bell. How potentially harassing are these free offers? After brief search, I found a brief testimony on the service from CNET Networks.

They performed an investigation of the offering, and came to conclusion, that the offer is not as good as it sounds at the beginning. Coming back to eSnailer statement, it is claimed, "This is at no cost or hassle to you and takes truly no time," but when you go through the actual process of sending a letter, you will discover that the advertising offers are provided by company MyInsiderDeals, a site rated "very spammy" by McAfee SiteAdvisor. After signing up at MyInsiderDeals, the SiteAdvisor team received 240 e-mails per week. Note, that you MUST select one advertising offer to send your letter via eSnailer.

The other big warning sign for eSnailer is the lack of a privacy policy. On any site that asks for personal information like e-mail address, home address, phone number, or age, you should always read the privacy policy first. If there is none, your information can be sold to nearly anyone who wants it.

The advertising offers page on eSnailer does include MyInsiderDeals links for "Terms & Conditions," "About," "Unsubscribe," and "Privacy," but those pages create more question marks about eSnailer’s legitimacy. The Terms & Conditions page tells all about the "MyInsiderDeals Hunt for the Money Giveaway," but there’s no mention of eSnailer. The "Privacy" link does indeed spell out MyInsiderDeals’ privacy policy, but it’s not pretty. "The personal profile information that you submit to MyInsiderDeals.com remains your property, but by submitting that information to MyInsiderDeals.com, its partners including, but not limited to, SilverNGold, Dealhighway, ConsumerValueDirect, SmartBrands, BargainSpot, SavingsAvalanche, Deal-zone, Couponandgifts, AskVinegarJoe... [59 more partners] ...and/or any and all other affiliates, you grant MyInsiderDeals.com the right to use that information for marketing purposes." And, definitely, you do not see all these details before you enter in the process…

Site claims that you have a paid option for people that do not want any offers for modest cost $1.50. You want my advice, if you can still use them? I would say NO. As there were negative testimonies and other matters of concern, why take a risk. The offer is exactly as it looks like - “too good to be true… “

Company site: http://www.esnailer.com/

Customize icons on your PC

This article will hardly be able to help improving your computer performance, but it might help you to find an easy way around your data stored and programs installed on your PC. I am talking about possibility to alter look of your icons, automatically assigned by your operating system. This one of the options we rarely think as customizable, but it is.

Making new icons

Let’s first make a new icon, solely with the standard tools, build in the Operating System, in 10 easy steps:

1. Start >> All Programs >> Accessories
2. Click Paint
3. In toolbar select Image
4. Click Attributes
5. Type 32 in both Height and Width and sure that Pixels are selected under Units, and click OK.
6. Now make your design.
7. If you want to add picture, store on your PC, you can do that as well: Edit >> Paste from >> Chose square picture with 32 x 32 pixels.
8. File >> Save As. Choose name and extension ICO from the drop down listing: name.ico.
10. Save your creation.

Most of the readers would definitely choose the more advanced graphic editor available instead of Paint (which I never use myself). The actions list will be the same, but the process of the picture cropping, editing, and resizing will be much easier.

You might even use one of the many available free online icons creation tools. For example, Real World Graphics Online Icon Maker (http://www.rw-designer.com/online_icon_maker.php) or Sherv Icon Maker (http://www.sherv.net/icon-maker/)

Storing new icons
More likely, you stored your icon at the default location, which is My Documents, My Pictures, or Desktop. It might be accidently deleted or misplaced. It is recommended to move it in the save location together with you system files.

1. Go to the system folder System32 and make a new folder with name My Icons, or any other easy recognizable name you like. Note that the folder might be hidden, if the Hide system files option is activated in the Folder Properties. You need uncheck it, if you want to access the folder.

2. Copy your new icon there, and use the folder for any new custom icons you might be willing to create in the future.

Changing icons

This operation is easy and straightforward.

1. Just right click on any program or folder icon, find Properties (usually the last line in the menu) and open the Properties Window.

2. Locate change icon button to execute the option. It might be in different tabs depending on what you are working with. For example, for folders, this button is under Customize tab, and for shortcuts on the desktop - it is under Shortcut tab.

3. Select browse and follow the path to your new icon file. Choose it and set it up for replacement.

Additional Reading:
http://downloads786.blogspot.com/2008/09/make-your-own-icon.html
http://forums.pcpitstop.com/index.php?showtopic=139257
http://www.worldstart.com/tips/tips.php/3004
http://www.pcdon.com/DonEdrington-MakeYourOwnFileFolderIcons.html

Millions of Songs at Hand

Music is a hot business to be in nowdays. Music is everywhere, boosted by multiple players you can carry with ease. Interest drives advertising to the sector, advertising encourages generation of the free services we all can enjoy. A fresh example of the new service you can definitely benefit of is a nice Online Music Search Engine Jogli (http://www.jogli.com/).

Yes, Jogli is the search engine for music, but not a simple one. It scans other websites such as YouTube for any free existing music and music video clips, and then indexes the music in order to enable an easy and efficient search. As a result, users have access to the largest free inventory of music on the Web, consisting of approximately 12 million albums and half a billion songs. The music is listened to through Jogli’s website, although it is stored and broadcasted from the original sources.

Users can search and listen to any desired music video clips, individual tracks, entire albums and other users’ playlists, without the need to download any software.

Jogli is a music community. Any user can be a VJ, creating and sharing play lists with friends. Users can review, chat and respond to each other’s “MTV channels”.

Video Presentation:

Music Search Engine

Jogli carries a rating 4 of 5 on the Music Search Engines Rating List at RateItAll. Overall, there are 22 entries at the moment.

Let nice music to sweeten your day!

Yonda - New Concept for AdSense Profits Sharing

One of the Rating Lists that is changing all the time, I host at RatingAll, is Revenue Sharing Web Sites list (http://www.rateitall.com/t-24229-revenue-sharing-web-sites.aspx). Indeed, new sites are coming all the times, some other are dropping from the list. There are quite a few articles hosting communities, sharing ads profits, but Yonda has several distinctive differences, worth mentioning and worth looking into.


This is probably the first site I observed, where you can earn shares of AdSense ads profits with no need to register on their site. You provide your AdSense referral ID and ads channel for tracking (optional), when you submit your article, and you get 99% of your ads exposure to the readers. Easy like that. You submit your stand-alone article with your tracking number already embedded in interface.


What you do:
1. Post your article on the site and provide your AdSense Publisher ID.
2. You will get an URL, e.g. http://yonda.org/12345/any-text-you-choose
3. Link to that URL from your website/blog/forum, OR recruit other people to promote your article


What you get:
1. Your article hosted at yonda.org, which contains your AdSense Publisher ID.
2. Free marketers for your article (your article will get an exposure through the site free promotion campaigns).
3. You get your income share, when your ad is clicked.


One more interesting thing in their marketing concept is developed ability to use affiliates to spread a word about using the content. If somebody takes your content and republishes it, he will be able to share with you the context ads income as well, splitting money stream between 2 available Google AdSense ads blocks.


The difference between your article, published by yourselves, and your article, published by somebody else will be in the article URL:


Yours: http://yonda.org/12345/you_can_put_any_text_here.htm
Referral’s: http://yonda.org/12345-789/ you_can_put_any_text_here.php


Note that you can get as many affiliates as you can. And the number after the dash 789 will point out on the affiliate identity.


By the way, there is one more unusual feature you see on this site: you can modify its name as per your needs. Let’s say you have submitted an article and you get this URL: http://yonda.org/12345
where, 12345 is your Article ID. Google looks at the URL to decide the topic of a page and serve related ads. So, if you write about the amazing Pink Elephant, you can add the keywords text as you wish to maximize chance to get good Google ranking and quality ads, and you link to: http://yonda.org/12345/the-amazing-pink-elephant


So, you can modify the URL as you wish: http://yonda.org/12345/you_can_put_any_text_here.htm


But it is definitely a good thing to put some descriptive text at the end of it.
Your affiliates can also make changes to their URL name as they feel like.


What will happen, if your affiliate finds another sub-affiliate for himself? If the site would promise unlimited profits change, I would not waste my time, writing about this opportunity, because I do not believe in MLM. In this case, the real and practical approach has been applied. Since there are just two ads units, you will loose your position in it, and your AdSense Publisher ID will be replaced by the ID of the new player. Unfair? Not really, since this channel has already played nicely for your income stream. You still have other articles to get earnings from.


There is one more limitation: you cannot add hyperlinks, pictures, or codes, but rely on the text only.


I am giving the preliminary rating for the Yonda on the List (http://www.rateitall.com/t-24229-revenue-sharing-web-sites.aspx) as 4 of 5. It is possible that following the practical test, or after other users’ feedback, this rating will change one or other direction.


Submit your articles: http://yonda.org/


So, why not testing it right now? Here you go, and published this article through their system. You can see the results through the following short URL: http://yonda.org/16/.
As you understand, I can apply any other longer URL, like http://yonda.org/16/adsense_profits_Yonda.html, and you will still get to the very same page.

But, when you look at the published article, you'll see that there is something wrong about it. I was expecting that Hyperlinks do not work in text format, but as you can see they have completely disappeared altogether in the text. So, I changed all Hyperlinks by just removing http sign at the beginning of each link. Big disadvantage? Yes, for the articles, like this one, which is heavily based on the different links it is significant, but, may be, for any neutral topic it is not a big deal. With link beginnings removed, the disappeared pieces showed up again in the text. You cannot edit your article, each time you have to republish it again, so proof read it before publishing. Note that my URL has number 16, my next test URL was 17, and the final has number 18. So, looks like, we are first comers here.

You can check the final article at http://yonda.org/18/ or, for example, http://yonda.org/18/yonda_adsense_profits_sharing.html
You can put your AdSense publisher ID at the same article, republish it as you like, and we'll see together how the split revenue concept is working.


Happy money making with Yonda!

Free the Internet - October 11, 2008 - 3rd Ed.

Welcome to the 3rd, October 11, 2008, edition of the Free the Internet Blog Carnival. Some statistics: Submitted Articles - 28. Published Articles - 16. I want to thank all the authors contributing to the issue. Some articles were excluded from the review, since their topic of discussion did not match the main target of the carnival. I am sorry, that not all submissions were accepted, as some of the excluded articles carried a significant value.

Cade Krueger presents Getting Started On eBay For Internet Home Business Opportunities posted at Write To Right.

AndrewB presents Do search engines like your Web site? posted at Personal Plug, saying, "Between 75% and 98.8% of visitors to Web sites come from searches made at search engines. If you’re going to get high levels of traffic - and hence the levels of ROI you’re looking for - it’s very important that the search engines can access all the information on your Web site."

axel presents Easy Steps To More Search Engine Traffic posted at axel g.

Fiona King presents 50 Free Web Tools That Will Predict your Future posted at The Daily Netizen.

Dan-O presents Codes for Free Music on iTunes, Myspace, Facebook and Blogs posted at Dan-O’s Free Music Downloads, saying, "How to get free music to listen to and download online by using easy to copy code called a widget."

One Family presents Google Chrome Web Browser Beta 1 User Experience - Review posted at One Family’s Blog, saying, "The article provides a review of Google’s new Internet Browser, Chrome."

Mark Graybill presents Trying Out Free Oses & Giving Back posted at An Infinite Number of Cats on Keyboards, saying, "Results of a high school class testing a number of free operating systems on the range of computers in the school’s lab."

Heather Johnson presents 50 Great Online Networks and Communities for Christians posted at Christians Do It Better.

Raymond presents Where Are The 12 Month 0% No Balance Transfer Fee Credit Card Offers? posted at Money Blue Book.

Raymond presents How To Get Your Free FICO Credit Score posted at Money Blue Book.

Fitz Villafuerte presents Download Free Software And Save Money posted at Ready To Be Rich, saying, "Absolutely free and top quality softwares that you can use for business and personal use."

Indian presents 2009 Horoscope - Astrology posted at DecisionCare, saying, "2009 Horoscope forecast and astrology predictions."

WordPress Hacker presents Auto Create Navigation Tabs for New WordPress Pages posted at WordPress Hacker.

Fiona King presents The Ultimate Guide to Internet Privacy Law: 100 Must-Read Resources posted at The Daily Netizen.

Brian Terry presents 5 Essential Search Engine Optimization Tips To Increase Your Website Ranking On Search Engines posted at Big Yellow Blog of Turbo Marketing Secrets.

Brian Terry presents Blogging Your Way to Big Traffic posted at Big Yellow Blog of Turbo Marketing Secrets.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of free the internet using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

YouTomb against YouTube

There are millions of videos up on YouTube, but thousands have also been removed, and not always with the owner’s permission. If any footage online can be accused of copyright violation, YouTube will take it down, whether or not the accusation was justified. YouTomb, a research project by the MIT Free Culture student group, tracks the top videos removed from the service for copyright violation, and retains the metadata about the videos so we, the public, can make our own decision about whether the removal was justified or not.

YouTomb against YouTube

The videos cannot be viewed or downloaded at this time, but, at least, if you are the footage author you can see, who requested your video to be removed, and may be you can fight back, if you have substantial proof that accusation and removal is unreasonable.

Authors Web Site: http://youtomb.mit.edu/

5 Tips and Tricks on Changing Properties of Recycle Bin

Everybody used to the regular operations with Recycle Bin. You delete the file normal way, and it appears in Recycle Bin up to the moment you empty it. However, there are several opportunities to alter the main functionality of the Recycle Bin according to the user special needs, which are no so straightforward.

1. Automatically Empty Recycle Bin

As we already mentioned, when we delete a file, that file will move into Recycle Bin by default. There, we have options whether to restore it or just empty the Recycle Bin. When you open the Recycle Bin properties with right click, while you highlight it, you can change the settings to remove files as soon as they are deleted. You can also choose to use the Shift+Delete option on your keyword to remove the file or folder permanently.

2. Increasing Recycle Bin Size

You can increase and decrease the size of the Recycle Bin. There are some size limitations with Recycle Bin size, its default size is equivalent to 10 percent of the drive size. But if you delete a larger size file accidentally, it might be too big to fin in the default size of the Recycle Bin. Therefore, if disk space permits, you can increase the reserved space so you can retrieve the big file from Recycle Bin if needed.

• First Right click on the Recycle Bin icon on the Desktop of your computer then go to Properties.
• Adjust the slider bar in the center of the screen from 10% to maximum size as you want.
• Then click OK button to save your new sitting and exit the Recycle Bin Properties Window.
• After change reboot your computer to have Windows fully initiate the necessary changes to your system.

3. Renaming Recycle Bin

I did not find for myself a valid reason to rename Recycle Bin desktop icon, but you might find one with ease.

• Enter Windows built-in Registry Editor: Start >> Run >> regedit
• Then Go To: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/CLSID/{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}
• Change the Name "Recycle Bin" to whatever you want without typing any quotes.

This video tutorial offers slightly different approach, but the result will be the same.

How to Rename Recycle Bin Desktop Icon?

4. Removing Recycle Bin from Desktop

If you do not use the Recycle Bin to store deleted files as a safety buffer, you can get rid of its desktop icon completely.

• Enter Windows built-in Registry Editor: Start >> Run >> regedit
• Then Go To: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/explorer/Desktop/NameSpace.
• Click on the "Recycle Bin" String in the Right Hand pane. Hit Delete, and click OK.

5. More Recycle Bin Editing Options

Here even more extensive list of the Recycle Bin Hacks:

• Add rename to the menu:
  HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT’CLSID’ {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}’ ShellFolder
  "Attributes"=hex:50,01,00,20
• Add delete to the menu:
  HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT’CLSID’ {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}’ ShellFolder
  "Attributes"=hex:60,01,00,20
• Add rename and delete to the menu:
  HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT’CLSID’ {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E} ’ShellFolder
  "Attributes"=hex:70,01,00,20
• Restore the recycle bin to Windows defaults including un-deleting the icon after deletion:
  Restore the icon.
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE’SOFTWARE’ Microsoft’ Windows ’CurrentVersion’ explorer’
  Desktop’NameSpace’{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}
  @="Recycle Bin"
• Reset Windows defaults.
  HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT’CLSID’ {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E} ’ShellFolder
  "Attributes"=hex:40,01,00,20
• Other edits to the recycle bin icon:
  HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT’CLSID’ {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}’ ShellFolder
  "Attributes"=hex:40,01,01,20 ... standard shortcut arrow
  "Attributes"=hex:40,01,02,20 ... a different shortcut arrow
  "Attributes"=hex:40,01,04,20 ... and still another shortcut arrow
  "Attributes"=hex:40,01,08,20 ... make it look disabled (like it’s been cut)

Your Picture on a Magazine Cover

You do not need to be very popular to get features on top notch Magazine covers like Time, Vogue etc. You just need to upload your picture/image and with few clicks of mouse you can be on the cover of famous magazine using web service MagMyPic. Remember my post about Photofunia? The technology looks the same, but MagMyPic is focused exclusively on the magazines covers, while Photofunia has different fake picture interfaces.

Your friends might say that having your picture on the famous magazine cover is fake, but you can always think about that as experiment to see how you will look on a magazine cover, when that will happen in real in near future. Basic features of the service include:

• Currently Support 8 different Magazine covers.
• Very easy to use, upload a pic and select Magazine cover.
• Supported picture formats: .JPEG, .GIF, or .PNG format.
• Registration is optional.
• Buy Magazine for real from website at heavy discount.

Create Fake Magazine Covers with your own picture at MagMyPic.com