Links, Links, Links - April 11th, 2009

It's Passover and Easter, I get to be sick and mope around the house. So, in the mean time, here are some nifty links - the latest on the web:

• 50 Stylish Navigation Menus for Design Inspiration
• Free computer science e-books
• 10 Amazing Twitter Updates
• Life Simulator (that is: miserable life simulator)
• DiggBar conundrum: Why Engadget is blocking the DiggBar

Happy Holidays!

More Porn 2.0 Sites You Need to Know

As an addition to my original Porn 2.0 post, here are two more porn 2.0 sites you may wish to know about:

PornoGrab - Lost of videos and pictures, with (of course) the option to upload videos and images of your own.

Yuvutu - Videos, blogs, amateur cams, chats, forums and more. Enjoy.

100 Retro Nintendo Games You can Play Online For Free

The days of the 8-bit were the best. Zelda kept us busy for hours, years before anyone thought up the weird name Wii. There were also Mario Bros., of course, and many more games.

For those of you who don't know it yet - you don't really need a Nintendo console anymore. If you wanna play one of the cool retro Nintendo games, all you have to do is click here - and get 100 Nintnedo Games you can play online - for free!

Have fun!!!

Learn how to Play the Guitar - Online

Masahble has posted another cool article: 11 Resources For Learning Guitar On The Web.

Guitars are popular instruments - they are easy to obtain and carry (unlike drums, for example) and you can get a good start easily enough.

The web offers many ways and places to learn how to play the guitar - mostly for free. There are also many sites that offer score sheets and tabs - free of charge. Check out these sites for score sheets:

• Anyscore
• Free Scores
• 8notes
• Free Guitar Tabs
• Guitartabs.net
• Free-Tabs

Bunch Your Links Together

I just love simple, useful, online tools. LinkBunch is one of them. Dead simple: enter a few links that you feel like sending or saving. LinkBunch will group them together under one link, and give you that link.

This way, you can share multiple over IM, Twitter, e-mail or even a mobile phone.

Great stuff.

Who Needs Word? 13 Online Word Processors

The trend of using online services over local-based software is getting stronger.

I find myself using more and more services online. For example - Gmail instead of a POP3 client on a specific computer; Zamzar.com as a filer converter - instead of installing a converting software; Pixoh - for image editing, etc.

There are many who also use online services for word processing. I don't like Microsoft's Word very much, and there are many open source replacements for it (OpenOffice, AbiWord and more). I'd like to do some online editing now and then, but most of these systems don't support Hebrew very well, which limits their usefulness to me.

Still, if you are into some online word processing, check out Mashable's list - 13 Online Word Processors.

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Forex online - Without it, you are playing the wrong game.
Forex trading involves substantial risk of loss, and may not be suitable for everyone.

Missing your Pandora?

Those of us who don't reside in the US of A, were recently robbed of one of the best music sites on the net - Pandora. About a year ago, the owners of Pandora (an automated music recommendation and Internet radio service created by The Music Genome Project) claimed that they cannot afford the payments they need to make for royalties, and closed the service to surfers outside of the USA.

There many ways to connect to Pandora from outside the US, but it's not very convenient, and people who are not very technology-oriented found those ways (proxies and such) to be extremely difficult.

There are also many sites who claim to offer you a personalized music experience, but none really matched the qualities of Pandora, in my humble opinion. Those include last.fm, deezer and MeeMix, which was a real disappointment. If you wanted free music online, you were left with choices like SeeqPod - which is cool, but hardly personalized - or FilterMusic - which is a list of internet radio stations, albeit a very good one.

To make a long story short - if you miss Pandora like I do, and can't connect directly, you will love GlobalPandora - a simple site that allows you to connect to Pandora from anywhere on the globe - and it's the real thing. I'm not sure how long this site is going to hold on, but hey - Enjoy it while it lasts!

Anyone wants a free air guitar?

Go ahead, take one!

Play Free Chess Online with Shredder

There are many free online chess games out there. Thing is, the interface is usually cumbersome and you always have to register or sign up.

Sometimes you just want to PLAY - no hassle, no problems. ShredderChess is just for you - play chess online for free, with a lightning-quick interface. Very cool! They also have a mobile version - but that costs money.

Now, if I can just beat the F%$%$^ computer...

The Ultimate Anti-Virus and Security List

The good people of Mashable have composed a very through list of anti-virus, anti-spyware and security tools.

There are many good security tools out there - a lot of them are free. I personally use:

• AVG free as an anti-virus.
• Kerio as a firewall (no, the windows firewall isn't enough).
• Spybot and Hijackthis as anti-spyware. Seems like Spybot has gotten "tired" over the years. Hijackthis is only for those of you who know what they are doing, by the way.
  
• AVG Rootkit removal - for the one (and hopefully the last) time I got hit by a scary rootkit.
• Regmon - for when the shit really hits the fan, and there are no other programs who can help me. Kids, don't try this at home!

The Best Freeware Sites

Good old freeware is always a great thing to find. Especially if it's a really good program, like Taskbar Shuffle and the sort.

Here is a list of some great freeware sites. Remember, if you enjoy a program, consider donating some money to the developer. This way, freeware will remain FREE:

• Snapfiles Freeware Section
• NoNags
• Grandfiles
  
• TechSupport - freeware utility list
• eConsultant Freeware list
• Freewarebox
• Best Freeware
• Freeware Guide
• A list of 300 freeware programs

Enjoy!

What a Wonderful List: 480+ Open Source Applications

Mashable.com has delivered again: an excellent list of over 480 Open Source applications.

Naturally, you won't need ALL of them, but a few might be extremely useful. It's very interesting to see how much open source has become part of the life of the computer user - many times without them knowing that they are using open source software.

What's really amazing to me, is the amount of times that these programs prove to be a hell of a lot better than the "regular" commercial programs. I think Pidgin is an excellent example - it's an Instant Messenger that allows you to use all of your IM accounts in one place. There's nothing new about that, but Pidgin does the job wonderfully.

It's simple, it connects instantly, it has all of the options of the "regular" IMs and it looks better than most of them. I enjoy using it, and I love the fact that it was made by people who really understand the needs of a computer user.

I also love Media Player Classic, which easily and effortlessly solved a lot of codec and drivers problem I had while playing videos on my computer.

These programs are the proof that it can be done better, lighter, more efficient and more fun. When I enjoy a program very much, like the amazingly efficient Taskbar Shuffle (Microsoft, oh Microsoft - how in the hell didn't YOU think about that), I also make it a point to donate the creator. In this case, it's not open source, but I don't really care. It's the only time that I really ENJOY paying for a piece of software.

Fatboy Frogger - Flash Game

Have Fun!