The Great Geek Manual

Utilities

• Mapnificent – this service shows you how far you can get on public transit (warning: slow to load in some browsers) in a given time in 17 cities around the world. Explanation. [Video]
• Newzfor.me – a news feeder for twitter. You can select the various news sources and have relevant news tweeted to your twitter followers.
• Tagxedo – tag cloud with styles. Similar concept to Wordle, but with much greater customization and word control.
• Twitario – allows you to see your tweets, chronologically, in an elegant, ordered and plain diary. With Twitario, you can surf your tweets page by page, month by month, or year by year.

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Utilities

• Floola 6.1 – a popular alternative iPod manager that can be run directly from your iPod and needs no installation that supports all commonly used iPod features including artwork, podcasts and smart playlists.
• Gist – an online contacts management system that knows about your social media contacts as well as your IRL friends.

Software

• Beyond DEFCON 15 Must See Hacking Conferences
• 6 Things That Have to Change About iTunes

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Utilities

• Audiotool – an online flash-based service that behaves like a desktop workshop.
• MapCrunch.com – Google Street View Randomizer
• RadioTime – remember radio? If you ever feel like becoming re-acquainted, this is a great place to start. RadioTime is an exhaustive directory of streaming radio stations in the U.S. and U.K.

Tech News

• Google could face fines in UK under privacy laws
• It’s official! The twentieth century is officially over. This week, Sony has announced that it is ceasing production of the Walkman. This comes just months after the discontinuation of floppy disks.

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Utilities

• Autoruns 9 – this utility lists every program and process that launches when you start the computer the utility is installed on. It’s useful for figuring out why your computer takes so long to boot and for detecting malware.
• Ducklink – this is a screen capture utility that lets you capture shots of an entire scrollable length of a webpage or just a specific portion of your screen.
• WizardRSS – supposedly turns a partial feed into a full feed.

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Utilities

• BuzzVoice – this app grabs news from any of over 1,600 top blogs and news sources, and converts them into audio files in real time. You can stream the audio to your PC, iPod, or iPhone any time.
• HTML Instant – a real-time online HTML editor. Great for figuring out what’s going wrong with your code when you hit a kink.
• ShoutKey – a temporary URL shortener that allows users to pick the duration for which a link will be accessible.
• txtSpoof – allows you to send a text message and decide who the message appears to be sent from. This should provide endless hours of fun for high schoolers everywhere.
• Wozaik – Cut the best portions of your favorite websites and keep them all on the same page. If you have a lot of web pages you like to regularly visit, you can use this site can to create your own custom interfaces to view them all at once.

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Utilities

• CintaNotes – a self-contained application that organizing notes into a strip running down the side of a screen or minimized. Really useful for online research.
• Goo.gl – Google has finally launched its own url shortener, which it’s being billed as the “Stablest, Most Secure, And Fastest URL Shortener On The Web.” Plus, if you simply add “.qr” to the end of any goo.gl URL, it will create a QR code!
• Soylent – a plugin for Micro$oft Word that farms out fact-checking, editing, rewriting and proofreading for pennies on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service.
• Sumatra PDF – a small, portable alternative to Adobe Reader.

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Utilities

• DIY Dynamic Templates – This utility lets users create and print schedules and pages for filofaxes. Save big over the overpriced daily planners from stores.
• Flux utility – An awesome utility that adjusts the color of your monitor from florescent to halogen with the time of day to reduce eye strain.
• Hashapass – An online service for creating really strong passwords. Great for professional who work in high-security industries.
• Pixlr – A seriously amazing online image editor nearly comparable to Photoshop.
• Scr.im – Convert your email address into a short, safe web link you can share without fear of a spambot collecting it and bombarding your with junk mail.
• Zamzom – This utility lists all of the computers connected to your wireless network. Useful if you think your connection is being used by a neighbor.

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Utilities

• About.Me – a new site that lets users create a custom splash page and personal analytics dashboard for their web identity.
• Facebook Slideshow – Browse a photos on Facebook without having to click back and forth with this experimental slideshow app.
• Fences 1.01 – Fences is a program that helps you organize your desktop, and can hide your icons when they’re not in use. A “Fence”, a term coined by this program, is an icon group on your desktop. Fences is an add-on to your desktop, not a replacement.

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