Cool Tools!

It's been a while since the library blog showed off a few cool tools to make your online life a bit easier, so it seems like high time to take a look at some of the new things out there!

Printing!

Printing problems may be one of the biggest headaches to come along with all of the wonderful things available on the web. How many times have you tried to print a web page and discovered that it refused to print correctly? The text was cut off. Advertising or images on the page made what should be a simple 1 page print job into a several page nightmare. If this sounds familiar then you'll be happy to find PrintWhatYouLike.com, a site that let's you take any web site and edit out those parts you don't care about and preserve the parts you do, making printing tidy and neat and efficient. Of all of the tools I've discovered in the last six months, this is by far my favorite.

Another set of problems involving printing arises in relation to PDFs. PDFs are Portable Document Format files -- the ones that look exactly like scanned in document originals. But more than ever before, new online tools let you manipulate PDF files in interesting ways, converting things (including entire web pages) to and from the PDF format. Enabling editing within PDF documents. A great site to explore these options is NitroPDF.com's collection of free online tools. NitroPDF is working to become a viable competitor for Adobe and so is garnering name recognition for its software by letting users sample limited versions of its products for free. These include converters (HTML and Word), creators and editors. The links are all for the online versions that do not require downloads. They also have free trial versions, but you do not need to download a trial to take advantage of the free software.

It's Just Easier!

PageZipper is one of those tools that just makes life easier. Why am I not surprised that it's brought to you by those clever folks who created PrintWhatYouLike? PageZipper will bind together pages that are in a series, like a bunch of photos or a sequence of Best Sites of 2008 or whatever that require you to click between each page. Instead of clicking the app simply stacks the pages vertically as you scroll. As long as you keep scrolling it continues to stack until either you stop or the sequence ends. At LOLCats you might scroll until you crashed you computer...

Another "it's just easier" tool is NameChk. This website will run your preferred user name through a massive collection of social networking, bookmarking or online tool sites to see if it is still available. That way you can run out and secure RicketyRockhopper before anyone else snags it (still available on all but Squidoo and Vimeo).

It's Just Less Annoying!

Don't invite spam to your mailbox. Rather than posting your email address, any of them, on a Facebook page, internet forum, web site, etc. you can instead use a nifty tool called Scr.im, which will assign you a short, convenient web address that will intervene between you and email address harvesters. For similar reasons, on those occasions you absolutely do have to use an email address and don't want to be bothered with the subsequent email, create an email account just for that purpose.

It's Just More Secure!

Have your own laptop or wireless device you'd like to protect in case it gets stolen? You can download the Adeona program and it will simply sit on your machine and wait, doing nothing unless you activate it. But if your machine is swiped and someone logs in to the internet using it, and you've activated Adeona in the meantime, the program will send location information that authorities can use in locating the device. (Note: this is a research program, which explains why it is free, but it is also in development so you should expect some imperfections.)

Feeling a Little Foolish?

April is the month of fools, and it is also National Humor Month, and perhaps more than ever we could use a little laughter. In honor of April Fool's Day, here is the Museum of Hoaxes list of the Top 100 April Fool's Pranks of All Time. They also provide a list of today's best pranks, including my personal favorite Gmail autopilot, which would respond to your mail for you. Museum of Hoaxes is one of my personal favorite time-waster web sites. PC World provides links to the day's best techno-foolery.

Comedy fans have a number of places (besides the ubiquitous YouTube) that they can go on the web to satisfy their desire for a funny fix. For fans of particular types of comedy, here are locations of a few best comedy bits online. David Letterman's Top 10 List Archive, Jay Leno's Headlines, the Darwin Awards (for those who improve the gene pool by creatively departing from it), and here are some of everybody's favorite Dumb Criminals stories. Here is the Onion's all-too believable-at-times fake news site, while for those who prefer their fake news a little farther off the radar, the Weekly World News has stories just for you. (Check out the latest about the Fiji Mermaid seeking FAFSA aid.) Whether or not you use an RSS reader, you may find it worthwhile to check in on Humorfeed every so often. The feeds "feeders" gather in funny material from around the web suitable to a variety of tastes. And since you're connected to the College, you'll find things to laugh at on CollegeHumor. (Check out Your Essay Translated and Your Professor's PowerPoint Presentation.)

While not for everybody, John Hodgeman's (PC in the Mac/PC commercials) comedy, with its witty pseudo-intellectualism and genuine humanity can be both very funny and surprisingly insightful. Here is his 16-minute TED lecture: A brief digression on matters of lost time. (TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and the TED Talks, available for free on the web, are from an annual conference which brings together 50 talented and innovative thinkers in all different fields of knowledge and challenges them to give the "18 minute talk of their lives". The results are extraordinary.)

Like your humor in illustrated form? Check out the online portion of the Library of Congress' display: Herblock's History (Political Cartoons from the Crash to the Millenium), Daryl Cagle's Professional Cartoonists Index (searchable by topic -- check out Twitter -- or artist), the CartoonBank at the New Yorker (which is a commerce site, but both the Free link and the Recession Proof link are worth a look for no cost)

Make 'Em Laugh is a PBS site about comedy that includes tributes (and funny stories) about some of the greatest comedians of all times as well as five of the greatest viral videos and an interview with Michael McKean talking about This is Spinal Tap. The American Comedy Archives at Emerson College include both transcripts and videos of some interviews with famous comics and comedy writers. A few years ago, the American Film Institute put together a list 100 Years...100 Laughs, selecting the best in film comedy. You can check out the list and see if you agree.

And somewhere in all of this, you ought to find a little to laugh about.