It looked stunning when I stumbled upon this particular website PollDaddy. We have a wiki KM portal for our team and my manager asked me to add “Polls” section to it. I was searching through the documentation of xwiki to get to know to create a poll for our portal When I found PollDaddy. One can easily create online polls and surveys. Jus we need to create an account which is free and then we would be able to create stunning polls and surveys in a minute. The polls/ Surveys can be embedded into your blogs, websites etc. They provide the HTML code(JavaScript/Flash) for embedding the polls / Surveys. The UI looks too good and also very easy to design. There are also many templates to choose from while building your polls/Surveys. Thanks to PollDaddy I was able to accomplish my task very easily.

PipeBytes a free online service to transfer any file size only to your buddy. Even though there are many sites like mailbigfile or yousendit which emails large files to the recipient, but this PipeBytes is special. No software to install. Only web browser is needed. Send files on any size. Sender logs in to PipeBytes gets a code selects the file to upload. It gives a key and a link. Pass on the key to your buddy and he can log into PipeBytes and click “Pick File”, Enter the key. So your buddy could start downloading file as you upload it, which lacks in many of the already existing file server. PipeBytes widgets are also available, so now you can add this functionality to your website.

It was selected as one of the PC world’s “Top 25 worst tech products of all time” Apple’s Pippin. Pippin a multimedia platform marketed by Apple between 1995 and 1997 aimed at playing multimedia CDs, games and also functioning as a network computer. It had a CD Rom drive and a standard output that can be connected to a TV. Apple never planned to release Pippin on its own, instead it licensed the technology to the third parties. But before Apple’s Pippin got released in the market, the market was dominated by Sony, Sega and Nintendo. The news is that Apple had filed for the extension of the trademark of Pippin. After the success of iPhone in the Mobile Market, iPod in the music Market now with the resource and the momentum they have right now… This time Apple will come definitely good and will be challenge to Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation.

WikiTrash – This page in Wikipedia contains a list of a bit unusual articles. Wikipedia states that the page contains “unusual articles” – are articles that you wouldn’t normally find in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Probably you could spend a lazy afternoon going through the articles and editing the pages. The contents are categorized into Military, Relegion, Language, Sports, Science, Food and drink etc.

Few interesting articles from the trash PigWar, Extraterrestrial Real Estate, Vril, Guilty not proven, Longest English word etc.

I always used to love cooking. The love for it increased more after watching the movie ” Ratatouille “. As I just started cooking I was unaware of many recipes, I had to call my mom every time. This happens with most of the bachelors, newly wedded people. Arusuvai.com (in Tamil) contains recipes, health tips, traditional recipes, discussion forums, polls etc. The recipes are categorized appropriately. The only drawback is that the “search” feature is not so impressive. Hope in the near future they will improve it soon. Also arusuvai.com maintains a hotel list in Tamil nadu. Many people have started contributing special recipes also.

We use the <windows>key more often in our keyboard. I use it to show the desktop <windows> key + D and to open the windows explorer <windows>+E more often. There is a freeware called Calvier using which we can create key combinations for opening up virtually any applications that is in your PC. Download it from here.

Most of us would have used windows task manager, which shows whats running in windows operating system. With this Process Explorer v 11.04 shows us information about which handles and DLLs have opened or loaded. This is more for advanced users. This process explorer has three panes. The left pane shows description of the file, CPU resources and memory used. The right pane shows a list of currently active process. The bottom pane shows the DLLs used by the currently selected process / handles used by the currently selected process. Hovering over the process name shows the path where the executable file is located. This might help us in removing viruses, spyware, where they might be hidden. Double click on a process Wow!!! u get a more details like performance graph, threads, security, environment etc. This process explorer is useful for tracking down DLL version problem or handling leaks and thus provides insight to the way the applications or windows work. Download it from here

Gone are the days, where we needed softwares for our daily activities. Right from typing word documents, maintaining accounts, preparing presentations, editing photo  etc. almost all of these tasks can be done online now. Considering photo editing tools eventhough there are many online photo editing tools, I found this particular online photo editing tool splashup.com very impressive and contains almost all commonly used brushes, effects, layering effects etc. that are available in Adobe Photoshop. Using splashup.com you can edit photos from your PC, Flickr, Picasa, facebook etc. Hope in the next versions we may get more effects and a online photoshop soon.

Phishing has been on the rise with the increase of the e-commerce websites. There are many ways to avoid phishing. The “Calling ID” anti phishing toolbar is a very useful addon to our browser (works with both internet explorer and firefox).  This calling ID runs almost 54 automatic verification tests to verify the websites. When any of these tests fail the user will be alerted with the message before giving the username, password, etc. in the website. Also another interesting feature of this calling ID toolbar is that it shows the owner, his complete address and the server location in the toolbar. So before doing business with anyone online verify their identity using this Anti-Phishing toolbar. It is completely free and you can download it from here. One pitfall about this Calling ID toolbar is that it eats almost 20MB of your RAM.

Who hates popularity in this world??? Many times we would have imagined our picture coming in the front page of a popular magazine. Want to have a look at it??. There are many sites like magmypic, oncoverpage, FotoTricks offering Fake magazine covers where you can upload your picture and have fun watching it. Also please ensure that you don’t use it in any website which has any commercial interest so please be careful while using the picture on the internet.