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Most reliable blogging services of 2010

Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: Blogging, Business Tools,

When someone picks a blogging service, what often determines which one they'll pick may be the price or features. However, reliability is often forgotten, despite the fact that if your site goes down, nothing else really matters. Pingdom, an Internet monitoring company, published a study they did of some of the most popular blogging platforms on the Internet. The study was conducted over 2 months, and covered the services from Tumblr, Wordpress, Typepad, Blogger and Posterous. They used in-house software to monitor uptime, and check the availability of certain services. Overall, they found that during the period tested, Tumblr was by far the most unreliable, with Blogger being the winner at basically no downtime whatsoever. Check out the report for full details.

LinkedIn now offers sharing widgets to publishers

Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: Business Tools, Social Networks,

When people speak of social networks, a lot of the conversation these days is focused on Facebook and Twitter, but in the business world, LinkedIn is where the action is. Today, the business social networking site has started offering a "Share" button to web publishers, very similar to the one already available from Facebook. The new button allows readers to share content from sites they visit with their LinkedIn connections. Several button sizes and options are available for publishers to choose from. Competition in the sharing area is of course very high, with many sites already offering Facebook, Digg, and Twitter buttons. It's unclear if many sites will jump in and add LinkedIn sharing links, or if those will remain confined to the business world.

Zibra Open It! helps you unbox anything with ease

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Smart Home,

Zibra just announced their new Open It! tool, aimed at helping all of us who open packages with any sort of frustrating regularity. The Open It! offers five methods of busting into those packages, saving yourself a lot of anxiety and injury:

Cut It: Long cutting jaws cut quickly through sealed clamshell packaging
Snip It: Hardened, precision ground steel blades snip through zip ties and twist ties
Slice It: Slices CDs and DVDs and the auto-retract system prevents blade from being exposed when not in use
Unscrew It: Removable screwdriver for easy use and convenient storage
Pop It: Bottle cap opener is cleverly built into jaws

The best part is that this thing is only $9.99 at places like Wal-Mart, Michaels, OfficeMax, Office Depot and others, which means we pretty much wanna get one immediately. They’re available in green and orange colors.

Google launches Latin translator

Posted by John Kilhefner Categories: Productivity,

Google recently updated their blog with a post titled “Veni, Vidi, Verba Verti”. Being that there are not too many Latin speakers around, I am sure you were confused by this, and even more so by the subsequent foreign text. However, by using Google’s new translator you can make sense of it all in just a matter of seconds. For instance, the title translated to roughly “I Came, I Saw, I Translated the Words”.

Click here for the Latin Google post, and here for Google Translator. Here is the Google post in its translated entirety:

“That language barriers be torn away and the knowledge of the world is made accessible and useful, translation systems of many languages of the nations were created by us. Today, we announce the first language translation system by which no native speakers now make use of: the Latin. Being but a few speak Latin daily, year by year more than a hundred thousand American students receive the National Latin Exam. Besides many people all over the world study Latin.

This Latin translation system rarely be used to translate e-mails or understand the subtitles of YouTube videos. But many that are ancient books of philosophy, of physics and of mathematics are written in Latin. But many thousands of books are in Google Books, who have whole passages in Latin.

Translating by machine from Latin is difficult and our grasp of grammar not without error. The Latin is unmatched because most of them Latin books have already been written and only a few of the new shall be hereafter. Many have been translated into other languages and these translations we use to train our translation system. Since this system translates books well similar to those from whom he learned, our ability to translate famous books (such as The Gallic War Caesar ‘s) is already good.

The next time you find a Latin passage or you need help with the Latin writings, try this.”

InstallPad Downloads Programs Faster

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Software,

Do you get frustrated when your PC wakes up every morning and tells you about updates that appeared overnight? For those tired of downloading programs or new browsers, InstallPad is the answer. It takes care of the chore quicker so that you can get on with your surfing. The software can also find latest versions of your programs as well as service packs, tools and applications. Best of all, InstallPad is free after installation of Microsoft .NET framework 2.0.

D-link Sidestage USB Monitor

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Accessories, USB, Peripherals,

We love finding things that do more than light up to put into our USB port. D-link’s Sidestage is such a gadget. The 7-inch LCD monitor with 800x480 resolution is an extension of your PC’s main screen. Use it to IM, watch videos, video conferencing or utilizing tools such as PhotoShop. The monitor is a mere 7 x 4.6 x 3/4-inches and weighs 1.34 lbs, and is compatible with most CRTs and flat panels. Look for price and availability towards the end of the year.

Become a Speed Cuber

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Toys,

As we know by now, Rubik’s Cube devotees actually compete to see who is the fastest. Want to up your game and join the ranks of a speed cuber? MegaHouse’s kit comes with a cube, screwdrivers to dissect it and make it respond quicker, lubricant, and a manual on how you can achieve your goal. And you thought the competitors were just nimble-fingered. Although the instructions are in Japanese, we figure there must be illustrations. The Speed Cubing Kit is available for 2,625 Yen (~$26.00>.)

The Freelancer’s Toolset

Posted by Jenny Lewis Categories: Internet, Misc. Tech,

While perusing del.icio.us bookmarks over the holiday, I came across technology and productivity blog Codswallop’s fantastic Freelancer’s Toolset. Yoav Ezer posted this list of 100 tools for freelancers back in May, and barring a few recent developments in the web app universe, it’s exhaustive and incredibly helpful. With apps covering organization, calendaring and to-do’s, money, storage, project management and productivity, writing and design, security and privacy, mobility and contact, marketing and networking, business and legal, contact and feedback, website tools, printing and packaging, revenue building and giving, and more - just about anything that a freelancer can use on the web to further their business can be found on this list.

For Ladies Only: The Miss Macgyver Tool Set

Posted by Lolita Beckwith Categories: Accessories, Smart Home, Misc. Tech,

With so many women living on their own or with female roommates, we’re surprised this wasn’t invented sooner. The Miss MacGyver Tool Set is a cleverly-named collection of 5 tools, each in a pretty pink color, that perform a total of 45 functions! Includes a hammer, two sets of pliers, wire cutters, knives, screwdrivers, scissors, openers and much, much more. Plus, you get not one, but two pink tool belts! The set is lovely, feminine and means business—just like you. Available for $46.45 USD.

Read More | Latest Buy via Nerd Approved

The Mother of all Swiss Army Knives

Posted by Lolita Beckwith Categories: Accessories, Misc. Tech,

We’ve always been fascinated by Swiss Army Knives (don’t ask), and we’re quite taken with this one because it not only takes the cake—it can slice it all kinds of ways! Wenger’s Giant Swiss Army Knife contains a whopping 87 useable instruments, for over 100 functions. Need a double-cut wood saw? Check. Golf club face cleaner? Check. Cigar cutter? Check. Screwdriver for gunsights? Check. A laser pointer? Check. And on and on. The Wenger, which is 9"W, is actually meant to be a collector’s item, which sort of explains the exorbitant $1025 USD price tag. Too bad, because we’d love to fiddle around with it for a few hours. We’ll just make do with the slightly smaller USB version instead. The Wenger is currently unavailable for purchase.

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