That’s it, I’m never eating out again.

YourFonts allows you to upload large templates (up to 4000 x 5000 pixels) and it has the most advanced raster to vector conversion algorithm. Together this results in unbeatable high quality personal fonts.

Font Generator – Make Your Own Handwriting Font With Your Fonts

In the past, Microsoft did make a huge UI change with XP but it was done so in Beta 2, which was still an early stage in development. In retrospect, Windows Whistler (XP) Build 2428 was the first build to contain the new Luna theme, which was a while before the RC came out. The introduction of a new UI during the RTM, especially when Microsoft has spent so much time fine-tuning and improving the current UI, could seem unlikely. But just because Microsoft hasn’t included the new UI in any of the leaked builds yet, it doesn’t mean they haven’t been working on it. Could Thurott be right? Only time will tell.

Windows Whistler (XP) Build 2257 (Pre-Beta 1). This was 7 builds after Build 2250 was shown at PDC. Source: Winsupersite

Windows Whistler (XP) Build 2428 (Beta 2). This was 132 builds after Beta 1 or 18 builds after Beta 2.

Peacekeeper – The Browser Benchmark by Futuremark Corporation

There are plenty of web sites that will let you know which famous and historic people you share a birthday with. Dead At Your Age is kind of the opposite. It doesn’t quite tell you who died on your birthday. But does let you know which famous people you’ve lived longer than.

All you have to do is enter your birth date and the web site will dig up a list of people who left behind this mortal coil before they hit your age. You can also subscribe for email alerts letting you know when you’ve surpassed another milestone.

In other words, Dead At Your Age does a really good job of letting you know that lots of people lived, became famous and died as actors musicians, politicians, or war heroes in the amount of time it’s taken you to get where you are.

‘’A Russian man survived after downing three bottles of vodka and leaping from a fifth floor balcony – twice.

Alexei Roskov says he jumped the second time because he couldn’t take his wife’s nagging about the first time.

Wife Yekaterina had watched in horror as her drunken husband opened the kitchen window of their Moscow apartment, and hurled himself out.

Astonishingly Mr Roskov, 22, survived and managed to stagger back upstairs with barely a scratch after the 50ft fall.

But while his wife called for an ambulance and began to scold him, he jumped again.

Amazed medics treated Mr Roskov for minor cuts and bruises before releasing him.’’

How do you spell relief?

ClamWin is a Free Antivirus program for Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003 and Vista.

ClamWin Free Antivirus comes with an easy installer and open source code. You may download and use it absolutely free of charge. It features:

• High detection rates for viruses and spyware;
• Scanning Scheduler;
• Automatic downloads of regularly updated Virus Database.
• Standalone virus scanner and right-click menu integration to Microsoft Windows Explorer;
• Addin to Microsoft Outlook to remove virus-infected attachments automatically.

Free Antivirus for Windows – Open source GPL virus scanner

Today’s change means that Microsoft no longer offers free support for XP or Office 2003. It also means the firm is no longer taking requests for design changes or new features.

The end of mainstream support also means XP is now technically out of warranty. That looks pretty strange considering it’s still possible to buy a new machine running XP through downgrade options.

Though XP is now in what’s dubbed the “extended support phase”, Microsoft will continue to offer advice for the system through its Support and Knowledge Base sites. It will also continue to issue security updates, both through the Patch Tuesday update and emergency patches where necessary. These security updates will be available until at least 4 August 2014.

Users now have two options for additional XP services from Microsoft. They can pay for support (on a per-hour, per-incident or other basis). They can also purchase an ‘extended hotfix agreement’, which means they’ll continue to get updates for the system which are purely for performance rather than security. However, such agreements must be purchased within the next 90 days.

For users outside the US, mainstream support may still be active if local laws require Microsoft to offer it for longer. Mainstream support is also still active for the ‘Embedded’ edition of XP, which is used on some devices such as arcade games and electronic cash registers.

It’s worth remembering that many users will still be able to get XP support from computer manufacturers rather than Microsoft. Business may also be covered by other Microsoft programs such as Software Assurance.

The end of mainstream support is hardly the end of the world as you should be able to find a solution to most XP problems somewhere online.

FAIL Blog: Pictures and Videos of Owned, Pwnd and Fail Moments

This USB Tulip Hub has got to be the prettiest computer accessory we’ve seen in a while. OK so it’s plastic, but it’s better than nothing, no? Next we’d like it done in shot silk with a Lalique crafted tub base. Thank you. $22.00.

Turn your desk into a blooming garden with this pretty tulip USB hub! Four USB high-speed ports are included, with one colorful red flower for each. Compatible with most USB plugs, for both Mac and Windows systems.

Spam. Those pointless, highly annoying junk messages that keep showing up in your inbox. Sadly enough, it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting rid of spam anytime soon, so in the meantime, here are some interesting facts you probably didn’t know about those pesky electronic messages everyone loves to hate.

• Back in 1864… Spam dates back to the 19th century. Western Union allowed telegraphic messages to be sent to multiple destinations. It didn’t take long before someone figured out the potential and in May 1864 the first unsolicited mass commercial telegrams started showing up.
• The origin of the name. The term spam is most likely derived from a 1970 Monty Python sketch. The sketch takes place in a cafe where everything on the menu includes SPAM meat and a chorus of Vikings drown out conversation by repeatedly singing “SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM… lovely SPAM, wonderful SPAM”, SPAMming the dialogue.
• Backronyms. There are a couple of false backronyms for spam: Shit Posing As Mail, and Stupid Pointless Annoying Messages.
• SPAM luncheon meat. The maker of the SPAM luncheon meat (Hormel Foods Corporation) doesn’t object to the term “spam”. They have however asked that the capitalized version of the word (i.e. SPAM) is reserved for their product and trademark. So… spam is spam, but SPAM is luncheon meat.
• Green Card spam. The first big commercial “spam incident” on the Internet happened in 1994 when two lawyers (a husband and wife team) started using bulk Usenet postings to advertise immigration law services. It became known as the “Green Card spam”. In spite of widespread condemnation, the attorneys claimed that free speech gave them the right to send out unwanted commercial messages and labeled their opponents as hypocrites and anti-commerce radicals. They later wrote a book called “How to Make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway”.
• Amount of spammers. About 80% of all email spam is sent by fewer than 200 spammers.
• Percentage of email. 80-85% of all email is estimated to be spam, although some sources estimate it to be as much as 95%.
• Top sources of spam. In terms of volume, the major sources of spam in the last quarter of 2008 were: 1. United States (19.8%), 2. China (9.9%), 3. Russia (6.4%), 4. Brazil (6.3%), 5. Turkey (4.4%).
• McColo. When hosting provider McColo, known for hosting many spammers and botnet operators, was taken down in November of 2008, spam dropped a massive 50-75% across the Internet. Unfortunately spam levels were back to normal just a couple of weeks later as the spammers migrated their servers to other places.
• Different names for spam. Different kinds of spam often get their own nicknames. Spam over IM is referred to as “spim” (spam + IM) and spam over SMS is sometimes referred to as “spasms” (coined by the adnews website Adland in 2000).

Source: Wikipedia entries about email spam and electronic spam.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(electronic)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_spam

After you’ve finished with your uploads and your editing those files become ‘shareable’ via multiple networks such as Facebook, Typepad, and other.

When using Closr.it, it creates a URL that can be sent to whomever you wish as a widget that you embed on your site. Given that it gets rid of the need to do copy-pasting of images which, naturally, messes with the quality of the picture upon zooming in or various alterations, the service comes in handy.

In brief, for those who care about keeping the image quality unaltered for any level of zoom, Closr.it is worth trying.

The OFF-System is a peer to peer networking system that is using a different approach than darknets like Freenet. Darknets anonymize user data while the Off-System creates randomized multi-used data blocks which means that it is not possible to map a data block to a single file on the network.

To retrieve data from the peer to peer network one would need to download all required blocks plus the so called retrieval url which is created when files are added to the network. Each block on its own is nothing but a set of random data which means that this data is not copyrighted by anyone.

The developers have a multi-page article on their website describing it in great detail. Users on the other hand can simply download the Open Source client of the Off-System which comes with a comfortable search function build in.

The options are quite extensive ranging from incoming and outgoing filters, security settings like trusted nodes to networking and advanced options. There is usually a overhead involved when replicating files which can range from a 50%-200% file increase on the receiving end.

On the go: changing…
At home: changing…
In the office: changing…

Then NetSetMan is your solution. It will do the work for you.

NetSetMan – Network Settings Manager | Freeware & Professional

So you think you can type fast, eh? Not soooooooo fast. Here comes Fast140. What is it you ask? Well, it recycles tweets from Twitter and turns them into a speed typing game. No longer will you be testing your speed to mundane and correctly spelled sentences like "The dog ran quickly.", now you get stuck with winners like the one pictured above.

Uhhh, I’m sorry what? I have to type………"Hero" by Enrique Iglesias? YES, I did. Ugh! Now that’s a time waster my friends. And I loved every damn second of it.

This gem of an app comes via Philip Kaplan, aka "Pud", the fellow who brought us ummm….Effed Company. I can say Effed, right? I got the inside scoop by pinging him on Twitter naturally:

Brilliant behind the scenes information, thanks Philip.

I think that playcount will increase dramatically, don’t you guys think?
It’s actually a really cool idea and a nice use case for Twitter’s recently released oAuth support. It just tweets for you once saying that you’re trying out Fast140, and then all it does is track your scores for you after that.

Now go play, and enjoy it!

Many of you have probably been adjusting Windows’ half-open connection limit since Windows XP. It’s widely regarded as one way to help increase the speed of your torrent downloads.

If you’re running Windows 7 beta (or one of the plethora of leaked post-beta builds), Half-Open Limit Fix is a small, portable utility that is compatible with your OS and will patch your tcpip.sys in just a few clicks.
Download the application, launch it, and click the button for your preferred language – nearly a dozen are supported. Most sites recommend using 50-100 and the program will default to 100. If you want to, change it – otherwise, just click add to tcpip.sys and reboot.

Once Windows has loaded again you can head to your torrent app’s configuration screens and adjust your connection preferences to utilize the new half-open connection setting (TorrentFreak has a good tutorial for uTorrent and BitComet).

A fan is really just a fan.  It blows on you, the only extra that is useful that could possibly be added to a fan is a heating option.  Beyond that nothing extra is really needed.  Yet, you do need your gadgets to match your style and even your interests.  So if you need a fan to blend in with cheesy USB gadgets, this is the one.  That or this could be for teachers and Apple/apple fans.   Although the fan doesn’t come in very Apple-like colors, meaning, it doesn’t com in white.

This cheap flimsy fan in the shape of an apple is powered by a USB cord.  If you want it blowing on you while you’re away from the computer, you’ll just need 4 AAA batteries on stand by to keep it powered up.  Those batteries are of course, not included with the brightly colored fan.  The fan comes in red, green and orange.  As I said before, sadly there is no white version.  It includes a USB cable with the fan upon purchase.  You can pick it up for $16.99 from Gadget4all.

Source: Pocket-lint

If we’re to believe the survey, 42 percent of IT departments will wait 12 to 24 months, another 24 percent will wait 24 to 36 months, and 17 percent will wait more than 36 months. The study also found that 50 percent of those surveyed are considering or have considered a move to a non-Windows OS. I queried Dimensional on this number since it was so high, and they forwarded me this from their study:

This same question was asked in similar surveys conducted in 2007 and 2008. In 2007, 44 percent of participants said that they had considered this alternative, and in 2008 42 percent of participants said they had. In this 2009 survey, the number jumped to 50 percent.

Of that 50 percent who consider a switch, says Dimensional, 14 percent actually follow through. “There is a distinct upward trend in this number over the past two years (9% to 11% to 14%),” Dimensional’s Senior Research Analyst Diane Hagglund told me.

Vista only runs on about one out of every 10 business PCs, according to Forrester. This pales in comparison to Windows XP, which runs on about 7 out of every 10 PCs. Equate it to a disfunctional marriage: you really should be divorced, yet you can’t imagine life without one another.

Add to this developers’ blase attitude towards Vista. Last year, only eight percent were writing applications for Vista, an Evans Data study indicated. That figure was only expected to rise to 24 percent this year, according to the firm’s projections. The Vista hate seems to be universal.

If we are to put stock in Dimensional’s findings, and Microsoft really does run the risk of repeating history with Windows 7, what can it do to prevent that? For one thing, time may be on Microsoft’s side. Free support for XP runs out Tuesday. While paid extended support expires in 2014, it’s likely that, rather than spending extra money for support of an aging product, companies will opt to upgrade. With the economy the way it is, cutting costs is always a good thing.

Another thing Microsoft could do is urge developers to actually develop applications for Windows 7. It’s a valid point of argument that Vista failed in part because there were no applications really were made for the operating system, as MG Siegler pointed out last year. Enterprise — and heck, consumers too — need a reason to upgrade. The best place to start would be software.