Filed under: Internet, Web services

PayPal provides a quick and easy way to pay for goods on eBay, Half.com, or other sites that accept the service. But what if you want to buy something from a store that doesn't accept PayPal, but don't feel like giving up your credit card information? Last year PayPal launched a service that lets you create a single-user credit card number that is linked to your PayPal account. And today the company launched a plugin that gives you easy access to the the Secure Card service in your web browser.

You can install the PayPal plugin by logging into your PayPal account and select PayPal Plug-in from the menu on the left. You'll be prompted to download a 5MB file which will install the plugin for both Internet Explorer and Firefox. Note that the plugin is Windows only, and does not seem to play well with Firefox 3 yet.

Once installed, a window should pop up whenever you visit a site asking for your credit card information. You can also generate a card manually through a drop down menu.

If you're using Mac, Linux, or Firefox 3, you can still use the secure card feature by logging into your PayPal account and generating a card number. But the browser plugin makes the process much easier.

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Filed under: Windows, Windows Mobile, Microsoft, Mobile Minute, Beta

One of the coolest, and least frequently used, features in Windows Vista is Windows SideShow. Essentially this is a service that lets a computer running Windows Vista communicate with a handful of electronic devices like a media center remote control or an LCD screen. In other words, you can use a remote control to browse and control music playlists on your PC even when your monitor is off.

We've been expecting Microsoft to develop software that would let you use your Windows Mobile phone or PDA as a SideShow device pretty much since the first time we heard about this technology. Last year we even got a hint that a Windows Mobile client was coming. But it wasn't until this week that Microsoft finally released something, in the form of a beta release. And when we say beta, we mean it. Windows SideShow for Windows Mobile is listed as a 0.01 release.

Windows SideShow for Windows Mobile works on Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices that use the Microsoft Bluetooth stack. WiFi and 3G are not supported. If you've got a device that meets the requirements, you can use your PDA or phone to access information on your PC and control some PC functions from your device. For example, you can check the weather, read your email, control media playback, or use your device as a PowerPoint remote control.

[via the::unwired]

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Filed under: Mozilla, Beta

Firefox 3 RC2 is now available for download. Yes, we know that there was a file labeled Firefox 3 RC2 available on the Mozilla FTP server for the last few days, and we thank everyone who sent us links letting us know. But until Mozilla updates the links on the download page, it's not official. Mozilla may want to do some last minute testing or tweaking. Or they might just want to make sure the servers are ready to handle a ton of traffic.

So what's new with Firefox 3 RC2? Not a whole heck of a lot that you'll notice. This release wasn't about adding new features, but rather fixing bugs. There's still a rather lengthy list of known issues which you can read about in the release notes.

Also, keep in mind that installing Firefox 3 RC 2 will overwrite your previous Firefox installation. You shouldn't lose any bookmarks or preferences, but some add-ons may stop working until the developers update those extensions.

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Filed under: Internet, Social Software

Just type in any two items, and the web service will dig through a database of Wikipedia articles and figure out how long it would take to get from one to the other. The Wikipedia page for "2007" is apparently the closest to the "center" of Wikipedia, meaning that you can get to any other page from 2007 with an average of 3.45 clicks. When you take out Wikipedia pages for dates or long lists of items, the page for "United Kingdom," is the closest to the center, since it's an average of 3.67 clicks away from any other page.

[via Digital Inspiration

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Filed under: Video, Google, web 2.0

Google now lets you add annotations to YouTube videos. What does that mean? Basically, you can add text to any video you upload.

You can use three different formats, speech bubbles, notes, and spotlights. You can see a speech bubble in the image above. A note looks pretty much the same, but without the arrow pointing toward a mouth. And the spotlight lets you draw a box around some element in the video. When a user scrolls their mouse over that element, the text will pop up.

Annotations are easy to customize. You can change the size, location on the screen, and location in the video. You can also adjust how long they stay on the screen.

[via Google Operating System]

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Filed under: Developer, Internet, E-mail, Yahoo!

One of the most valuable features of any good email or IM service is the contact list. Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, and other companies that provide online communication tools also give you a place to store information about your friends, family, colleagues, and people who you met years ago and have completely forgotten about.

Yahoo! is making that much more useful by launching the Yahoo! Address Book API, which will let 3rd party developers create applications that can interact with your contact list. For example, you can use the API to develop an application that will scan your contact list to find other users who already belong to the social network you're signing up for, or a list of people you may want to invite. The API also supports contact synchronization, which could come in handy if you want to develop a tool that syncs online contact lists with Outlook or Thunderbird.

The API also provides the ability to create, modify, or delete contact information, which sounds a litle scary. But Yahoo! says write-acess is "available on a case by case basis," so developers will need to contact Yahoo! before creating a utility that has the ability to wipe out your address book.

Plaxo and LinkedIn have been using the API for a while, but Yahoo! is launching it publicly today.

[via Mashable]

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Filed under: Internet, Web services, VoIP, Search, web 2.0

WhitePages.com has announced a deal to purchase Snapvine, a company that provides voice applications for social networking sites. WhitePages plans to continue offering Snapvine's current services, including tools for "voice blogging," leaving voice comments on social networking sites, and adding voice comments to photos. But WhitePages also plans to roll out new services, including:

• Free, private voicemail boxes
• Email
• SMS services

Last month WhitePages abandoned plans to buy Jangl, a similar service. The WhitePages web site includes phone numbers for about 180 million people living in the US. Using Snapvine, WhitePages will be able to let individuals replace their phone numbers on the site with personal voicemail boxes or click to call buttons thet lets people reach them via phone without actually giving away their phone number.

[via TechCrunch]

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Filed under: Internet, Microsoft, Search

Microsoft is expanding its Search and Give program which lets you pick a charity to receive some cash every time you use the company's search engine. The program has been around for over a year and has raised more than $250,000 for 20,000 local schools and non-profit organizations.

The new version ups the ante by letting you choose from over a million different organizations you'd like to support. That includes more than 100,000 schools and 900,000 non-profit organizations. Microsoft has also increased the amount of money donated. Every time you click the search button, a penny will be donated, although Microsoft will only match up to 500 searches per user per month. That means you could raise up to $60 a year for the charity of your choice just by searching the web.

You can also use new tools to track your donations, total donations, and the number of people contributing to the same charity as you. While we kind of laughed when Microsoft tried to bribe people to use their product search engine by promising cashback on some purchases, the search and merit program is meant to appeal to your charitable side rather than your frugal side. If you're already a Live Search user, you should totally check out Search and Give. And if you prefer another search engine, it might at least be worth checking this one out.

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Filed under: Fun, Games, Internet, Microsoft

So you remember the whole Steve Ballmer egging incident, right? Of course you do, how could you forget?

Irked at the cost of Microsoft Office? Mad about Vista? Aren't we all.

Now you can get your revenge by throwing eggs at Steve Ballmer, yourself. We're sure Jerry Yang is already playing this one.

The concept is simple, throw eggs at Ballmer and get points. Most points makes you the most eggcellent egg tosser this side of Redmond.

Give this one a shot and post your high score in the comments!

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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Microsoft, Freeware, Search

A few months after releasing a technical preview of Windows Search 4.0, Microsoft has released the final version of its updated desktop search software.

If you've ever tried using the search feature in Windows XP or earlier Windows operating systems, you know that it can take several long minutes to get your results. Windows Search cuts that time down to seconds by constantly indexing every file on your desktop. If you have a lot of documents and media files on your PC, that index file can eat up a few hundred megabytes or even a few gigabytes, so you'll want to make sure you've got some free hard disk space before installing Windows Search.

Several other Microsoft products including Outlook 2007, OneNote 2007 and Windows Vista use Windows Search technology. But you can also download and install the standalone search client for any Windows XP, Vista, or Server 2003 system.

Windows Search 4.0 includes a number of bug fixes, allows you to index encrypted files, and provides search results faster than previous versions. If you're looking for a different free desktop search application, you might want to check out Google Desktop or Copernic Desktop Search.

[via ActiveWin]

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