Filed under: Internet, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Ever find yourself puzzling over an unfamiliar word on a web page? Sure, you could open a new browser tab and look it up at Dictionary.com. Or you could just drag a Lingro bookmarklet to your browser toolbar and hit it to make every word on a web page clickable. When you select a word a definition will pop up, assuming you've set the tool to translate from English to English. You can also click on the flag iconts to translate words into Spanish, French, German, Italian, Polish, or Swedish.

The definitions are culled from publicly available dictionaries and user contributions filed under a Creative Commons license. So if you find a word without a definition, a message will pop up asking if you'd like to contribute one. Of course, the odds of your clicking the word if you already knew the meaning are pretty slim (unless you're say, writing a review of Lingro).

You can also use Lingro the old fashioned way, by visiting the service's home page and typing in a word or entering a web address to translate. There's even a service that lets you upload a file from your desktop for translation into another language.

Honestly, we didn't have much luck translating entire web sites. But Lingro's dictionary definitions and single word translations seem pretty good.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

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Filed under: Utilities, Windows

There are a couple of ways to backup your computer. You could perform regular backups of your important files and data so that you can restore them if your goes kaput and you have to build a new system or reinstall the operating system and programs from scratch. Or you can create a complete disk image that you can use to restore your computer to exactly the state it was in the moment you created the backup.

While there are plenty of free utilities for performing both types of backup, most free disk imaging software requires you to reboot your computer and load Linux or simplified version of Windows to complete the image. That means you can't create your backup while you're using your PC to do other things. But Macrium Reflect Free Edition lets you create an image of your Windows system while using Windows.

Macrium Reflect comes in 32 bit and 64 bit versions and is compatible with Windows XP and Vista. You can image a complete disk or just individual partitions. And you can save your images to a local hard drive, network drive, or optical disc. You can also schedule backups and create restore discs using Linux or BartPE.

We were able to backup a partition with 12GB of data in just about 16 minutes. Since Macrium Reflect lets you create compressed backups, the image weighed in at just 8GB.

There are some features that you can only access by paying $40 for a fully licensed copy of Macrium Reflect, including Windows Server 2003 compatibility, differential and incremental backups, and the abililty to backup and restore individual files and folders. But the free edition is still pretty useful and provides an easy to use alternative to previously mentioned DriveImage XML.

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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Apple, Microsoft

Parallels for Mac, the crazily popular utility for Mac users to run Windows on their Apple computers in...a window has said the product's user base has hit 1,000,000 users.

That's a really nice pace for a piece of software not blessed by Mr. Jobs himself we'd say.

Right now the company's running a special where you can get 2 copies for $129. Kind of cool if you have multiple Macs around the house like a lot of you do.

Our question is this though:

Do a lot of people get Parallels and run Windows because they want to, or because they have to? Do people secretly love Windows XP (or egads Vista) but want to feel like a cool kid by having a shiny sexy Apple product?

Tell us what you think in the comments, if you're one of the 1,000,000 users of Parallels, why do you run Windows at all anymore?

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Filed under: Internet, Web services, Google, Googleholic, web 2.0

• Street View expands
• Docs gets PDF storage
• Feedburner's new address
• Google Reader, Contra-style
• Grand Theft Google
• GBroswer rumors

Continue reading Googleholic for June 10, 2008

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Filed under: Audio, Internet, AOL

AOL has relaunched AOL Radio, with live streams from 140 CBS-owned radio stations from around the country in addition to hundreds of web-only channels. That includes a handful of talk radio stations and dozens of music stations. But more importantly, the CBS deal could help AOL bring in local advertising deals, which could be a vital component in making AOL Radio profitable.

The New York Times reports that Arbitron rating show that AOL Radio has a larger weekly audience than any other web radio service. But the cost of providing the bandwidth for radio streams and paying royalties for the rights to stream the music is high, and the company has yet to turn a profit from its online radio efforts.

The deal with CBS replaces a similar partnership AOL had with XM Satellite Radio.

The new AOL Radio Player also features support for Safari, preset buttons and support for pausing radio streams and skipping some songs.

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Filed under: Utilities, Windows Mobile, Commercial, Mobile Minute

Spb Software House has released an updated version of the company's popular Spb Backup utility for Windows Mobile phones and PDAs. While most Windows Mobile devices come with some sort of backup software, Spb has a few features that sets it apart, like the ability to create automatic scheduled backups and self-extracting backups that can be restored without installing Spb Backup first.

The new version includes:

• Support for device and ROM upgrades
• Smartphone version
• A file-black-list for files to ignore

Spb is also including desktop software that lets you manage backups on your PC and explore the contents of backup files.

Spb Backup 2.0 is compatible with Windows Mobile 2003 and newer devices with VGA and QVGA screens. There's a 5 day free trial available, but a full license will set you back $24.95. Current users can upgrade for $9.95. If you purchased Spb Backup in the last 90 days, you can upgrade for free.

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Filed under: News, E-mail, Web services

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Filed under: Fun, Internet, Video, Macintosh, Apple, iPhone

So some guy named Steve Jobs got up on stage at something called the WWDC yesterday and talked about some products from a company called...orange or banana? Or was it carrot.

Oh, Apple, that's right.

It was long. And sometimes boring. So thanks to Mahalo Daily, here it is in Sixty Seconds. Did we get our iPhone with iRobot and iHateMakingMyOwnCoffee? We do get Exchange integration and now we're all Mobile with MobileMe and plus Apps for iPhone coming July 11th. Whew, that's a lot.

What they left out was that the new OS Snow Leopard or Rain Monkey or whatever (coming next year), will support multi-core processors, AND be able to take advantage of even more RAM (up to 16TB!).

See for yourselves.

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Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Freeware

Opera has launched a release candidate of Opera 9.5, the latest version of the company's web browser. Opera 9.5 has been in beta for several months, but the release candidate is a bit more stable, sports a few new features, and more importantly, a bunch of bug fixes. Here are a few of the highlights:

• Features a previously mentioned new skin
• Smoother upgrade from Opera 9.2 to 9.5
• "Download message bodies" enabled on all POP accounts
• Stability fixes
• Improvements to the Mac native skin and fixed support for Mac OS X 10.2

Unless major issues with Opera 9.5 RC are found, this version could eventually be marked a stable release. If you haven't tried Opera in a while, it's worth taking for a spin. While there are still a handful of sites and web services that don't render properly in Opera, (Google, we're looking at you), overall the browser is incredibly fast and full featured.

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Filed under: Internet, Security, Utilities, BlackBerry

A common problem for many Blackberry and other mobile phone users have as well is what to do with all of those "omg these could be important" SMS messages. What to delete, what not to delete?

That's no longer the question in Dexrex's mind.

Dexrex has put out an SMS archiving software and service for Blackberry people like yourself.

Once you get an SMS message it immediately gets archived by Dexrex for later checking out, re-reading, pining over, crying about, and forwarding to your buddy whilst drinking at the bar online (by just you hopefully). Dangerous stuff indeed.

We're calling this one Gmail for SMS.

The obvious issue here is privacy, as it is with all web services. SMS messages can be uber private, for example:

"d00d, thiz girl eez hawt". Do you want everyone in the world to see that? We don't. Dexrex has to prove themselves trustworthy.

Having said that, if you get a lot of SMS', give it a shot, tell us if its helpful, and share your experiences.

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