KeePass

KeePass is a free/open-source password manager or safe which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key-disk. So you only have to remember one single master password or insert the key-disk to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish). Try it out at http://keepass.sourceforge.net/

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Etymology Word game

In this etymology game you'll be presented with 10 randomly selected etymology (word origin) or word definition puzzles to solve; in each case the word or phrase is highlighted in bold, and a number of possible answers will be presented. You need to choose the correct answer to score a point for that question. Beware! The false answers will often also seem quite plausible, and some of the true answers are hard to believe, but the site claims to have supporting documentation! Check out http://www.etymologic.com/

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Group Hug

The idea of http://grouphug.us is "for anyone to anonymously confess to anything. it actually feels kind of good to know that someone will read it. This is completely confidential. no information about you or your computer is stored. in fact, we only collect the text you type, the date, and a random number.” So if there's something you need to get off your chest, check out the site and post your confession. You can also visit the new Israeli site "i4giveu" at http://www.i4giveu.com/ for more confessions, http://www.notproud.com/ or PostSecret at http://postsecret.blogspot.com/. Postsecret is a weblog that asks people to submit 4-by-6-inch postcards that contain anonymous secrets. The postcards are scanned and placed on the website. PostSecret has thousands of daily visitors and a quick check of RSS reed subscriptions shows thousand of people get RSS feeds daily with new postcards. In their own words, "Each secret can be a regret, hope, funny experience, unseen kindness, fantasy, belief, fear, betrayal, erotic desire, feeling, confession, or childhood humiliation. Reveal anything - as long as it is true and you have never shared it with anyone before."

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Old Friends

The New Zealand Old Friends website (part of TradeMe) at http://www.oldfriends.co.nz/ has almost become the “default” reunion site for Kiwis. You can sign up for free to create a profile and keep your details up-to-date. Use the site to look up your old school friends and workmates. The Hawera High School listing currently has around 2500 registered ex-students and dozens of old class photos to browse through.

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Star Wars

Hot on the heels of the launch of http://www.bdaman.co.nz (where you can win b-daman prizes each week) is Hasbro’s new Star Wars toy site at http://star.wars.net.nz Each week the site offers 200 Star Wars Attacktix prize packs to be won - each prize pack contains an Attacktix Battle Game Figure, an Interactive CD ROM to teach you how to play and a cool Star Wars toy catalogue.

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OpenOffice

OpenOffice.org is a multi-platform office productivity suite. It includes the key desktop applications, such as a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and drawing program, with a user interface and feature set similar to other office suites. Sophisticated and flexible, OpenOffice.org also works transparently with a variety of file formats, including those of Microsoft Office. Download it for free at http://download.openoffice.org/2.0.2/index.html

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Dynamic Optical Illusions

Check out Skytopia’s collection of dynamic optical illusions at http://www.skytopia.com/project/illusion/illusion.html

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Cow Abductions

It’s a serious problem – cow’s have been disappearing without explanation. The Cow Abduction website at http://www.cowabduction.com/ now posts evidence and documentation proving that they are in fact being abducted by aliens!

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Shoelace knots

Most people only know the one shoelace knot that they learned as a child, having been taught by either a parent, a sibling, a relative, a teacher or even another child. Many are surprised to learn that there's more than one method, let alone sixteen! Check out Ian’s Shoelace Site for 16 different ways to tie your shoelaces at http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/knots.htm

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Tapefailure

Tapefailure is a "history recording tool" for your web browser. What this means is that you can record a browsing session using Tapefailure’s recorder, save it, and then share it with others. Each recorded session can be played back almost perfectly through the Tapefailure playback tool; as long as you know the tape ID or have a link, and you can view your recorded session over and over again. Check it out at http://www.tapefailure.com/

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Online Calendars

Hot on the heels of the release of the 30boxes online calendar system at http://30boxes.com/ and the new Kiko calendar at http://www.kiko.com/ comes Google’s foray into the area, with Google Calendar. With Google Calendar, you can see your friends' and family's schedules right next to your own; quickly add events mentioned in Gmail conversations or saved in other calendar applications; and add other interesting events that you find online. You decide who can see your calendar and which details they can view. Planning an event? You can create invitations, send reminders and keep track of RSVPs right inside Google Calendar. Organisations can promote events, too. You can set up automatic event reminders, and instantly bring up anything on your calendar with the built-in search tool. Of course, it’s free, and you can sign up at http://www.google.com/calendar/

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Changing people’s perception of you

Other people's perceptions are very important in business. First impressions are made within seconds, and office gossip has the potential to damage a reputation almost beyond repair. Do you know how your colleagues perceive you? http://www.askmen.com/money/successful_100/112_success.html lists eight common misperceptions, and ways you can turn negative impressions into positive ones.

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Colour Blender

If you ever need to design a harmonious colour scheme, whether it be for a website, magazine or perhaps your own home renovation, check out Color Blender, a free online tools for colour matching and palette design. By dragging sliders to change red, green and blue values, you create a primary colour, and the tool then suggests other colours that match, forming a harmonious blend which you can export in a variety of ways. Try the tool out at http://colorblender.com/

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Interactive Evolution

An amazing Flash animation at http://dl.xferla.net/mirror/ovelho.com/evolution.swf allows you to “Scroll” through history by dragging an arrow along a timeline... watch as the Earth forms and cools, the continents develop and life emerges from the sea.

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Zooomr

Zooomr is a photo uploading and sharing website that follows on the heels of Flickr (http://www.flickr.com) Zooomr focuses on helping you explore photos from the inside out no matter what language you speak. Sign up for a free account at http://beta.zooomr.com/

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Their Circular Life

Their Circular Life is a beautiful Italian site built inFlash that provides a novel way or exploring a day in the life of cities around Europe. Check out http://www.theircircularlife.it/frameset.htm

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Monowheels

A monowheel (or motorwheel) is one big wheel with rider and engine (if any) inside its circumference. It is not to be confused with a unicycle, which has the rider above the wheel. Check out an amazing gallery of monowheels from as far back as 1869 at http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/motorwhl/motorwhl.htm

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Battle B-Daman

If you’re into Hasbro’s B-Daman range of battle toys for kids, check out their new website at http://www.bdaman.co.nz/ and register to win prizes.

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Time

Diego and Susy perform the same ritual on April the 17th every year – they take a photo of every member of their family. Their website at http://zonezero.com/magazine/essays/diegotime/time.html shows a chronological archive of pictures taken since 1976. As you scroll down, you can watch them growing older, and see new members joining the family and growing up... It’s a fascinating gallery.

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50 Writing Tools

Roy Peter Clark from Poynter Institute has posted links to 50 online tools and resources that can help you when you do any kind of writing. From “Using strong verbs” to “Writing cinematically”, this is a very comprehensive resource. Check out http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/fifty-50-tools-which-can-help-you-in-writing.html

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StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a free service (and browser toolbar) that uses the thumbs up / thumbs down rating system to form collaborative opinions on website quality. When you stumble, you will only see pages which friends and like–minded stumblers have liked. Every time you hit the Stumble button, you’ll see another random website. You can customise the types of websites you want to see, and click thumbs up or thumbs down to rate the site. If you rate a site which isn’t in the Stumbler database, you’ll be prompted for a few key words or “tags” to describe the site after which it’ll become part of the system. It’s a fun and simple way to surf the web and see some amazing sites you might have missed otherwise. Visit http://www.stumbleupon.com/

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Goowy update

Goowy media helps you simplify your online digital lifestyle by delivering a virtual desktop that helps you manage your personal communications (instant messaging, email, contacts, calendar), organize your digital content (virtual file storage and sharing) and aggregate your web information (minis for rss, news, weather, search, bookmarks, etc.) They’ve added the ability to upload and manage files, and integrated an instant messaging system that lets you chat with people via a number of common instant messaging systems. Sign up for free at http://www2.goowy.com/

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April Fool’s Day hoaxes

April the 1st was a bad day to surf the web – you couldn’t be sure which news story was a hoax and which was real. Google claimed they were launching Google Romance, a service to let you search for a date. Another site announced a new product that transmits power wirelessly through your house... Wikipedia collected a list of 2006 April Fool’s Day hoaxes which you can read at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_1,_2006

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Web 2.0 Awards

As the Web 2.0 craze spreads (find out more about Web 2.0 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web20) new sites are springing up everywhere. The Web 2.0 Awards site set out to see what the meme had to offer: first to collect, then to classify, and finally to calculate the best of the best. They surveyed over 300 sites and sorted them into more than 30 categories. Then, from the biggest categories they selected the top three projects and ranked them based on their usability, usefulness, social aspects, interface & design, and content quality. Check out the winners at http://web2.0awards.org/

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AllTunes

While the rest of the world enjoys the ability to purchase and download individual songs legally via the iTunes Store, we Kiwis are stuck with the choice of either downloading tracks illegally, or buying CDs and ripping them onto our computers (which is a legal grey area). AllOfMP3 (http://www.allofmp3.com) has released a beta of its latest desktop music library and download tool allTunes. Although the name is an obvious play on iTunes, those familiar with AlloFMP3 will know that they are infamous for extremely cheap, high quality and quasi-legal music downloads on the web. allTunes is a windows interface to the AllOFMP3 library, allowing users to find and download high quality music easily. It looks and acts a lot like iTunes. The model is simple, download the application, signup for an account, find music (amongst the 40,000 albums they have) click and download. The price is US2c per megabyte downloaded, which works out to be around $1-1.50USD per album. The reason the prices are so low is because AllOFMP3 and allTunes operate in Russia, where they claim they are complying with local copyright law and paying royalties back to artists and labels. The legality of the service is questionable, but they have been in operation for years now with no seeming threat to their existence. Check out allTunes at http://www.alltunes.com/

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AppZapper and MacZOT

AppZapper is for people who want to confidently try new apps while knowing they can uninstall them easily. Drag one or more unwanted apps onto AppZapper and watch as it finds all the extra files and lets you delete them with a single click. A slick safety system remembers which apps you want to keep safe, and the log tracks all the files you've zapped. In one Zap you'll understand it. In two you'll fall in love. Within the five free Zaps, you'll know you need to add AppZapper to your arsenal. Go ahead — try five free zaps and see AppZapper in action now at http://appzapper.com/
MacZOT is here to offer a new software ZOT! to Mac users around the world. It will often be a limited quantity of a great piece of shareware. It may be one you've looked at before, or one you're willing to chance based on the deal. It's one item per day to keep people coming back to see what's new. Will you come back every day? No. Will you forget about MacZOT! possibly. But, if you remember, you might find some neat deals you can't find elsewhere. We don't want to send any unwanted e-mail, so bear with us if we forget to remind you of some great stuff. Check it out at http://www.maczot.com/

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