Make Your Own Screen Saver...

Bored with your screen saver?

If you are an Adobe (or Macromedia) Flash aficionado, www.creamshavers.com can help you go beyond that boring starfield or those endless winding 3d pipes. With nothing but a Flash file, you can now quickly and easily make your own screensavers that can be installed on any Windows machine.

Simply visit the Creamshavers site, upload your Flash (.swf) file, and the site does the rest. Within seconds, you are given a download link for the .exe file to install on your computer. Once installed, it will show up in your control panel with the rest of your screen savers. I have made several screen savers in this way and can attest to the fact that they contain no watermarks, ads, popups, or spyware like many other so-called "free screensavers."

Of course I created a sample screensaver. And it should come as little to no shock to anyone who knows me that my sample screensaver is Lost inspired. I took the Lost Countdown Clock from Season 2 and used a little basic Actionscript to create a Lost Clock screensaver. Feel free to download it and install it on every computer in your office for that authentic "Lost" feel.

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Free Mosaic Maker Software...

I've been looking for a free Mosaic making software for a long time. If you aren't familiar with it, it is the software that lets you make a large photo that is actually made up of 100s of other photos. I posted a few examples below. Each example shows the original photo and the mosaic(if you click on the mosaic, you can see the larger version to make out the individual tiles).

I really like the fact that you actually download the software to use on your computer. I have found a few sites that offer this service in the past. This requires you to upload your pictures to an external site, then wait for a long time as your mosaic is processed. I once had to wait 2 days for a mosaic that I made on a website! This program lets you choose a folder full of pictures to use as tiles, choose the picture you want to end up with at the end, set some options, then go. I was also pleasantly surprise at how quickly it processed. The whole process for each of the pictures below took about 2 minutes.

There are some very cool potential classroom posters in the works in the near future....

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Need to send a large file? Senduit.com can help.

There are many times when it is necessary to send large files online. Whether the file in question is a movie file, a zip file, a program, or something else, it is often inconvenient to send it via email. Some email services put limits on attachment sizes as well as the amount of storage space you are given.

Enter Senduit.com. The site allows you to upload any file under 100 MB to their server. The process is simple:

1. Browse for the file on your machine.
2. Choose how long you would like it to be available. You can choose anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 week. (No, they won't host your huge file forever for free, you mooch).
3. Upload your file.
4. Share the new web address given to you by Senduit.

It's really that easy.

Ditch your old Voicemail for free Youmail!

If you have a cellphone (if you don't, you probably aren't reading this blog either, are you?) and you are still using the Voicemail provided by your carrier, stop. Immediately. I just started using a service called Youmail that works seamlessly with my carrier (Verizon) and brings much more power and convenience to my Voicemail. Best of all, it is completely free!

Signing up for Youmail is simple. You register with the site, then enter your phone number. They will send you a text message to verify you actually own that phone. You use the pin from the text message to begin the setup. They walk you through forwarding your voice messages to the Youmail server rather than your carrier. For me, the process took less than 5 minutes. From there the features are very exciting and easy to use:

1. Check and listen to your voicemail from your email.
   For me, the best feature and reason enough to sign up. Someone called me today at 3:00 when I was sitting in a faculty meeting. When I got back to my computer I had an email telling who the message was from and giving me a link to hear it online. You can also set up Youmail to send MP3 or Wav attachments.
   
2. Share your Voicemail.
   Once someone leaves you a voicemail, you have some options. If the voicemail is important, funny, annoying, or otherwise noteworthy, you can forward it to anyone else with an email address.
   You can also embed the message in a Flashplayer on any blog or website (this might make your friends think twice before leaving you any more voicemails).
   
3. Custom Greetings:
   Do you sometimes feel that your voicemail greeting is too friendly for colleagues or too formal for friends and family? Youmail has this problem solved too. You can set up more than one greeting and forward callers depending on which category they fall into.
   
4. Ditch Caller:
   Another great feature is the ability to define numbers that you do not wish to grant voicemail access to. When these people call, they are given a custom message and promptly hung up on. Great for annoying telemarketers and anyone else you don't need leaving a 4 minute message for you to suffer through.

I've been using the service for a few days and I am very impressed. I wish I could replace my landline and school voicemail with Youmail (hopefully they will add this later). It is great to be able to manage email and voicemail all from one computer screen.

**Prediction: this seems like the kind of company Google might snatch up. You heard it here first.**