15 Web Tools to Enhance Language Learning

from PickTheBrain | Motivation and Self Improvement by Karen Schweitzer

With the world becoming more culturally diverse everyday, it is becoming increasing important for everyone to learn a new language. Whether you are learning for your career, education, or just want to increase you knowledge of other languages, the Internet provides a wide variety of tools that can enhance your learning experience. Here is a list of 15 free language learning tools to explore today:

Popling – Popling is free online web software that is great for practicing language vocabulary without any real effort. This unique software works by having a window (flash card) pop up at certain intervals on your desktop. You can either click on the window to study the full flash card or ignore it and the window will disappear.

Radio Lingua Network – The Radio Linga Network offers free online podcasts that you can use to enhance listening comprehension and language learning skills for 20 different languages. The podcast episodes range from one-minute quick lessons to longer, five-minute lessons.

Livemocha – Livemocha is a free community language learning tool with online interactive lessons, user created courses, and language partners that are ready to practice with you. The language partners are a great way build your language confidence though conversations with live native speakers. You have the option of either using conversation exercises or submitting text and audio files to native speakers for corrections and edits.

Palabea – With this large international language learning community, you can interact with native speakers, find audio and visual learning aids, improve writing and grammar, and even find native speakers in your hometown. Through these tools, Palabea gives everyone the opportunity to learn or study their foreign speaking skills on an international web platform.

Freelang.net – Freelang.net offers free language dictionaries, translations, blogs, and forums to help you increase your language skills. These tools are an excellent way for you to improve your reading, writing, and speaking skills in the language you’re studying. This site also provides links to other translation software, learning tools, and more.

ForiegnWord.com – This site features four different tools that foreign language learners can use to translate text, find language links, and gain access to 265 online dictionaries. Just one of the tools featured on this site, Translate Now, provides access to 28 translators in over 38 different languages.

Lingro – Lingro is a free site with open content dictionaries that provide free online learning in 11 different languages. With this site, you can increase your language comprehension and understanding through online translations, word lists, games, a collaborative dictionary, and more.

Babbel – The Babbel site is a free online learning portal for Spanish, English, German, French, and Italian. Within this site, you will find multimedia learning methods and tools that are easy and fun to use. Babbel also offers a language exchange community with more than 400,000 registered users.

Transparent Language – Transparent Language provides language software that has helped millions of individuals worldwide with language learning. On this site you can find several free resources and tools, including language software, blogs, games, articles, and learning communities to enhance your language skills.

Open Culture – This free site provides podcasts for learning 37 different languages. The podcasts cover everything from Arabic to Yiddish and are perfect for beginner, intermediate, and advanced learners. You can listen to lessons instantly on your computer or download them in MP3 format for listening on the go.

SharedTalk – SharedTalk is an online language learning community that provides tools to practice and study a multitude of different languages. With this site, you can use language partners, voice chat, text chat, and email to enhance your language skills while helping other people to enhance theirs.

Lang-8 – This site encourages language learners to practice writing skills by writing in the language they are studying. Once your writing assignment is complete you can send it to a native speaker for editing and corrections. This site also works as an online exchange community–you will be asked to read and correct the writings of others who are studying your language.

Digital Dialects – Digital Dialects offers free interactive learning games for 58 different languages. The games provide practice with beginning phrases as well as vocabulary builders to help language learners increase their knowledge. The site is updated regularly with new material.

Translation2 – With four free online translators, Translation2 is a good site for increasing your understanding and comprehension in language learning. Translation tools include a text translator, dictionary, text to speech translator, and an IM translator. The text to speech translator is an excellent way to practice pronunciation and can be embedded in emails or web pages.

How Do Countries Choose Which Side They Drive On?

How Do Countries Choose Which Side They Drive On?

by Linda Rodriguez from mentalfloss.com/

Chaos has descended this week on the tiny Pacific island of Samoa after government officials decided to force the entire nation to switch sides of the road on Monday. While Samoan officials insist there have been no accidents as a result of asking drivers to switch from driving on the right side of the road to driving on the left, many non-driving Samoans have been left stranded because the island’s buses now open to the middle of the road.

Samoa is the first nation since the 1970s to switch sides and did so, they say, to end their reliance on left-hand drive vehicles imported at great expense from America. All well and good, but the real question here is why do different nations drive on different sides of the roads? Here in England, where traffic comes from the right, it took me more than a few weeks to stop looking left every time I went to cross the street—training that was completely undone when I went to France for two weeks at the end of the summer.

So what is the deal with the “wrong” side of the road? How do countries decide which side they drive on?

Because The Pope Said So

According to some sources, about a quarter of the world drives on the left, as they do in Britain. This isn’t too surprising, since at one time Britain owned about a quarter of the world. Traveling on the left side of the road was a practice that started with the feudal societies of Western world, like the proto-British empire – back in the day, you never knew who’d you pass on the road, so best to keep your sword arm between you and them. In 1300 AD, Pope Boniface VIII codified the practice with a law that decreed that pilgrims headed for Rome should keep on the left.

The Birth of the Left-Hand Drivers’ Seat

Things were going fine until the advent of market-based agriculture on a grand scale. In the 1700s, farmers in the US and France began hauling their products to market in big rigs pulled by many horses. Because these wagons typically had no place to sit, drivers would sit on the rear left horse, with their right arm free to whip the team along – and the left-hand drivers’ seat was born. Drivers naturally tended to ride on the right side of the road now, because it was safer to meet oncoming vehicles from where you could see their wheels. In 1792, a Pennsylvania law required that vehicles keep right, other states following soon after.

Because Napoleon Said So

Another explanation blames Napoleon. Because Napoleon was left-handed, he demanded that everyone approach from the right, so he could keep his sword arm between himself and anyone he’d meet. That’s not exactly true; the custom of keeping to the right actually pre-dated Napoleon, but he did make sure his troops followed it whilst they spread their Empire, and from Napoleon’s lips to law. Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Spain, which were all at one point under Napoleon’s either direct control or influence, subsequently drive on the right.

It’s an England/France Thing

So on two different continents, the “keep right” rule was becoming entrenched – while in England, keeping left remained the only way to go, especially after a 1756 city ordinance decreed that all traffic on the London Bridge must keep to the left. From there, it was all about influence.

Though not a hard and fast rule, places that were under French and US influence kept right, while those under the British Empire and its influence still kept left.

In Japan in 1859, for example, a British ambassador was able to convince the government there to keep left, a major coup for the lefties and Britain (this is what the Brits say; the Japanese, however, may disagree and claim that their decision to keep left had more to do with samurai warriors and their needs).

Because Hitler Said So

With the invention of the automobile, countries had good reason to pick a side and stick to it, although not all did. By 1938, there was another reason: Wherever Hitler invaded, he forced the native populations to drive on the right. Parts of Austria, including Vienna, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, that had historically driven on the left now had to drive on the right.

Ask Your Neighbors

Countries were still making “which side?” decisions well into the second half of the 20th century. Sweden, for example, switched to driving on the right in 1967 because by then, most of the countries their burgeoning car industry sold to were right-side countries. By this time, the clearest indicator of which side a country drives on became what its neighbors did, and with whom they traded.

Of course, some places, like the US Virgin Islands, confuse the issue even more by driving left-hand side cars on the left side of the road – it’s the only place under US purview that does so.

You Are Neglecting Your Most Important Relationship

from PickTheBrain | Motivation and Self Improvement by Ali Hale

There’s one crucial relationship in your life that I’m pretty sure you’re neglecting. And if you’re one of those people who gives a lot of themselves to others and always drops everything to give a friend a hand, you’re definitely neglecting it. Nope, it’s not your relationship with your partner, your mom, or even your kids. Important as those are, this is even more crucial. It’s a relationship I can guarantee you’ll have from the day you’re born till the day you die.

It’s your relationship with yourself.

So often, the one person in life who we criticise, judge, condemn and ignore is ourself. We decide that our needs don’t matter. If everyone else in our life walked out, this one relationship would be all we had left. And when we disregard our relationship with ourself, all other aspects of our life suffer: however hard we strive for success, things will always feel empty.

There are three key factors in your relationship with yourself that you need to pay attention to:

Acceptance and Love

Think of a person who you love. Maybe your partner, or a close friend. Do they have faults? Is there anything about them that irritates you at times? Of course… but that doesn’t stop you loving them, does it? They’re not perfect – no-one is – but you accept that, and you love them, warts and all.

So why don’t you treat yourself the same?

Most of us have a negative, critical internal voice that berates us for being less-than-perfect. We beat ourselves up over little mistakes … that birthday we forgot, that silly typo in an email, that time we were late, the hasty words we didn’t really mean. And we fail to recognise the many, many times that we get things right.

When we try to adopt new habits, we’re very quick to blame ourselves for not succeeding overnight. When we have big dreams and plans, we dismiss them as unrealistic.

Would you treat your partner like that? Your best friend? Your kids? Then why do you treat yourself that way? Do all the harsh things you say to yourself help you to improve your life … or do they make you feel unhappy and low in confidence?

Quality Time

I’m sure you make the effort to spend time with the people you love. You nurture your relationship with them by going out to dinner, or watching a movie, or playing a game together. We’re all familiar with the phrase “quality time”, and we know how important this is to our relationship with our spouse or kids.

When did you last spend any quality time with yourself?

If you’re an introvert like me (and like 50% of the world), you get your energy from being on your own: being around other people constantly can make you feel in need of some alone time. And even extroverts need some time to simply be themselves – away from the rest of the world.

How about going for a walk on your own, or going to a movie on your own? Could you take yourself out to lunch or for a coffee – without family or friends in tow? What activities and hobbies do you enjoy that are purely for you?

Don’t be afraid to be selfish. If you don’t nurture yourself, and take time for your relationship with yourself, it’ll show in your relationships with others.

Exploration

The final key to having a good relationship with yourself is exploration. In your friendships and romantic relationships, you enjoy learning about the other person. You hear their history, you get to understand what makes them tick, and you watch them grow and develop.

How well do you know yourself?

Ways of exploring yourself could include meditation, prayer, learning a new skill, or reading about personal development. Exploring who you are might lead you to conduct experiments to see what habits and structures suit you best: are you a morning person? Do you like to be alone at lunch, or in the evening? What dreams do you have? What’s your mission in the world? What contributions can you make?

Taking serious time to reflect and explore the workings of your mind can lead you in new directions. It can help you discover a hidden passion. You might find that your potential is far greater than you realised. You may well have to do some work to destroy some of your preconceptions; those statements about yourself that start with “I always…” or “I never…” or “I can’t…”

What’s your relationship with yourself like? If you’ve been neglecting that relationship – and almost all of us have – how are you going to start restoring balance in your life?

Fried Lettuce, Slug Entrails and Other Insomnia Cures

Fried Lettuce, Slug Entrails and Other Insomnia Cures

by Linda Rodriguez from mentalfloss.com/

Today’s insomnia cures are slightly more scientific than the back in the day. But they’re also less interesting, which is why we’ve rounded up some of the weirder insomnia treatments handed down through the ages. From what to rub on your feet, to what to line your belly with, here are 6 bizarre prescriptions for when you’re tired of counting sheep.

1. Rub Your Feet in Dormouse Fat

In Elizabethan England, people who couldn’t sleep would often rub dormouse fat onto the soles of their feet. Why dormouse and why feet has been lost to the ages, however, the dormouse has retained its snoozy image: The dormouse slept through most of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party in Alice in Wonderland.

2. A spoonful of Sea Slug Entrails

Most cultures have their own folk remedy, usually involving food, for putting insomniacs to sleep. I remember when I was a little girl, my mom would make me hot chocolate when I couldn’t sleep. Little girls in Japan, however, might have gotten a plate full of sea slug entrails. In France, it could have been fried lettuce and in places in the US, a raw onion.

3. Pay to Hear a Sleep Concert?

A new craze is sweeping Japan and while there’s always a new craze sweeping Japan, this one may offer some hope to sleepless office workers. They’re called sleep concerts: Basically, you buy a ticket to the concert, plunk yourself down in a comfy seat, and drift off. One such concert, titled “Dreams: Good Sleep Concert,” featured major Japanese musicians playing music that had been scientifically tested to induce sleep; a CD of the concert was later sold and won Japan’s 22nd annual Gold Disc Award for Best Instrumental Album of the year in 2008.

4. Ancient Ambien

Sleepless Greeks and Egyptians used opium, typically mixed with several other herbs that probably had no effect, to induce sleep. The only problem with opium is the highly addictive nature of the poppy-derived narcotic. But drugs have always played a part in helping people sleep: Cannabis, typically smoked in cigarette form, was a popular sleep aid up through the 19th century. Some, especially those in college or who maybe spent some time touring with the Grateful Dead, might say it still is. And when all else fails, there’s the time-honored tradition of drinking until you pass out.

5. Toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble

Potions have long been a part of the insomniac’s medicine cabinet. Tinctures made from valerian root, mandrake root, and lettuce seeds are a few of the debatably helpful but generally innocuous variety, whilst the Middle Ages prescription of “drinking a potion made from the gall of a castrated boar” is just gross. Incidentally, the castrated boar juice was also included in a concoction to knock victims – er, patients – about to undergo surgery in the Middle Ages as well. So many uses for castrated boar gall, who knew?

6. Carry a compass to bed with you

In the Victorian era, people tended to be interested in slightly dubious spiritualist theories, including those involving magnetic fields and their impact on human health. Charles Dickens, who suffered from insomnia and for a time, tried a combination of opium and alcohol that left him with a wicked hangover, ultimately found relief after placing the head of his bed due north.

Bullets are slow

By Jason Kottke

You’re going to spend the next 10 minutes watching bullet impacts in super slow motion.

The really amazing part — nope, not the instant bullet liquification (!!!) — is how quickly other things happen after the bullet hits something. Glass seems to crack almost instantly, even at a million fps, making the bullets seem pokey in comparison.

The Science of Getting Rich

http://www.pickthebrain.com

“Abundance” – courtesy of Geeart.com

If you don’t read any other book this decade on financial prosperity, you must read “The Science of Getting Rich.” The Science of Getting Rich is a great (short) book which was written by Wallace D. Wattles back in 1910. It provides a basic roadmap teaching on how anyone can become financially free.

I will briefly share with you the major points of the book in this article.

The book starts off discussing how there are:

• Smart people that are rich, and
• Blockheads that are rich
• Intellectually brilliant people that are rich, and
• Mentally slothful people that are rich
• Big spenders that are rich, while
• Many frugal people remain in poverty

The authors point in making these observations is to note that riches are not contributable to luck, the right family, or the right neighborhood; but something else.

This article will recap the basic principles taught in “The Science of Getting Rich,” so that you can start practicing the science today, even if you’re a blockhead.

Here are the 4 major principles that the book teaches:

Principle # 1 – Visualization and Though Control

“Greatness is attained only by the thinking of great thoughts.”

The book tells you to take time daily to visualize what you want in great detail. The book states: …”do not do this as a mere dreamer or castle builder…,” but you must do it in faith knowing that your vision is going to become a reality.

The book requests that you do this whenever you have spare time throughout your day. It also asks that you be very specific and detailed in your visualizations.

My commentary: I recommend that you think about specific pre-meditated events that you want to occur in your life, and try to visualize them for at least 30 minutes a day. You have to pre-play your future. This will provide you with the motivation needed to accomplish your vision. Motivation is the fuel to any destination you want to reach.

You have to see it, before you can have it. As it is written, “without a vision, the people perish.”

Principle # 2 – Right Action

“Every day is either a success or a failure, and if every day is a success, you cannot fail to get rich.”

The book states that you should give 100 percent effort in your daily actions, and tells you to complete an honest day’s work every day. However, the book also states that you should never over work, because it’s not the number of items that you complete, but the importance of each item that matters. If you complete enough important items you will succeed.

My commentary: Whatever your goal, be sure to give 100 percent effort towards it every day. Complete the items that are sure to take you to your goal, postpone the busy work.

Never let a day go by without getting closer to the goals that you want to achieve!

If you have “a passion” to achieve a goal, then you have the power to achieve it. Passion is power.

Principle # 3 – Avoid Bad News

“If you want to become rich, you must not make a study of poverty. Things are not brought into being by thinking about their opposites.”

The book says you should diligently avoid all bad news.

My commentary: Avoid all negative media, videos, TV and movies showing poverty, doom, gloom and lack; you should also avoid conversations that include the above mentioned. There is no reason to fill you mind with all of the negativity in the media. Garbage in, garbage out! You will become what you constantly give your attention to. I recommend you give your attention to what you want to become, and to avoid that in which you do not want to become.

The book says that you should only talk of prosperity and the great possibilities when you speak. Speaking of lack and poverty only hinder your ability to create prosperity…

Principle # 4 – Gratitude

“…faith is born of gratitude. The grateful mind continually expects good things, and expectation becomes faith.”

Finally, the book states that you must remain in a state of gratitude at all times; for everything that you have.

My commentary: Always speak, think and feel grateful throughout your day for all of the “good” that’s in your life. Place things in your environment which remind you to be grateful. A grateful heart will attract great things.

These are the four principles taught in the Science of Getting Rich, memorize them, and put them into action; they will change your life.

About the author: this guest post was written by Mr. Self Development. Please support Mr. Self Development by subscribing to his blog at mrselfdevelopment.com; Mr. Self Development is a motivational author that offers a practical guide to success and wealth.

Don’t Forget To Follow PickTheBrain on Twitter!

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Top 10 International Products of 2008

http://www.readwriteweb.com

Written by Lidija Davis

We live in a technologically rich and increasingly Web-savvy world. In this post, we celebrate the World Wide Web by selecting our top 10 international products of 2008. What do we mean by ‘international’? We looked for products that were developed outside the U.S., which showed innovation and support for global Web standards. We also tried to choose from a cross-section of countries, although obviously we couldn’t cover all the major countries. That said, we hope you enjoy our selections!

Of course with so many innovative products to choose from all around the globe, some exceptional non-U.S. products didn’t make the cut. So please let us know your own favorites in the comments.

This is the second in our series of top products of 2008, the first can be found here:

1. Top 10 Semantic Web Products of 2008

Note: the products listed below are in no particular order

1. Remember The Milk: Australia

Remember The Milk, the Australian startup that gave us our favorite task management tools, began when Omar Kilani, Emily Boyd and one stuffed monkey got together in 2004 with a simple idea. The idea grew and in 2005 they launched Remember The Milk.

RTM has seen enormous growth over the past couple of years. By October 2006, 100K people had signed up for the service, 200K by May 2007, 500K by March 2008, but it is only within the past year that RTM has had a significant impact on Web users globally. RTM now boasts over one million users, was named one of CNET’s Webware 100 Award winners in April, and in May ReadWriteWeb readers chose RTM as one of their favorite Web apps. More recently RTM created a gadget for Gmail and an application for the iPhone, pushing its reach further still.

2. Afrigator: South Africa

Afrigator is a social media aggregator and directory for content from the African blogging community, similar in many ways to Technorati. Anyone in Africa with an RSS feed can use Afrigator to index their content and market it to the world.

Launched in April 2007 (alpha), Afrigator has seen a steady 25% month-on-month growth rate, launching beta in November of the same year. In September 2008 MIH Print Africa acquired a majority stake in Afrigator, giving the startup some breathing room to work on their new project Adgator, Africa’s first ad network. Currently tracking 4159 blogs across the continent, Afrigator is a great place to find content from the “Afrosphere.”

3. Zoho: India

Zoho is an Indian startup that offers a number of office tools, project management software and CRM solutions. It has made serious advances with its office productivity suite during 2008, reaching a milestone of 1 million users in August this year.

At the beginning of 2008, Zoho updated Writer to include support for the DocX file format along with several other features. In April, support for Visual Basic compatible macros was added to Zoho Sheet; macro record and playback rolled out four months later. October saw Zoho Mail emerge from private beta to being publicly available, offering at the same time offline support via Google Gears.

4. Netvibes: France

Members have created more than 50 million start pages spread across 200 countries on Netvibes since its launch in 2006. Available in 76 languages, Netvibes was named one of Times Best Web Sites 2007; but this hasn’t dampened the team’s enthusiasm to make Netvibes bigger and better, as evidenced by the launch of Netvibes Ginger in April 2008.

Ginger is a social version of NetVibes that allows you to share your new content from Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, blogs, etc. with friends; it also lets you follow the digital life of your friends. In November, Netvibes added a feature that allows content to be shared via integration with Facebook Connect and Twitter.

5. Dopplr: Finland / U.K.

Dopplr is a startup that lets you share travel plans with your friends, and “highlights coincidence,” giving you a heads up of which friends will be in cities you plan to visit. While the company has only been around since 2007, it has big name backers, and according to Compete has shown significant growth.

Last month Dopplr launched its new city pages, which include creative commons images automatically imported from the ‘interesting’ tag on Flickr – to provide a visualization of visitor activity for cities within the Dopplr database. If you’re not using it yet, you soon will be; we think Dopplr shows plenty of promise.

6. Maxthon: China

The browser market has seen many changes in 2008, with the introduction of Google’s Chrome in September, Mozilla’s Firefox 3 making the Guinness Book of World Records in June, and the slow decline of Internet Explorer as Firefox gains momentum. In Asia however, there’s another browser making waves. Maxthon, according to European web metrics company Xiti, is creating problems for its main competitor Firefox. It comes as no surprise then, that Mozilla recently released an edition of Firefox specifically for China.

Maxthon is a browser created in China and reported to be the second most popular browser in China today. While it doesn’t show up as a contender in most market share reports, it has had a staggering 174 million downloads at the time of writing this post. Using Internet Explorer’s rendering engine, Maxthon has over 1,400 add-ons, proxy switching capability, aggressive ad blocking, split-screen browsing to name a few of its innovative features. We said it two years ago, and we’ll say it again: this is one to keep your eye on.

7. Xing: Germany

Xing, the German social network for business professionals and the first Web 2.0 company to go public [December 2006], today has over 6.5 million members, and is now clearly in the race toward globalization alongside LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has over 30 million members, and according to Compete a 179.6% year-to-year change that beats Xing’s at 137.6%. It is important however, to note the financials, something we analyzed back in March this year, which may not be completely in LinkedIn’s favor. The data of particular interest concerns user engagement; visitors to Xing stay an average of 43.4 minutes on the site, while visitors to LinkedIn stay an average of 7.8 minutes – a whopping difference of 456%. We think Xing has made some good choices this year, especially the recent hire of Stefan Gross-Selbeck, as reported over on ReadWriteWeb’s Jobwire.

8. FreshBooks: Canada

FreshBooks, the Canadian online invoicing, time and expense tracking service for individuals and small companies, has been showing steady growth over the past year according to Compete, and claims to have over 500K new users since May 2004.

We compared FreshBooks with other online accounting services in August this year, and decided it was easy to use, includes a host of useful features, has an active forum, and offers benchmark data by industry to its users. More recently, we looked at FreshBooks Report Cards which provide an insight into how your business fares in relation to other businesses in your profession. Selected as one of the PICK 20 top Web 2.0 leaders in Canada in September this year, we think Freshbooks deserves a mention here too.

9. Mixi: Japan

Mixi, Japan’s biggest social network (only available in Japanese) was previously known for its closed platform. No more. In August this year, Mixi announced that it is acting as an OpenID provider – therefore bringing the global OpenID to millions of Japanese users.

While Mixi is not acting as a relaying party yet, allowing users to login with OpenID from other networks, the functionality of Mixi user profiles has now increased dramatically. According to the blog Asiajin, this opening up is pretty radical for Mixi standards.

10. Wuala: Switzerland

Swiss startup Wuala offers an unusual online social storage system: it uses the disk space of other members’ computers as part of the cloud. Wuala launched in August 2008 – making it the youngest of our international products.

Wuala differs from our other favorite online storage services in several ways. The advantages of this type of storage include no limits on file size and bandwidth. However the main disadvantage is that regardless of the AES-128 and RSA-2048 encryption, the idea of storing data on machines scattered around the world won’t appeal to all. Still, with 28 million files uploaded as of writing and growing by the minute, Wuala is definitely worth watching.

So, do you think we’ve picked the best 10 International Products of 2008? Please let us know what you think about our choices in the comments. Most importantly, let us know which international products you think are worth tracking.

Five Best Windows Task Manager Alternatives

from Lifehacker: Top by Jason Fitzpatrick

The Windows Task Manager is a functional but basic tool for keeping an eye on what your computer’s up to. If you want to go beyond the built-in tool and for more in depth information and control, check out these five alternatives.

Last week we asked you to share your favorite alternative to the Windows Task Manager, and now we’re back with the five most popular nominees. Read over each entry, then don’t forget to cast a vote for your favorite of the top five in the poll below.

Note: Clicking on the screenshots below will enlarge the screenshots to their original size.

Process Hacker (Windows, Free)

Process Hacker is the only open-source offering in today’s Hive. When using Process Hacker you’re not just able to view your applications and services in more detail but to interact with them in a variety of ways—many well beyond the scope of the standard task manager, like hex editing the contents of a process’ virtual memory. Process Hacker allows you to alter process security levels, terminate, suspend, resume, and restart them. For those “What is this?” moments, you can right click to search online for the identity of a given process and what it might be up to.

Anvir Task Manager (Windows, Basic: Free, Premium: $39.95)

Anvir Task Manger is available in a range of editions ranging in cost from free to $89.95 for a full security suite. The free edition, however, has quite an array of features that make it more than satisfactory as an alternative to the default Windows tool. From within Anvir Task Manger you can manager your startup applications and delay their startup to improve your boot time, and check processes against a virus database. In addition to common features like the ability to alter the priority of a process you can also right click on any process and hide the window it is running in within the system tray. Although you have to install it to unpack it, once installed you can turn Anvir Task Manager into a portable application.

Process Explorer (Windows, Free)

Process Explorer is the free and portable offering from Microsoft. Process Explorer is like the standard task manager on steroids. You still get a list of processes, you still see charts of your usage, but both give you significantly more information and control over the information. Unlike the default manager, Process Explorer makes it easy to track down which file is being held by which program and get to the bottom of computer mysteries like why a certain DLL or DOC file simply cannot be deleted. It also shows which service is performing which function so you’ll never look at a long and repetitive list of Windows system executables that are indistinguishable from each other—every one will be associated with its function.

Extended Task Manager (Windows, Free)

If you want more than the default task manager can offer but you’re not sure if you need some of the advanced featured offered by other nominees in this week’s Hive Five, Extended Task Manager is a great compromise. Extended Task Manger can display locked files and which process is locking them, help you terminate specific processes to free files, provides a summary overview of your resource usage, and allows you to pause and resume processes. Note: we ended up having to test Extended Task Manager on one of our Windows XP machines after it failed to launch in Windows 7 64-bit. Whether this is a result of being launched in Windows 7 or in a 64-bit environment is unknown.

System Explorer (Windows, Free)

System Explorer lived up to its name by not only allowing you to explore system processes but which applications autorun on startup, system add-ons, drivers, services, and more. It doesn’t have the most elegant interface we’ve seen so far, but it does pack in an enormous amount of information and functionality. You can manipulate processes, search for additional information online, check them against virus databases, and hunt down which process is locking which file or causing system instability.

Why Email No Longer Rules…

Why Email No Longer Rules…

And what that means for the way we communicate

By JESSICA E. VASCELLARO from The wall street journal

Getty Images (4 on the left); Google Wave

Services like Twitter, Facebook and Google Wave create a constant stream of interaction among users—for better or worse.

Email has had a good run as king of communications. But its reign is over.

In its place, a new generation of services is starting to take hold—services like Twitter and Facebook and countless others vying for a piece of the new world. And just as email did more than a decade ago, this shift promises to profoundly rewrite the way we communicate—in ways we can only begin to imagine.

Journal Community

“I’ll stick with e-mail — write when I want, as often (or not ) as I want, to whom I want privately. No interest in letting the world know that I overcooked the spaghetti.”

—–Don Brazier

We all still use email, of course. But email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet—logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether we are sitting at a desk or on a mobile phone. The always-on connection, in turn, has created a host of new ways to communicate that are much faster than email, and more fun.

Why wait for a response to an email when you get a quicker answer over instant messaging? Thanks to Facebook, some questions can be answered without asking them. You don’t need to ask a friend whether she has left work, if she has updated her public “status” on the site telling the world so. Email, stuck in the era of attachments, seems boring compared to services like Google Wave, currently in test phase, which allows users to share photos by dragging and dropping them from a desktop into a Wave, and to enter comments in near real time.

Digits

• How Many Emails Did You Send Yesterday?

Little wonder that while email continues to grow, other types of communication services are growing far faster. In August 2009, 276.9 million people used email across the U.S., several European countries, Australia and Brazil, according to Nielsen Co., up 21% from 229.2 million in August 2008. But the number of users on social-networking and other community sites jumped 31% to 301.5 million people.

“The whole idea of this email service isn’t really quite as significant anymore when you can have many, many different types of messages and files and when you have this all on the same type of networks,” says Alex Bochannek, curator at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

So, how will these new tools change the way we communicate? Let’s start with the most obvious: They make our interactions that much faster.

Into the River

Years ago, we were frustrated if it took a few days for a letter to arrive. A couple of years ago, we’d complain about a half-hour delay in getting an email. Today, we gripe about it taking an extra few seconds for a text message to go through. In a few months, we may be complaining that our cellphones aren’t automatically able to send messages to friends within a certain distance, letting them know we’re nearby. (A number of services already do this.)

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These new services also make communicating more frequent and informal—more like a blog comment or a throwaway aside, rather than a crafted email sent to one person. No need to spend time writing a long email to your half-dozen closest friends about how your vacation went. Now those friends, if they’re interested, can watch it unfold in real time online. Instead of sending a few emails a week to a handful of friends, you can send dozens of messages a day to hundreds of people who know you, or just barely do.

Consider Twitter. The service allows users to send 140-character messages to people who have subscribed to see them, called followers. So instead of sending an email to friends announcing that you just got a new job, you can just tweet it for all the people who have chosen to “follow” you to see. You can create links to particular users in messages by entering @ followed by their user name or send private “direct messages” through the system by typing d and the user name.

Facebook is part of the trend, too. Users post status updates that show up in their friends’ “streams.” They can also post links to content and comment on it. No in-box required.

Dozens of other companies, from AOL and Yahoo Inc. to start-ups like Yammer Inc., are building products based on the same theme.

David Liu, an executive at AOL, calls it replacing the in-box with “a river that continues to flow as you dip into it.”

But the speed and ease of communication cut both ways. While making communication more frequent, they can also make it less personal and intimate. Communicating is becoming so easy that the recipient knows how little time and thought was required of the sender. Yes, your half-dozen closest friends can read your vacation updates. But so can your 500 other “friends.” And if you know all these people are reading your updates, you might say a lot less than you would otherwise.

Too Much Information

Another obvious downside to the constant stream: It’s a constant stream.

That can make it harder to determine the importance of various messages. When people can more easily fire off all sorts of messages—from updates about their breakfast to questions about the evening’s plans—being able to figure out which messages are truly important, or even which warrant a response, can be difficult. Information overload can lead some people to tune out messages altogether.

Such noise makes us even more dependent on technology to help us communicate. Without software to help filter and organize based on factors we deem relevant, we’d drown in the deluge.

Enter filtering. In email land, consumers can often get by with a few folders, if that. But in the land of the stream, some sort of more sophisticated filtering is a must.

On Facebook, you can choose to see updates only from certain people you add to certain lists. Twitter users have adopted the trend of “tagging” their tweets by topic. So people tweeting about a company may follow their tweet with the # symbol and the company name. A number of software programs filter Tweets by these tags, making it easier to follow a topic.

The combination of more public messages and tagging has cool search and discovery implications. In the old days, people shared photos over email. Now, they post them to Flickr and tag them with their location. That means users can, with little effort, search for an area, down to a street corner, and see photos of the place.

Tagging also is creating the potential for new social movements. Instead of trying to organize people over email, protesters can tweet their messages, tag them with the topic and have them discovered by others interested in the cause. Iranians used that technique to galvanize public opinion during their election protests earlier this year. It was a powerful example of what can happen when messages get unleashed.

Who Are You?

Perhaps the biggest change that these email successors bring is more of a public profile for users. In the email world, you are your name followed by a “dot-com.” That’s it. In the new messaging world, you have a higher profile, packed with data you want to share and possibly some you don’t.

Such a public profile has its pluses and minuses. It can draw the people communicating closer, allowing them to exchange not only text but also all sorts of personal information, even facial cues. You know a lot about the person you are talking to, even before you’ve ever exchanged a single word.

Take, for example, Facebook. Message someone over the site and, depending on your privacy settings, he may be a click away from your photos and your entire profile, including news articles you have shared and pictures of that party you were at last night. The extra details can help you cut to the chase. If you see that I am in London, you don’t need to ask me where I am. They can also make communication feel more personal, restoring some of the intimacy that social-network sites—and email, for that matter—have stripped away. If I have posted to the world that I am in a bad mood, you might try to cheer me up, or at least think twice about bothering me.

Email is trying to compete by helping users roll in more signals about themselves. Yahoo and Google Inc. have launched new profile services that connect to mail accounts. That means just by clicking on a contact, one can see whatever information she has chosen to share through her profile, from her hobbies to her high school.

But a dump of personal data can also turn off the people you are trying to communicate with. If I really just want to know what time the meeting is, I may not care that you have updated your status message to point people to photos of your kids.

Having your identity pegged to communication creates more data to manage and some blurry lines. What’s fine for one sort of recipient to know about you may not be acceptable for another. While our growing digital footprints have made it easier for anyone to find personal information about anyone online if they go search for it, new communications tools are marrying that trail of information with the message, making it easier than ever for the recipient to uncover more details.

A Question of Time

Meanwhile, one more big question remains: Will the new services save time, or eat up even more of it?

Many of the companies pitching the services insist they will free up people.

Jeff Teper, vice president of Microsoft Corp.’s SharePoint division, which makes software that businesses use to collaborate, says in the past, employees received an email every time the status changed on a project they were working on, which led to hundreds of unnecessary emails a day. Now, thanks to SharePoint and other software that allows companies to direct those updates to flow through centralized sites that employees can check when they need to, those unnecessary emails are out of users’ in-boxes.

“People were very dependent on email. They overused it,” he says. “Now, people can use the right tool for the right task.”

Perhaps. But there’s another way to think about all this. You can argue that because we have more ways to send more messages, we spend more time doing it. That may make us more productive, but it may not. We get lured into wasting time, telling our bosses we are looking into something, instead of just doing it, for example. And we will no doubt waste time communicating stuff that isn’t meaningful, maybe at the expense of more meaningful communication. Such as, say, talking to somebody in person.

Review: Best New iPod and iPhone AppStore Games

from TechCrunch by David Diaz

With the recent iPod Touch update Apple has positioned and marketed the device as a new type of mobile gaming platform. Games have always been some of the best selling applications in the AppStore for both the iPod Touch and the iPhone. A recent advertisement for the iPod Touch carries the slogan “The Funnest iPod Ever” and features a number of games. We decided to try out and review each of the games featured in the ad and rate the ‘fun factor’ ourselves.

The Apple mobile devices have become decent gaming machines, with some of the newer games providing in-depth 3D environments and absorbing gameplay. We found a number of games that were extremely well developed and addictive, as good and better than most of the dedicated mobile gaming devices available on the market today.

We previously reviewed the best iPhone Apps so far this year. The following is our review of 12 of the new iPod Touch and iPhone games featured and highlighted in the recent Apple campaign.

If you have found any cool and fun new games for the iPod Touch or iPhone, or you have a particular favorite game, let us know in the comments.

Top Gun

TechCrunch Rating:

Download: Rated 9+; $1.99

After watching Top Gun for the first time, who didn’t want to be a Navy Fighter Pilot – flying around shooting planes out of the sky to save your country, and being called awesome monikers like Maverick and Ice Man? With Paramount Pictures Top Gun iPhone app, you can get closer to this experience. The best part of it is, you can do it to the tune of Danger Zone.

The game features 10 missions, each one increasing in difficulty as you progress. The controls are balanced and the game is well designed for the most part. The graphics were crisp, and there was no frame lag when I played. It did seem odd though that the game had no throttle control: you are unable to speed up nor slow down, which meant I couldn’t use my favorite Top Gun quote, “You’re gonna do what,?!” while playing. The lack of a multiplayer mode keeps me from giving it a higher ranking, but for two bucks, you can’t really go wrong. Playing to Danger Zone adds another star to the rating, it just pumps me up everytime.

Real Racing

TechCrunch Rating:

Download: Rated 4+; $6.99

This is the closest an iPhone game has come to either Gran Turismo or Project Gotham. Real Racing is for the true racing enthusiast and gamer. There are 48 cars in 4 different classes, and the game boasts a massive 76 events in its career mode. The game offers automatic acceleration, as well as manual for those who truly want a challenge. Furthermore, the game offers a six person local multiplayer (through a WiFi network) so you can test your skills with all of your friends. On top of a global leaderboard, Real Racing has customizable leaderboards so that you can always hold your superiority over the heads of those closest to you.

Overall, this game is amazing. The graphics are awesome, the gameplay is crisp, and you can even post your best races straight to youtube! The only thing that seems to be missing is a non-local multiplayer so that you can challenge anyone around the world, but the upsides far outweigh this point. Definitely worth the $6.99.

Monster Trucks Nitro

TechCrunch Rating:

Download: Rated 4+; $0.99

The goal of Monster Trucks Nitro is to race down the eight different tracks as fast as you can while surmounting the obstacles which the game lays out. The game awards either a Bronze, Silver, or Gold medal depending on how fast you complete the races. Monster Trucks Nitro is a fun game and kept me engaged for a short while.

Unfortunately, I finished quite quickly and realized that there was no replay value to it other than simply going for all Gold medals. Also, there was no real sense of speed even when I used the Nitro. The graphics are decent, the framerate is adequate, and the multiple camera angles add a neat aspect to this game. However, the amount of content is definitely the shortcoming in this game and keeps it from a better rating.

3D Rollercoaster Rush

TechCrunch Rating:

Download: Rated 4+; $4.99; Limited Free Version

Looking at the description of this game, I didn’t think there was any way this game could be worth the $4.99 price tag, so I downloaded and installed the free and restriction version to try it out. Within minutes of playing the free version, I was hooked, and immediately purchased the full version for $4.99. The graphics are awesome, and I have yet to get past all of the levels. The carts can go faster or slower through the use of the accelerometer and the stunts which you can perform are, as the description describes, “insane.”

Being able to race the game designer’s time and demolish it is pretty satisfying, but I would still like a multiplayer function if I’m going to be shelling my hard earned(ish) cash. Overall, the $4.99 is a bit steep compared to other games, but worth it. At a slightly lower price, it would definitely be a 5-star ‘must have’ game. Try out the free version first to find out if you enjoy the game.

Touch Hockey: FS5

TechCrunch Rating:

AppStore: Rated 4+; $0.99; Limited Free Version

Playing this game brings back memories of being in an arcade and playing air hockey with my buddies. There really isn’t too much to say about Touch Hockey: FS5, as it is quite simple and intuitive. The gameplay is smooth and very responsive. The friends feature, where you can play a friend over WiFi, is very addictive.

The only problem is that in single-player mode the AI is way too easy, so unless you have a friend to play against over WiFi, the game becomes very boring very quickly. The only difference between the free version and paid version is the removal of ads, which for most won’t justify the purchase price as the ads are not very intrusive.

Homerun Battle 3D

TechCrunch Rating:

AppStore: Rated 4+; $4.99

Homerun Battle 3D, previously known as Baseball Slugger, is a homerun. The batting controls are perfect and there is so much replay value with the online challenges. The graphics are clear and the stadium rendering excellent – it certainly looks and plays better than Wii Baseball. This has quickly become one of my favorite iPhone/iPod Touch games available today.

My only gripe is how, when playing alone, the computer can throw six 80 MPH fastballs in a row, and then come with a 104 MPH slider. That’s ridiculous. Other than that, this game is a must have for anyone looking for a casual and fun game.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour by EA Sports

TechCrunch Rating:

AppStore: Rated 4+; $4.99

Like Tiger Woods, this game is a winner. It becomes apparently from early on that EA Sports has spent a lot of time developing and refining this game to mimic the classic console experience. While many games use a lot of the iPhone’s features simply for novelty sake, EA makes sure to use them to the users advantage.

The game offers actual PGA courses to play on, different difficulty levels, and upgradeable equipment and abilities. The graphics are as good as they get, the gameplay is on par with any other game out there, and replay value is high, especially for fans of golf. An online multiplayer would have seen this game receive an off-the-charts rating, and I hope we see that feature soon. This game is definitely a must have for anyone with either an iPhone or an iPod Touch.

Slope Rider

TechCrunch Rating:

AppStore: Rated 4+; $2.99; Limited Free Version

Based on the Mac game, Slope Rider was re-engineered to work on the iPhone/iPod Touch. While the game has crisp graphics and a good interface, there is nothing which truly stands out. You can either race via the alpine tracks, or do tricks via the freestyle courses. There are a multitude of tricks to master which are combined through the use of grabs, flips, and turns, which will in turn increase your points.

There is no multiplayer, and the only way to gauge how good you are is to check the global leaderboard. For this game, I would definitely recommend saving your three dollars for one of the other games on this list, and just downloading the free version.

Aqua Moto Racing

TechCrunch Rating:

AppStore: Rated 4+; $3.99; Limited Free Version

If you blinked during the Apple commercial then you might not have seen this game. Aqua Moto Racing brings back memories of Nintendo 64’s Wave Race, which is definitely a good thing. There are 18 different tracks to race from, and you are able to race these in reversed mode as well, which adds to the replayability of the game.

While this game doesn’t have true multiplayer functionality, it does offer ghost mode. Ghost mode lets you race against the times of those who have made the global leaderboard. While this game isn’t on par with some of the other stellar apps on this list, it is definitely worth the free test drive, especially for those nostalgic for the old Wave Race.

Finger Foos

TechCrunch Rating:

AppStore: Rated 4+; FREE

On the Apple Ad, Finger Foos seems really cool and fun, but it really isn’t – it is terrible. The game is ridiculously simple and requires absolutely no skill whatsoever. The technology behind it is slick as you can see in the commercial, but the game just isn’t very fun.

It is a very very poor version of Touch Hockey: FS5, but does have the benefit of allowing more players to compete at once. It is a free game, so try it out yourselves to find out just how terrible it is and how misleading the ads can be.

2XL Supercros

TechCrunch Rating:

AppStore: Rated 4+; $7.99; Limited Free Version

If a game developer charges $8 for a game, it better be a very good one, especially since that price point is at the top end for games and it is the most expensive game on this list. 2XL Games, the developers of 2XL Supercross did not disappoint. This game has everything: the graphics are crystal-clear, the sounds of the engines are life-like, and the physics of the game are nearly perfect. A player can customize the look of his rider, ride in either a 125cc, 250cc, or 450cc bike, and race from four different camera views.

The controls take a little while to get used to, but once you get them, the game is a lot of fun. And if you don’t like the preset controls, no worries, as the game has eight different control configurations. This is another must have for any game enthusiast. Best of all, it has a free version to test-drive.