Daily Tech Bits

Gmail Playtime

Imagine my surprise when I visited Plurk today and found out that Gmail had some new features. Sign in, click on ’settings’ then ‘labs’ and you get some cool new tools to play with -13 of them to be exact. Quick links, pictures in chat and snazzy new icons are just a few of the goodies on offer. Lifehacker has a detailed review of the whole lot. Enjoy!

In other release news, those who are trying out FF3 but not committing all the way will be happy to hear that Portable Firefox is now at RC2. I can’t wait to make the change as I’ve found FF3 buggier than their previous releases.

File Sharing Faves

Lifehacker has published a post on five favorite online file sharing services. These are all services that are easy to use, work fast and are free to use, for the basic package. The selection results from a reader poll that narrowed the field to Box.net, Drop.io, Media Fire, Windows Live SkyDrive and FolderShare. There’s a quick review of what each service offers, and you can also vote for your personal favorite. Check it out.

Docs To HTML

Converting Word to HTML code that works is always a pain. If you don’t, you’re stuck with messy characters and invalid code. Not only does it look bad, but it also irritates readers. There are a number of tools you can use to avoid this problem and many of these are highlighted in the Wired wiki guide to converting Word docs to web pages. It covers three free tools, two downloadable tools and tells you how to prepare your Word doc for conversion. It’s a no frills guide which will help you achieve clean HTML even if you compose in Word.

Backscattered - Now I Know

I’ve been looking for the answer to this question for months. I couldn’t understand why I was getting bounced back emails that I had never sent, that looked like they were coming from my domain. I worried that a spammer had hijacked my email somehow, or perhaps my whole site. Once I realised that wasn’t the case, I calmed down, but I was still puzzled by the issue.

Now, thanks to an article on PCWorld, I know.  Spammers are sending emails that they pretend come from a legitimate domain. All that’s needed is for your email address to have appeared online and to have been harvested.

The good news is that there are ways to reduce the backscatter tide. Check out the article for the full story.

No RSS? No Problem!

It’s a nuisance. You’ve found a site you really like and want to find a way to keep track of new content on the site. But alas, there are no RSS feeds. There are many sites that still don’t make these available, so what can you do? MakeUseOf.com provides an article on monitoring sites without RSS feeds that highlights a couple of tools you can use. Of course, you’ll need Firefox to use them, but that’s a great browser and a small price to pay, in my opinion.

Open Source Resources

FREE - four of my favorite letters. That’s why I was happy to read about awesome open source resources for writers. Christina Laun has compiled a list of 50 tools that will help anyone who spends a lot of time online. I’ve tried a few of the tools myself, and can endorse her recommendations. There are also a few new to me that I plan to check out. (Tip: DailyWritingTips).