Online Observations

Move over Meebo, welcome IMO.IM

Meebo as many of you know used to be the final destination for web-based multi-client instant messaging. it had support for a variety of messaging platforms such as yahoo, aim, etc. Well, recently I discovered IMO.IM, and I have to say I got blown away by its simple ease of use and accessibility.

IMO supports MSN, Yahoo, AIM/ICQ, Google Talk, MySpace, and Skype (yes, you read it right). That is a great list and in my opinion covers most of the chatting platforms out there (maybe they are missing Facebook and Orkut, but they may come soon). On top of providing Instant Messaging facilities on the above mentioned service, IMO provides Voice and Video as well on all these services (and all this through a browser, of course).

But, its not just the fact that there are so many features available on IMO which makes it a very good service to use. There is also the fact that it is insanely simple to use. I can go in there and get set in literally less than half a minute. I don’t need to create any logins, etc. I think that makes it a very good option for quickly hopping over to when you want to quickly have a chat with some of your Yahoo contacts, but you don’t have access to your machine, and the computer you are on, doesn’t have YIM installed (or any number of similar scenarios).

Oh, by the way, I didn’t even go through a fraction of the total feature set. That’s because I haven’t had the need to use it all. But do check it out. Go IMO.IM.

Another simple implementation of a simple idea: Gog.is

How many times have you had the need to send someone the results of a Google query? How many times has someone asked you for help on really simple things, the answer for which is the first result on a Google query? I have had the need to do this many a times. If the answer to any of the above for you is also yes, then here’s a savior for us.

It’s a nifty little app on Google App Engine called Gog.Is. It is a TinyUrl type of a service which allows you to send Google queries through a small URL. It works by converting whatever you append to this url into a Google Search query, and returns the query page. For example:

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Google Chrome Addons

For all those who have been cribbing about how Chrome is not extensible, and it doesn’t have a number of various add-ons, here’s news. Despite the fact that there are no addons, Chrome is a better browser.

Having said that, if you can’t live without a certain few, you might be in luck. A large number of add-ons have been converted into bookmarklets for Chrome. Bookmarklets are available for:

StumbleUpon, Digg, Gmail, Snipshot, and even Adblock (amongst many more). Here’s the ReadWriteWeb article which will take you to all of them.

If you are having trouble uninstalling programs on your Windows

If you are having trouble uninstalling programs from your Windows (XP or Vista) installation, here’s a neat little tool that I came upon. It’s called Revo Uninstaller. It’s a completely free utility that helps you remove even broken installations from your computer.

There is a long feature list that this nifty utility boasts of (i.e. aside from it’s primary function of uninstalling programs). One of these features that I really want to mention is the Junk Files Cleaner. You have to use it to believe it. I used to think that my computer was free of junk files. I was wrong. With this software, I was able to free up more than a couple of Gigabytes within minutes.

Here’s a link to their website which has a list of complete features and the download: http://www.revouninstaller.com/

Best free collaboration tool

If you thought that Google Docs is cool when it allows multiple people to edit a document at the same time, you will be surprised to know that it doesn’t even show updates in real time. But here’s a tool that shows Google Docs how it is done. It is called Etherpad. This neat little tool does allows you to have any number of coordinators on a single text document and shows you changes made to the document in real time. I foresee a very neat use of this already: imagine a client telecon, where there are a number of your colleagues present and all are trying to take notes. A tool like this would be awesome, because then everyone can take these notes collaboratively in real time, and add to each others comments.

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Rent your books instead of buying them, and save the environment

Chegg.com is a service that may be a dream come true if you are a college student in the United States. They basically offer you a rental service for your college books. It’s a simple process. You can search for the books that you need and then place an order for their rental. The book is shipped to you, and you are welcome to use it. They even allow you to highlight in the books that are sent to you (but not write). Once your term is over, a pre-paid shipping pack is sent to you to return your book back to Chegg.

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Here’s how you can go about freeing your hard disk space

Knowledge is power, they say. If that is true, then it follows that if you know exactly where your hard disk space is being used, then you should have the power to free it up. So, how do we get this knowledge. Enter DriveSpacio. DriveSpacio is a freeware developed by someone who couldn’t find a freeware that did the job.

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