Daily Bits

The Ultimate Converter Website

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You probably needed to convert something in the past right? Whether it was inches in centimeters, kilograms in pounds or Celsius degree in Fahrenheit, we all pass through the pain of those conversions. The web certainly can help, but until yesterday I always used a different website depending on the conversion that I was needing to perform.

Not anymore! While browsing the web yesterday I came across a website that will do pretty much all the conversions you will need in a single place. I will call it the Ultimate Converter Website (they authors were too modest and simply called it “Online Converter”).

ultimate converter website

Here is a list of the things you will be able to convert there:

  • Distance & Length
  • Weight & Mass
  • Speed
  • Volume
  • Area & Space
  • Temperature
  • Time
  • Effect
  • Pressure
  • Energy and Work
  • Bits and Bytes
  • Morse Code

Heck yeah, they even convert Morse code!

Pirates of The Amazon: Firefox Plugin

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I find it amazing the extent that people’s creativity can go, especially on the Internet. There is a new Firefox extension called Pirates of The Amazon that will let anyone using it to browse the Amazon website and see whether the books, CDs and movies can be found for free via The Pirate Bay website.

Basically you would visit Amazon normally, and if the extension managed to find a free torrent for a specific product you would see a “Download For Free” link right on the screen.

Here is a video with a screencast of the extension in action:

Crazy stuff huh?

Watching Live Football Online

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If you are a football (aka soccer) fan, I am sure that you have already tried to watch live matches online right? Finding the right place that will stream the matches for free and with a minimum of quality is a tough task though. It can get tremendously frustrating too, especially when the match is getting started….

In order to solve this problem the guys from Soccer Lens create a really comprehensive guide explain how you can watch live soccer for free.

They listed the advantages, disadvantages and a bunch of links to the sites that actually stream the matches. Here is a quote from the article:

There are two main ways to watch P2P streams. PC users can download one (or several) of the programs listed below. Typically, it will download as a zipped file or an executable file. Double-click on the downloaded file and take it from there. Unfortunately for Mac users, there are only a few programs that will work for you. If you have Windows XP or Vista, as well as the latest version of Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player, then you should be able to use any of these programs. Some of them will work with Firefox or with Linux, but you’re better off sticking with the Microsoft family. See? Bill Gates controls our lives when it comes to watching football, too.

Or you can go to a website that hosts live streaming video like www.justin.tv. Each method has its advantages and drawbacks, so you’ll probably want to try out several methods instead of relying on one.

When running P2P programs like Sopcast or TVU (more below), you will typically get an interface that will include a screen and a list of available channels. To take a look at the TVU interface, click here. Sopcast’s interface is similar, but more compact. To take at Sopcast, go here. Click on the channel you want to watch and you should be good to go.

A good idea would be to bookmark one of the pages listed below containing football schedules. That way, you can be sure that you’ll never miss a game!

Worth a look if you plan to watch some matches on your PC!

Can Advertising Work on Social Networks ?

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Can social networks be made advertiser friendly ? This is the top question on the mind of both Web companies and media giants that have bought into the social networking pie. There is still the missing piece to making advertising click and its even being questioned whether companies should attempt to do so.

From the patent side, Bill Slawski at Seo By The Sea has a post on a latest filing from Google on using the details from a user’s profile, contacts and groups to place ads in context on their page. What is interesting is that in case the profile information is scanty, the system will provide advertisements based on the tastes of the contacts of with whom the user is connected.

Technology aside, Facebook’s experience with the Beacon program has resulted in some serious questions on how to make money of social networks in a manner that users find tolerable. The problem here is that social networks are not exactly media that users consume. Unlike search, video or other form of media, there is no immediate tangible motive for a person on a social network. There is also the question as to whether social networks need to be monetized at all. From the point of view of a brand promotion, social networks are great avenues. But move that space over from being company hosted to being a generic online hang-out and brand promotion becomes all so intrusive.

The ideal solution to make money off social networks continues to remain illusive. Constant experimentation by the likes of Google and FaceBook will hopefully result in some sustainable form of revenue generation.

Search Updates at Google and Yahoo

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The tough news around Yahoo apart, the second most popular search engine is doing good on rolling out new features. Announced this week was the availability of Yahoo Glue. What Glue does is return a list of different media types for a search query based on the context such as Wikipedia links and excerpts for people and stock quotes for companies. The feature was first launched and tested in India. Google’s Universal search immediately comes to mind when looking at the interface. The glue pages are not available for all topics but the list of topics is growing.

Google also announced a new feature called SearchWiki. Its an approach made to factor in user preferences for search results, albeit in a scaled down manner. For a given list of results, users can now choose to move links up or down the rankings or even delete them. These changes will affect the ranking for the particular user only. There is also a feature to add custom notes to the results and also view notes added by other users. In the long run perhaps Google will mine all these user preferences to further enhance their search algorithms. Its interesting to see Google implement features for social input to search results.

The Storm Has Arrived

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The iPhone has been the darling of gadget lovers but its the Blackberry Storm that has been highly anticipated in enterprise circles. Research in Motion’s latest device that mimics many of the features introduced in the iPhone has, according to reports, been very well received.

Some of the features that are unique to the Storm are :

  • Support for Microsoft Office documents
  • Copy and Paste
  • Tactile Feedback – to give a physical effect for keys pressed
  • Support for both CDMA and GSM
  • 3.2 MP camera
  • Support for normal 3.5mm Jack for headphones

Features similar are automatic switching to portrait and landscape mode, on screen keyboards (some difference is there in the portrait mode). The device is available from Verizon Wireless. One real hard miss is the lack of support for WiFi. For $200 and a two year contract its a good alternative for the enterprise users mesmerized with the iPhone.