i COPY : make ur printer and scanner a Xerox machine

Don't have one of those newfangled all-in-one printer/scanner/fax/time machines? Well, if you've got a printer and a scanner hooked up to you computer, you probably know that it's not that hard to use your PC as a copy machine. Just scan an image with the one and print it with the other.

The problem is that you might wind up having to use two or three separate programs to do the scanning and copying. iCopy makes the process a lot simpler.

You can either download an installer or a zip file. For some reason the installer didn't work on our test system, but the standalone .exe file in the zip version worked perfectly. The source code is also available.

The program will find your printer and scanner, and let you create copies by pressing the big button. You can also adjust your printer/scanner settings, choose the number of copies to make, and set brightness and contrast levels.

Firefox uploader addon

Uploading files to websites can easily become a chore if you do it enough. Heavy Flickr or YouTube users probably know this feeling as much as anyone else.

If you find yourself doing a lot of uploading, why not consider making the job easier on yourself? The Firefox Universal Uploader add-on for Firefox can ease your burden when uploading files, photos or videos to Flickr, Picasa, Youtube, Box.net, Facebook, Webshots or OmniDrive. Working just like most modern FTP clients, simply navigate to the folder containing the files you'd like to upload, and bounce them across to the destination.

Google Moon

Google has added updates imagery to Google Moon allowing you to see high resolution photos of a place you're unlikely ever to visit. Aside from high res pictures, there are also photos, articles, scientific charts, and links to videos from the Apollo moon missions.

There are even Google Street View style 360 degree closeup images of selected locations, and a text search box for finding specific spots on the moon's surface.

Google's had the moon on the brain this week. The company has also announced its sponsoring the Lunar X-PRIZE contest. Teams around the world are competing for a $30 million prize. All they have to do is land a privately funded spacecraft on the moon. Of course, it costs NASA a whole lot more than $30 million to send the shuttle into space and back without even stopping at the moon. So the odds of anyone designing and flying a ship to the moon for less money than $30 million is pretty slim. But hey, the prize would help recoup some of your costs, right?

PDF addon for firefox : usefull

When you click on a web link that takes you to a PDF document, you can either download it or view it in your browser if you have the right plugin installed. But you usually have to configure your browser settings to either always download a file or always open a file.

Sure, you can open a file with Firefox and then download it, but considering how long it takes for the Adobe Reader plugin to open a file, that just seems like a waste of time.

That's where PDF Download comes in handy. This Firefox add-on gives you more control over how you handle PDF files. Want to automatically download every PDF you see? You an do that. Want to open every file using Adobe Reader? No problem. How about opening every file as an HTML document? Yup, you can do that too.

But probably the most useful option is the default view. Once you install PDF Download, every time you click a link that takes you to a PDF file, a window will pop up asking what you'd like to do with that file.

i-Phone news

This week in iPhone news:

• Apple sells the one millionth iPhone
• iFlickr allows users to upload pics from their iPhone to Flickr
• iUnlock, a a free software SIM unlock was released
• Apple says updates will most likely break 3rd party apps
• Free iPhone ringtone makers start to appear

Apple sells the one millionth iPhone
On Monday Apple sold the one millionth iPhone. It only took 74 days for Apple to reach the one million mark, a feat that took the iPod 2 years.

iFlickr allows users to upload pics from their iPhone to Flickr
iFlickr is a 3rd party iPhone app that allows users to upload photos taken with the built-in camera in their iPhone directly to Flickr at full resolution. You can also upload your iPhone photos by email by getting a special email address from Flickr.

iUnlock, a a free software SIM unlock was released
A software SIM unlock was released to the public. iUnlock (which has ties to our sister blog TUAW) has been used to unlock iPhones in over 90 countries.

Apple says updates will most likely break 3rd party apps
After word got out that Apple was taking a neutral stance on 3rd party native iPhone applications, in an interview with Gearlog Apple said future "software updates will most likely break" 3rd party apps.

Free iPhone ringtone makers start to appear
After Apple starting selling ringtones through iTunes several free iPhone ringtone makers have started to pop up. MakeiPhoneRingtone allows you to drag and drop ringtons onto your iPhone, and this simple hack within iTunes allows you to turn any existing mp3 into a ringtone.

Have you found something cool for the iPhone? Let us know about it by sending up a tip.

FireFox rocks ! 400 million downloads

In less than three years, Mozilla's Firefox has amassed 400 million downloads. The whole shift towards using the Firefox web browser was sparked in November 2004 by a Spread Firefox campaign in which tens of thousands of users spawned 25 million downloads. The buttons and banners placed on websites took only a year to grab 100 million downloads, and a year later 200 million.

Now, three years, an award for most recognized brand and 400 million downloads later, Firefox is helping people surf the web better, faster and with a friendlier experience. If you want to be part of the next 400 million users to download the virus and spyware free browser, you too can add some Firefox love to your blog or website.

Use Gmail as ur Drive :Shell Extension

GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google Gmail account, allowing you to use Gmail as a storage medium.

GMail Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google Gmail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your Gmail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag'n'drop files to.

Ever since Google started to offer users a Gmail e-mail account, which includes storage space of 2000 megabytes, you have had plenty of storage space but not a lot to fill it up with. With GMail Drive you can easily copy files to your Gmail account and retrieve them again.
When you create a new file using GMail Drive, it generates an e-mail and posts it to your account. The e-mail appears in your normal Inbox folder, and the file is attached as an e-mail attachment. GMail Drive periodically checks your mail account (using the Gmail search function) to see if new files have arrived and to rebuild the directory structures. But basically GMail Drive acts as any other hard-drive installed on your computer.
You can copy files to and from the GMail Drive folder simply by using drag'n'drop like you're used to with the normal Explorer folders.

Because the Gmail files will clutter up your Inbox folder, you may wish to create a filter in Gmail to automatically move the files (prefixed with the GMAILFS letters in the subject) to your archived mail folder.

Please note that GMail Drive is still an experimental tool. There's still a number of limitations of the file-system (such as total filename size must be less than 65 characters). Since the tool hooks up with the free Gmail Service provided by Google, changes in the Gmail system may break the tool's ability to function. I cannot guarantee that files stored in this manner will be accessible in the future.
GMail Drive v1.0.11 - download site #1 (Softpedia)
GMail Drive v1.0.11 - download site #2 (Filehippo)
installation :

• Extract the ZIP file to a temporary folder.
• Run the Setup application.

Nokia's Alternative to iPhone

Okay, it's not really a phone -- but Nokia's open source N800 tablet has a lot of great things going for it, not least of which is it's $100 cheaper than the iPhone and better still, it's not part of the AT&T network.

If you can get past the fact that it is not a phone (or already have a perfectly good cell phone), here are some features that might sway you to a) get over your iPhone envy and, b) purchase a device that some believe outperforms and outfeatures the iPhone:

• Excellent 802.11 and Bluetooth radios.
• Razor-sharp 4.1", 800x480, 225 pixel/inch color touchscreen.
• Built-in stereo speakers.
• 640x480 Webcam.
• FM receiver.
• USB 2.0 connectivity.
• Two full-size SD card slots with a supported capacity of 2GB each.
• A fast CPU (330MHz).
• 128MB RAM.
• 256MB Internal Flash.
• Slated to get mobile WiMAX next year.
• USB and line-in interfaces to record and playback podcasts.
• Supports Flash 9 and Skype Internet calls which allow users to better browse YouTube videos, play online flash games, and make free Internet calls to other Skype-enabled devices.
• Optional equipment: Nokia navigation kit to use the N800 as a navigation device.

Since the N800 is open source, there are many third party applications which extend its usefulness and fun factor, such as:

Pidgin - full-featured internet messaging client, with AIM, MSN, Yahoo and Jabber support
Canola - media player with network streaming
FBReader - e-book reader
Claws Mail - full-featured email client
Obscura Photo Manager

Other than the killer light touch screen on the iPhone, the N800 has all the right stuff. What do you think? Would you rather have an iPhone or geek out with an N800?

Split large file and put htem back together with G-Split

Have a large file that you need to send to a friend, but don't feel like using YouSendIt or a similar service to get around your email provider's file attachment size limits?

For years, folks have been posting enormous files on Usenet (or storing them on floppy disks) by dividing them up into tiny portions using applications like HJSplit. The problem is that you need to use the same application to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. So if you're trying to send home movies of the kids to your mother over email, you'd better be sure she knows how to use HJSplit if she wants to watch them.

GSplit is a bit more user friendly, since it doesn't require the recipient to install any software. GSplit creates an executable file that will put all of the pieces back together. The program has a few other nifty features as well:

• Supports batch file splitting (select a few files to split and walk away from your computer for a while)
• Option to integrate with Windows Explorer allowing you to split files through a right-click context menu
• Split files by choosing the number of pieces or the size of each piece

Oh yeah, and did I mention that GSplit is free?