You may find this technique useful even if you are not a very tech-savvy user.
Situation #1. Say you have music MP3s, documents and other important files on the hard drive of your home computer. If you turn this home computer into a web server, you will be able to access all these files from office or any other Internet connected machine including your mobile phone.
Situation #2. You have some personal photographs that you want to share with other family members. You can either upload these pictures online to a site like Flickr or better still, just convert the computer into a web server. Now you can connect the camera to the computer, transfer the digital pictures to some designated folder and they’ll instantly become available to your friends and family anywhere in the world.
Situation #3. You want to host a website on the internet but the web hosting jargon like FTP, DNS, etc. is way too complex for you. The workaround therefore is that you setup a web server on your home computer (it’s easy) and then host a website in seconds without spending a single penny on external web hosting services.
Now if any of the above reasons look convincing enough, here’s how you can convert your Windows, Mac or Linux PC into a web server in less than two minutes - no technical knowledge required.
Go to labs.opera.com, download the Opera Unite software and install it. Congratulations, you are now running a web server on your machine and just need another minute to configure local file folders that you want to share with others over the internet.
Here’s an illustrated screenshot of the configuration panel - nothing technical here again.
Start the Opera Web browser (yes, that’s also you web server now) and enable the Opera Unite service from the lower left corner. Now double click the File Sharing link and select the folder whose content you want to share on the web. Any file or folder inside this folder can now be accessed over the internet - you can either use a public URL or specify a password for private sharing.
The following screencast video has more detailed instructions on how to get started with Opera Unite or you may refer to the User Guide if you get stuck somewhere.
Opera Unite looks pretty useful but there are other services around that can also do pretty similar stuff. For instance, both PurpleNova and Dekoh Dekstop enable users share content on the Internet directly from the hard drive without having to upload it anywhere.
Update: It’s important to note that your computer must be in running state and also connected to the Internet for others to download files and web pages since Opera Unite streams content directly from your machine - it doesn’t upload or caches anything to its own servers. Give it a shot. [flickr]
If you are on a budget, the built-in OCR engine of Google Search is almost a perfect option for converting scanned PDFs to text - just put all your scanned PDF images onto a public website and wait for Google spiders to convert them into editable digital text.
Obviously there are two drawbacks associated with the original idea. The PDF conversion process is not real time and second, you need access to a public web server where you can upload the PDF images so that Google bots can find them.
If you aren’t willing to wait that long and need to perform instant OCR without downloading any of the software tools, try OCR Terminal - it’s an online Optical Character Recognition service where you can upload scanned images, multi-page PDF documents or even screenshots and convert them into searchable text documents.
OCR Terminal is a free service but you are only allowed to convert up to 30 scanned pages in a day and allows for text extraction only from English language documents. They are developing a desktop client that will allow users to convert scanned PDFs or TIFF images and get them back as formatted Word files without the web browser.
Also see: Software Tools for a Paperless Office
Tip: You may also try using the OCR Terminal service to extract text from newspaper clippings or images of whiteboards that you may captured on the camera phone.
So what do you want to do on Flickr?A: Get Flickr Down – it’s a tiny Windows utility that lets you download pictures from Flickr in bulk without requiring authentication. Mac and Linux users may try Flump.
Q: I want to use my Flickr account to bookmark all interesting pictures that I frequently encounter on the Internet.
A: Get the Flickr Uploadr addon for Firefox. It lets you post pictures from a web page directly to Flickr with a simple right-click.
Q: I know Flickr offers a search engine but it won’t display more than 24 pictures at a time. Is there a better alternative ?
A: Switch to either Compfight or PictureSandbox – these are some of best Flickr search tools on the web, even better than Flickr’s built-in search engine.
Q: How can I upload video clips to Flickr from the desktop. The Flick Uploader works only with images.
A: Flickr has already added video support to the Flickr Uploader but the tool hasn’t been released officially yet. You may however download the new Flickr Uploadr here – it supports video and images.
Q: I am looking for photos on Flickr that have shades of red. Does Flickr allow search by color ?
A: Flick doesn’t support color search yet but you may try MultiColr, Color Selectr or Colr Pickr – these are Flickr mashup that display photos from Flickr which match some particular color. The advantage with MultiColr is that it lets you look for multiple color tones in the same photo.
Related: Get Color Scheme Ideas With Kuler + Flickr
Q: I need pictures from Flickr for my school project that look like a sad or angry smiley face.
A: Go to Retrievr, draw a sketch of the smiley face and this tool will try to retrieve pictures that match your sketch. Could be a great option for searching pictures that cannot be described in words.
Q: I am worried that people may use my Flickr photos without attribution. How can I protect my Flickr images ?
A: You may consider adding text watermarks to your Flickr images. PicMarkr can do that for you or you use Picnic that’s built right inside Flickr.
Q: I need to embed a Flickr badge or a live slideshow on my website that will display my latest Flickr pictures. Any suggestions?
A: FlickrIn could be a good choice here – it’s available both in Flash and JavaScript format. Another option is FlickrSlidr.
Q: I want a Flickr Screensaver.
A: Get the Google Photos Screensaver (it comes free with Picasa 3). Go to screensaver option and attach your Flickr RSS feed to the screensaver.
Q: I want my desktop wallpaper background to show Flickr pictures.
A: Get the Switcher – this program will change your desktop background at periodic intervals taking pictures from Flickr – you can select pictures by user, tags, or just plain random so you never know what the next wallpaper would look like. Fleace is another option.
Q: Can I upload PowerPoint presentations on to Flickr as a set ?
A: Not directly but there’s a workaround – PowerPoint lets you export all slides as an image that can be uploaded to Flickr in one set (or use a common tag). While Google Docs or SlideShare are better places for sharing PowerPoint slides, you may still want to use Flickr as it will attract traffic from Image search engines like Google Images.
Q: OK, enough serious talk. I want to have some fun with Flickr photos.
A: Get CoolIris to browse Flickr pictures in a 3D wall. BigHugeLabs, PimpAmPum and Dumpr
to offer a nice collection of Flickr toys for you to do fun stuff with Flickr pictures.
Useful Blog Add-Ons & Tools That Improve Visitor Experience
All these 15 add-ons are free and you don’t have to be a geek to use them on your site.
1. Google Talk Badge - This badge will enable site visitors to get in touch with you quickly. They won’t need a Google account and the badge is enabled only when you are online. Alternative is meebo me.2. Web2PDF Online - Love this. People can download your articles as PDF files with a click. The PDFs are free of any advertising and you also get full access to stats so you know what articles downloaded most, etc. (example)
You simply copy-and-paste a small block of code into your webpage, and QuickSwitch converts all the documents in your blog into Flash Paper format hosted on Scribd. If you only link to PDF files, try PDFMeNote script.
Alternatively, you can create your own translation box with language flags or through a different translation service.
Unlike the regular "Digg This" buttons, this widget creates a list of posts from your own blog that are currently getting votes on Digg. Put it in your sidebar to highlight "recently popular" content.