Best Last.fm alternatives

Recently Last.fm announced that they are charging subscription fees for all users outside US, UK, and Germany.
http://blog.last.fm/2009/03/24/lastfm-radio-announcement

Don't want to pay for something you have much better alternatives for? Yeah, right. Try these two:

Jango: A very nice service, with very good selection of music and similar (up-to-3) artist-based radio channels as Last.fm.
http://www.jango.com

AccuRadio: This is not an artist-based radio station, but the available channels are very well-picked, and you can even mix-and-match channels with their radio-builder now. Definitely worth a shot. Also try their iPhone/iPad app...
http://www.accuradio.com

Worth mentioning: thesixtyone

It's TAX time

I have tried multiple online tax filing services, and decided that TaxSlayer is the best. Why?

• It is cheap compared to others ($15 in total for federal and state E-FILE for 2009 returns, and you can keep your PDF copy).
• It is convenient (asks questions that direct you to deduct relevant expenses).
• It does the job.

Give it a try:
http://www.taxslayer.com/

Firefox 3.6 Chrome 4 Opera 10.5

We always wonder about speeds of different browsers. Here they are:

http://lifehacker.com/5457242/

ps: I'll try Opera 10.5 myself now!

Most visited wesites

Worldwide unique visitors (June, 2009).  Source: comScore

  1. Google Sites: 844 million
  2. Microsoft Sites: 691 million
  3. Yahoo! Sites: 581 million
  4. Facebook: 340 million
  5. Wikimedia Foundation sites: 303 million
  6. AOL: 280 million
  7. eBay: 233 million
  8. CBS Interactive: 186 million
  9. Amazon: 183 million
 10. Ask Network: 174 million

Online Storage and Backup

I tried multiple tools and web sites for online storage. Dropbox is the best one I have found.

It synchronizes your files online, and keeps versions for 30 days (the paid version keeps unlimited history of versions and deleted files). It is extremely easy to use: After installation it creates a Dropbox folder. Just copy any files you want to that folder, and they are synchronized. You don’t need to change anything, just change the folder name you use. Their iPhone application is also very nice. Furthermore, the fact that they keep your data encrypted with your password on Amazon S3 servers sounds like a good reason to trust them.

The default is 2GB free space if you join on
http://www.getdropbox.com/
If you join through an invitation, you get extra 250MB. I have multiple invitations. Just drop a comment and specify a way to reach you (e.g., twitter DM) and I can send you the invitation. I'll check it often, so you should get the invitation soon.

Windows and Mac versions are easy to install. Linux version is also easy if you have root access. For using it under linux with no root access, download it from (or find a newer build in the forums):

http://forums.getdropbox.com/topic.php?id=12922&replies=67#post-81845
Unzip, untar and run
~/.dropbox-dist/dropbox

Watch Hulu or Youtube videos Full Screen when you have multiple monitors

So, you have multiple monitors (in general, two:) and you want to watch videos (movies or tv shows) on Hulu or Youtube. Of course, you'd like to watch the video full screen on one of the monitors, while maybe you are working using the other monitor. Unfortunately, the moment you click somewhere, the flash video player exits full screen. Here's the solution for you:

For Hulu: Download and install official Hulu video player. It even has continuous playback feature, which means for example for a TV series, once one episode ends, it starts showing the next episode. You don't even need to pause working. They have Windows, Linux, and Mac versions.
http://www.hulu.com/labs/hulu-desktop

For Youtube: You can download programs (for example, VLC media player does the job), but you don't have to. A simple trick can approximate full screen (approximation is this: The video covers the whole browser page, and then you can run your favorite browser full screen). The trick: Add "_popup" after the "watch" in the url of the video in the address bar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww
becomes
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww
Note: The url can have many other things after this watch clause. Ignore them, just write the "_popup" after "watch".
Bonus: Check out the video for a laugh :)

Download Youtube Videos (even HD)

I know many of you would like to download youtube videos. If possible, you would prefer high definition (HD) videos. Here's your one stop answer:

http://www.youtubesnips.com/

Reasons: easy to use, converts to formats playable on phones including Apple iPhone (.flv .3gp .mp4).