General

The Internet is evolving pretty fast, and we need to keep abreast of new trends when possible. Perhaps the greatest phenomenon that we saw emerging over the last couple of years is Twitter. It started as a messaging and micro-blogging tool used by a few tech pioneers, and now it is everywhere, from companies that are using it to sell goods to celebrities who adopted it to keep in touch with their fans.

Twitter is also creating a new way to absorb and stay updated with online content, much like RSS and web feeds did years ago. Considering that we decided to create a Twitter account for our blog, where you will get updates whenever a new post is published (with a link to it).

You can follow the DailyBits Twitter account here: @dailybit

And yes, someone had already registered @dailybits…. Apparently there is a blog in Belgium with the same name. Not a big deal, as that blog is probably sending some traffic to us when its readers end up typing .com instead of .be.

If you’re an avid Facebook user (alright, who isn’t anyway?), you’re probably tired of refreshing Facebook.com just to see the latest updates from your Facebook friends and contacts. For busy people, that could get pretty annoying at times. The good news is, there are several desktop applications available which allow you to receive Facebook updates in real-time without you going to Facebook.com. [Read more…] about Four Best Desktop Applications for Your Facebook Needs

The guys from CellPhones.org think that bloggers deserve more recognition for the work they do. We couldn’t agree more. To solve that problem they are launching the 2009 Blogger Appreciation Contest. You just need to visit the application page and submit your own blog or the blog from someone you think deserves recognition.

The prizes are pretty cool:

1st Prize: 1 year of your cell phone bill on us (Cell Phones . Org) – up to $1000
2nd Prize: Free cell phone of your choosing (does not include plan, just the phone).
3rd Prize: $100 off your your next purchase at Cell Phones .org – this is transferable and never expires.

The deadline for submissions is February 28, so check it out.

If you missed any of our posts in 2008, below you will find a list with the most popular of them. Best 2009 wishes for all our readers, too!

• 17 Sensational, Free and Downloadable Graphic Novels: The web is home to a treasure-trove of free culture. Thousands of artists, writers, film-makers, poets and illustrators craft impressive creative works and share them freely online, in the interests of making their work accessible to as many people as possible. We thank them for that.
• 18 Undiscovered Websites Every Gamer Should Know: The gaming niche is characterized by its haves and have-nots. You’ve seen Kotaku, IGN, GameSpot, Joystiq, 1UP and the others, but what about the great, lesser-known gaming sites?
• 25 Incredible Skins, Resources & Tools for the Gmail Power User: Gmail is one of those rare things unanimously loved by everyday web users and tech-heads alike. The possibilities are endless. It can be anything from a simple email client to your central nervous system on the web. How far you take it is up to you.
• 8 Freeware Alternatives Every Windows User Should Install: Paid Windows software like Norton AntiVirus, Adobe Photoshop and Nero are etched into the minds of users thanks to years of advertising by the powerful corporations that own them.
• 10 Best, Free Programs to keep Windows Protected: Windows isn’t secure as you might have known. You’ve probably faced threats and trojans on your computer. There are loads of programs that are targeted at keeping your Windows computer safe from intrusions, here’s a pick of the best of them.
• Who Spent $10 For These Domain Names? Seriously!: Sure, domain names are the real estate of the future, but that does not justify spending $10 on crazy stuff. Below you will find some of the craziest (and crapiest) registered domains that I came across through my research sessions on the web.
• 7 Tips to Keep Windows XP Fast and Responsive: Windows XP is a landmark in Microsoft’s history. After a couple of unstable releases, Windows XP ironed out all the creases. Even today, Windows XP is more stable and considered a better OS than Vista by many.
• 11 Undiscovered Website Ideas to Steal and Make You Rich: Community-based sites and web applications are rapidly becoming hot property. Young entrepreneurs are making startling amounts of money with simple ideas that connect people and places. Fancy becoming one of them?
• 5 Ways to Make Your Web Surfing More Productive: Many of us could certainly manage our time more wisely while online. Bloggers in particular are surfing the Web daily and can be easily distracted from more important work. There are many ways to curb your wayward surfing and streamline your Internet experience, however, starting with the following five.
• 10 Must See Virtual Places To Visit Before You Die (with video!): Daily Bits is pleased to present a video travelogue of essential virtual destinations; a mixture of must-see places spread across consoles from the past, present and future, as well as some that are available to visit in your browser today. Start ticking them off your virtual list, and make sure you bookmark the rest — all due to arrive this year.
• 5 Terrific (and Unusual) Twitter Uses: As growing social sites like Facebook and MySpace collapse under their own weight, drowning users in never-ending streams of “Pirate Ninja Hug For Cancer!” applications, the high-tech haiku of Twitter is gaining ground. With 140 characters to answer the question “What are you doing?”, the service has soared from simple status messages to a global information network. Here we look at five uber-uses people have put twitter to.
• 5 Webcomics That Don’t Suck: One popular image of the internet is of a wonderful utopia, allowing creators worldwide to share their genius without “The Establishment” holding them back. The only problem is that most people aren’t geniuses, and huge sections of that “Establishment” are filters designed to protect the innocent public from a never-ending torrent of terrible music, garbage writing and – worst of all – comics so bad they’d make Marvel back off and re-launch as a house painting firm.
• 6 Better Ways to Search Google: Everyone uses Google these days and often multiple times each day. We use it for work, for fun and for general interest. It has made our researching so much easier. Google makes looking up the most mundane detail simple. Need a phone number for the pizza place down the street? Google it.
• 8 of the Best Adobe AIR Applications: Adobe AIR showed a lot of potential during its period of public beta but unfortunately had very few applications that really took advantage of the technology. Thankfully over the last month or so we have begun to see some impressive and useful applications being released.
• Top 10 Countries Censoring the Web: When the World Wide Web was created in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee (not to be confused with the Internet itself, which is the core network developed many years earlier), its main objective was to enable the free exchange of information via interlinked hypertext documents.

The OLPC project was a grand vision. Making computers accessible to the young generations provides them a portal to information that should go a long way in reducing the knowledge divide. But at $188, the project is still a tad costly on a per child basis. Enter Virtualization. A concept that makes one physical computer system host several virtual systems with resources allocated to them.

California based NComputing is using virtualization to provide an alternative to governments looking to provide affordable computing resources in their learning centers. The software from NComputing turns a PC into a number of virtual PCs which can be accessed by maximum 30 people, each with their dedicated mouse, monitor and keyboard.

An excerpt from PC World:

NComputing’s virtualization software runs on a desktop PC, said Stephen Dukker, chairman and CEO of NComputing. That PC is connected through an access terminal with the “virtual” PCs, which consist of a monitor, keyboard and mice, also known as “thin clients.”

The thin client does not have any storage. All of the computing is done on the main PC. NComputing software works with Microsoft’s Windows and Linux operating systems.

A single PC has more than enough processing power to be shared by several users, Dukker said. A typical person running productivity, multimedia, e-mail and Web browsing applications uses on average just 1 to 2 percent of the capacity of standalone PCs, with occasional peaks using 10 to 20 percent of a computer’s processing power, he added.

While the XO laptop provides a personalized all time available computing resource, it is pertinent question whether laptops are the solution for the same, if at all portable computing is as much a necessity. NComputing’s virtualized solution does provide a better priced alternative to the OLPC.

You might be shocked with the latest events in Wall Street and around the world as well, but this is not the first time that we experience a financial crisis. Taking a look at what happened in the past can help us both to understand what caused the problems, and how people manage to solve them. For that purpose Neatorama published a really interesting post titled 10 American Financial Meltdowns in the Past Century.

Here is the quote from the first one, the Panic of 1907:

Background: At the time, the young US stock market was in a decline – it was off 25% since the beginning of the year and Wall Street was jittery over the tight money supply.

Trigger: Then along came Otto Heinze with his get-(even)-rich(er)-quick scheme. In October of 1907, Otto, along with his brother, a copper magnate named Augustus Heinze, and the ice king (yup, he sold ice – remember, this was before the age of household refrigerators) Charles W. Morse, aggressively bought shares of United Copper, thinking that they could corner the market on the stock. Their plan failed spectacularly, and immediately bankrupted the trust companies and banks that provided the financing.

Runs on banks immediately ensued as depositors pulled their money from banks that had dealings (or rumored to have dealings) with the trio. In a little less than two weeks in the Panic of 1907, a chain reaction had left 9 trust companies and banks bankrupt.

They also covered how each crisis was solved. Check out the post to read the complete list.