The open source community Codeplex has got a portable and light weight application that reads out text. So it is basically a very useful and light weight application that can be used to read text aloud through a robotic voice. Its called Clipspeak. Some interesting features are:

1. Record the audio to MP3 (turn text to MP3 OR ebooks to audio books)

2. Copy paste text to be spoken. Stop ongoing speech.

3. Change voice parameters.

[Download]

ONLY FOR U.S. Schools

Google invites U.S school students to submit their artistic and creative imaginations for the Google logo on its home page. Last year winner Christin Engelberth’s entry. Some important dates are as follows:

School Registration Deadline – March 17, 2010

Early Bird Submissions -Win Netbook Computers – March 10, 2010

Doodle Entry Deadline – March 31, 2010

State Finalists and Regional Winners Notified – May 17, 2010

Online Public Vote – May 17-24, 2010

Awards Ceremony and National Winners Announced – May 26, 2010

Winning Doodle on the Google Homepage – May 27, 2010

Are you concerned about your website taking long load times. This could be your internet connection or really a fault with your website. To find out Pingdom tools is the best place. It analyzes your load speed on a standard internet connections. Anything less than 12 seconds is fine. If you have something more than that, it could be a reason to worry.

Pingdom tools gives you a list of objects in a particular order (default in the order they load) and their load times. This helps you find the area of fault. A graph generated is something like this:

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Sometimes the website host goes down without you noticing it. This may lead to a significant drop in the visitor count. You can get notifications of your site going down right at your desktop. Pingdom desktop notifier alerts you when this happens. Later take some action to get your host working again.  It uses the Pingdom uptime monitoring service and is very easy to use. Runs on windows XP, Vista and seven.

It also has several other alert features. Some limited features are available on a free account. Bigger websites can use the paid versions (30 day free trial).
size: 3.6mb
[Download]

Struggling with image manipulation softwares to cut the background off your photographs was the old method. It is not something you should do when you have Instant mask with you.

Instant mask is fairly easy to use and removes the background from pictures effectively. It works best when the background is of some distinct color or has a clear sharp boundary with the subject. It offers you a free version with lesser features and an Instant mask pro version with full features. The pro version can be bought or the trial can be used for 14 days before buying.

Again, Instant Mask offers a freeware version with sufficient features also.

[Download]

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