Start pages are always a mess in web browsers. Firefox put up a design contest for users to design a perfect start page recently. Be it Chrome’s most used pages or Firefox’s default Google search page. Well, Chome does the work to a pretty good extent not to mention opera’s and safari’s speed dial pages. But it is totally a different experience when you have the start page on the cloud that is perfectly customized according to your needs. All those web services on your home page for you to access at a click. Doesn’t that seem perfect.
Symbaloo - Start simple, is a simple interface that basically focuses to refine your first contact with the internet everyday. The symbaloo pages houses draggable boxes that link to your favorite web services like feeds, mail, radio, search, translate and what not. If even that doesn’t make you scream enough. You have free places where you can add your own boxes that link to a service specified by you. Now that’s too much YOU.

To set it as a start page. Just click the button at the bottom of the page that says “Set as startpage“. The following light box a the center of the screen gives you the instructions. OR simply drag the link http://www.symbaloo.com to the home in firefox.

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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Okay, I have hundreds of pictures to arrange into a collage. I’m too lazy to arrange so many of them into a collage. What do I do?

Solution:

I download this free software that automates the process of creating a collage from number of pictures. Leaves absolutely nothing for you to do and gives you a finished professional looking collage. It’s called shape collage. One great feature of Shape collage is that you can make the collage in a desired shape. The software also has an online version, that allows you to work directly on the cloud.

Some great features:

Create picture collages in less than a minute with just a few mouse clicks

Create collages in the shape of a Rectangle, heart, circle, letters, or even draw your own shape.

Adjust the collage size, size of the photos, number of photos, and spacing between photos

Change the background, the colour of the border, and more

Edit the final image in Photoshop by saving it in PSD format.

[Shape Collage]

Make sure your computer has java runtime environment installed.

To share files on a office or home network IP messenger is a great software. It shares files with no immediate servers in between and help accelerate the sharing process. Gtalk or Skype are other good options sometimes. When sharing through a browser Mediafire, Rapidshare and Megaupload always come to our minds. But they have their own down sides. Some require you to pay for premium accounts. All of such sites require you to wait for hours to upload if you are sharing a big file.

FilesOverMiles

If you have tried using Opera Unite (review by Saurav), reluctant to shift to opera now and want something like unite on the cloud. Then you are searching for FilesOverMiles.  FilesOverMiles lets you send files to anyone with no upload waiting times. The files are shared directly. With no servers in between the process, the sharing gets done fairly faster, especially between systems on the same network. When you upload a file to FilesOverMiles, it generates a unique secret URL. You decide whom to share the URL with. The files sent are also encrypted, thus it  ensures complete privacy.

This is one innovative software product, an Anti-virus that is free. Its called Panda Cloud Anti-virus. The innovative part is, it never needs an update. Download it here and install it without hassle (very easy to install). Installation finishes fast and there is no update ritual after the install. As soon as installation finishes you start using the product.

It has a clean and simple user interface. Perfect for malware protection. It protects you from rootkits, spywares, adwares and keyloggers very efficiently. Even some dedicated programs meant for malware protection do not do that well.

Panda is definitely recommended for users who are searching for a complete antivirus that is free. In the essence it never needs an update.

[DOWNLOAD]

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