Bitstrips: The title says it all really. Make great looking comic strips and cartoons with this online generator.

Oh, remember the joy of making compilation tapes back in the old days? Well, you can relive those great times with two online resources which allow you to make and share your own comps. 

Muxtape is the one that seems to have gained most traction but my favourite is Mixwit. While Muxtape allows you to post a url to your compilation for others to listen to Mixwit is embeddable on your website, blog, Facebook or Myspace page and is customisable with added images etc. The Muxtape homepage is also a great source of music, with some pretty eclectic tastes on show.

MoFuse Instantly Converts Sites for the iPhone

MoFuse is a service that will take your website and instantly create a mobile version of it, sparing you the development costs of doing so by hand.

Today the company is announcing that it will now automatically create iPhone versions of sites in addition to the standard versions for dumbed down mobile browsers.

Starting immediately, when iPhone users browse to the MoFuse mobile version of a site, which can be placed at a subdomain, they will be presented a nicely formatted version for their swank handheld device.

Mobile Version of this site can be found at:  http://mikepower.mofuse.mobi/

Instapaper

This is just another reminder of a great little bookmarking application which is getting a lot of attention from  serious web guys. It's is an utterly simple, very fast, 'read later' bookmark service which allows you to bookmark pages while you browse, using a browser bookmarklet. OK so there are tons of other, similar apps out there but do give Instapaper a try. It's not something to use for permanent archiving, there are no tags, folders or extracts. It's just a great way of storing interesting stuff you want to come back to later, when you have more time. I love it. Try it, you might just find it useful.

VIDDIX is a new video platform that allows users to add all kinds of web content to their video timeline. This new video platform will enrich the online video experience in ways never before seen on the web. The panel on the left is used to display video. The VIDDIX upload system supports all sorts of raw formats and converts them to FLV for optimal web performance.The panel on the right is used to display the extra web elements that are connected to the video. These web elements can range from a simple text with links to full flash objects and forms.

NewsClipper Brings All The News Video from Around the Web to One Place

Why isn’t there a Google News for video? That is what Onar Vikingstad, a 27-year-old Norwegian Web developer with a day job at Apple, asked himself before he created NewsClipper. The site is a side project of his that brings together news video clips from the Websites of ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, ESPN, Fox News, NBC, and MSNBC. He explains:

What I wanted to create with NewsClipper was a site that consolidates all news clips from the major TV news networks in one location. No more having to run around to different carefully managed and controlled individual websites. Basically it lets you view the latest news clips from the major TV networks in one location, without having to go to their slow sites overloaded with ads.

'DVD Jon' frees your media with DoubleTwist

The man notorious for cracking the DVD code, and Apple's FairPlay DRM, is looking to make a legitimate business out of his expertise. Beginning Tuesday, the first product from his company, DoubleTwist Ventures, will enter open beta.

Called DoubleTwist, it's a free desktop client that essentially allows any kind of music, photo, or video file to be shared between a long list of portable media players, and through Web-based social networks. Instead of iTunes songs or videos taken with a Nokia N95 remaining locked on the phone, DoubleTwist software allows for dragging, dropping, and syncing of different media formats no matter the device.

The idea, according to DoubleTwist founder and CEO Monique Farantzos, is that media files should be more like e-mail. It shouldn't matter what service you create the file in, or on what type of hardware, it all should work together seamlessly, she says.

Currently Windows only but a Mac version is coming.

PicLens - Immersive Slideshows Across the Web

PicLens instantly transforms your browser into a full-screen, 3D experience for viewing images on the web. Photos will come to life via a cinematic presentation that goes well beyond the confines of the traditional browser window. With PicLens, browsing and viewing images on the web will never be the same again.

NEW! Immerse yourself in 3D Style. Our new interactive "3D Wall" lets you effortlessly drag, click, and zoom your way around a wall of pictures for an extraordinary, full-screen viewing experience. Why mundanely flip through online photo galleries or squint at thumbnails from Google Image Search when you can fly through an immersive, full-screen experience instead?

Cheap Impostor

If you want to use your computer to make a book or a magazine, the final step before printing is called imposition. Cheap Impostor is a simple yet powerful alternative to fancy imposition software. It doesn't offer all the features of high-end imposition software (which costs hundreds or thousands of dollars). Hence the name. However, if you want to print and bind booklets, magazines, or even long books, this program might be all the imposition software you need.

Let's say you want to make a magazine from a document you've written. You would like to have the magazine be the size of a sheet of paper folded in half. You might assume that you can simply print the document 2-up, fold it in the middle, staple and be done. Whoops! If you did that, the first page would be on the back cover of your "magazine", while page 2 would be on the front. And so on...it gets really ugly. 
CI costs $35 and is Leopard compatible.

Dreamhost has introduced 'Easy Mode' to it's one-click install control panel:

When you do "Easy Mode", you'll be using a fully-hosted version of
WordPress as opposed to getting files installed into your own web space.

This fully-hosted version WILL use your own MySQL database though, which
you'll have full control of. Although you can still pick from over 50
themes and enable some plugins we have installed, you won't be able to
customize the themes or install extra plugins.

However, you also won't have to worry about managing your installation
at all.. we'll automatically handle all upgrades and it's now on US to
make sure your WordPress blog is always working and fast and correctly
configured (so long as you don't go mucking directly in your database)!

(In fact, "easy" WordPress one-clicks are ALREADY upgraded to 2.3.3!)

You still get the installation at any sub-domain of yours you'd like and
of course there are no ads or anything of THAT ilk.

Also, "easy mode" is cool because ALL you do is pick a (sub) domain and in
less than 17 seconds you're ready to blog!

In effect this gives you the advantages of a fully managed Wordpress installation with automatic upgrades etc together with the ability to use your own domain or sub-domain. The downside is that you get the same customization/plugin limitations as the Wordpress.com version. At the moment the 'Easy Mode' is limited to WP but Dreamhost will be adding other apps later.

It also seems that the billing fiasco of last month has actually generated more positive feedback than negative because of the way the DH boys handled it. There are people who hate Dreamhost's jokey approach to everything, even the very serious stuff, but as far as I am concerned I love it all and I think Josh Jones rocks!
And 500GB/5TB for around £3 a month! You'd be silly not to take a look.

SproutBuilder: You've Got to See This Drag and Drop Widget Maker

SproutBuilder is going to explode the world of widgets on the web. This is far and away my favorite product I've seen at DEMO, not just this year but ever in the three years I've attended. The product is a drag-and-drop Flash authoring tool built on Adobe's Flex. SproutBuilder lets you build very sophisticated, multi-page widgets with media, analytics and more. In minutes. With ease.

Sprout is a cool , quick and easy way to build multimedia content and publish it anywhere in a form that can then be copied and spread by others. Add and mash up content and use the available templates or design your own. Then manage your 'Sprout' easily so that any changes are updated immediately at every location. Check out the short video on the Sprout site and then request a beta invitation. Seems a little flaky at the moment and I think the UI could be a lot more intuitive but it's early days and it IS, after all, a beta!

Instapaper, A Beautifully Simple Bookmarking Tool

Instapaper, a new site by Tumblr employee Marco Arment, simply put will easily be one of the websites I visit most this year. It may very well be the easiest and most beautifully minimal bookmarking site ever created.

I use Magnolia for most of my bookmarking needs (plus a bit of del.icio.us/furl) but Instapaper is something different. It is a super fast and super easy way of saving stuff to read later. No tags, no folders, no dialogue box just instant bookmarking. I'll be using it a lot. Check it out!

UPDATE: Instapaper now has RSS feeds. Very handy.

SHARE beta

“Share” beta is a web-based service that allows you to upload and share files. You can distribute the URL for the file to a selected number of users, post the link for the URL on a website, or embed the code for previewing the file in a web page. You have the option to allow recipients to invite others to view your shared files or limit access to only the specified recipients.

Using Share enables you to upload and share large files with others without attaching the files to an email message. Users have access to the latest version of the files through Share. It also enables the recipients to preview PDF, JPG, GIF, and PNG files using the web browser before downloading them.

Via Robin Good

Password Manager + AutoFill for Mac OS X



1Password remembers all passwords, automates sign-ins, guards against identity thieves and keyloggers and loads more. It is the number one password manager for Macs.

DIY Flash and Lighting Hacks

Lighting can be the difference between a good shot and a great one.

Walk into most professional photographer’s studios and you’ll be confronted with truckloads of lighting equipment. To the average hobby photographer it’s enough to make your mind boggle - and for your stomach to turn as you think about the cost of it all...In this post I’ve found 10 DIY Flash and Lighting Hacks that put some of these lighting techniques within the grasp of the rest of us. Some are more involved than others but all are fun and will provide you with some new lighting gear to experiment with.

Just three and a half days to go until the latest $49  Mac Heist Bundle closes shop.

So far over 22,000 bundles have been sold and almost a quarter of a million dollars raised for charity. In addition to the ten listed below (all now unlocked) MacHeist has also included the best dowload manager for Mac, Speed Download, as part of the deal. Two great Freeverse games, including Magic Tiki Mini Golf and the Apple Design Award runner up, WingNuts 2 have been added, bringing the $49 bundle value to over $400 and the deal to an unprecedented 90% off!  This is the second bundle I've bought and it's such a great deal it's hard to see any reason not to go for it, unless you don't use a Mac or you already have all the apps!

Photo Products to Watch in 2008

I consider Eye-Fi a magical piece of photo technology. It makes it possible for me to upload photos to Flickr (or other services) and to my computer directly from my camera using my wi-fi network - no wires, no card readers. Once it's installed, you just shoot a photo and within seconds the photo magically appears on the web and my computer.

From Commoncraft, the great guys who brought you (among other things in their Paperworks video series) "RSS in Plain English".

MacHeist » Bundle

Last year's bundle caused a frenzy in the Mac community, selling over 16,000 copies in a week. This year, we're setting our sights a little higher, with a larger bundle, a two week sale, and what we believe to be a stronger collection of apps. Simply put, this is the best Mac software deal in history.

UPDATE: All the apps are now unlocked so you get immediate licensed versions of all 10 PLUS Speed Download, the best Mac download manager. For $49 it's a great bundle. SnapzProx and Pixelmator are worth more each than the whole deal. PLUS 25% of your purchase price goes to a charity of your choice!

Interclue makes your browsing smarter, faster, more informative

With the Interclue browser add-on you'll see less and know more, click less and do more. Handy icons and tooltips tell you about each link before you click, and relevant actions appear right next to your cursor. You'll never have to open a site in the dark again—Interclue will tell you if the content is objectionable, full of paid-for links, or just plain irrelevant.

“I'm definitely impressed with the implementation of web previews in Interclue” — ReadWriteWeb

“...it may very well be one of the best Firefox add-ons that I have seen. ” — Cybernet News