eHow: How to do just about anything

eHow(http://www.ehow.com) is an online how-to reference containing information on how to do just about anything. If you want to know how to tie-a-tie, lose weight, write that perfect CV, negotiate a raise or even kiss on a date - eHow can help you.

eHow is full of user contributions, most of the advice is practical and low cost. The Google powered search at eHow not only takes less time in finding information, but carrying out simple tasks yourself can save you money.

One of the most refreshing things about eHow is that you don't need to register in order to be able to use it, meaning no giving out personal details, and no daily spam in your Inbox.

Personalized Start Pages

It always helps if we could have had all of our "daily content" - mail, news, market updates, weather reports etc. all at one place. Opening several windows or tabs also might burden the system resources, which might be annoying at times.

Personalized Start Pages helps you organize a start up page the way you want. Microsoft's Start.com, Google's Personalized homepage, Pageflakes, Protopage, Netvibes are a relatively new concept where you can aggregate all those "daily content" on a single customizable page.

Most of these online services are built on AJAX-based technology and are free. Apart from the basic features of aggregating content from different sources most offer you a host of other value added services like Search Engine, RSS/Atom Readers, Podcasts etc.

Soapbox from Microsoft

Soapbox (http://soapbox.msn.com) - video sharing is the latest offering from Microsoft.
Call it Microsoft's ego getting in the way of their focus or a smart strategy to tap into the overly popular video sharing business, Soapbox has a key advantage of being tightly integrated into Microsoft's other online services.

Soapbox enables its users to upload videos in several formats, assign categories and share them with other people. Microsoft claims that Soapbox will be more bandwidth efficient than its competition.
Soapbox will be tightly integrated throughout Microsoft's portfolio of online services, including Windows Live Spaces and Messenger. Microsoft could also link Soapbox with Zune, using which you can share content wirelessly, Soapbox could have a huge advantage due to this. YouTube on the other hand is more or less a standalone, unless Google thinks otherwise.

Microsoft is also promoting "Soapbox Community", an online set of tools that allow users to discuss videos. The service will also be closely linked with Microsoft's Live Spaces.

Soapbox is currently available as a beta and is available on invitation-basis only. As per popular reviews there is nothing appealing with Soapbox that may lure YouTube users into taking it up. It remains to be seen if Soapbox integration with Live Spaces, Messenger does help Microsoft cut a share of the market.

Source: Microsoft's Soapbox takes on YouTube

ASCII Art

ASCII Art diagrams are created using ASCII characters. WikiPedia has an entry about ASCII Art:

ASCII art is an artistic medium that relies primarily on computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable characters defined by ASCII.
ASCII art is used wherever text can be more readily printed or transmitted than graphics, or in some cases, where the transmission of pictures is not possible. This includes typewriters, teletypes, non-graphic computer terminals, in early computer networking, e-mail, and Usenet news messages.

There are many commercially available programs that can convert images or text that you type, into ASCII Art diagrams.
I really like the one that's available online: http://www.sebastian-r.de/asciiart/

JavE - Java ASCII Versatile Editor is a free program that could be used to create ASCII Art diagrams. You will need Java Runtime to run JavE. You can download JavE from here: http://www.jave.de/