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Enhance your Blogger, Wordpress, MySpace, etc. with some music or a voice message that your visitors can listen to.  Embedding music into your blog or MySpace profile is really easy with Fun SoundPlayer Maker tool. You need no special plug-ins – just an SWF sound player and its HTML code. You may ask: “Where can I get them?”. This program will give them to you. So, let’s go into technical details.

To embed audio into a web page, there are three steps:

1.       Creating Flash sound player;

2.       Uploading SWF player to the Web;

3.       Inserting Flash audio player code into a web page.

Does that look difficult? Actually, it’s not. All you need to create an SWF music player and its HTML code is to use Fun SoundPlayer Maker utility. It lets you create and customize web sound players and buttons with some mouse clicks. Even the worst dummy can create flash music player with its help – no programming or scripting, simply choosing a button look, selecting sound file  to embed and… that’s all. Yes, it’s really that easy. The program gives you web ready SWF file of your audio player and a piece of HTML code. Select “Save SWF and copy an HTML code to clipboard” in publishing options. Also, you can record your voice immediately in Fun SoundPlayer Maker, save it as an mp3 file and embed into the player.

The next step – to get a flash mp3 player working, we should upload an SWF file to the Web. When it comes to the website owners, we say – upload an SWF player to your server. But if you’re a usual blogger without your own server, what should you do? I use Google sites to store my files. Go to http://sites.google.com and create your own website. That’s where you can store your files. Also, you can choose other file storage spaces from this list.  Attach the file of your flash sound player to the created website and go to your blog or MySpace profile.

That’s the third step – open an HTML editor of your blog post and paste the player code from the clipboard.  It will look like this.

“<object classid=”clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000″ codebase=”http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0″ height=”34″ width=”84″><param name=”movie” value=”myplayer.swf”><param name=”quality” value=”high”><embed src=” myplayer.swf” quality=”high” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” height=”34″ width=”84″></embed></object>”

Then, go to your Google site and copy the link of the attached SWF file. In Internet Explorer, simply click the file, open it with IE, and copy the link address in the address bar. In Firefox, it’s easier to right click on the file, in the popup menu click “Copy Link Location”, and get the link address. Paste this link into your code as a player source (replace the name of your SWF file with this link):

“<object classid=”clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000″ codebase=”http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0″ height=”34″ width=”84″><param name=”movie” value=”myplayer.swf”><param name=”quality” value=”high”><embed src=” http://sites.google.com/site/yourgooglesite/Home/myplayer.swf” quality=”high” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” height=”34″ width=”84″></embed></object>”

That’s all, your audio player is successfully embedded to your blog or MySpace.

Tips: 1) Select player templates with an embedded sound source. 2) As most of the blog editors don’t support JavaScript, select standard compliant markup in player publishing options. 3) While posting your player, you will see nothing in a visual post editor. You’ll see only the code in an HTML editor. Don’t worry, that’s normal. You’ll be able to test player in a post preview.

With huge amount of things to get done each day, it is really easy to forget important things that require your attention. How to stay focused on important task and remember everything. Here are 10 tools to help you get organized and manage your time effectively. I’ve listed both software and online tools – everything I tried and liked. They really help, so give them a try!

Backpack

Backpack is a web-based service that makes organizing your information incredibly easy. Backpack lets you make pages which can contain any combination of notes, to-dos, images, files, etc. You can keep these pages to yourself or share them with colleagues, co-workers, friends, or family. Also use Backpack Calendar and Reminders, email to-do lists, notes, files, and images to a Backpack page.

Pricing – from $7/month for Solo plan to $99/month for Pro, 30 days free trial, free plan with limitations.

Screen Calendar

Screen Calendar creates custom desktop wallpapers with built in active calendar. Screen Calendar has all functions of PIM. It allows scheduling your day hourly, set reminder, print notes or calendar itself etc. Version 7.4 supports iCalendar synchronization, so events can be imported to the desktop calendar directly from iCal files – both local and remote (e.g. Google Calendar). Also, calendar look and background can be customized to your liking. There is Outlook edition for those who used to schedule in Outlook Calendar.

Pricing – $24.95 for a single license, free trial version.

30 Boxes

30 Boxes is a web-based software application that allows an individual to keep calendar data online, to share their calendar data with an invited circle of friends and to aggregate public online information of friends. 30 Boxes is created for individuals looking for a robust, yet simple online calendaring solution that is easy to share with friends and family.

Pricing – free!

Daily Home Planner

Daily Home Planner is the software that will help you to schedule, plane meals, keep contacts, manage family finances, etc.  Handy scheduler let you view your entire family’s appointments and daily routine in one location. The Journal feature will store a daily record of the day’s events. Meals planner automatically add recipes ingredients to the shopping list. Goals and to-do lists help to keep track of plans and projects.

Pricing – $34.95 for a single license, 30 day free trial.

Toodledo

Toodledo is an easy to use, web-based to-do list.  Use Hotlist to remember the high priority tasks, add or edit tasks without page reload to save your time, organize tasks into folders or projects, set personal goals, use online calendar, track time spend for specified tasks, attach notes to any task,  share your to-do lists with coworkers, friends,family. Toodledo even have an iPhone app that you can use even when you don’t have an internet connection.

Pricing – free plan, Pro $14.95/year, Pro Plus $29.95/year

PlanPlus

PlanPlus is a powerful planning software. Task List Gadget allows to quickly view and manage the tasks set up in PlanPlus without opening the program. Prioritized Daily Task List, daily notes, appointment schedule, weekly planning tools, MS Outlook synchronization, Palm applications.

Pricing – $79.95 for a single license, free trial

Evernote

Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere. Everything you put into Evernote is always synchronized across all of your devices. That way, all your memories are available to you wherever you are.

Pricing – free account, Premium account - $5/month or $45/year

Desktop calendar software is the best assistant for everyday time management. Nevertheless, contemporary calendar planners offer not only scheduler features, but also other helpful options such as wallpaper management, contacts management, offline managing web calendar events and many more.

Here are my top 5 calendar planners:

A Better Calendar (SRO Software)

Active Desktop Calendar (XemiComputers)

Desktop Calendar & Planner Software (Eshasoft)

Desktop iCalendar (Desksware)

Screen Calendar (FeatherySoft)

 I’ve compared their features so that everyone can choose what best meets his needs. Look, consider and choose calendar program you like the most.

Opera 9.6 final has been released. Opera is one of the fastest and the most customizable web browsers. What’s new in version 9.6?

Opera Link

Opera Link allows synchronizing Speed Dial websites, bookmarks, custom searches, typed history, notes and other browser data between computer(s) with Opera Desktop and/or mobile phone(s) with Opera Mini.

Opera Mail

        - RSS/Atom feed preview before subscribing;

- Follow or Ignore threads and contacts – simplify recognizing important message and ignoring unimportant ones;

- Go To Thread allows viewing only the messages from the chosen thread;

- Low Bandwidth Mode lets to receive mail faster in the case of low speed Internet connection.

Opera Scroll Maker

Opera Scroll Maker simplifies reading text on long web pages. Scroll maker can be enabled to indicate the previous position of the bottom of the screen at the end of the page. It lets to easily find where to continue reading.

These and other great features along with improved performance and stability mean Opera 9.6 is a must-have for everyone who uses Opera everyday and must-try for users of other web browsers.

Download Opera 9.6 and enjoy.

What is Internet Radio today? It’s the ability to choose from a myriad of different radio stations. It’s music, shows, news etc. broadcasted all over the world.  Also, it’s the ability to record your favorite music for later playback. Yes, recording Web radio is easier than record from usual radio receiver. At first, Internet Radio music is streamed without noise. And you don’t need any special recording equipment, just a piece of software – Internet radio player and streaming audio recorder.

Here is a list of free audio recording software. Each of programs is both web radio player and sound recorder at the same time. Consider their features, choose what you like more and enjoy your e-radio.

Program	File support	Search by country	Search by genre	Search by network	Manually adding stations	Timer
Screamer Radio	MP3, OGG, AAC, WMA	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
XstreamRadio	MP3, WAV	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Nexus Radio	AAC, MP4, MP3, OGG, WAV, WMA	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Icy Radio	MP3, OGG, WMA	No	Yes	No	Yes	No
Free Sound Recorder	MP3, WMA, WAV	No	No	No	Yes	No
Freecorder	MP3, WAV	No	No	No	Yes	No

This week, Technorati – the recognized authority in indexing and searching weblogs – releases its newest State of the Blogosphere Report 2008. This year’s report is divided into 5 parts (or 5 days). So, till Friday, we won’t have a full data, but the first days’ data are enough for interesting findings.

The most obvious is that the blogosphere growth becomes more and more impressive – 133 million blogs indexed since 2002 vs. 70 million blogs in April 2007. 900K blogs are created every day vs. 120K in 2007. So, if last year people created more than 1 blog every second, now there are 10 blogs created every second! At the same time, the daily number of posts is now only about a million vs. 1.4 million posts a day in 2007. But it’s still significant, isn’t it?

Another interesting trend is growing popularity of blogs vs. the mainstream media. In 2007 we saw only 22 blogs in the Top 100 list of the most popular websites and the highest position of a blog was 19^th. This year we can see that 4 of 10 Top entertainment sites are blogs, and two of them take the first and the second positions. Maybe, one of the reasons of such a significant growth is the fact that blogs are changing their format and the difference between top blogs and classic mainstream media became less and less clear. This fact is also emphasized in the report: “Larger blogs are taking on more characteristics of mainstream sites and mainstream sites are incorporating styles and formats from the Blogosphere”.

This is a very interesting trend. Yes, we all notice that the largest blogs are created by a team of writers, although initially blogs were intended to be maintained by individuals. Among the most popular blogs, we can see a few individual blogs – for instance, Seth Godin’s and Heater Armstrong’s ones. Mainstream media also borrow some features of blogs, i.e. comments, and they have their own blogs too. And, the main reason of future merging is that people usually don’t care is the website they like a blog or a mainstream media if it give them the information and entertainment they want. And as the blogs offer more and more entertaining and functional features, people more and more like them.

Technorati also pays great attention to the bloggers – who they are, where they are from, why and about what they are blogging, etc. Here are some of the highlights:

1. Two-thirds of all bloggers are male;
2. 50% are aged 18-34;
3. Bloggers are more affluent and educated than the general population (70% have college degrees);
4. 44% of bloggers are parents.

Among the reasons why people blog, the most popular are to share their opinions and experience with others, to meet new friends and like minded people, business or self promotion.

So, if you’re interested in blogosphere life, visit Technorati site to read the report fully and let’s waiting for the last half of this interesting and informative report. We’ll publish a short review of the next three parts of Technorati’s report, so don’t miss it!

Do you want to create printable calendars for any month? Are you bother with online services which never let to create really personalized calendar and always demand paying for the calendars of good quality? Do you think you have to buy special program for creating and printing calendars? No. Consider using your desktop calendar planner as a tool for creating printable calendars.

Screen Calendar, full-functional calendar scheduling software, has a print option in addition to its scheduling features. It allows printing:

• desktop calendar as is;

• calendar for the current or for the next month without background;

• notes for various time periods;

• background image only.

Print desktop calendar as is and get a monthly calendar with background image. Your desktop wallpaper will be used as a calendar background (without desktop icons) and your calendar style and layout will be fully reproduced on the print. As all the layout parameters are customizable, you can adjust everything from text color to cell spacing and create the personalized calendar to best meet your needs. Small calendar or transparent full-screen calendar, bright or restrained, for one or two months – that’s for you to decide. Download Screen Calendar, create and print your personalized calendars.

I’ve decided to make a list of 7 best posts of my blog. Why? Because today my blog is one year old and I want to recollect the posts which I liked the most or which had the most active feedback. Why seven? Just because it’s my favorite number :). So, let’s remember…

1. Flash myths and flash facts

Sometimes I seem all the netizens are divided into Flash-lovers and Flash-haters. And comments on the post have proved this again. Without saying is Flash good or evil – I’ve simply collected facts to disprove 5 most widespread Flash myths.

2. Key features of wallpaper management software - make the right choice

Good wallpaper manager is a program which can do everything with your wallpapers – from organizing your digital images into the background lists to fitting wallpapers to your desktop size without distortion. Such option as autochanging goes without saying. So, looking for the best wallpaper manager, pay attention to the features which will help you to manage your desktop backgrounds effectively.

3. Top flash elements of web design for attracting visitors to your website

Flash is a very powerful tool for adding animation and interactivities to a website. What types of flash content can help you to make your website more informative and presentative? And what tools can help you to create flash content you need? This post will answer your questions.

4. 10 Best Mozilla Firefox 3.0 Add-ons

It’s a list of my top 10 Firefox 3.0 add-ons. These extensions are the essential part of my everyday web surfing. I tried to be honest and show both advantages and disadvantages of each plug-in, so that you may choose the best ones for you.

5. Must have flash tools for website owners and bloggers

The wide variety of available flash tools makes website owners and bloggers hesitate what to use to enliven web page or a blog post. This post contains useful information for everyone who has website or blog - the selection of the most helpful and popular flash website tools. They are highly ranked swf tools used by thousands of professional web developers and common users.

6. Calendar marketing

Brain storms in marketing department yield different results: new solution of a difficult question can be found, or stunning brand can be invented, or team spirit can rise. One of such our brain storms resulted in creation of new software – Promo Screen Calendar, low cost and effective marketing tool for promoting your company, goods and services.

7. Make cool Flash sound player for your website

That’s my favorite post because of the funny pictures of web player with a little tongue and because I really like this software which allows creating web sound players in 3 easy steps without any programming experience. Try to create and publish Flash music player in a matter of minutes.

It seems there is nobody in the Web who haven’t write something about Google Chrome. Not to break this impression, I’ll also describe my first impressions of this new web browser.

Yesterday on 2 September 2008, the beta version of new Google browser Google Chrome was released. The rumors about this browser were started back in 2004, and at last we have the possibility to try it out. What makes Google Chrome different from the similar products is its architecture. Google Chrome is really multithreaded that means each tab has its own memory space and is an isolated process (or “sandboxed”, as they call it). So, if one of tabs crashes, it can be easily terminated without closing all the tabs and the browser itself. And, the most important, it improves your protection because malicious software running in one tab can’t affect other tabs or interact with  your system. Besides, Google Chrome has process management utility – its own Task Manager, independent of Windows Task Manager that lets you see what process are running and end separate processes if needed.

Google Chrome is based on WebKit rendering engine which is also used in Apple Safari and Nokia Web Browser. JavaScript is run V8 JavaScript engine which is claimed to provide faster performance than all competitors. Chrome also includes Google Gears technology which caches and serves application resources and allows web applications to run offline without needing to contact a server. So, even when the Internet connection is terminated, your Gears-enabled applications are still running.

And what about the interface? It’s exactly what Google says about it – “streamlined and simple”. Maybe, way too simple for people who are used to menus with a versatility of options. Nevertheless, a few buttons it has give a lot of possibilities. Of course, there are Back and Next buttons, but there is no separate button for web history. You can see the history holding the Back button. There is a Reload button and there is no Stop button (and sometimes I miss it). Bookmark management is rather easy – just click the star icon at the left edge of the address bar to bookmark current page. Do you want the page to be in the bookmarks bar - drag the star to the bookmarks bar and you’re done. Great. But it’s nothing new. We’ve already seen this in Firefox. There are two more buttons – to control the current page and to control Google Chrome itself.

Tabs are above the address bar, I can’t say it’s better or worse than the usual interface – it’s a matter of taste. New Tab page is helpful – it displays thumbnails of 9 most visited websites, searches, recent bookmarks and history. To add new tab you can simply click plus icon near the last opened tab. That’s what we have in Opera and Internet Explorer too.

What I like are dynamic tabs – you can drag tabs out of the browser to create new windows or gather multiple tabs into one window. That’s really easy and handy. Chrome needs no download managers because of simplified downloads - you see your downloads status at the bottom of your current window, the downloaded file can be easily dragged and copied, for example, to the desktop. Also, you can just click the file in the download status bar to open it or click the arrow at the right edge for more options. That’s easy, but I can’t say it was too difficult for me to download something with Firefox, especially with the help of such add-ons as DownThemAll!, FlashGot, etc.

Great option is Incognito mode where no history, passwords, files opened and downloaded etc are saved. The interesting feature is that you can open two Chrome windows – one for normal and one for Incognito mode.

What else?
- One box for everything – not a brilliant idea, as for me. Separated boxes for search plug-ins and for the URL bar are much handier.
- Application shortcuts – allows creating an application or websites shortcuts on a desktop, quick launch bar or start menu. That’s rather interesting but I still prefer working within standard browser window and having all its options at hand. Still, I believe this options will have many admirers.
- Safe browsing - Google gives a warning about phishing or malware. I can’t get the reason to highlight this option, because each browser now has the same options.
- Importing settings – settings, bookmarks, passwords and browsing history can be easily imported from your existing browser.

Now Google Chrome is available only for Windows users, the developers promise Chrome for Mac and Linux but without making promises about the date. Also, they promise to add a progress bar – and I hope they will because I miss it so much.

All in all, I had a pleasant browsing experience with Google Chrome, but I’m still a Firefox lover and I won’t switch from it for now.

There are 24 hours in a day. Time never changes. And you often seem to have more to do than you have hours in the day. How to spend time more effectively and minimize losses of time? To make use of every minute, you should plan your time very well. You have no time for filling in Day-Timer? Or even when you don’t forget to write your tasks in, you’ll surely forget to look them through? So, use the tool which is always at hand – planning calendar integrated with your desktop wallpapers. I recommend Screen Calendar – multifunctional and intuitive planning calendar software. Which of its functions can be used for the most effective time management? Read a few tips.

Easy daily scheduling. You can schedule the whole day within a few minutes. Simply double-click date cell of the calendar to open task scheduler. You don’t need to set start and end time for each appointment – just double click needed timeline or select more than one timeline by mouse dragging, right click on it, and Add record. So, this record’s start and end will be already set. Easy and quick scheduling helps you to get into the habit of adding tasks to the scheduler immediately that guarantees you won’t forget anything.

Advanced options of the task scheduler. Screen Calendar lets you reduce the length of scheduler line up to 5 minutes. It’s great for putting in even the shortest events. Why such short events should be put into scheduler? Because for the most effective time planning, you should put literally every event of your day to your planning calendar. Time-stealers like a transportation time are often overlooked when scheduling a day that causes unplanned time losses. Screen Calendar also has option to attach files to the records. That can help you to save time for planning and make your records more detailed and informative.

Reminder. Of course, it’s one of the most popular features of calendar planner. It will help you forget nothing you’ve planned. Screen Calendar has different types of reminders available: sound reminder, message reminder or running application.

Recurring events. Screen Calendar’s schedule calendar allows you to repeat recurring events with a few mouse clicks. This feature is very helpful because it helps both save time for planning and establish a routine for better time management.

Postpone. You can easily postpone uncompleted events to the next or another day. Of course, time management gurus don’t recommend postponing anything, but life is life and this option will surely be of use for you.

Data synchronization. Do you also use MS Oulook or online schedulers like Google Calendar for time planning? With Screen Calendar software, you can synchronize records in these planners and your desktop calendar by pressing one button. Browse Google Calendar events directly on your desktop, import and export evens from/to MS Outlook Calendar or iCalendar with no efforts and in no time. Get all your events at your fingertips, i.e. on your desktop.

Print. Create printable planning calendars or simply print your notes. That’s extremely easy with a versatility of printing options of Screen Calendar.

Customization. Customize everything from calendar size (small or fullscreen) and background image to fonts and colors of date cells to your liking.

Make time management pleasant to make it effective.

You can try Screen Calendar for free or buy it now.