Dropbox: More Ways to Use this Handy Application

Dropbox has quickly proven itself to be one of those “must have” applications. Its seamless interface make syncing files between your multiple computers are breeze. While your primary reasons for using Dropbox may be the ones advertised on the site, with some third party hacks and settings tweaks there are some truly awesome uses for your Dropbox account.

DropTunes: Playing audio files from your Dropbox account is already something that can be done. However, DropTunes takes the pain out of clicking each individual file and creates playlists from the music folders that you store in your Dropbox. Additionally, DropTunes give you a nice user interface to adjust volume, pause, and even click forward and back tracks.

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More Readable Fonts for Your Screen?

Full disclosure: I blog on the internet. And, yes, that involves a lot of time spent reading lengthy walls of text on my MacBook screen in the name of research. So when I heard somebody had developed a font that was specifically designed to be the best for reading text on bright screens, I knew I wanted to test it out for myself, and you can too.

The awesome in-house designers at the awesome font foundry FontShop already launched Axel, a font optimized for readability in Excel (and other) spreadsheets viewed on screen. But now they’ve expanded their offerings to Azuro, a font designed to make reading walls of text on the web easier to read.

Assuming you’re reading this on the screen of your phone, tablet or computer, you can check out the difference Azuro makes on this wordy email compared to the furniture of e-mail fonts, Arial and Verdana, in the GIF image below:

Cool, right? If you want to get your hands on Azuro, head over to Font Shop, where you can get a set of 4 variations (regular, italic, bold and bold italic) for just $19.90, either in Web formats or in OpenType with TrueType outlines for Windows or Mac.

By Taryn Fiol

Font Feed via Gizmodo

Unplggd: Free Up Space on Your Computer

If you’re good to your tech, it will last a long time. Of course, that’s a double-edged sword. If you’re lucky enough to have a computer that lasts six or seven years, you’re also going to have six or seven years’ worth of junk on that machine slowing it down. Luckily, there’s plenty you can wipe off your hard drive. Start with these four folders and collections to get the most space back.

Apps & Widgets
Haven’t used AIM since Facebook and Skype came into your life? Drop it. Don’t need that desktop widget telling you the temperature outside? Get rid of it for good. Do it yourself or use software like AppCleaner (for Mac) or Revo Uninstaller (for PC).

Fonts
You don’t want to delete any of the fonts that came pre-installed with your machine (they’re probably used by your system in some fashion). But if you’ve added any addition fonts over the years, purge the unused ones. Believe it or not, fonts can eat up valuable hard drive space.

Pictures
By thinning out the pictures you have stored on your hard drive, you’ll free up tons of space. Back up the ones you want to keep, then dump everything else. Do it manually by sifting through your library, or use software designed for your machine. A Mac friend of ours swears by Duplicate Annihilator, a program that automatically thins out your iPhoto library by hunting and killing duplicate photos.

Languages
Do you speak English? Type in English? Read in English? Then there’s really no need to keep a bevy of foreign languages installed for your system. Do it manually (here’s a guide for Windows PC users), or find a program to do it for you (Like freeware Monolingual for Mac).

By Taryn Fiol.

Unplggd: Turn Websites into Desktop Apps

As more of our digital lives move towards the cloud, our reliance on native desktop applications has begun to diminish. Where once we depended on native apps like Outlook, today many of us use websites like Gmail. Even games and music have begun to migrate from the desktop to the cloud. What is great about web apps is the ability to access your information from anywhere. However, with desktop apps you have the convenience of quickly launching programs from the dock or through shortcuts. Wouldn’t it be great if you could have both? Well, with Fluid you can!

Fluid is a free application that aims to address the biggest downside to web apps: multiple steps to launch just one web program. With Fluid, you can create a site-specific browser for any website. What this does is take any URL and converts it into a native Mac application. This application then resides in your Dock and Applications folder for easy use. It is really that simple.

While there are other similar programs out there (such as Mozilla Prism), one of the best aspects of Fluid is its deep integration with Max OS X. For more advanced users, Fluid supports client-side scripts for manually tweaking features and formatting. Additionally, quite a few plug-ins exist that add more functionality for advanced users, and enhance the experience of the newly created native apps.

To add to the fun, there is an entire Flickr group dedicated to creating icons for use with Fluid. If you find yourself going to the same sites all of the time (say, Unplggd) then be sure to give Fluid a try and let us know what you think.

By Jesse Leikin.

Unplggd: Notebook and USB

The Pinetti Quattrogiga Leather Journal looks like an unassuming modern notebook from the outside. But upon closer inspect, one will note the detachable silicone strap closure hides a technophile’s secret: a 4GB USB flash drive! It’s a beautiful duet of analog and digital storage in a single form factor. Available in two sizes.

Details: $85.00, Jenni Bick Bookbinding, small journal measures 5 1/2″ x 7″ and large journal measures 6″ x 9″, refillable blank pages, detachable silicone strap holds the book closed and features a 4GB USB storage drive, pocket flaps inside hold the insert in place, and can also be used to store notes & receipts, can be personalized with embossing

By Gregory Han.

Unplggd: What a Difference a Decade Can Make

By Gregory Han

[via Reddit]

Unplggd: Consumer Electronics Show 2011

CES 2011 is drawing to a close, and most tech reporters are set to return home pretty soon. As much as we love tech, it’s easy to be completely inundated with information during these fares. Some sites were generating over a hundred posts a day this week. Two of the products that we particularly liked were the Polaroid revamp thanks to Lady Gaga and the new Zeppelin Air dock from Bowers & Wilkins.

he Zeppelin Air from Bowers & Wilkins has been redesigned, although it preserves the same footprint. The interior has been completely changed. The air moniker is there for a reason, because it will wirelessly connect to your iPod, iPad, or iPhone via WiFi to stream music. There’s even an Ethernet port. Each of the five drivers has their own amp, and they’ve all been tweaked. Naturally, this doesn’t come cheap. It will ship in March and will cost $600.

While it was announced at last year’s CES, it took until now for us to see what would become between the partnership, if you can call it that, between Lady Gaga and Polaroid. Polaroid’s Grey Label line, which includes camera glasses, a digital Polaroid camera, and an instant mobile printer are the result. The GL20 Camera Glasses come from Lady Gaga’s music video for her song ‘Fame’. You can capture and upload photos, as well as videos, directly to the glasses. They can be displayed in real time on the 1.5-inch OLED screens. They come with earpieces that double as a USB port.

The 12 megapixel GL30 Instant Digital Camera is a printer-enabled point-and-shoot. Then, they can be printed via the instant printer. The camera has a stand that allows you to select images easily. You need the GL10 Instant Printer to print these out. This printer can churn out prints in under a minute, Polaroid-style, and doesn’t use any ink. It can also connect via Bluetooth to cell phones. It’s not something that new, but this functionality will please some users. We’d have preferred for Polaroid to come out with some new real Polaroid film cameras instead of these, but we knew that it wasn’t going to happen. We didn’t expect the printer to be integrated into the digital camera, but we were hoping that it was.

More from the show: Gregory Han’s Best in Show post.

By Range.

(via iLounge & Designboom)

Unplggd: Cute Peripherals for Brightening up Your Office

Whether you’re sitting at your personal computer at home or slaving away at your work desk all day, we could all use having some “kawaii” tech around that can’t help but make us smile. We’ve put together a list of ten adorable tech peripherals that will bring a little more “cute” into your life.

Elecom Cube AC Power Adapter ($30) – Super kawaii USB AC Power Adapter cube for your iPhone or iPod. It’s also available in plain pink, white, black, but who could pass that cute face up

Mimobot USB Flash Drives ($25-$80) – These Mimibot designed flash drives come in various cute and colorful styles, including popular Sanrio characters like Hello Kitty. They come in 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB versions.

Nano:ztag ($10) – The Nano:ztag contains an RFID chip and when used in conjunction with the Nabaztag: tag or Nabaztag Mirror, it can perform different actions such as putting on a playlist or going to a favorite website.

Relax Bear USB Mouse ($22) – The Relax Bear mouse helps you relax by just looking at its adorable face. The loveliest part of all is that its ears are the left/right click.

Owl USB Flash Drive ($29) – This cute little owl is a 4GB USB drive housed in a removable water-resistant silicone jacket.

Hello Kitty USB Mouse & Mousepad Set ($55) – Classic optical Hello Kitty mouse and Mouse pad set, the left/right click and scroll wheel are positioned on Hello Kitty’s bow, which lights up when activated.

Carrot Flash Drive ($16/$19/$31) – You can use this little carrot flash drive to hold digital pictures of other cute things. Put it beside your Nano:ztag and experience cuteness overload daily at your desk. Comes in 2GB, 4GB and 8GB.

Para-Chan USB Mouse ($70) – Cute white mouse that, strangely enough, is the mascot for Toshiba.

USB Robo Owl ($20) – This USB powered Robo Owl from ThinkGeek sits on top of your monitor. Movements include turning its head from side-to-side and blinking.

Heart USB Mouse ($55) – What says ‘I love you’ more than this talking heart mouse? Also available in blue, pink and yellow.

By Vivian Kim.

Unplggd: How Do You Stay Productive?

“We know. It’s hard to feel like you’re being productive these days with all of communication venues and potentially distracting YouTube clip at the tip of your fingers. While there’s no argument that two screens help you feel like you’re getting more stuff done, one too many windows open will eventually cause a decrease in productivity. Here’s how to stay productive, even with all of that going on…

One of our favorite software tools to up our daily productivity is Dizzy, a small program that runs in the background and allows us to allocate shortcuts to resize windows on command. You know, so we can do side-by-side comparisons of products, blog quicker, etc.

If we recall, Windows 7 now has that as a built-in feature, so cheers to Microsoft for implementing it!

Lifehacker editor Adam Dachis recommends splitting up monitor screens physically in order to encourage true separation of play and work. So if you’re ever tempted to chat, but need an hour of super dedicated crunch time, you can simply drag the window over to the other monitor and finish up your work without blinking boxes begging for your attention.

Got a productivity tip when having a number of windows open? Share it in the comments!

By Anthony.”

Unplggd: The Future of Keyboards?

Microsoft’s Arc Keyboard impressed us with a design that departed from what we traditionally thought of as Microsoft design. And it seems like they’re busy with their skunk works, developing future technologies that might breathe innovative fire into their brand, like this adaptive keyboard concept which combines the best elements of a touch-UI, a colour-changing keyboard layout system that delivers something similar to the Optimus Maximus Keyboard , and the text input capabilities of the tried-and-true keyboard.

The UIST 2010 Student Innovation Contest is annual event which allows students to play with prototype hardware, with this year’s contest sponsored by the labs of Microsoft Applied Sciences.

What’s an Adaptive Keyboard? It is a research prototype developed by Microsoft Hardware to explore how combining display and input capabilities in a keyboard can allow users to be more productive. The keyboard incorporates a large, touch-sensitive display strip at the top. In addition, the display continues underneath the keys, allowing the legends to be modified in real time. This lets you do things like change the character set to a different language or display command icons.

What do you think about this hybrid of touch and traditional keyboard input?

By Gregory Han.”