There are plenty of image search engines on the web. Enter a text based search term, and Google, MSN, or Yahoo! will spit out a series of pictures it thinks match that query. But TinEye takes a slightly different approach. This image search engine, currently in private beta, lets you upload an image from your desktop and search the web for identical or similar images. You can also use an online image as your starting point.
The concept is pretty cool. If you're looking for an image, why should you have to enter text? But the truth of the matter is it takes a bit longer to search for something using TinEye than a text based search engine. And it's a lot harder to get accurate results. If you upload a popular image that's been used on a bunch of web sites, you should be fine. But if you upload your hand-drawn image of Angelina Jolie naked, don't expect to find any high resolution images matching your query. Not that we tried.
But seriously, we uploaded a few images that have been posted here at Download Squad, and TinEye didn't spit out a single match, which means it doesn't even indext this site. So while the service claims to be searching a whopping 487 million images, it doesn't exactly cover every site on the web.
Still, we'll be keeping an eye on TinEye. If the service can improve its index and do a better job of finding similar images, and not just identical ones, it could actually become useful.
Check the junk folder of your email service, and we're guessing you'll find hundreds of messages offering to enhance various body parts, decrease others, or ask for your help withdrawing large sums of money from a bank account. But what if you're simply misreading all of these messages? What if you're the one with the dirty mind, not the marketers?
Yeah, we're pretty sure that's not the case, but artist Janet Nelson is definitely onto something with her Innocent Spam series. She's taken actual subject lines from junk email messages and turned them into cute comic images, with none of the innuedo attached. For example, "oh man, he is ridiculously huge" could refer to anything, right? Why not a big dog? And just because you think of something else when you hear the word "Willy" doesn't mean it has to be dirty.
You can buy Nelson's work on a T-shirt or mug. Or you can just check out the comics on her website for free.
This is a story we've kind of been expecting to bring you since the day eBay bought PayPal. The company is thinking of requiring members to use PayPal to complete transactions -- in Australia anyway.
Right now you can arrange payments by check, money order, PayPal, or other methods. But next month eBay will change that policy and require Australian shoppers to pay via PayPal. And that's prompted antitrust complaints from Australian banks, which arrange money transfers for eBay auctions. Some sellers also complain that PayPal fees are higher than bank transfer fees, which means the new rule could cost them money.
Honestly, we don't know many people who use eBay and don't use PayPal. It's easy and convenient. And eBay claims it does a better job of preventing fraud than other payment services. But let's not forget that eBay gets a cut every time you pay with PayPal. And that's on top of the commission eBay already takes for items sold on the site. The company claims any additional income will be offset by increased investment in buyer protection measures.
There are currently no plans to go PayPal-only in the US and other markets. But eBay could be using Australia as a test case before expanding the policy. Australian regulators haven't yet issued a final ruling on the antitrust implications of the policy.
Well, we've done it again. We've squandered away another perfectly good hour week... wait, no. That's something else. But if you haven't squandered away your week on Download Squad, here are some of the stories you may have missed.
Wanna write for Download Squad? If you haven't heard, we're hiring. If you've always wanted to try add "professional blogger" to your business cards, now's your chance. Be the envy of your friends. Your very, very geeky friends. Click the link to find out how to apply.
Microsoft: Think twice about IE7 before upgrading to XP SP3 We're going to go out on a limb and assume this doesn't affect a lot of people. But if you want to upgrade to Windows XP SP3 and use Internet Explorer 6 (because you're only cutting edge when it comes to operating systems, not web browsers), here's a tip: You will not be able to downgrade from IE7 to IE6 unless you install IE7 after SP3.
Filemail: Email files up to 2GB We're always on the lookout for new ways to get around the 10-20MB file attachment limit imposed by most free email service providers. Filemail is a new service that lets you upload files up to 2GB to share via email. You can also adjust a variety of settings, or pay for a premium account if you need to upload even larger files.
OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta now available The next major OpenOffice.org release isn't due out until this fall. But you can download a public beta of OpenOffice.org 3.0 today. The new version includes a handful of new features, a bunch of bug fixes, and a native OS X client.
Hahlo 3.0: Twitter freak's new best friend Hahlo 3.0 might just be the best Twitter client we've seen for the iPhone. It's fast. It's pretty. And it supports practically every Twitter feature you could want in a mobile client.
Puppy Linux 3.0 released: Linux for your flash drive Puppy Linux has long been one of the most popular "portable" Linux distributions. You can install Puppy to a flash drive and carry it with you to use on practically any computer that can boot from a USB device. The latest version includes a new theme, better hardware support, and some shiny new applications.
Quick, what do the twenty images above have in common? If you guessed they're all images pulled from Google Images, you guessed right. But that's not the answer we're looking for. The correct answer is Windows. And now you pretty much know how to play Guess the Google.
The game picks a random word, performs a Google Image search, and then gives you the results. You have 20 seconds to figure out the original search query. The faster you figure it out, the more points you get. The game is simple, but surprisingly addictive.
If you have half a dozen social networks and microblogs that you like to update simultaneously, you probably need to go outside and get some fresh air. But before you do that, you can post an update to let all your friends know that you're going outside to get some fresh air using HelloTxt.
Last time we looked on on the site, you could post messages to 10 different services including Facebook, Twitter, Pownce, and Jaiku. And that was about all you could do. But now the service has rolled out a new feature that lets you post images and videos. Well, sort of. You can upload an image to the HelloTxt server and get a shortened URL to place in your message so that anyone can click through and see the image. But HelloTxt doesn't actually host the videos. You'll need to copy the embed code from another site like YouTube or Vimeo. You do still get a shortened URL that you can send out to friends, so there's some value in the video feature. Just not as much as we'd like.
Somewhat ironically, while HelloTxt will give you shortened URLs for videos and images, there's no option to shorten a regular URL, so you'll have to rely on old standbys like TinyURL if you just want to share a link.
It's 7:30 in the morning. You're trying to get the kids fed, clothed, and out the door on their way to school without being late for work yet again. And the phone rings. You don't recognize the number, but you pick it up anyway because who knows? It might be important. "Hello?" you say. "Hello?" No answer. Just as you're about to hang up, you hear a click and then a friendly voice finally comes on, asking if you'd like to apply for a credit card, change power companies, or purchase a burial plot. There goes two minutes of your day that you'll never be able to get back. And odds are it's going to happen again tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that.
We're not entirely sure that CallerComplaints will get those nasty telemarketers off your case any more than asking them to remove your number from their list. But it certainly might make you feel better.
When you visit the web site, you can type in the phone number of the people who have been calling and hanging up on you to find out if other people have complained about calls from that number. You can read their comments and enter your own. Or if you're just bored and want to read some horror stories, you can click on the most reported numbers from the past week, month, or all time. And if you've got any tips for getting a telemarketer to stop calling, you can share them with the community. Or better yet, share them with us in the comments!
Do you live in constant fear that you're going to miss a new episode of CSI: Miami because nobody bothered to tell you that tonight's episode wasn't a repeat? You could just stay glued to your TV or keep your nose buried in TV Guide. Or you can just visit mytvrss, pick a few of your favorite shows and receive a note via RSS whenever a new episode is coming up.
The site features dozens of popular television shows. All you have to do is check the boxes next to the ones you want to monitor and mytvrss will create a custom RSS feed for you. Pop that feed into your RSS reader, and it's like having a TV guide that shows you only the programs you're interested in. Each item includes the title of the upcoming episode, but if you want to read an episode summary you'll have to click a link that takes you to TVRage, a site with TV listings, episode summaries, and more.
Cyber Bandwidth Monitor does pretty much exactly what you'd expect it to do, and more. This little WIndows utility tracks your upload and download speeds over time and plots your network activity on a little graph. The utility grabs data once per second, but you can adjust the settings so that it refreshes more frequently. You can also tweak a ton of display settings, ranging from the font and window size to the graph scale.
In addition to real-time information, the program also logs all of your activity over time and can send you daily, weekly, or monthly updates. Cyber Bandwidth Monitor also has a few other useful features, like built in Ping and Traceroute utilities.
We're always on the lookout for good desktop Twitter clients. Because while the microblogging service is kind of useful as a web-based tool for sharing your thoughts, desktop clients make Twitter feel more like an instant messaging platform that allows you to communicate with hundreds, even thousands of people at once.
While there are a couple of excellent Twitter clients for Windows and OS X, Linux users have had a more limited selection. A few months ago we looked at gTwitter, an application for reading and sending Tweets from your Linux desktop. While gTwitter will get the job done, it lacks some of the features we use the most, like URL shortening and the ability to reply to tweets from other users with the click of a button.
So we were pretty excited when we read about Twitux, another Twitter client designed for Linux. Installation couldn't have been easier. We downloaded a deb file for Ubuntu, and our system automatically downloaded all the required dependencies and instlled Twtiux. And then we saw that it was almost as basic as gTwitter. Twitux gives you more control over your timeline view, allowing you to see the public timeline, your friends timeline, your own timeline, direct messages, or replies. But if you want to send a reply or direct message you'll have to do it manually. There's no option to click on a friends' name in the timeline and respond.
Fortunately, now that Adobe has released a version of their AIR platform for Linux, you can run popular AIR-based Twitter clients like Spaz and Twhirl, So while we're still kind of hoping that someone will develop a full-featured Twitter client that runs natively in Linux, we'll happily settle for the cross-platform Twhirl client. A new version of Twhirl was released this week with a few bug fixes and one major new feature: support for Friendfeed discussions.
Still haven't made up your mind about Internet Explorer 7? No problem, you can always uninstall it and revert to the Internet Explorer 6 web browser that came with your operating system. Unless you've upgraded to Windows XP SP3, that is. Because Microsoft is telling computer users that if they install IE7 before XP SP3, there's no going back.
Basically, when you install IE7, your IE6 files are saved in an uninstall directory that includes the original IE6 installation files and any security updates you've added over the years. But SP3 includes a different set of security updates. So if IE7 is already installed when you load SP3, the uninstall directory that was created when you were using SP2 is no longer valid.
If that's all a bit confusing, here's what you should take away: If you don't plan to use IE7, don't install it. Period. If you do plan to install it, but want to be able to uninstall it, then you should load Windows XP SP3 before upgrading from IE6 to IE7. If you upgraded Internet Explorer before installing XP SP3, the only way to uninstall it would be to uninstall the entire service pack, which is really far more trouble than its worth.
Freenet is a tool that lets users publish pretty much anything online "without fear of censorship." The software stores your data on a decentralized, anonymous network of nodes made up of other Freenet users' computers. Freenet communications are encrypted and routed through those nodes, making it difficult for anyone to trace what you're doing. The service is useful for communication where a right to free speech is not guaranteed, and for privacy nuts and conspiracy theorists in countries where free speech is supposed to be a universal right, but may not be.
Freenet 0.7 was released this week, marking the first major update in three years. The latest version not only lets users upload data anonymously, but also lets users mask the fact that they're using the service at all by connecting only to computers of people you know and trust.
You can use the Freenet network to share files, publish websites, send emails, or communicate via message boards. The software is Java based and works with Windows, Mac, and Linux systems.
Sharp may have abandoned its Zaurus line of PDA/microcomputers. But that hasn't discouraged hackers who continue to add new functionality to these tiny computers. While the Zaurus handhelds already run a stripped down version of Linux, that's not good enough for some folks, who have decided to port full desktop operating systems like Ubuntu and Fedora to run on the Zaurus.
The 0.1 release of Ubuntu for the Zaurus is based on Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn, although the developer refers to it as Frisky Firedrake. The custom distro lacks some most of the bells and whistles you'd get with a full Ubuntu installation, but that's to be expected since the installer weighs in at just 80MB. But it does include an X server, allowing you to load a window manager like IceWM or Enlightment E17. Future releases will likely inclde more of the functionality of a full Ubuntu installation, but if you've got a Zaurus C3x00 series device and a sense of adventure, you can try Frisky Firedrake 0.1 and try adding packages and customizing your environment yourself.
Free webmail is nothing new. But the field is pretty much dominated by big names like Google, AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo! Zenbe is a startup that hopes there's room for one more. And the company's webmail client makes a pretty strong case that there should be.
Zenbe is a free email service that gives users 4GB of storage for emails and attachments. But that's just the start. The service features an attractive interface that combines some of the best aspects of Gmail and Outlook. For example, you can star messages and add tags like you do with Gmail. But you also ahve access to an integrated calendar and task manager like you get with Outlook.
There are also a few featues you won't find in other services, like the ability to star messages with different colors, or create ZenPages that let you organize messages, appointment, attachments, and other information on a single web page which you can share with other users.
Zenbe is currently in private beta, but you can request an invitation from the company's home page.
Update: We've got invites for the first 100 people who sign up through this link.
The Audacity team has released an updated version of the popular opern source audio editing application. Audacity 1.3.5 beta packs a bunch of minor updates, including bug fixes better file handling, and some interface improvements. Here are some of the things that jumped out at us:
Hit Shift while clicking record to start a recording at the end of an existing track
Users should see fewer invalid sample rate problems under LInux
Updated versions of the Portaudio, Libogg, LIbvorbis, and other libraries
More informative dialogs when dealing with unsupported file formats
New keyboard shortcuts
Audacity is already one of the best free audio editing applications for Mac, Linux, and Windows, and the program just keeps getting better.
Well, we've done it again. We've squandered away another perfectly good 
Cyber Bandwidth Monitor
