Beware holiday hackers

As consumers spend more time and money online, hackers are out in full force this holiday season.

The holidays are prime time for online mischief, and shoppers looking for holiday deals make ideal prey. Some tips on how to avoid being scammed online this holiday season.

Pingie: RSS to SMS Utility

By: Kristen Cole

Since Twitter is the topic du jour today, this little web app fits right in with the concepts of convergence, mobility, and New Media, especially for those users of Twitters out there that primarily utilize the service from their mobiles. Paul Stamatiou today reviews a nifty little utility called Pingie, the purpose of which is to take RSS feeds and send them to your mobile phone via SMS.

Pingie is was announced today by the folks over at UNEASYsilence with several suggestions on how you might use the utility. Obviously, you aren’t limited to the suggestions they have (deal of the day type feeds like Woot or Slickdeals), but those are some of the better applications. Others that spring to mind would be RSS feeds to any calendaring programs you may have set up, or any other type limited use alert system (update feed on a collaborative document in Google Docs?).

The applications are wide, varied, and endless. It is a simple service to use, too. Create your account on Pingie you can add feeds and later login to change settings. The system is simple to stop, if you need to; just reply to any Pingie SMS with the text “STOP PING”.

Paul points out the same thing I found to be slightly annoying in the service: a bit too much wasted space in the message. In SMS, real estate is highly valuable, and a bit of the info Pingie relays is “superfluous and redundant,” as Paul says.

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8 Sites to Learn Typing

10-Fast-Fingers.com - A 10-step typing tutorial program that teaches you more finger placements in each lesson, and then tests you on them. When you’re all done there is a speed test to see how you improved.

GoodTyping.com - Has over 27 lessons, offers 18 different keyboard layouts and is available in multiple languages.

Learn2Type.com - Offers a typing test to test where you are skill wise, and besides teaching just the QWERTY keyboard setup, they also offer AZERTY and Dvorak layouts. Also has lessons for kids as it’s never too early to start learning to type.

PowerTyping.com - Okay, so maybe typing sites aren’t all fancy with rounded corner logos, or gradient images, but did you come to look at the pretty, or to learn to type? This site focuses on QWERTY and Dvorak keyboard layouts.

Typing-Lessons.org - While the site has a very 1990’s feel to it, the site explains this is on purpose so as not to distract you from the purpose of the site which is to teach. Teaches you all th rudimentary skills you need to get started on the road to being a better typist.

TypeOnline.co.uk - Offers lessons on normal keyboard placement, and has practice lessons for touch typing and speed tests. Also offers a nice selection of information on safe typing so you don’t develop things such as Carpel Tunnel Syndrome.

TypingWeb.com - A full-featured online typing tutor with lessons, games, statistics to track your progress and more. The system is free for individuals, and they do have packages available for schools and companies for a fee with group progress reports.

Bonus: after you’re done with all these, you can have some fun with Qwerty Warriors, a strangely addicting game that forces you to type faster and faster before the enemies swarm you.

Google Presentations Introduces Embedded Slide Shows

Source: TechCrunch

Google Docs just added some cool new features to its Web-based Presentation software: slide shows that you can embed anywhere on the Web. Check it out below:

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