The Jumbled Box Bookmark Roundup, 4/9/2011

A couple of very useful tools for the photographers this time and a few other interesting finds… 

Photography

JPEGmini

A free, online image editing utility boasting that it can reduce the file size of your photos by up to 5x, while keeping their original quality and JPEG format! Useful for e-mailing photos and reducing your storage requirements.

tags: web utility free photo photography


RawTherapee

A free, open-source, RAW image converter and digital photo processing application. It's also cross-platform, with versions for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux, and almost all dSLRs and even some medium format bodies are supported.

tags:software windows freeware photography application macintosh Linux


The rest…

My Council Services

An online incident reporting service so you can let your local UK authority or council know about stuff like abandoned cars, road or pavement damage, uncollected rubbish, fly-tipping, broken street-lights, etc. You can track the progress of your submission and there's also an iPhone app version too.

tags: uk government ios application software freeware web service


Watch-Documentaries

A large, searchable and catagorized, directory of free-to-watch online documentaries. All media is embedded from other websites such as YouTube, Dailymotion, Guba, Tudou, MegaVideo, Veoh, Youku, etc.

tags: free video reference tv


Magazinify

A free Firefox and Chrome browser add-on that seamlessly organizes all the articles you want to read into text, removing all the annoying ads and popups, and then converts it to PDF format and e-mails you the magazine at the end of the day.

tags: free web pdf utility conversion


mylostaccount

Need help tracking down an old or lost bank or building society account? This is a free service that brings together the three main account tracing schemes of the British Bankers’ Association, the Building Societies Association and National Savings and Investments into a single website. 

Together, they represent most of the firms that offer savings and current accounts in the UK so ,if you need to trace a lost account, then this is the place to start.

tags: web service free banking finance saving


Hunch FM

Yet another free streaming music service. This time from web recommendation service Hunch - just pick a genre and get listening.

tags: web service music streaming free


TheTVDB.com

An open database, editable by anyone, of television shows. Includes series and episode guides.

tags: tv database directory


The Glaswegian

A local, weekly, free Glasgow newspaper for keeping up with news, entertainment and sport in and around Glasgow.

tags: newspaper media free glasgow scotland


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The Jumbled Box Bookmark Roundup, 28/08/2011

Not a great deal of new sites this week. A music streamer, some aeroplane seating guides and an esoteric, arty colour tool.

JamCloud

A free social  media discovery too that lets you play music and watch videos with your friends in real time. Create listening rooms with an international audience where you can chat about what's playing and vote up or down.

With a library of over 325 million songs and videos and filters for the most popular, most watched, and most discussed videos and playlists, you can easily search for videos, playlists and new users to follow.

tags: free web service sharing music social video facebook twitter


Next, while overlooking a workmates attempts to book some flights, I hooked onto a flurry of aeroplane seating sites like SeatGuru, SeatExpert, Best Plane Seat and Seatmaestro

These sites cover such things as seating plans for almost all of the world's airlines and aircraft, tips to have the best possible travel experience when you fly. You can find out which is the best row or side on just about any aircraft, how much room you'll get, what the inflight service is like, etc.

tags: travel transportation flight information airline


the color of

This is an attempt to find out the colour of anything by querying and aggregating image data from Flickr. It's an attempt at answering a potentially complex and abstract question in an objective manner, by using simple algorithms on data originating from subjective human perceptions.

All you need to do is enter a word, phrase, idea or concept and it'll return with its idea of a matching colour artwork for that, which you can actually buy if you want to.

tags: photo design art web free utility image

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my collected links are here.

The Jumbled Box Bookmark Roundup, 21/8/11

Quite a few online writing aids this week, a price comparison site, a web photo slideshow and a book recommendation engine.

SpellCheckPlus

A free, online spelling and grammar checker for English configured to give results aimed at those learning English as a second language although you can turn that feature off. There are also sister sites for French and Spanish learners/speakers - BonPatron and SpanishChecker

tags: free web utility writing


Ginger Software

A publisher of grammar and spell checking software with free, online grammar checker, spelling checker and proofreading services.

tags: free web utility writing


SpellChecker.net

Another free, online spelling, grammar and thesaurus checker. It even handles handles all four variations of English (Australian, British, Canadian and American) as well as over 20 other languages.

tags: free web utility writing


Paper Rater

Designed to help students improve their writing, this excellent free, online grammar and spelling checker, proofreader and plagiarism detector is well worth checking out.

tags: free web utility writing


After the Deadline

A free, open-source, online spelling, writing style and grammar checker with implementations as browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox, plug-ins for WordPress and JQuery and as an extension for OpenOffice. You can even download and run the server software on your own installation if desired.

tags: freeware software web service writing


Buy-Online

A UK online shopping deals and price comparison site covering most consumer goods. Has French, German, Australian and US sites too. Other, similar sites worth checking out are listed here.

tags: UK pricecomparison electrical electronic hardware accessory audio computing video home clothing photography usa germany france australia


Snapshock

A free web photo slideshow service to let you share your pictures more elegantly. Create your own viewing experience with custom themed backgrounds and music. You can also join your photo albums with your friends and produce social slide-shows.

It currently supports importing photos directly from your Facebook account and will soon include PicasaWeb, Flickr and Photobucket. The developers are also looking into enhancements like 3D imaging, de-blurring and sharpening, images comparison and more.

tags: photography free web service sharing gallery photo


MindTheBook

A question and answer service where you are presented with a book or list of books that are deemed best able to answer your question. In effect, it's a book recommendation service that connects questions with books that answer them. It also defines books with questions they answer well.

tags: book literature search web utility


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Jumbled Box Bookmark Roundup - 14/8/2011

This week, we have a few useful book/e-book oriented sites, a utility to find lost or stolen cameras and a general information site.

BookCascade.com
tags: book pricecomparison uk

A useful book price-comparison service that searches the UK's online book stores to allow you to find the cheapest supplier.

Click here for over 20 similar sites.

GadgetTrak Camera Serial Search
tags: web service free photography hardware security

Lost your digital camera or had it stolen? Every picture taken by a digital camera has the serial number embedded in its EXIF data and this free web utility will help you by searching the web for photos taken by a specific camera.

You could also try similar site stolencamerafinder.

Kindle Cloud Reader
tags: web application kindle ipad ebook
Amazon's web application to let you read your Kindle books online - no need for an application or even a Kindle. Browser support is limited to Google Chrome and Apple Safari at the moment though, which is a bit of a pity. On the plus side, you can continue reading offline and it's optimized for the iPad.

SENDtoREADER
tags: web utility kindle free
A simple web utility to instantly send any web page to your Amazon Kindle. It's a bookmarklet that works with most modern browsers including: Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera with a version for Internet Explorer coming soon.
It also offers enhanced text readability as every page you send to your Kindle is processed to make it easier to read, removing all unnecessary content including ads, polls and banners, while leaving the main content and images intact.
There's also SENDtoREADER Periodicals, which aggregates any RSS feeds you want to get on your Kindle, composes all those feeds' content into a single, easy-to-navigate document and, at a time set by you, sends it to your Kindle.

The AnswerBank
tags: information advice learning reference

A social question and answer site - ask questions, whether practical or just for fun, and get answers from real people.

All above posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Weekly Bookmark Roundup - 7/8/2011

• AUPEO! UK
  Create your own online radio station by choosing the music genre or music similar to an artist.
  tags: free web streaming radio music
• BBC - Reception problems
  UK TV and radio reception diagnostic utility/form.
  tags: tv connection support radio
• Pixlr-o-matic
  Free, online photo editor to apply effects, vintage, retro, etc.
  tags: web utility image photo photography editor
• SaveItt
  Free e-book, PDF and document search engine.
  tags: web search free pdf ebook
• How Many Left?
  See how many cars of any make and model are still on the road in the UK.
  tags: uk motoring information

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Port de Pollença, Mallorca

We recently went on holiday to Mallorca, one of the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. For anyone thinking "doesn't he mean Majorca?" Well, yes you can call it that if you want but the locals speak Catalan and that's what they call it. The island is Spanish so both Catalan and the more commonly Castilian Spanish are spoken but all the official notices and road signs are in Catalan so you might as well get used to it.

Port de Pollença Harbour

The town is pretty much a tourist resort but a good bit quieter than nearby Port d'Alcúdia, one of the most popular resorts on the island. We stayed in the Oro Playa aparthotel in Port de Pollença (Puerto Pollensa) in the North of the island. The accommodation was good but, like most places we stay when on holiday, we almost never partake of the laid-on entertainments or restaurants so can't say much more than that. It was clean and well kept and the staff were very friendly., which is pretty much all we wanted The only downside was its proximity to the Puerto Azul hotel, which blasted out endless holiday songs at high volume for its kids club. Seriously, if you don't have kids, then don't ever consider going to the Puerto Azul, you'll be suicidal in a week.

As for the resort itself, the town is centred around the harbour area and the main square, where there are loads of restaurants and snack bars. There's also a very good beach stretching down from the South side of the town and around the bay. As for the eateries themselves, most are very good quality quality and I don't think we had a bad experience in the two weeks we were there. As ever, the Indian restaurants are woeful compared to those at home but we've gotten used to that by now and expectations of a decent curry abroad were set aside long ago. The nightlife is another issue though - there's very little of it. The resort is obviously more aligned to family or elderly tourists so if you're looking for a wild nightlife go to Alcúdia instead.

Port de Pollença Beach

It's not completely bar-free though and we did find a couple of decent ones near the main square, one Australian and two Irish-themed ones. Not that they'd ever seen a real Aussie or Son of Eire behind the bar but they were lively enough and had some live music most nights. We ended up in Mulligan's most nights as the area's only decent rock band, and the only one we could find in the resort, called The Hustlers played there several times a week. The downside was there are also two Elvis impersonators doing the rounds. One, a young fit-looking guy, was really bad and seemed to sing anything but Elvis numbers and the other looked like he'd lived the Elvis lifestyle and was close to expiring at any minute. I'm sure he also had a Glasgow accent.

There's not a lot else to do in Port de Pollença. I did find a little nature reserve called l'Espai Humit de la Gola. If you walk along the front, you'll notice a little bridge over a stream that's pretty full of fish. and always attarcts a few tourits. If take the road leading off on either side of this, you can get down into the reserve. It's not large but it's a pleasant stroll through a butterfly and bird infested wetland area. There appeared to be a resident Little Egret that was always worth watching as it pranced around catching who knows what in the shallows.

l'Espai Humit de la Gola

So, to sum it up - good beach and good food but not the best of night-life although Alcúdia isn't far away. If you want to get out of Port de Pollença for the day, there a decent walk though the Boquer valley to Cala Boquer, you can also walk over to Cala San Vicente but that's a bit more strenuous. Getting to the little town of Pollença or Alcúdia is easy by bus too and there's always car hire if you want to go further afield.

A Cold Afternoon At Castle Semple Loch

Sunday again and the weather isn't great but still decent enough for a stroll by Castle Semple Loch near Lochwinnoch.

Castle Semple Loch, looking towards Kenmuir Hill Temple

It's still cold so the loch was partially frozen over with a thin film of ice but that didn't stop the usual gamut of over-wintering waterfowl from enjoying the day.

A Frozen Castle Semple Loch

There were plenty of birds in evidence - mallards, mute swans, tufted ducks and goldeneye as well as the ever-present gulls. The wind was whipping over the loch surface and where it hit the edge of the ice, it produced a really strange tinkling sound. Anyway a few hours wandering in the cold here was enough and we headed back home for a warm fireside.

Tufted Duck

Mute Swan