WebNotes works as a browser add-on or a simple bookmarklet. Using the webnotes is easy, install the toolbar or bookmarklet and when you want to annotate or add notes to a web page select the tools like sticky note ot Highlighter from the toolbar and start annotating. The highlighted text and the notes automatically synced to your webnotes account. The notes can be categorized using Folders, tags would have been a better choice instead of folders for organizing annotations.

You can also access all your folders and associated notes from Firefox sidebar using Organizer button on the toolbar. The added annotations can be easily searched using the search function both in browser sidebar or from webnotes account. The added annotations can be shared with others either by email or via URL. But others can’t edit these pages without registering to the service, a good option will be allowing others to edit these annotations via a simple password protection or something similar.

WebNotes is currently in beta and they have provided me 25 invites to share with our readers. Leave a comment if you want to get invited to the service, make sure you leave valid email address while commenting.

WebNotes: Annotate the web with post-it notes and highlights (Invites) | Technology Bites

You can see the list of all the available streams on the left side of tha app, click any stream to start the video. For streams like Chris Pirillo there is an option to chat via IRC Channel, the chat function opens up as a flash window and works perfectly.

The list of web shows it provides is not exhaustive yet, well over 100 shows are included. If your favorite stream is missing you can request for the addition at the developers site.

StreamDesk requires .Net Framework 3.5 and Flash Player 10 in IE for Windows and works on XP, Server 2003, Vista, Serve 2008. Mac OSX 10.5x or newer is supported with Flash Player 10 in Safari.
[Via Webware]

Watch web shows on the desktop with StreamDesk | Technology Bites

After opening the new calendar you can switch calculator modes using the “Mode” menu. If you go to “Options” menu you will see Date Calculation, Templates, Unit Conversion links. Clicking on templates will open an inline window where you can calculate Gas Mileage, Lease Estimation, Mortgage Estimation and Wage Estimation.

Unit conversion option allows to convert common unit types like volume, energy, mass etc from one unit value to another. This unit converter is useful for students to quickly convert units from one to other.

Download the Zip file from here. Extract the zip file and open the calc.exe file to use it right away. If you want to replace your existing calculator with this windows 7 calculator then first backup this file C:\Windows\System32\calc.exe and replace it with the file from the archive. Then backup this file C:Windows\System32\en-US\calc.exe.mui and replace it with the one in the archive.

Source Daily Gyan, Via Lifehacker

Get Windows 7 Calculator for Windows Vista | Technology Bites

It can launch the hidden windows applications, launch any program with in a single click, search files, monitor running system processes and more. Overall it has some 250 functions. The program has menus to launch specific set of programs like control panel applets, network utilities, programs adn etc.

It is a tiny program, and can be minimzed to systray when not active. Compatible with Windows XP.

Download XPSysPad
Note: I don’t have XP system right now, so i haven’t tested this before posting.

XPSysPad: Windows XP Launcher and Monitoring Utility | Technology Bites

“produced by the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH) and based on its Rome Reborn model, contains over 6,700 3D buildings and 250 Google Earth placemarks that allow Google Earth users to explore and learn about this fascinating period of history.”

Google says this is the first time they have incorporated an ancient city in Google Earth, hopefully we will get more of these kind of cool projects which allows us to see the ancient cities in 3D.

This layer was pushed initially by Google but looks like they have pulled it back, origiral Google blog post updated with a quote

Update @ 12:15 PM: Rome wasn’t built in a day! The Ancient Rome 3D layer will be available soon. We’re sorry for the delay, and we’ll post here when it’s live.

I can see the Ancient Rome 3D layer in my Google Earth but when i click it is showing the present Rome. See my Rome photo set at Flickr

Visit Ancient Rome in 3D with Google Earth | Technology Bites

All you have to do is subscribe to the feed in another language and then go to feed settings and click “Translate to my language”. It will automatically translates the feed and any new items until you stop it.

There are some third party services like Mloovi for this but they don’t provide full feed or images in the feeds.

Translate your Google Reader subscriptions | Technology Bites

After installing the plugin restart the browser, now you will see a camera icon next to your name. Your friends names who have installed this plugin also show the camera icon in the chat list. Click the contact name to start the chat, here you will see Video & more on the bottom of the chat window, clicking that will show you you start video chat and start voice chat links. Clicking on the start video chat will open up the video provided you have the webcam in your system.

Gmail Blog notes

Once you install the plugin, to start a video chat, just click on the “Video & more” menu at the bottom of your Gmail chat window, and choose “Start video chat.” You’ll have a few seconds to make sure you look presentable while it’s ringing, and then you’ll see and hear your friend live, right from within Gmail. You can click the “pop-out” iconto make the video larger, or click the fullscreen iconin the upper left-hand corner for a fully immersive experience. See this all in action in the video below:

Gmail gets voice and video chat | Technology Bites

Using this app is easy just download the application, and run it, enter a web page url to get the screenshot and wait till it loads after that hit screenshot button it will save the web page as a full sized image.

You can also run this via command line also, the command line usage is particularly useful if you want to get snapshots of multiple web pages at one go.

Command Line Usage

webscreencapture.exe [url] [image]

example for command line usage

webscreencapture.exe http://www.teknobites.com c:\teknobites.jpg

You can use command line to create batch screenshots from several web pages. To do this first create a .BAT file. You can create a .BAT file using notepad, open notepad paste something like the below commands and while saving enter file name in notepad as “batchfiles.bat” and select All Files for Save as type field. Now open this file, it will sequentially creates all the screenshot files.

Batch file example

webscreencapture.exe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLyG0mUnw4A c:\1.jpg
webscreencapture.exe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izUxI-k01CU c:\2.jpg
webscreencapture.exe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0JX5jWv-tk c:\3.jpg
webscreencapture.exe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqBy1TuZURk c:\4.jpg

Via [Freeware Files]

Take screenshots easily with web screen capture | Technology Bites

It doesn’t require any registration, the interface is simple to use. Just select the feeds you want to be included with your magazine style newsletter and enter email to deliver the newsletter and select the frequency of updates. You can select hourly, daily or weekly. You can also select preset category feeds including popular blog feeds. You can generate first issue instantly as a PDF file.

Turn RSS Feeds into a Personal Magazine | Technology Bites

It can convert pictures of the formats BMP, GIF, JPEG and PNG. You can save the image by taking a scrrenshot and with an image editor. If you wish to save it as a html file then you need to copy the page source. After converting the image you will get the output in text format, right click on the page and select view page source, on that source code you will see a big chunk of html code with < font > tags around, copy that and paste it wherever you wish.

If you are looking for desktop tool to convert images to ascii text checkout this lightweight image editor, it can save images in ascii text art format.

Convert Image to Text Online | Technology Bites