Every now and then I find myself working on slides in Keynote and writing Download Squad posts - and struggling to find a suitable image. Of course, Flickr is the best way to find images - their clear licencing and Creative Commons support makes finding images fairly straight forward. However, getting the image into Keynote isn't entirely painless. The workflow of browsing search results, viewing the image and then finding it at a suitable size (if it exists) takes time - however that's where Viewfinder steps in.

A native Mac OS X application (requiring Mac OS X Snow Leopard), Viewfinder allows you to search Flickr from the desktop apply filters to show only Creative Commons images, and specify a particular image size. Then, once you select an image you can download the image, set it as your desktop background - and most importantly - send images straight to Keynote for your slides.

If you're a heavy keynote user (or blogger) who frequently needs to find Flickr images for your work Viewfinder is indispensible. I've been testing it since early September and found it an incredibly convenient tool to have at hand. A licence costs £15 (roughly $25) and a free demo is available for you try from the Viewfinder webpage.

When a few blog sites yesterday happened upon Google's YouTube video of the new Dashboard, they moved quickly to pull it down. Though the original video is still MIA, Google made an official announcement of the new feature on their own blog last night and the video above is now ready for public consumption.

While Dashboard is now live -- you can check yours out at https://www.google.com/dashboard -- what's being talked about by most sites is how this move is all about transparency and privacy controls. Heck, even the official post hits on those points: "In an effort to provide you with greater transparency and control over their own data, we've built the Google Dashboard."

The post continues, "Designed to be simple and useful, the Dashboard summarizes data for each product that you use (when signed in to your account) and provides you direct links to control your personal settings."

That's fantastic, and I'm sure it's a big part of the story, but I can't help thinking that there's a tie-in to other Google projects. Perhaps Chrome OS and Android, for example?

Do you hate having to remember different passwords for every site you sign up for? Google sympathizes. They're working on a way to let you keep far fewer passwords in your life on the web. It's actually something that sites like Plaxo and Facebook already do: allowing you to register for a site by sharing information from an existing account (like your Gmail, for example).

The information never gets stored by the new site you're signing up for, so using your existing credentials is both convenient and secure. Plus, you don't get one of those annoying email messages asking you to confirm your account. (Is it just me, or do those things get marked as spam most of the time, anyway?)

Google's working on some code that will let companies offer this service - it's called "hybrid onboarding," technically - to their users. It's not going to have an immediate impact, but I hope this will cause more sites to get on board with hybrid onboarding and ditch the annoying signup processes and endless passwords.

[via AppScout]

Finding a web designer is a terrifying proposition for many people. How do you find someone qualified? It's not like there's a directory out there that lets you quickly browse and compare examples of work from various web designers to narrow down your set of choices quickly, and can help you get in touch with the one you choose.

Well, actually, now there is. And if that sounds like a good idea, consider that last week 37signals released a new site called Haystack. 37signals is a well-known web development company that is responsible for the incredibly popular online project management software Basecamp, as well as a few other web properties you might know: Campfire, Basecamp, and Highrise, to name a few.

The thing is, 37signals wasn't always an online service provider; at one time they were a web design firm creating client sites, so they know the difficulty web designers go through to attract clients. 37signals also takes pains to understand the difficulties users face, and have applied that approach to building a directory to help clients easily find web designers (and web designers easily find clients).

Early reports seem to be positive, with designers reporting they are signing new clients in short order. So if you're looking to advertise your design abilities, or if you're looking for a designer, give Haystack a look.

As web apps become more powerful, more popular, and more full-featured, they're starting to replace desktop apps for many people. A Mac app called Fluid can pull those web applications onto your desktop and turn them into OS X native site-specific browsers.

Fluid has a lot of advantages compared to running web apps in your browser: you get a Cocoa app with its own Dock icon, automatic unread badges for sites like Gmail and Google Reader, and built-in userscript support. Keeping your web apps in a separate browser also means that they can't be taken down when another site crashes in some other tab. You can even create menubar apps, so your favorite webapp will be close at hand, right at the top of your screen.

To find icons for your Fluid apps, I recommend checking out the Fluid Icons Flickr group. The users there have come up with attractive icons for most of the apps on my list. Chris Ivarson has also designed a handful of great icons for Fluid apps.

Now that you know a little bit about how and why you should use Fluid, give these 10 sites a spin as site-specific browsers!

Google Wave

Google's hot new communication tool is a perfect candidate for a site-specific browser. It's pretty resource-intensive, and it's still in the preview stage, so it's prone to crashes and lag. I haven't found any excellent Wave userscripts yet, and the site's favicon makes a nice enough Fluid icon. If you want an additional icon and a userscript that gives you a badge count for Wave, Devthought has posted them.

Google Reader

A lot of people are already using Google Reader as their main RSS app, so it makes sense to set it up in Fluid. You also get the benefit of an unread count badge on the Dock icon and a bunch of great userscripts. One of my favorites is Helvetireader. Try setting it up with Chris Ivarson's icon.

Share

Now that the new Lists feature has rolled out to everyone and become a big part of Twitter, the microblogging service has taken the logical next step and launched list widgets. That means you can embed a live version of your favorite Twitter list anywhere on the web. It doesn't even have to be your list, actually: if someone else has a favorite that you enjoy, you can make a widget of that, too.

Like the List-to-RSS solution I wrote about recently, list widgets allow you to follow a list without following everyone on it. Widgets also make it very easy to customize the appearance of your lists, as well as a bunch of other options. Live auto-updating is included - or you can set how often it loads new tweets - and you can also control the number of tweets that appear at once. Don't want to show avatars or hashtags? That's fine too, there are some checkboxes that will take care of it. This set of features makes widgets a great way to share your favorite Twitter content outside of Twitter.

[via TechCrunch]

Clicky is a new web analytics package that is looking to give the current king of web analytics, Google Analytics, a run for its money. Like any site tracking service, you create an account, insert some code into your pages (or if you are using one of the popular blogging platforms, simply install the relevant plugin), and watch as Clicky gathers statistics for your site in real-time.

The service sets itself apart by being very well designed and easy to read, but also by including extra related features, like the ability to include your FeedBurner statistics, tracking Twitter statistics, and providing an integrated link shortening service based on its related domain name clicky.me.

The free version of Clicky is ad-supported, but a Pro version is also available.

A few of Clicky's more obscure features need a Pro account to use. For example, with a pro account you can set up Twitter searches for your brand name or URL, and then see how many mentions you are getting.

Have you ever received a PDF file in an email that contained information you need in text form, but the PDF doesn't let you select the text? Sometimes this is due to access restrictions on the document, but more often it's because the person creating the PDF did so by simply scanning the document. This creates an image of the document, but does not embed the text information.

To extract the text, you need to use optical character recognition (OCR) software. Most scanners come with OCR software, but if you don't have ready access to it, you might consider using the Online OCR service.

Online OCR lets you upload a PDF file and it returns plain text that can then be copied directly into the word processing tool of your choice.

Obviously there are security concerns with uploading and storing copies of your documents on a 3rd party's site, but if that's not a concern to you, Online OCR might be just the trick to solve your OCR needs.

[via Lifehacker]

I hate making resumes.

If you're like me, you'll probably appreciate any tool that helps make creating a resume easier. Ceevee is just such a tool.

Ceevee is an online resume builder that allows you to fill in specific fields, and it spits out a very nicely designed resume for publication on the web or print. You have a choice of three themes, which are all essentially the same but with different typefaces.

Modern (the default) uses a sans-serif font, Classic uses a serif font, and Plain Text uses a monospaced font, though it still has formatting.

Once you've created your CeeVee, you can share it on your website by embedding code that will also show a CeeVee icon. If you make it public, you can also share your CeeVee using Twitter and Facebook.

[via WebWorkerDaily]

WordPress has become a victim of its own popularity. The blogging-based content management system powers a huge amount of websites, and has become a target for hackers. Site hacks have been around for a long time, but recently they seem to have evolved.

In the past hackers would gain control of a site just to prove that could, then typically post a quasi-incoherent message on the site to prove their hacking prowess and illiteracy. Now hackers have become more advanced, and hacking has become financially motivated. Hacks include embedding links (some hidden, some not) for the purposes of gaming search engines, and instead of crowing about their conquest, hackers are now trying to hide and cover their tracks as much as possible.

This means that site owners are losing their confidence that their sites have not been compromised. With recent highly publicized exploits that allowed hackers to take control of out-of-date WordPress installations, it became even more important to make sure your site is clean.

If you're running a WordPress site on your own server, one step you can take to make sure that it is clean is to install and run the WordPress Exploit Scanner plugin. Beware, the exploit scanner is very thorough, and it will likely report a lot (and I mean a LOT) of false positives. It essentially reports any hiding behavior, which some of the plugins on your site might be doing for very normal reasons.

Even with the false-positives, the WordPress Exploit Scanner is a useful tool in any blogger's toolbox.

If you're loving Twitter's new lists feature, but you're finding yourself a bit overwhelmed by following so many new people, there might be a better way to try out a list. One Twitter user has put together a list-to-RSS script. All you have to do is pop a list's URL into the site and drop the resulting feed URL into your reader. This way, you don't have to check the list on the web, and you don't have follow everyone on it.

Be warned, the list-to-RSS site has run into some rate-limit issues with Twitter's APIs, so you may have to check back periodically if it doesn't work for you on the first try. Meanwhile, if you're still looking for some good lists to subscribe to, may I recommend the Download Squad team list? Sebastian has also collected some great list recommendations and a step-by-step guide to using lists in an earlier Download Squad post.

Google Wave is an innovative new communication tool, but part of innovation is that it's not always intuitive to use. Early adopters have been jumping into Wave with little guidance on how to take advantage of all its features. I guess you could watch the 90-minute Wave video, but that's not exactly a quick-start guide.

Well, there's a saying almost as old as computers themselves, and it goes: RTFM. Read the, um, flippin' manual. Now Google Wave has a flippin' manual that you can read, but it's not from Google: it's from Lifehacker's Gina Trapani and Adam Pash. Sounds a lot better than "watch the frickin' 90-minute video," eh?

Gina and Adam's guide is quickly making the rounds on the web, being promoted by the likes of Mashable. I'd like to add Download Squad's endorsement to the list. The Complete Guide to Google Wave is a straightforward, well-organized volume that goes a long way toward demystifying a new and complex tool. It's available to read online for free, but you'll be able to buy it as a DRM-free PDF soon, and in print in January.

Still don't have Wave? Go throw your name in the hat for Download Squad's Great Google Wave Invite Giveaway.

I've written before about the Readability bookmarklet, a handy way to make cluttered sites more easily readable (and printable). Well, TUAW blogger and talented designer Brett Terpstra has made some improvements that result in an even more minimal page. Print/email links and logos are cut out, and only essential images are included. For most sites, that means you'll be left with some nicely-formatted text, and nothing more. This new-and-improved version is aptly called Readability 2.

If you need to copy-paste an entire article without grabbing images or accidentally copying weird formatting tags, Readability 2 is just the ticket. Code and pre tags are also preserved, so Readability 2 won't destroy the formatting of code snippets on a webpage. Mr. Terpstra points out that it's also great for getting text ready to be grabbed with capture tools like Evernote.

(and yes, the image above is a screenshot of this post, after using Readability 2.)

A lot of people overlook Microsoft's SkyDrive for free, web-based file storage and sharing. Still, it's tough to argue with 25gb of free space for your digital goodies that you can access from anywhere. SkyDrive Explorer is a free shell enhancement for Windows that makes it even better.

Once you install SkyDrive Explorer, you'll see a new icon in My Computer (under "Other"). Double click it to open your drive, and a Live login window will appear. Sign in and you've got full-on access to SkyDrive right from Windows Explorer. Add files and folders, move things around, delete old junk - all as if they were stored on your local hard drive.

I'd like to see the app allow access to SkyDrive from open and save dialogs, but it's a great addition to Windows even without that functionality.

SkyDrive Explorer runs on both 32 and 64-bit Windows.

[via gHacks]

If you were hoping the title meant I had gotten wind of some kind of Microsoft-sponsored sabotage, I'm sorry to disappoint you...

Even though there are thousands and thousands of Google Wave users now, it seems like the number of available invites isn't keeping pace with demand. I barely mention Wave, and yet I've still had people hounding me on Twitter for a spare invite. They're even being sold on eBay, for crying out loud.

While I don't have any to give out, I do have some encouraging news. Those of you who want access might not have to wait for Google to pony up more invites.
TheNextWeb is reporting that Google could well be on the verge of announcing the federation of Google Wave. Yep. You may just be running your very own Wave server on your own hardware sometime soon.

Google's been talking about Wave at eComm Europe. They've demoed a terminal-based wave client and and hinted that the Wave sandbox environment will be opened up later today to allow federation. The Wave protocol code is already available for developers to tinker with.

Will today be the day Google opens up the floodgates? We'll keep you posted.