It’s important to keep your Mac clean and healthy. UsingMac.com has compiled a list of the best 30 free tools that can help you to do this. These include  system cleaners, system tweakers, data organizer. system display manager, etc.

Click HERE see the the list of 30 Free System Tools for a Better Mac.

A Japanese company called Keihin Electric Express Railway Co. has introduced a “Smile Scan” system. It aims to evaluate the smiles and grins of its staff.

The device analyzes the facial characteristics of a person including: eye movements, lip curves and wrinkles. It also rates the smile on a scale between 0 and 100 percent.

“We aim to improve our services to make our customers smile,” says a company official.

Now I just started laughing when I first read this. Such a bizarre idea. I wonder if it can detect fakes smiles

via Mainichi Daily News

If you’re a power blogger, or someone who blogs regularly, across multiple blogs, with detailed, in-depth posts, a desktop blog editor can make your life infinitely easier.

Some are browser-based, some are standalone. Some work across different platforms while others are only for Windows or Mac OSX. Some are paid while others are free.

Web Designer Depot has a list of 20 Useful Desktop Blog Editors.

I use a combination of the web Wordpress and MarsEdit (Mac).

Gina Trapani ask her followers on Twitter whether they are going to upgrade to the new iPhone 3GS or not.You can see the compilation of answers here.

“So, are you getting an iPhone 3GS? Why or why not? (Will compile and report back best responses.)”

One of the answers says (by @megnut):

“Yes, iPhone = my computer, and $399 is worth it. Haven’t bought new laptop since late 06 and don’t plan to for long time.”

I think this raises a very interesting point. Has the iPhone become powerful enough to replace your laptop? So the tiny keyboard and smaller screen are drawbacks but it’s pretty amazing that you can do simple photo editing and create documents & spreadsheets, yea?

Rene from The iPhone Blog said:

A couple of friends of mine who work in IT administration have been telling me the same thing since the iPhone 3G launched. One of them recently left his laptop behind and took only an iPhone with him on a motorcycle trip and conference, and was still able to keep on top of his servers.

While the sheer volume of writing and editing demanded by TiPb still keeps me chained to a laptop, I’ll also admit to leaving the MacBook behind and running out with only my iPhone whenever I can — and yes, I’ve been likewise amazed at not only how much I can now accomplish with a mobile computing device, but how easily I can accomplish it.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball also expressed his views:

This, to me, gets to the heart of the revolution at hand. A decade ago, my first PowerBook was a secondary machine to the desktop anchored at my desk. Now, my main machine is my MacBook Pro, but it feels a bit like an anchor now. My mobile secondary computer is my iPhone.

My Thoughts

I think the iPhone will play a bigger role in people’s mobile computing. But will or can it replace your laptop? I think it really depends on your needs. For people with light usage (checking email, casual web browsing), I think the iPhone could definitely be an alternative. For me, it will. I don’t do a lot of heavy mobile computing and therefore carrying a laptop would be illogical.

What are your thoughts?

Below is a Friendfeed conversion about this subject:

As you may know, Google added some new functionality to Gmail’s labels. They changes include:

1) New location for labels
You’ll notice your labels in a new location on the left of your inbox (or on the right, for those of you using the Arabic, Hebrew, or Urdu versions of Gmail). Instead of having their own section, your labels are now above your chat list, grouped together with Inbox, Drafts, Chats and other system labels.

I didn’t really mind the labels being placed at the near bottom of the sidebar because I rarely click on them. However, the labels must now be placed at the top now in order for the new drag and drop feature to be usable.

2) Label hiding and showing
You now have control over which of your labels show. We’ve done our best to get you started by automatically showing the labels you use most and hiding the rest. Label hiding is my favorite new feature, since it saves me from having to look through labels I rarely use. If I ever need to reach any of my old labels, I just click the “more” link.

I like this one. There are some labels that I just don’t want to see. Now I can make my labels list shorter and more usable.

3) Drag and drop

You can now drag messages into labels, just like you can with folders. This does the exact same thing as “Move to” — it labels and archives in one step.

You can drag labels onto messages too. It’s the same thing as using the “Label” button. To label or move many messages at once, first select the messages and then drag and drop the label.

Another nice feature! This reminds me on the drag and drop feature in the MobileMe web apps.

Nice job Google! Keep it coming!

I downloaded Firefox 3.5 the day it came out. Won’t go into a lengthy review but there are some of my first thoughts about it:

• A little snappier and faster
• A few minor design/UI changes
• And finally private browsing is here

Here are the notable changes via the release notes.

Available in more than 70 languages.

Support for the HTML5 <video> and <audio> elements including native support for Ogg Theora encoded video and Vorbis encoded audio.

Improved tools for controlling your private data, including a Private Browsing Mode.

Better web application performance using the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.

The ability to share your location with websites using Location Aware Browsing.

Support for native JSON, and web worker threads.

Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.

Support for new web technologies such as: downloadable fonts, CSS media queries, new transformations and properties, JavaScript query selectors, HTML5 local storage and offline application storage, <canvas> text, ICC profiles, and SVG transforms.

If you bothered to read all the *notable* features, I’ll give you a thumbs up (Y). Anyway, make sure you do get Firefox 3.5. It’s always a good idea to get the latest version of any software.

Nifty Little Web was launched on April the 11th 2009 meaning that it’s just under 3 months old. The aim of this website was to link and post interesting, funny, amazing and helpful stuff that are scattered across the internet. However if you take a look in the archives, I seem to have drifted off posting mostly fail and ownage pictures. To those who enjoyed those posts, I’m glad you did. To those who got sick and tired of them, I apologize and promise to post a variety of different posts in the future.

OK. But the main point of this post is to announce version 2 of Nifty Little Web. The main changes are a new design, restructured use of categories and tags and of course better content.

Also, I want to thank my friend Joe who is the creator of LiveCrunch for helping me with the setup of this site.

NOTE: Redesigning and restructuring is a lengthy and hard process. So over the next few days, you may see errors or ugly layouts on this website. If you do, please let me know. Thank you (Y).

Are you always tired? Wished you had more energy? ZenHabits.com has a list of 55 ways that could help you to get more energy and get through the day.

Read the post here.

“I walk slowly, but I never walk backward.”

Abraham Lincoln

Today, I was stage managing a school show. Some kids were goofing off backstage, so I yelled at them that they could hurt themselves. While walking back to my chair, I tripped over my own feet and fell 5 feet off the stage. I shattered my cheekbone telling kids they would hurt themselves. FML

via fmylife