Curious about the domains that you visit most or perhaps you want a way to share that information on a social website? Now you can see and share the 30 most visited domains in your browser’s history with the Visitation Cloud extension.

Accessing Visitation Cloud

As soon as you install the extension you can get started using it. Depending on how your browser’s UI is set up there are three methods for accessing Visitation Cloud: a “Visitation Cloud Button” inserted at the end of your “Bookmarks Toolbar”, a menu listing in the “Tools Menu”, and a “Toolbar Button” (not shown here).

Visitation Cloud in Action

As soon as you activate Visitation Cloud a new window will appear with your top domains displayed in a cloud format. Keep in mind that this is more than just a static image…each listing is actually a clickable link.

Clicking on any of the listings will open that domain in a new tab or window depending on your particular browser settings.

If you feel that you have a great set of links and want to share it with your friends then that is easy to do. Right click anywhere within the Visitation Cloud Window and select “Save as…”. The “cloud image” can be saved in “.png, .jpg, or Scalable Vector Graphics (.svg)” format. For our example we chose the “.svg format”.

Perhaps you love the set of links but not the layout…right click and select “Randomize” to change how the cloud looks.

Here is our cloud after being “Randomized”. Things definitely got moved around…

Accessing the Visitation Cloud Image in other Browsers

Once you have your “cloud image” saved you can share it with friends or save it for your own future use in other browsers. Here is our “cloud image” open in Opera Browser with link opening in progress.

The same “cloud image” open in Google Chrome. Very nice…

Conclusion

While this may not be something that everyone will use Visitation Cloud does make for a rather unique, interesting, & fun way to access and share your most visited domains.

Links

Download the Visitation Cloud extension (Mozilla Add-ons)

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iTunes Store offers a large variety of free content, but to download it you have to have an account. Usually you have to enter your credit card information to sign up, but here’s an easy way to get an iTunes account for free downloads without entering any payment info.

Although iTunes Store is known for paid downloads of movies, music, and more, it also has a treasure trove of free media.? Some of it, including Podcasts and iTunes U educational content do not require an account to download.? However, any other free content, including free iPhone/iPod Touch apps and free or promotional music, videos, and TV Shows all require an account to download.? If you try to download a free movie or music download, you will be required to enter payment information.

Even though your card will not be charged, it will be kept on file so you can be charged if you download a for-pay item.? However, if you only plan to download free items, it may be preferable to not have your account linked to a credit card. The following steps will get you an account without entering your credit card info.

Getting Started

First, make sure you have iTunes installed.? If you don’t already have it, download and install it (link below) with the default settings.

Now open iTunes, and click the iTunes Store link on the left.

Click the App Store link on the top of this page.

Select a free app to download.? A simple way to do this is to scroll down to the Top Free Apps box on the right side, hover your mouse over the first item, and click on the Free button that appears when you hover over it.

A popup will open asking you to sign in with your Apple ID.? Click “Create New Account”.

Click Continue to create your account.

Check the box to accept the Store Terms and Conditions, and click Continue.

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Enter your email address, password, security question, and date of birth, and uncheck the boxes to get email if you don’t want it…then click Continue.

Now, you will be asked to provide a payment method.? Notice now that the last option says None!? Click that bullet option…

Then enter your billing address.? Simply enter your normal billing address, even though you are not entering a payment method.? Click Continue and your account will be created!

If you get the Address Verification screen just verify your county and click Done.

An email will be sent to you to verify your account…

Click on the link in your email to verify your account, iTunes will launch and you’re prompted to enter in the Apple ID and Password you just created.

Your account is successfully created!

Now you can easily download any free media from iTunes.? Keep an eye on the Free on iTunes box on the bottom of the iTunes Store page for interesting downloads, or if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, watch the popular Free downloads on the Apps page.

And of course there is always great content on iTunes U to grab free as well.

Purchasing for-pay media

If you want to purchase an item on the iTunes store later, simply click on the item to download as normal.? Click Buy to proceed with the purchase.

iTunes will prompt you that you need to enter payment information to complete the purchase.? Enter your Apple ID email and password, and then add the payment information as prompted.

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Remove Payment Information from an iTunes Account

If you’ve already entered payment information into your iTunes account, and would like to remove it, click Store in the top iTunes menu, and select View My Account.

Enter your Apple ID email and password, and click View Account.

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This will open your account information.? Click the Edit Payment Information button.

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Now, click the None button to remove your payment information.? Click Done to save the changes.

Your account will now prompt you to enter payment information if you try to make a purchase.? You could repeat these steps after making a purchase if you do not want iTunes to keep your payment info on file.

Conclusion

This is a great way to make an iTunes account without entering your credit card, or to remove your credit card info from your account.? Parents may especially enjoy this tip, as they can have an iTunes account on their kids computer or iPod Touch without worrying about them spending money with it.

Links

Download iTunes

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Boxee is a very cool multimedia app that lets you access and stream your digital media in many different ways. There’s also a lot of extra apps included with it, and today we take a look at the Pandora application in Boxee.

Pandora has been a favorite free music streaming service that’s been around for some time now. Though there are new services like Grooveshark and Spotify that are competing, Pandora is still a reliable choice. It’s now included in Boxee, and here we take a look at using it.

Create a Pandora Account

If you don’t already have a Pandora account, you can easily create one at their website (link below).

Pandora in Boxee

To start using Pandora from Boxee, launch Boxee and from the main menu select Apps.

Now from the My Apps section select Pandora.

When the Pandora app menu comes up, select Start.

Now you need to log into your Pandora account.

After signing in you can starting listening to your stations, viewing artist info, and cover art. All while enjoying some cool visuals in the background.

From the controls at the top you can control playback, skip songs, control volume, get information on why a song was picked, and give a song a thumbs up or down.

Of course you can also pull up your stations and switch between them and add more. The same features you’ve come to expect from Pandora are available.

One thing we noticed missing is not being able to click on the band or artist to get additional information about them –which you can do on the Pandora site and desktop app. But that isn’t a deal breaker by any means, and we’re hoping the feature will be added in the future.

Then while you’re checking out other apps, shows, and setting within Boxee, the cool visuals continue and the songs from you stations keep playing.

Conclusion

Pandora is a great streaming music service and a welcome edition to Boxee. If you’re a fan of Pandora now you can listen to it on your home theater system. If you’re new to Boxee, make sure to check out our article on getting started with Boxee.

Create a Pandora Account

Download Boxee

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You’ve filled out your brackets and now you are ready for one of America’s most popular sporting events. But what if you are you stuck at work or away from your TV?? Or your local affiliate is showing a different game? Today we show how to catch all the March Madness online.

March Madness on Demand

You’ll need a broadband connection, 512 MB RAM or higher, with cookies and Javascript enabled in your browser. March Madness on Demand offers two viewing options, a Standard Player and a High Quality player. The High Quality player is not, unfortunately, high definition.

Standard Player Requirements

• Windows XP/Vista/7 or Mac OS X
• IE 6+ (We also successfully tested it in Firefox, Chrome, & Opera)
• Adobe Flash Player 9 or higher

High Quality Player Requirements

• 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 or Intel-based Macintosh
• Mac OS 10.4.8+ (Intel-based)
• Windows: XP SP2, Vista, Server 2003, Server 2008, Windows 7
• Firefox 1.5+ or IE 6/7/8
• Silverlight 3 browser plug-in

Watching March Madness on Demand

Go to the March Madness on Demand website. (Link below)

Check the “Watch in High Quality” section to see if your browser is ready and compatible for the High Quality viewer.

If not, you’ll see a message indicating either your browser and system are incompatible…

Or that you need to install Silverlight. To install Silverlight, click on the “Get HQ” button and follow the prompts to download and install Silverlight.

To launch the player, click the large red “Launch Player” button.

At the top of the screen, you’ll see the current and upcoming games. Click on “Watch Now” below to begin watching.

At the bottom left, is where you click to watch with the High Quality player.

If to many people are watching the High Quality player, you’ll see the following message and have to go back to the Standard Player.

At the lower right are volume controls, a “Full Screen” button, and a “Share” button which allows you to share the game you are watching on various social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Perhaps most importantly for those who want to steal a bit of viewing time while at work is the “Boss Button” at the top right.

Clicking on the “Boss Button” will open a fake Office document so it may appear at first glance like you’re actually doing legitimate work. To return to the game, click anywhere on the screen with your mouse.

You’ll be able to catch every single game of the tournament from the first round all the way through the championship with March Madness on Demand. If your computer and Internet connection can handle it, you can even watch multiple games at the same time by opening March Madness on Demand in multiple browser windows.

Watch March Madness online

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Finally another Friday has arrived and it’s time to waste the afternoon on company time playing a flash game. Today we take a look at a fun game called Abduction.

Abduction

Abduction is a neat game where you snatch people and livestock to sell them on the intergalactic market.

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The controls are basic using the arrow keys or W,A,S,D and the left mouse button. Here is the tutorial that you can play first to get the hang of it.

While you’re abducting hillbillies, they throw pitch forks and other objects at your craft so you need to avoid them.

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The game has several levels to keep you distracted until quitting time.

Play Abduction at FreeWebArcade

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Being able to unwind for a few moments each day can make the time pass so much better and help you feel refreshed. If your favorite method for relaxing is playing a quick game, then join us as we take a look at the Random Games from MyGiochi.net extension for Google Chrome.

Random Games from MyGiochi.net in Action

The really great thing about this extension is that each day you can have a new random game to play. If you love variety this is definitely going to be a perfect match for you. We got “Power Golf” as our random game of the day.

Here is a look at things once we got started…this one can be a lot of fun to play.

Time to move on to the third hole now…

What if you want something different from the game available on any given day? In the upper right corner you will find links for “game categories” that you can look through (clicking on the links will open a new tab). Since the links are in Italian you might need to experiment a little bit to find the category that you want to browse through.

We chose the “Games for Girls Category”. With Chrome’s new built in “Translation Bar” you can easily switch the page over to the language of your choice.

Ready to choose a fun game to play!

You really can have a lot of fun with the games available at My Giochi.

With our “game of the day” we had a second option for other games to try.

More games equals more fun!

Conclusion

If playing online games is your favorite way to relax then the MyGiochi.net extension will make a great addition to your browser. Have fun with all of those new games each day!

Links

Download the Random Games from MyGiochi.net extension (Google Chrome Extensions)

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We’ve received a lot of questions about mapping a drive from XP to Windows 7 to access data easily. Today we look at how to map a drive in Windows 7, and how to map to an XP drive from Windows 7.

With the new Homegroup feature in Windows 7, it makes sharing data between computers a lot easier. But you might need to map a network drive so you can go directly into a folder to access its contents. Mapping a network drive may sound like “IT talk”, but the process is fairly easy.

Map Network Drive in Windows 7

Note: All of the computers used in this article are part of the same workgroup on a home network.

In this first example we’re mapping to another Windows 7 drive on the network. Open Computer and from the toolbar click on Map Network Drive.

Alternately in Computer you can hit “Alt+T” to pull up the toolbar and click on Tools Map Network Drive.

Now give it an available drive letter, type in the path or browse to the folder you want to map to. Check the box next to Reconnect at logon if you want it available after a reboot, and click Finish.

If both machines aren’t part of the same Homegroup, you may be prompted to enter in a username and password. Make sure and check the box next to Remember my credentials if you don’t want to log in every time to access it.

The drive will map and the contents of the folder will open up.

When you look in Computer, you’ll see the drive under network location.

This process works if you want to connect to a server drive as well. In this example we map to a Home Server drive.

Map an XP Drive to Windows 7

There might be times when you need to map a drive on an XP machine on your network. There are extra steps you’ll need to take to make it work however.

Here we take a look at the problem you’ll encounter when trying to map to an XP machine if things aren’t set up correctly. If you try to browse to your XP machine you’ll see a message that you don’t have permission.

Or if you try to enter in the path directly, you’ll be prompted for a username and password, and the annoyance is, no matter what credentials you put in, you can’t connect.

To solve the problem we need to set up the Windows 7 local account as a user on the XP machine and make them part of the Administrators group. Right-click My Computer and select Manage.

Under Computer Management expand Local Users and Groups and click on the Users folder. Right-click an empty area and click New User.

Add in the user credentials, uncheck User must change password at next logon, then check Password never expires then click Create.

Now you see the new user you created in the list. After the user is added you might want to reboot before proceeding to the next step.

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Next we need to make the user part of the Administrators group. So go back into Computer Management Local Users and Groups Groups then double click on Administrators.

Click the Add button in Administrators Properties window.

Enter in the new user you created and click OK. An easy way to do this is to enter the name of the user you created then click Check Names and the path will be entered in for you.

Now you see the user as a member of the Administrators group.

Back on the Windows 7 machine we’ll start the process of mapping a drive. Here we’re browsing to the XP Media Center Edition machine.

Now we can enter in the user name and password we just created.

If you only want to access specific shared folders on the XP machine you can browse to them.

Or if you want to map to the entire drive, enter in the drive path where in this example it’s “\XPMCEC$” –Don’t forget the “$” sign after the local drive letter.

Then login…

Again the contents of the drive will open up for you to access.

Here you can see we have two drives mapped. One to another Windows 7 machine on the network, and the other one to the XP computer.

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If you ever want to disconnect a drive, just right-click on it and then Disconnect.

There are several scenarios where you might want to map a drive in Windows 7 to access specific data. It takes a little bit of work but you can map to an XP drive from Windows 7 as well. This comes in handy where you have a network with different versions of Windows running on it.

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Are you tired of unneeded webpage loading and extra link clicking just to access an image found using Google Image Search? Now you can jump directly to the image itself with the clickGOOGLEview extension for Google Chrome.

The Problem

When you find an image that you like using Google Image Search you always have to go through extra hassle just to get to the image itself. First you have an entire webpage loading in your browser and then you have to click through that irritating “See full size image” link. All that you need is the image, right?

Problem Fixed

Once you have installed the clickGOOGLEview extension you will absolutely love the result. Find an image that you like, click the link, and there is your new image without any of the hassle or extra link clicking.

Big or small having direct access to the image is how it should have been from the beginning.

Conclusion

The clickGOOGLEview extension does one thing and does it extremely well…it gets you to those images without the extra hassle or additional link clicking.

Links

Download the clickGOOGLEview extension (Google Chrome Extensions)

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One of the cool features of Windows Home Server is the ability to stream photos, music, and video to other computers on your network. Today we take a look at how to enable streaming in WHS to Windows Media Player in Vista and Windows 7.

Turn on Media Streaming on WHS

To enable Media Streaming from Windows Home Server, open the Windows Home Server Console and click on Settings.

Now in the Setting screen select Media Sharing, then in the right column under Media Library Sharing turn on Library Sharing for the folders you want to stream.

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If you have a Windows 7 machine on your network make sure media streaming is enabled. You should then see the server under Other Libraries and can start streaming your media collection.

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Stream Video to Media Player 11

Now let’s say you want to stream videos to another member of your household who’s using a Vista machine in another room through Windows Media Player 11. Open WMP and click on Library then Media Sharing.

Now click the box next to Find media that others are sharing then click Ok.

Now you should see the server listed under Library…where in this example it’s geekserver.

Since we only enabled Video streaming for this example, we need to click on the category icon and select Video.

Now you can scroll through the available videos…

And start enjoying your favorite videos streamed from the server through WMP 11 on Vista.

Of course you can use this method to stream photos and music as well, you just need to enable what you want to stream from the Home Server Console. You can also stream your media to Windows Media Center and Xbox which we will be covering soon.

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One of the cool features of Windows Home Server is the ability to stream photos, music, and video to other computers on your network. Today we take a look at how to enable streaming in WHS to Windows Media Player in Vista and Windows 7.

Turn on Media Streaming on WHS

To enable Media Streaming from Windows Home Server, open the Windows Home Server Console and click on Settings.

Now in the Setting screen select Media Sharing, then in the right column under Media Library Sharing turn on Library Sharing for the folders you want to stream.

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If you have a Windows 7 machine on your network make sure media streaming is enabled. You should then see the server under Other Libraries and can start streaming your media collection.

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Stream Video to Media Player 11

Now let’s say you want to stream videos to another member of your household who’s using a Vista machine in another room through Windows Media Player 11. Open WMP and click on Library then Media Sharing.

Now click the box next to Find media that others are sharing then click Ok.

Now you should see the server listed under Library…where in this example it’s geekserver.

Since we only enabled Video streaming for this example, we need to click on the category icon and select Video.

Now you can scroll through the available videos…

And start enjoying your favorite videos streamed from the server through WMP 11 on Vista.

Of course you can use this method to stream photos and music as well, you just need to enable what you want to stream from the Home Server Console. You can also stream your media to Windows Media Center and Xbox which we will be covering soon.

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