Video as Desktop Wallpaper

If you have experienced the DreamScene feature of Windows Vista you know the feeling of having videos displayed on the desktop as a wallpaper; what maybe you don't know is that it is possible to achieve the same in XP. How? Trough the VLC media player. Just go to the 'video' menu, click on the 'wallpaper' option and you are set.

GMail Tip

Here's an interesting GMail tip from digitalalchemy.tv:

Gmail has an interesting quirk where you can add a plus sign (+) after your Gmail address, and it'll still get to your inbox. It's called plus-addressing, and it essentially gives you an unlimited number of e-mail addresses to play with. Here's how it works: say your address is pinkyrocks@gmail.com, and you want to automatically label all work e-mails. Add a plus sign and a phrase to make it pinkyrocks+work@gmail.com and set up a filter to label it work (to access your filters go to Settings->Filters and create a filter for messages addressed to pinkyrocks+work@gmail.com. Then add the label work). (read full article)

How to Listen Pandora Outside the United States

The great Pandora.com is blocked from outside the US because of legal issues related with international licenses, but there are ways to overcome this.

One is globalpandora.com, a sort of web proxy to pandora;

Other is by means of a vpn, which tunnels and encrypts traffic. There is a downside in velocity but streaming audio is not that much bandwidth intense like video so you may experience some initial delay but the overall experience is good enough. You can look into SecureIX and Hotspot Shield for free, publicly accessible VPNs.