Creekside Chatter

Shotty is offered as freeware so try it for yourself.

The long-awaited Aldiko 2.0 is now here! You can download it from the Android market or on our website. The Aldiko 2.0 brings you a brand-new user interface, new features and additional eBook format support.

Personalized photo publishing service Mixbook has announced it has acquired scrapbooking service Scrapblog for an undisclosed amount.

Scrapblog has gone far since its beginnings as a scrapbooking service back in 2006, integrating with Photobucket, adding a virtual goods marketplace, and generally establishing itself as one of the leaders in the online digital scrapbooking market.

Mixbook on the other hand offers collaborative photo book, card and calendar building and sharing, with plenty of free designs for its users to choose from. The two services are a natural match, and combined they have more than five million customers, Mixbook claims.

“Digital scrapbooking has surged in popularity over the past few years, with the scrapbook industry reaching billions of dollars in annual sales. Scrapblog’s users will now have access to an improved user experience via Mixbook’s thousands of free designs, state-of-the-art software and industry-leading customer service,” said Andrew Laffoon, CEO of Mixbook.

and out is just about the coolest thing I can think of!"

Nonetheless, the actual practice of journaling often involves good old memoir-type writing. Not always, by any means, but at times looking back on your past with your pen in hand can be extraordinarily productive.

Since it's the New Year, I'd like to suggest a simple process of reflection that will help you turn again to the future with renewed confidence and faith.

First, flipping back through your past, identify the times that stand out as having been exceptional, better than other times. Choose one single year of this kind on which to focus.

Write "My Best Year" at the top of a new page in your journal, and then, remembering as many details about that year as you can, begin translating them to the page. How old were you? Where were you living? What was environment like? How did you spend your days? What were your involvements? Who were the others in your life at the time? What exactly happened to make it such a good period of time for you?

Stretch your memory to describe one day or incident from that time in as much fine detail as you can recall.

Now read over your journal entry and consider how this special time was formative for you.

Did the conditions and events of the time cause you to change in noticeable ways? How did that wonderful year influence who you have become today? Suppose you could go back to that same happy year. Is there anything you'd do differently the second time around?

Project Gutenberg "...is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today," according to Project Gutenberg's website.

This means that the Kindle app now has access to over 33,000 free and out-of-copyright eBooks. On top of that, the app also supports access to "millions" of eBooks through the Internet Archive and other online sources too. That's way more than a lifetime's worth of reading, for free!

What else is new in update 2.5?

• Continue downloading books while the app is in the background on iOS 4 devices.
• Improved image zoom
• New book indicator
• Bug fixes

Quite frankly, I’m sick of Google taking stands for “open” and “doing what’s right” only conveniently when it’s in their best interest to do so. It’s fine to be a company with interests. Just be honest about them.

Don’t feed us bullshit and call it filet mignon. We can smell it. And taste it. And spit it back at you.

So what could this rumored vacation freeze mean? It's possible there will soon be an announcement from Apple introducing a new product, and Apple wants its stores fully staffed to handle the flood of customers.

On the Mac front, Apple's MacBook Pros are overdue for an update, last being revamped in April 2010. However, it's unlikely that new MacBook Pros would cause a stampede of customers to the Apple Store. The most likely scenario is that Apple is planning on announcing the next generation iPad or a Verizon iPhone in the next few weeks, either of which could go on sale by the end of January.

Very interesting . . .

FreeOCR Is a No-Hassle Scan-to-Text Converter for Windows

Windows only: Your scanner probably came with OCR software. Chances are, though, it's both awkward and space-hogging. FreeOCR is an slim, efficient app that has just four main buttons, and performs well at converting scanned images and PDFs into edit-ready text.

Since so many scanners these days come as part of an all-in-one printer/scanner/copier combo, avoiding the installation of gigantic, auto-starting, self-promoting printer drivers is something we should all strive for. FreeOCR is a great alternative if you need to occasionally rip some text from a letter or other document. The app can grab text right off the scanner, or you can feed it a PDF file. Either way, your PDF shows up in the left window, and your text is ready to edit or copy in the right. Why more OCR apps aren't like this, we can't quite say.

FreeOCR is a free download for Windows systems only. Look for the download link a bit down the page. The app needs an internet connection active during installation, because it seems to be grabbing updated files from its server.

FreeOCR Software [via FreewareGenius.com]

Send an email to Kevin Purdy, the author of this post, at kevin@lifehacker.com.

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