buildings

The 404 705: Where Caroline McCarthy is starting The 406 Podcast (podcast)

Congratulations to Caroline McCarthy for completing last weekend's New York Marathon in four hours and six minutes! It's not only an impressive athletic feat for a first-time marathon runner, but a philanthropic one as well.

Caroline raced to benefit Camp Interactive, a program that introduces inner-city youth to technology through outdoor activities. Thanks to contributions from friends, family, and even some 404 listeners, Caroline was able to raise $5,431 for the cause.

Uncle Henry, aka Tapchus in the chat room, also joins us on today's episode with insights on how marathons have changed in the past 20 years. Henry's completed several of them himself, and even tells us about a bizarre race within the staircase at the Empire State building.

Henry ran back when Apple iPods, GPS tracking, automatic FourSquare check-ins, and wristwatch pedometers weren't around, so it's interesting to hear from Caroline and Henry on how running has changed with those inventions.

This year there was no shortage of runners wearing strange outfits for the marathon, and Caroline tells us that superheroes and animal costumes dominated the race this year.

Apparently there was even a guy who ran all five boroughs while juggling three balls--an achievement appropriately called "joggling."

There are also video voice mails today from two listeners: Lila recommends a pair of durable Sennheiser headphones, and Nate recalls a voice mail from two years ago that was featured on last weekend's 404 Throwback episode. Thanks for staying with us, Nate!

If you want to get in touch with the show, upload your video to YouTube and send a link to the404(at)cnet(dot)com. If you're camera shy, you can also leave a message on our voice mail box by calling 1-866-404-CNET as well.

Episode 705 Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Editing on the go

SunlitGreen PhotoEdit Portable is a lightweight program that allows simple corrections and changes to digital images. The program won't replace more full-featured software like Photoshop, but it's a great choice for putting the finishing touches on your images.

The program's interface is plain and intuitive, with menus and a toolbar across the top and a large area for viewing the image you're working on. Too many image editing programs we've seen have had fancy-looking interfaces at the expense of usability, and we're happy to say that SunlitGreen PhotoEdit doesn't fall into this trap; … Read more

Cool collages

Collages are a fun way to combine multiple images into one, and they have many potential uses, from greeting cards and scrapbooks to social networking profiles. CollageIt enables you to create good-looking collages without a lot of hassle.

The program's interface can be a little confusing at first glance--there are multiple menus and sliders--but if you focus on the Getting Started pane in the middle, you'll be fine. To create a collage, you simply select the images you want to use, adjust the settings, generate a preview, and save the collage when it's done. The program automatically … Read more

Remarkable resizer

We have to admit that we are somewhat impatient by nature, and we absolutely hate photo editing of any sort. It just seems so tedious to us, even when it comes to basic tasks like resizing images. For that reason, we love Prish Image Resizer. Now, instead of opening a separate program, loading our image, and tinkering with the dimensions, we can resize images with a couple of mouse clicks.

The program doesn't have an interface per se; instead, it appears in the context menu whenever you right-click on an image in Windows Explorer. It adds two options to … Read more

Bare-bones notes

Since so many of us spend so much time on our computers now, it makes sense to have a quick and easy way to take notes there, whether we're recording a great idea or just a reminder to buy milk. Efficient Notes Free gives peoplea way to write themselves notes, but it's not as useful as some similar programs we've seen.

The program's interface reminds us very much of Microsoft Outlook. The screen is split horizontally into two panes, with the top pane displaying each note's title and the bottom pane displaying the selected note'… Read more

Apple seeds new Mac OS X 10.6.5 version to developers

Apple has released a new version of its operating system, Mac OS X 10.6.5 (Build 10H548), to developers for testing. This version focuses on AirPrint compatibility, 3D graphics, QuickTime, and USB devices.

AirPrint allows iOS devices like iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches to interface with printers connected to Macs and shared on a Wi-Fi network. Developers are asked to focus on connectivity and compatibility of the AirPrint features as well as improvements to Time Machine software.

AppleInsider reports that other improvements expected to be included in Mac OS X 10.6.5 are:

Several printing issues including delays … Read more

Empire State Building refaced for savings

One of the tallest buildings in the world, New York's iconic Empire State Building, hopes to once again lead the world by example.

It was announced today that the window phase of the iconic skyscraper's sweeping energy retrofit has been completed.

Does this mean the beloved Art Deco landmark will now be sporting all new windows or a different look? No, not even close.

Instead, 96 percent of the Empire State Building's 6,514 windows, which includes the original frames, and 26,000 panes of glass were reused.

A workshop set up by Serious Materials, a tech … Read more

MS Word Building Blocks outshine AutoText

Microsoft Word's AutoText feature got a serious face-lift with the debut of Building Blocks in Word 2007 and 2010. (The Microsoft Office Support site offers a basic primer on creating and using Word 2003's AutoText feature.)

In a nutshell, you create AutoText entries by selecting the material you want to reuse and clicking Insert > AutoText > New (or simply press Alt-F3). You then enter a name for the entry that's between 4 and 32 characters long and press Enter. This adds the entry to the Normal.dot template and makes it available to all documents. To … Read more

Perfect PIM

We review a lot of free software, and most of it, though decent, isn't really anything to write home about. But every now and then we come across a program like EfficientPIM Free. Even though the word "free" is in the program's name, we actually had to go back and make sure that the program really didn't cost anything. We found it hard to believe that such a feature-packed program could really be had gratis.

The program's interface is attractive and intuitive, with a variety of color schemes to choose from. EfficientPIM's layout … Read more

Basic PDF creator

It used to be that creating PDFs required a big, expensive program like Adobe Acrobat. Nowadays, PDF creators are a dime a dozen, and they range from the bare bones to the feature-packed. 7-PDF Maker is a simple program that makes quick work of PDF creation, but we can't say that anything about it really sets it apart from the crowd.

The program's interface is quite plain, just a big gray box with tabs for settings and security. Most file conversion programs follow a certain series of steps; typically you choose the file you want to convert, adjust … Read more