It would not be an overstatement to say that English is the language of the world. Although Mandarin tops the list of most commonly spoken languages in the world, it’s a known fact that English links people around the globe. Thus, it won’t hurt to get a deeper understanding of this ever-present language and work towards bettering your grammar and vocabulary. Below is a list of some excellent web tools that can help in building a strong vocabulary and learning a new language:

VocabSushi

VocabSushi is a young resource that will let you build your vocabulary by playing games that take into account real-world usage and which adjusts to your skill and capability as you precede. It is ideal for students studying for standardized tests like the SAT or GRE. Features include endless sentence completion questions, word list management, article reader, downloadable MP3 audio, printable quizzes and more.

WordSpy

WordSpy is a website that tracks new words and phrases as they enter the English Language.

Wordnik

Wordnik offers a blend of results aimed at users getting more than just a stale definition of a word. It has that, of course, but it also has examples of phrases containing the word, drawn from a range of sources, and put in context. An interesting feature is the Twitter integration as the dictionary does a real-time search for the word on the social networking website and brings up tweets using it. It also pulls images related to the search term from Flickr and has a helpful ‘related words’ section, which contains the usual synonyms and antonyms but also, interestingly, words related to the subject that would be used in the same context. Users will be able to add their own words on top of the 1.7 million already available and the site creators hope that this, along with the social media elements, will make the site appealing to word enthusiasts as well as regular users.

Webopedia

Webopedia is the no-nonsense, low-jargon online dictionary and search engine you need for computer and internet technology definitions.

Phrases.net

Phrases.net is a community-driven resource that accumulates common phrases, casual expressions and idioms. These can be browsed through and rated as well as heard and translated to many of the most representative languages in the world today.

WordAhead

WordAhead allows you to choose from hundreds of words to review in video format. Each video uses graphics, text, and audio to describe the word, give its definition, and present the word in various contextual situations to provide a deeper understanding of the word. You can also view the videos in fullscreen which is great for displaying on the SMARTBoard. The site also has a Word List section which lists words alphabetically and provides a short definition. Students can click on the word to watch the video. It also has a Study Room where students can choose a word to watch the video review, go through a series of flash cards, or even create their own word list.

Wordia

Wordia is a first of a kind online video dictionary where you can search word definitions submitted by users as videos.

Thsrs

Thsrs is a simple online synonym finder that takes any word and find its shorter synonyms. Works simple, just type the words you need to find synonyms for into the provided field and click “Look up”. Thsrs will then come up with all available shorter synonym terms.

OneWord

OneWord is a website which allows the user to play a common writer’s prompt exercise, giving the user sixty seconds to write about one word. Its primary function being to assist in releasing one’s “internal editor.”

Vocabulary Is Fun

This website allows you to build your vocabulary with amusing crosswords and match games. It is the perfect place for anyone looking to expand their vocabulary skills or learn new words.

If you have a single Twitter account, there are thousand and one tools that you can use to post your tweets and receive updates. But, if you own more than one Twitter account, you will find that handling them simultaneously is not as simple. Most Twitter clients (as well as the Twitter website) support only one instance of Twitter login. To post to multiple accounts, you will have to log out and log in again with the new username, which can be a taxing and time consuming chore.

No need to sweat though as there a number of web-tools that make managing multiple Twitter accounts really easy. No need to download a desktop client or open multiple browser windows, simply use one of these services and tweet from as many accounts as you want at the same time:

Matt

Multi Account Twitter Tweeter, commonly known as Matt, makes it really easy to post to multiple Twitter accounts without having to log into each one every time. You do not need to sign up for any account. As long as you have a Twitter account, you will be able to login and send tweets. The first twitter account that you sign in to is considered your primary Matt account. Once you are logged in, you will be able to add other accounts in the settings page. When sending tweets, you can select various accounts, or select all to update your tweets.

HootSuite

Formerly known as Brightkit, Hootsuite is a popular web based Twitter client that lets you tweet to multiple Twitter accounts at once. You will be required to sign up for a free account with Hootsuite before you can use their services. Once you have made your account, you will be able to setup a variety of twitter accounts in the dashboard. To send a tweet, you can either update it from their website, or save the owl icon as a bookmarklet in your bookmark bar. The bookmarklet comes with a Send Later function where you can set a future time to send your tweets.

Splitweet

Splitweet is a Twitter multi-accounts and brand monitoring manager. It doesn’t just let you access several accounts at once, but it also monitors your brands and shows you how many times your name was cited.

TwitHive

If you have ever used and fallen in love with TweetDeck and would like to have a similar online version to manage multiple accounts, then TwitHive is the best contender. TwitHive is still in beta and its interface is not as refined as the others. Nevertheless, one awesome feature that TwitHive has is its capability to setup channels and track what others are talking about in the twittersphere. It is similar to TweetDeck, apart from the fact that it supports many Twitter accounts at once so you can track more stuff in just one page.

Tweet3

Tweet3 is just like any other Twitter page, except for the fact that it is improved and comes with added functionality. Other than the typical replies, favorite, message stuff, it comes with an Analytics tool that analyzes your Followers vs. Following statistics. It also supports grouping, Facebook, pretty pictures, trending topics, and all kinds of other cool stuff.

Twitomate

Twitomate is a very basic application designed just to let you line up tweets to publish on a rolling basis. However, if you have got multiple accounts and you just want to keep them updated, Twitomate is worth a look.

TwitIQ

TwitIQ is a improved Twitter interface that offers insight into your Twitter stream and Twitter followers. With TwitIQ you get: Full Twitter View/Update features, Keyword & Topic Insight into Tweets, Filters for Tweet streams, User Profiles with Keyword & Topic Insight, Integrated Twitter and Blog/News Search, Support for Multiple Twitter accounts and Many other UI enhancements.

TweetFunnel

TweetFunnel is designed for companies, organizations, academic institutions or anyone who would like to have multiple individuals contribute to a Twitter stream. You can also monitor for tweets mentioning your username, create a stockpile of tweets for future use, schedule tweets and assign tweets to another user for follow up. In addition you can manage multiple Twitter accounts from one user-friendly interface.

Yes. Yesterday, Microsoft officially  released its long awaited new operating system – Windows 7. In order to celebrate the launch Microsoft has published several beautiful Windows 7 themes (including desktop backgrounds, screen savers, sounds and so forth) that you can download for free from their personalization gallery.

Few of the themes look pretty neat and i had some hard times picking the most beautiful ones. I ended up downloading both  the Australia and Infiniti themes, which installed very smoothly on my Windows 7.  Be aware that the themes won’t work on Windows XP and Vista.

I guess that as Windows 7 will continue to gain momentum, Microsoft will add more themes to the gallery. Worth adding it to your bookmarks.

If you feel kind of creative, you might want to make your own Windows 7  theme and share it with your friends and family. Look for more instructions here.

Credit: Download Squad

Only a few things are more frustrating than having to deal with a format that is incompatible with what you need it to be. To top it off, most conversion software need to be downloaded. To make your life less complicated, check out this list of 10 tools that will let you convert image files online without any hassle:

Batch Image Format Converter Online

Batch Image Format Converter is an application that can be used to convert picture formats from one type to the others in a batch. This is a smart batch picture converter, in the sense that it identifies the input image format and converts it to the image format of your choice. Multiple graphic images can be converted from one format to the other. A few of the conversions you can attain with this application are tiff to jpg, jpg to gif, gif to jpeg, png to gif, jpg to gif etc.

Vector Magic

Vector Magic allows you to easily convert bitmap images like JPEGs, GIFs and PNGs to the clean, scalable vector art of EPS, SVG, and PDF with auto-tracing software.

Converticon

Converticon is a simple icon utility which can import ICO, PNG, GIF and JPEG formats and export to high quality PNG or ICO files.

Image Converter

As the name suggests, Image Converter is an online image converting application which supports over 100 major image formats. The most important of these include BMP, DIB, EPI, EPS, GIF, JPC, JPEG, PNG, TSA, PCD etc.

Online Image Optimizer

Online Image Optimizer by Dynamic Drive lets you easily optimize GIFs, animated GIFs, JPGs, and PNGs, so they load as quickly as possible on your site. Additionally, you can effortlessly convert from one image type to another.

Zamzar

Zamzar is an online file conversion application that supports conversion between a wide variety of different file formats. It lets you convert BMP, GIF, JPG, PCX, PNG, TGA, TIFF and WBMP image formats to GIF, ICO, PDF, PCX, THUMBNAIL etc.

Convert Hub

Convert Hub is a image and graphic converter which can auto-detect source image formats like ICO, PNG, JPG, GIF, BMP, PS, EPS, TIFF, TGA, TXT, HTML and 92 more.

Fix Picture

Fix Picture is an online website utility for digital camera owners. It supports all popular picture file formats (JPEG, TIFF, PNG, GIF, BMP etc) and camera RAW formats (CRW, NEF, RAF, CR2, DNG etc).

Go2Convert

Go2Convert is an online image converter website which supports over 100 major image formats including, BMP, DIB, EPI, EPS, PDF, PGM, PICT, SVG, JPEG, GIF etc. You can convert files up to 5Mb in size.

Bradicon

Bradicon is a web-based service that converts image files into an icon resource that can be used for a shortcut, a program, or as a favicon. Icons can be made from a number of popular image formats. JPGs, Gifs, PNGs, and BMPs can all be converted to icons, and if your image is partially transparent Bradicon will preserve that transparency in the icon file it creates.

Code to hide the pictures link on MySpace

Question:

Dorothy asks: I know that it’s possible to hide the pics link on MySpace. Can you tell me the codes i will need?

Answer:

Thanks for your question, Dorothy.

I guess you are working on a MySpace 2.0 profile (If not, i suggest you visit this tutorial). If so, please go ahead and grab your CSS code from the widget below (by clicking the Copy button) and then paste it into the CSS section of your MySpace profile (here’s how to do it):