There’s always a tragic story behind our New Year resolutions and goal setting endeavors. Reams have been written on how to stick to resolutions. So, let me try to add a few pages here with a slightly different take on email in the future services. Emailing yourself in the future could serve as reminders to alert you about sticking to the path.

You can also use these future emails to create tiny time capsules. For e.g. if you have losing weight as a goal, you can post a photo of your current girth and then open it as a future date to see whether you shed the weight or the goal. Of course, there’s no guarantee that the service will stick around in a year’s time, but suddenly being reminded of your goals sometimes helps to jolt that laziness off your bones.

Lettermelater

Lettermelater is a rich tool that allows you to create HTML emails, add attachments (photos), and even send it from within your default email account. The service allows you to set a future date, down to the last minute, when the letter will get delivered. You can also specify CC and BCC recipients; helpful if you are part of a group that’s mentoring each other towards a goal. But the feature I like is Lettermelater gives you the option to set up multiple recurring emails by selecting a range and interval, or selecting the dates individually.

FutureMe

With FutureMe, you don’t have to log-in before sending out an email into the future. You can choose to go anonymous and put your emails into public view. The collection of public FutureMe emails is an interesting read. The mail interface lacks a rich text editor, but you can include pictures (webcam snaps or from the desktop) with your emails. Maybe, you can just ask yourself if you are still alive after December 2012. Keeping yourself alive inspite of the foreboding predictions of the Mayans could be a nice New Year resolution.

Eternity Message

The About Me page says something about the original intention of the site – We had originally written the application to capture our thoughts, experiences, and life lessons so those could be shared with our children.

The service uses a secure protocol and the servers store the future messages – they are not sent out as emails. Recipients receive a notification to view the future message on the site itself. An early warning notification is also sent to the sender 3 days prior to the actual delivery. Eternity Message comes in two versions – a paid one which allows you to send messages 60 years into the future and a free Lite version that allows you to send the email up to 1 year in the future and to a single person. The message has to stay within 1000 characters – that should be enough for a New Year resolution.

Email Future

Schedule a goals-to-achieve email in the future with this text only service and pat yourself in one year’s time when you can tick off a few from your 2012 New Year resolution’s list. You can also send it to four other addresses if you want to gloat about your achievements one year down the line. Of course, there’s a high chance that you could also have four eggs on your face. Email Future allows you to set a private or public (anonymous) permission.

Mail Freezr

Put your future emails in ice-cold storage and bring them back to live on January 1^st, next year. You can freely freeze your emails for any period between 1 – 100 years, so you are probably safe if you put down your resolutions for the year and check them out next year.

2012 will be soon over. The future will come soon enough. List out your goals using these services and when you get the mail from the past in your inbox, you can either gloat or regret that you let another year pass by without ticking off a few from your goals list. Are you using a geeky way to set your New Year resolutions? Or are they already lying in the waste basket?

Image Credit: Shutterstock

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Last week we asked you which major company was the best of 2011. With companies such as Apple, Google and Amazon on the list, I didn’t expect this poll to create any major surprises. Alas, our readers are not to be taken for granted, and the winning company of 2011 is not in the above three…

Out of 483 readers who voted, almost 29% named Mozilla as the best company of 2011. Google game in close second with 25% of the votes, with third place going to Apple (19%), followed by Amazon (9%), Samsung (6%), Microsoft (4%), Facebook (2%), with Nokia trailing the pack at less than 0.5%. 4% of the voters thought the title should go to none of these companies.

Full results and this week’s poll after the jump.

So the surprising winner of this poll was Mozilla, who really did do some impressive things this year in its battle against Google Chrome. Microsoft, who has been working rather hard this year, did not seem to impress MakeUseOf’s readers that much.

This week’s poll question is: What Is The Future Of Paper?

If you’ve ever watched even one sci-fi movie as a kid, you’ve been waiting ever since for those flying cars and a life without paper. In reality, paper still has a strong hold on our society, although it’s quickly diminishing. Many people choose to forego paper bills entirely, and pay everything online. E-readers have also had quite an impact in the short time they’ve been around, and more and more people are leaving paper books behind. So is paper going to disappear soon, just like in the movies, or is all this just a drop in the ocean of paper, which will stay with us forever?

If you think paper will disappear in time, vote for the answer which states the closest number of years. Don’t forget to share in the comments exactly why you think paper will stay or disappear, and what would be the substitutes.

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In my article – “The importance of sound website design & search spiders to Internet Marketers,” I mentioned the importance of a designer being cognizant of the fact that web browser standards are not yet fully harmonized – a web page that looks great in Internet Explorer (6) might look hideous in a Mozilla based browser like Fire Fox or Netscape.

I also noted that with the explosion of devices with which to serve Internet applications, compliance with W3C standards has become critical.

Internet Explorer 7 will be more standards compliant and your HTML code will be subject to much more rigorous interpretation than is the case with IE 6, consequently some web pages that look fine in IE 6 might not look the same IE 7.

In IE 7 Microsoft has made a solemn effort to fix the browsers acquiescence to W3C standards and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) compatibility. CSS interpretation as recommended by W3C has been improved tremendously giving designers and developers more leverage in functionality for cross-browser design.

Therefore, if you have been designing your pages and have not bothered to check how they render in W3C Standards Compliant browsers like FireFox, you may be in for a rude shock when IE 7 finally rolls out.

If you have not been incorporating W3C Web standards in your design strategy you may need to re-design for IE 7.

How should you go about it?

Design for “strict” browsers like Fire Fox first. Not only is Fire Fox a more standards-compliant browser but it is also the primary competitor to Internet Explorer. A contender backed by Google’s marketing machine — and therefore, is not likely do “a Netscape” on designers.

Prior and up to IE 4.x, Netscape was the leading browser in the market with almost 80% of the market, but in a bid to force the issue culminating with proprietary goofs by AOL to whom Netscape sold out, they screwed up big time with versions 4 up to 6. A bitter war of attrition with Microsoft in the late nineties did not help either.

Microsoft grabbed the opportunity and gobbled the Browser market overnight.

With version 7+ Netscape has been revived. How well it will compete with IE and FireFox remains to be seen.

I will be the first to admit that most the web pages I have built in the last several years are not always standards compliant…and so are ninety five percent of other web pages — as I stated in my previous article, “if strict W3C standards were to be enforced in browsers, most websites would go out of business.”

To design for Fire Fox a designer needs to combine Valid CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) for “look and feel” and W3C compliant HTML for web page structure.

The combination of these two design strategies is powerful in that it elicits tremendous flexibility, ease of maintenance and opens up extensive possibilities in website design. The benefits are rewarding, and every webmaster should attempt to utilize this two pronged scheme in their design routine.

Making changes to and/or styling a site designed with CSS is much easier and more elegant than messing around with a traditional table-based design.

CSS may look intimidating to a first-timer but once you familiarize with the basics you can progressively harness the power of CSS to your full benefit. In addition, most web page design tools such as Dream weaver of FrontPage have built in modules with which you can automatically generate CSS code, which you can then view in a plain text editor for study purposes.

To aid you in your CSS endeavor you need the following developer tools: Web Developer Extension for Fire Fox and the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar. Great time-saving tools for creating, understanding, and troubleshooting Web pages.

As a matter of fact, by installing some of the 1,500+ available Fire Fox extensions you can eliminate the need for quite a chunk of standalone desktop applications.

After designing your Web page remember to us a Markup Validation Service to check whether your Web page conforms to W3C recommendations. If there are errors, the validator will notify you of them and suggest corrections.

In the example captioned above a standards compliant browsers will interpret your web page as an HTML 4.01 document, and because it is marked as “Transitional,” it will display it in “quirks mode,” meaning that the browser will forgo the strict standards mode, and display your page like it would be displayed in older “non-strict” browsers, while still supporting any tags developed after IE 4, Netscape 4 and others.

On the contrary, the following DOCTYPE declaration tells the standards compliant browsers that your web page should be displayed in strict compliance with the DOCTYPE declaration.

A complete list of recommended DTDs can be found at the W3C Website.

If you leave the DOCTYPE out, the browsers automatically switch to “quirks mode,” therefore, it is important to include the DOCTYPE declaration on every web page that you build in order for it to be rendered correctly.

If your Web pages render well in Fire Fox at present you probably will not encounter any major problems in IE 7 other than minor adjustments here and there. However, I think a realistic designer should at least make a meaningful attempt to follow W3C guidelines for it is the correct way forward.

Do it now so that you will ready for the future…re-designs and total overhauls are a time consuming and painful process. A process, which becomes much easier if your initial design incorporated structurally clean and modular (X)HTML with CSS compliance.

At present, a vast majority of webmasters are designing for IE (Internet Explorer) 6, which is not as W3C standards compliant as is FireFox, Netscape, Safari and Opera.

In my article – “The importance of sound website design & search spiders to Internet Marketers,” I mentioned the importance of a designer being cognizant of the fact that web browser standards are not yet fully harmonized – a web page that looks great in Internet Explorer (6) might look hideous in a Mozilla based browser like FireFox or Netscape.

I also noted that with the explosion of devices with which to serve Internet applications, compliance with W3C standards has become critical.

When the final release for IE 7 for Windows XP, Server 2003 & Vista is launched, hopefully before the end of 2006, the tables will be turned, so to speak.

Internet Explorer 7 will be more standards compliant and your HTML code will be subject to much more rigorous interpretation than is the case with IE 6, consequently some web pages that look fine in IE 6 might not look the same IE 7.

In IE 7 Microsoft has made a solemn effort to fix the browsers acquiescence to W3C standards and CSS compatibility. CSS interpretation as recommended by W3C has been improved tremendously giving designers and developers more leverage in functionality for cross-browser design.

Microsoft asserts that they are taking W3C compatibility issues seriously.

Concisely what this means is that IE 7 will tend to interpret your web page code more scrupulously than before.

Therefore, if you have been designing your pages and have not bothered to check how they render in W3C Standards Compliant browsers like FireFox, you may be in for a rude shock when IE 7 finally rolls out.

If you have not been incorporating W3C Web standards in your design strategy you may need to re-design for IE 7.

How should you go about it?

Design for “strict” browsers like FireFox first. Not only is FireFox a more standards-compliant browser but it is also the primary competitor to Internet Explorer. A contender backed by Google’s marketing machine—and therefore, is not likely do “a Netscape” on designers.

Prior and up to IE 4.x, Netscape was the leading browser in the market with almost 80% of the market, but in a bid to force the issue culminating with proprietary goofs by AOL to whom Netscape sold out, they screwed up big time with versions 4 up to 6. A bitter war of attrition with Microsoft in the late nineties did not help either.

Microsoft grabbed the opportunity and gobbled the Browser market overnight.

With version 7+ Netscape has been revived. How well it will compete with IE and FireFox remains to be seen.

I will be the first to admit that most the web pages I have built in the last several years are not always standards compliant…and so are ninety five percent of other web pages—as I stated in my previous article, “if strict W3C standards were to be enforced in browsers, most websites would go out of business.”

To design for FireFox a designer needs to combine Valid CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) for “look and feel” and W3C compliant HTML for web page structure.

The combination of these two design strategies is powerful in that it elicits tremendous flexibility, ease of maintenance and opens up extensive possibilities in website design. The benefits are rewarding, and every webmaster should attempt to utilize this two pronged scheme in their design routine.

Making changes to and/or styling a site designed with CSS is much easier and more elegant than messing around with a traditional table-based design.

CSS may look intimidating to a first-timer but once you familiarize with the basics you can progressively harness the power of CSS to your full benefit. In addition, most web page design tools such as Dreamweaver of FrontPage have built in modules with which you can automatically generate CSS code, which you can then view in a plain text editor for study purposes.

To aid you in your CSS endeavor you need the following developer tools: Web Developer Extension for FireFox and the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar. Great time-saving tools for creating, understanding, and troubleshooting Web pages.

As a matter of fact, by installing some of the 1,500+ available FireFox extensions you can eliminate the need for quite a chunk of standalone desktop applications.

After designing your Web page remember to us a MarkUp Validation Service to check whether your Web page conforms to W3C recommendations. If there are errors, the validator will notify you of them and suggest corrections.

Also, remember that when designing using W3C standards guidelines a lot of code(tags) that were very valid in the “Pre-Standards” era have completely depreciated and will be ignored completely by browsers. If you ignore these errors during validation, your web pages might not render correctly.

In many instances, you may never be able to achieve 100% HTML or XHTML validation. In such cases you may want put the following DOCTYPE declaration in your document—at the top of your web page before the tag:

Note: remove space after ” “

A “Document Type Definition” or DTD supplies Web browsers with information about which (X)HTML specification your web page is built upon, which instructs the Browser how to render the page for viewing.

In the example captioned above a standards compliant browsers will interpret your web page as an HTML 4.01 document, and because it is marked as “Transitional,” it will display it in “quirks mode,” meaning that the browser will forgo the strict standards mode, and display your page like it would be displayed in older “non-strict” browsers, while still supporting any tags developed after IE 4, Netscape 4 and others.

On the contrary, the following DOCTYPE declaration tells the standards compliant browsers that your web page should be displayed in strict compliance with the DOCTYPE declaration.

A complete list of recommended DTDs can be found at the W3C Website.

If you leave the DOCTYPE out, the browsers automatically switch to “quirks mode,” therefore, it is important to include the DOCTYPE declaration on every web page that you build in order for it to be rendered correctly.

If your Web pages render well in FireFox at present you probably will not encounter any major problems in IE 7 other than minor adjustments here and there. However, I think a realistic designer should at least make a meaningful attempt to follow W3C guidelines for it is the correct way forward.

Do it now so that you will ready for the future…re-designs and total overhauls are a time consuming and painful process. A process, which becomes much easier if your initial design incorporated structurally clean and modular (X)HTML with CSS compliance.

What will tomorrow bring for MP3 players and other portable media players? No doubt digital players have enjoyed tremendous success to date. They’ve quickly replaced portable CD players and regular radios as the perfect traveling companions. But will MP3 players continue to sell or will they be replaced just as quickly by new technology? Consider 5 possible trends of the future.

1. The MP3 Player Market Will Grow
A technology research firm by the name of DC recently released a market prediction that the MP3 player market will grow steadily until 2009, perhaps by improving sales some 4 times over%. Flash player technology is also expected to advance and grow in total gigabyte storing capacity.

2. Units Will Grow More User Friendly And Energy Efficient
Older models, not to mention small and simplistic devices, will be discontinued, though many have been axed already. The latest design to beat is a full-featured MP3 player with video capabilities that’s as small as a regular MP3 player (IPOD anyone?). (Ideal size, smaller than a common PC mouse) Large bulky systems are out and so are internal iPod batteries that you can’t replace without professional help.

3. Wireless Technology
Digital players now face a serious threat from cell phones provider, which are now incorporating MP3 playback into their products. Therefore, in order to keep up with the competition, expect many MP3 players to soon utilize wireless technology and feature a Wi-Fi connection for quick and easy Internet downloads.

4. Portable Media Players
MP3 Players are also being scrutinized for value when compared to similarly priced products such as Pocket PCs, Ultra Mobile PCs and even portable game consoles. The Nintendo DS and Sony PSP use wireless technology to provide users with more multimedia entertainment beyond games, including DVD and MP3 playback. Pocket PCs cannot only play MP3 files; they can also open word processors and spreadsheets, check email and browse the web. In order not to be replaced by more efficient and similarly priced gadgets, MP3 players will have to truly become media players, that is, incorporate image viewing, audio and video recording, and more into their systems.

5. Prices Will Drop
Going along with that prediction, a realistic belief is that in the coming years multimedia players and especially MP3 players will drastically fall in price. Pocket PCs and Ultra Mobile PCs are expected to be reduced as technology improves and the market changes. People certainly won’t mind buying a media playing device with limited features, but they won’t want to pay the same price for it that they would a complete portable PC for $400.00 to $500.00.
MP3 player manufacturers like Creative Zen, iRiver, Dell Hewlett Packard and Apple iPod are certainly banking on the present, namely that MP3 players are relatively novel. Whether or not they bank on the future, however, remains to be seen.

Recording, playing and listening to music has never been more fun that it is today. Through the Internet, you can easily download songs and listen to your favorite music anytime of the day and wherever you are. Portable players that have access to Internet or those that can store large number of digital music files are now very affordable, fun to use and designed just right to fit the modern generation’s lifestyle.

What is MP3?

MP3, an acronym for MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, is one of the most popular digital audio encoding and compression formats being used nowadays and is apparently making an enormous impact on how people store, listen and share music of different genres. It is even now regarded as a standard technology used in greatly reducing the amount of data used to represent audio without altering the uncompressed audio’s sound quality when played.

Compressing Audio into MP3 Digital Music

The compression ratio of MP3 is 12:1, which means that a typical audio file that is 1200 KB big can be converted into a 100 KB MP3 digital music file without corrupting the sound quality of the original. In fact, some MP3 digital music are clearer and sound better since the compression process eliminates portions of the original music that are not too significant to human hearing. There are three ways through which the unwanted portions of the music are determined; among them is psychoacoustics, which is a study of how people subjectively perceive sounds.

MP3 digital music can be compressed with various bit rates (the number of bits of data representing a second of audio), which makes it possible for you to create different sizes and sound quality of an MP3 digital music converted from the same original digital audio file.

Usually, digital audio is compressed with bit rates ranging from 128 to 320. MP3 digital music encoded with low bitrate are of lower sound quality whereas those encoded with higher bitrate are clearer and more pleasing to the ears. However, there are also other factors affecting the quality of the compressed MP3 digital music; these are the quality of the encoder and complexity of the signal encoded. Moreover, the quality of the computer, the speaker or the earphones through which one listens to the music also affects his judgment with regard to the sound quality.

Benefits of MP3 Digital Music

MP3 digital music is very versatile. It can be played using your personal computer or a laptop; it can be played through a portable, small and light MP3 player; it can be decompressed and recorded on a compact disk; and can be easily downloaded via the Internet. Through several software, which are also available for free, you can easily create MP3 digital music from other digital audio formats.

The best things about MP3 digital music is that it is inexpensive and can even be obtained for free. It makes acquiring and listening to high quality music easier, more pleasurable, and particularly, cheaper. Its small size also allows you to store hundreds of MP3 digital music on your computer or MP3 player with ease, helping you save money you might have spent for CDs.

If you haven’t already heard, Microsoft plans to discontinue support of the Microsoft Windows XP operating system.  What does this mean for you?  It doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have this operating system, in which case you have nothing to worry about.  If you do still have the Windows XP operating system, then this could mean a number of different things.

The fact of the matter is that this operating system will most likely remain safe well after the time that Microsoft decides that it is no longer going to support it.  This is due to a number of different reasons including the fact that it will possess more the 12 years worth of Windows updates as well as patches for security by that time.  This will help to make it one of the most secure and stable operating systems available, even in the coming years.

One other important point to remember is that Malware does change at a quicker rate that the rate at which Windows operating systems change, so the chances of you having to worry about threats targeted at Windows XP operating systems in the year 2014 is slim to none.  Chances are malicious software will be written to target new operating systems that contain security leaks and other vulnerability issues.

If you are concerned about having an operating system that will  not be supported, then you may want to consider purchasing a newer Windows operating system.  Before doing so, however, you’ll want to look into whether or not the common programs or applications that you are using on a daily basis with your current XP system will work on a newer Windows operating system version like Vista or Windows 7.  Compatibility can be one of the biggest concerns when going from one operating system to the next, and should be addressed before making a purchase of a newer system.

In most cases if you have a program that is not compatible with a new version of Windows, you may have then ability to run in a compatibility mode on the newer machine in order to execute programs in the same older environment that they were originally intended to be run.  This is the case with the new Windows 7 operating system which gives you the ability to run in XP mode, which allows you to run the older operating system in a setup know as a virtual machine.

If you enjoy the XP operating system, but don’t want to be left behind when the rest of the world moves forward into the newer era of Windows operating systems, then you may want to look into purchasing a newer operating system.  Chances are you can still run your XP specific programs one way or another, and you’ll be able to get support for your system when 2014 finally does role around.

The new software obviously comes up with new technology and easy and better performance. But sometimes they are so complicated that its hard for the common people to cope with the new version. But a little training can do the trick for anyone. The new software often require latest hardware and software specifications which can make you update the computer’s configuration.

Just thought I’d upload it for nostalgic reasons. —-PC Version Info—- If you’d like to try out the PC version here’s a link to some demos (Win95 and MAC): vintageware.orcon.net.nz Alternate download links: Win95: www.download.com Mac: www.macupdate.com If you’d like to play the Win95 version on a modern PC here’s a quick link with info about running Windows 95 programs on Windows XP: www.microsoft.com I’ll find more info later but hopefully that should get at least one of you started. —- NEW INFO: Accelerated graphics —- I found some free files that make it so you can use enhanced 3D graphics for older games that utilize 3Dfx Voodoo stuff. If you DON’T have a Voodoo card, then you should check these out! For Windows & Linux: sourceforge.net For Mac: sourceforge.net

With the spread of the internet, the prolific high-definition content in Europe and the United States has almost entered the whole internet. Due to the technology maturity and viewing habits of internet users, the high-definition HDD media player has naturally become the users’ first choice. More surprisingly, with more vendors entered this industry and products became ever more abundant, the price for High Definition HDD Player has shrunk greatly from the past $200 USD to recent $70.00 USD. This reminds us of the era of DVD spread.

Under such an economic background, Espow has been selling high-definition HDD media player of many different types and gained the users’ high recognition. The products Espow provided are the best HDD media players which are of best high-definition effect, most comprehensive format support and first-class audio support.

Is the high-definition HDD media player the final choice in this industry? From the product itself, it indeed has many advantages:

1. Good effect

It has 1080P high-definition decoding output and is compatible with different video formats. The sound effect can also reach DTS 5.1 professional level.

2. Prolific content

The abundant TV & Movies programs on internet, especially hot movies in Europe and United States, provide HDD media players with a better stage.

3. Increasing users

A large number of internet users watch television programs or movies with their laptops or computers. The vast majority of them intends to downloaded TV programs or movies from internet and directly watches on TV.

4. Low cost

HDD media player is cheaper now. 2.5″ HDD media player provided by Espow only sells at the price of $67.00 USD.

However, this product also has its own disadvantages. Those who are not familiar with computer and HDD will be hard to know this problem in a short period. As for sales, the players more frequently appear in computers digital marketplace, only a few of them were introduced into the main household appliance channel. Due to its absence in specific sales area, even those brand-named HDD media players are easy to be shadowed by the large area of TV or demonstration products.

From the perspective of the industry development, high-definition HDD media player will surely become an inevitable trend to replace DVD. With the high-speed development of internet, the high-definition media player industry will sustain and grow rapidly. As long as the manufacturers make good use of network resources, hard disk HD player will have the most promising market prospect. As more high-definition HDD players are introduced as well as the breakthrough of bandwidth limitations, more high-definition film-loving users have turned their eyes to high-definition HDD media player.