With the explosion of web 2.0, we’re seeing more and more web sites that are doing the jobs of full blown applications. One of these is ‘The Awesome Highlighter‘.

TUH (sorry, but it’s name is just TOO long) allows you to visit a web site and highlight the text any one of four colours. As if that wasn’t cool enough, you can also include a sticky note, and then resize it to fit whatever you type inside it too ! The web site is then saved on their servers, and you can recall it at your leisure.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve stuck a web site into Evernote and then come back to it days later only to have forgotten why I saved it ! This will undoubtedly stop that, and the ability to add your own notes over the top really is the icing on the cake. Why isn’t this built right into Firefox/Safari/Internet Explorer !?

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It’s a belated app of the week this time around, but I think it’s worth it.

One of the things I’ve always thought is missing from Spotlight is the ability to search Google and the like from it. It’s a brilliant tool now, but it would definitely take it one step further for me if that was included.

Fear not though, after a couple of clicks of the ‘Stumble’ button of my newly installed Firefox 3, I stumbled upon (see what I did there?) a nice little app called Monocle, by Waffle Software.

Monocle adds a Spotlight-like icon to the menu bar, and gives you the ability to search Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo and Windows Live right off the bat. There’s the facility to add others too, should you wish.

The really cool thing though, is it takes advantage of Google’s suggestion facility, and suggests results as you type. For example, type the-iBlog into Monocle and you’re given this site, our Twitter account and the Flickr page too. Very, very cool !

But that’s not the best bit. It’s FREE ! Who doesn’t like free software?

Head on over to the Monocle web site and get downloading.

Do you use Monocle already, or do you use another application/tool that does the job? Let us know below !

I‘m not really sure how I missed this, but better late than never !

It seems something’s afoot over on the O2 website. The PAYG pricing was briefly showing on the iPhone portion of the site, but was later taken down. Whether this means it was wrong, or just not fit for public consumption we’ll have to wait and see. If correct, the basics are:

• 8GB 3G iPhone at £299.99
• 16GB 3G iPhone £359.99
• Unlimited data and WiFi for 6 months…..

…..after these 6 months unlimited data and WiFi can be bought for just £10 p/m. Considering I pay nearly that for Cloud WiFi alone, I don’t think that’s a bad deal at all !

These prices were said to apply until the end of the year, again, assuming the web page was correct.

Did you manage to get a screen grab of the site before the page was taken down? We’d love to see it ! Also, at these prices will you be tempted into the world of iPhone? £300 can’t be bad, certainly £100 cheaper than I was expecting !

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Found over on Flickr. Made me giggle

Flickr Link

One of the easiest ways to get a speed boost from a computer (be it Mac or PC) is to shoehorn in a RAM stick or two. The Macbooks are no exception.

In this video from channelflip.com you’ll be shown just how easy it is to rip open your beloved Macbook and replace/add some RAM. It’s all warranty-safe too, which is always nice !

Towards the end of the video there’s even some nice graphs to show you just how much of an improvement to expect from your upgrade.

Screwdrivers at the ready !

Video after the jump.

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Evernote has been around for a while now in private beta form. Yours truly had an account, and I must admit I don’t think I’ve used it once since the initial novelty wore off ! Yesterday however saw the release of Evernote into the wild, with no invites required. They’ve also started to offer a paid for option giving you more storage, and speedier OCR:

The free option isn’t too bad at all, giving you enough space for 20,000 typed notes, 400 mobile photos or 270 web clips.

There’s also a few updates to the web and mac interfaces, and if you upgrade to the premium service you even get a free T-Shirt. Bargain.

And of course there’s also the funky iPhone version of the service, which is always a plus point !

Do you use Evernote? What for, and how often? I’d love to find a use for it myself, so please let us know in the comments section !

Twitter. It’s a wonderful thing. All those people, tweeting away. But who do you know who to follow? How do you find someone of interest? Twello.com, that’s how.

Two of the things that have been missing from Twitter are the ability to search for words inside tweets, and a way to find people based on their interested. Thanks to Summize.com the first one was solved a while ago, and to excellent affect. The second one however, has proved a problem. Until now !

Step up Twellow.com. Twellow has indexed over 330,000 users so far, taking what they have in their profiles and making a directory based on that information. It’s actually quite clever. If you look at our entry we are covered by four categories: News, Media, Geeks

By default the search results are sorted by number of followers, but you can sort by recent activity should you prefer.

Think of it as a sort of Yellow Pages for Twitter, and you won’t be too far off. It’s an excellent tool, and one I’m sure will get even better over time.

Do you Tweet? Join the 70+ users who currently follow the-iBlog here.

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