Make your own web mashup

A classic example is HousingMaps, which blends Craigslist's housing-for-rent listings and Google Maps to display the physical locations of housing that's available for rent.

Services from Amazon to Yahoo have made their features available for incorporation into new mashups via APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) at their Web sites. You can find and use everything from directory listings to video searches to GPS data to shopping carts. Unfortunately, combining this raw data into something new is extremely difficult for nonprogrammers. Luckily, software tools designed to simplify the process are just now beginning to crop up.

Start with Yahoo's Pipes
One tool that's available now (several others are still in beta) to help nonprogrammers build mashups is Yahoo's Pipes. Even in Pipes, you're a lot better off if you have the mindset of a programmer, since building mashups from scratch there is somewhat challenging. But it still offers a fairly quick way to get your feet wet with mashups.

That's because at Pipes you'll find a ton of mashups that other people have already built and posted. Pipes allows you to open one of these mashups, clone it, and save it with no trouble at all. Beginning with an existing design, you can start tweaking it to make it your own.

We grabbed and cloned a popular and simple mashup called YouTunes, which finds YouTube videos for the top ten songs at iTunes. It accomplishes this by snagging a "Top Ten Songs" RSS feed from the iTunes store and then running a search at YouTube for all video titles that match the song titles listed there.

But you may not want to watch videos of the top ten songs; you may be more interested in, say, the videos for the top ten songs on the iTunes Alternative Charts. To customize this mashup accordingly, simply replace the existing iTunes RSS feed in the 'Fetch Feed' box (in Pipes' Edit view) with the "Alternative Top 10" RSS feed from the iTunes Store. You can get that feed (and many others) from the iTunes Store RSS Feed Generator. You then save your newly customized "pipe" and click the Run Pipe link at the top of the page. You'll see a nice, clean list of YouTube videos corresponding to the iTunes Alternative Top 10.

When you start to feel more comfortable with the concept, Pipes can walk you through the process of building a mashup from scratch. For more on using Pipes, see "Eight Great, Simple Ways to Hack the Web."

Mashup editors coming soon
Other tools to help nonprogrammers make cool mashups are in the works. Microsoft says that its alpha-stage PopFly WYSIWYG mashup editor will work with any API written in JavaScript. Meanwhile, the Google Mashup Editor is being beta-tested by a small number of developers, and should be ready for action in the next few months.

-- Jon L. Jacobi and Mark Sullivan

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Run a 'guest' OS on your PC

It's hard to find the perfect operating system for your PC. Windows isn't the safest OS, but it probably runs all of your programs and games. Linux is much less vulnerable to the Internet's threats, but it doesn't natively support Windows applications.

Fortunately, modern PCs are powerful enough to run more than one operating system at the same time. Virtualization software such as VMWare's VMWare Server or Microsoft's Virtual PC 2007, both of which are free, let you run guest operating systems in memory and disk spaces isolated from the host operating system. Not only does this arrangement allow you to benefit from the strengths of both operating systems, but you can also test risky features or programs on the guest OS while keeping your host system safe from harm.

Installing VMWare
I opted to install VMWare Server under Windows Vista and then create a virtual machine running Ubuntu Linux 7.04. If you do the same, once Ubuntu is installed and running in a virtual machine, you'll be able to use some of the thousands of available (and free) applications that run under Linux, as well as take advantage of the Ubuntu VM to browse the Web and use other Internet resources more safely. After finishing your test drive, you might even consider replacing Windows with Ubuntu as your system's main OS.

Officially, VMWare Server is supported only under Server versions of Windows. But it runs under any Windows OS that has Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) installed, including Windows Vista--in fact, I performed the installation described below in Windows Vista Ultimate. Unlike Virtual PC 2007, VMWare also comes in a Linux version, which permits you to run dozens of Windows, Linux, and other OS versions from within a Linux host system.

Before downloading VMWare Server, click on the registration link on the same page and fill out the obligatory form to receive one or more serial numbers. Then download and install the software, and enter the serial numbers when prompted. Choose Start, All Programs, VMWare, VMWare Server, VMWare Server Console to launch the server, and click OK to create and run virtual machines on the local computer (VMWare can also run virtual machines stored on other computers on a network). Click New Virtual Machine and step through the wizard. If you're not sure how to answer when the wizard asks you how your virtual machine should connect to the network, stick with the default bridged networking option.

Load an OS
Next, insert the installation disc of the operating system you intend to load, select the virtual machine you just created in the VMWare console's Inventory list, and click Start this virtual machine. If your system has multiple DVD or CD drives, you may have to experiment by inserting the disc into different drives until you find the one that VMWare chose to use with your virtual machine. If the VM finds no boot media in its default drive, it halts with an error--just click the Restart Guest button on the console's toolbar after switching the disc to a different drive. Once the VM finds the disc and boots from it, you'll be able to install the guest OS normally.

Tweak Vista for peak computing performance

Does Windows Vista annoy you with its slow performance? Sorry, that was a stupid question. Let's jump right in with a few simple and practical ways to improve Vista's overall speed.

Slim down the user interface
Regardless of the task at hand, Vista puts up a beautiful screen; but you wouldn't run a marathon while wearing a tuxedo. So get Vista out of its white tie and tails and into some jogging shorts.

Start by junking the Sidebar. Sure, its analog clock and RSS feed are nice, but perhaps they're not worth the CPU cycles they use. Right-click the Sidebar and select Properties. Uncheck Start Sidebar when Windows starts, and then click OK. The Sidebar will be gone with your next boot.

Next, turn off some or all of Vista's cool-looking but cycle-eating visual effects. Click Start, type sysdm.cpl, press <Enter>, and tell the User Account Control dialog box to Continue. In the System Properties dialog box, select the Advanced tab, and then click the Settings button in the Performance box. In the resulting dialog box's Visual Effects tab, uncheck whichever options you can live without, such as Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing (available with the Aero environment). Or if you prefer, you can leave the decision up to Windows; to establish this arrangement, simply select Adjust for best performance.

Access your files and folders fast
Shaving a few seconds off the time necessary to load a file won't help much if you spend 3 minutes looking for it. Here are some ways to quickly reach the programs, files, and folders you need.

Look at the top-left corner of Windows Explorer or a File Open dialog box. The box located there, called Favorite Links, contains--you guessed it--Microsoft's favorite links. If you want to add a link to one of your favorite folders there, just drag the folder from the Folders box underneath into Favorite Links.

You can arrange the links however you like by dragging them up and down. You also have the option of removing one or more of them from the box by right-clicking the item and selecting Remove Link.

You can save some time in your file and folder search if you put everything in one cascading menu. By adding your desktop to the taskbar, you can make every folder on your computer and network easily accessible--along with all the shortcuts on your desktop that usually hide behind open program windows. Simply right-click a blank spot on the taskbar and then select Toolbars, Desktop.

On top of that, there's no need to go through any menus to load a program if you know that program's name. Just click Start or press your keyboard's <Windows> key, and start typing the application name. You don't even have to start at the beginning of the name; typing Elements, for example, will bring up Adobe Photoshop Elements. When the program name appears, press <Enter>.

Below the program name you will see a list of documents and (if you use Vista's Windows Mail program) e-mail messages containing that word. Those additional search results can be handy, but they slow down the search.

You can boost the speed of the Start Searches function by restricting where it looks for the string of characters you type. Right-click the Start button and select Properties. On the Start Menu tab, click Customize, then scroll down until you find the various Search options. The more options you leave checked there, the slower but more thorough your Start Searches will be.

Improve your hardware on the cheap
Hardware tweaks help, too. Increasing the amount of RAM in your system will speed up your PC for a very reasonable price. Vista needs at least 1GB of RAM to perform adequately, but 2GB gives it real speed. See our video "How to Upgrade Your RAM" for details and instructions specific to desktop systems.

If you have a notebook, where such upgrades aren't as standardized, check your vendor's Web site for configuration info.

Organize your photos

You can eliminate the hassle of hunting for photos on your PC by doing some up-front work with tags, which let you assign multiple search keywords to photos. For instance, you could tag a photo from your Alaska vacation showing both of your kids with each child's name and "Alaska," and it will then turn up in a search for any one of those tags.

I'll explain how to organize your photos in Windows XP (which is actually pretty lame at the task) and in Vista.

To tag a single photo in XP, right-click it in Windows Explorer, select Properties, Summary, and type the tag name into the Keywords field. When entering more than one tag, separate them with semicolons. You can tag multiple photos at once, but doing so deletes any tags you've previously assigned to them.

In Vista, ignore Windows Explorer and click Start, All Programs, Windows Photo Gallery. This program lists all available tags in the left pane. To make a tag, click Create a New Tag, and then just drag the photos to the appropriate tags.

How do you find photos by their tags? In Windows XP, press <F3> to bring up the search panel (if necessary, click the Back button until the panel says 'What do you want to search for?' at the top). Check Pictures and Photos, click Use advanced search options, enter the tag names in the 'A word or phrase' field, and click Search. In Vista's Photo Gallery, simply select one or more tags to see only the qualifying photos.

Set up video chats

Thanks to the Internet, increasing broadband speeds, and some cool new Web-based applications, setting up video chat with your family and friends near and far has never been easier. Not only that, it's practically free.

Getting started: You'll need a reasonably fast Internet connection, some software to facilitate the call, and a decent Webcam and microphone for each party involved. Some camcorders, digital cameras, and camera phones can also function as Webcams; to see whether a device you already own will do that, just consult the user manual.

Webcams: I tested three dedicated Webcams: Logitech's $29 QuickCam Chat and $99 QuickCam Pro for Notebooks, plus Creative's $129 Live Cam AF. All of them worked well, but the two high-end models come with a built-in USB microphone, a setup I strongly recommend for your not-so-tech-savvy chat buddies. Cheaper models usually have a separate analog microphone that plugs into the often-hard-to-locate PC audio input jack.

The software: After plugging in your Webcam, download the chat software and install it. I used Skype, but AIM, Microsoft's Office Live Meeting, and Yahoo Messenger support video chat as well. Configuring Skype was as simple as selecting the video and audio sources, creating an account for each party, and clicking the green Call button.

-- Jon L. Jacobi