Love that song but don’t know what it is? Tunatic can tag it for you!

Ever thought ‘what is this song?’ Let Tunatic hear it and you will get the artist’s name and the song’s title within seconds. Tunatic is the very first song search engine based on sound for your computer. All you need is a microphone and Internet access.

	Download Tunatic v1.0.1b for Mac OS X v10.2 or better
	Download Tunatic v1.0.1b for Windows 2000/XP

1 – let Tunatic hear the music. All you need is a microphone and Internet access.	2 – Tunatic identifies the song. Follow the white arrow to get links for the song.

How does this work? When you click Tunatic’s ‘search’ button, Tunatic transmits the song’s features to the Tunatic server. The server searches its database and returns the matching song. More Q&A

Are you Sure your Email isn’t being Hacked?

In the interests of full disclosure, I didn’t come up with this idea. I read about it in a computer magazine a year or two back but of course when I wanted to refer to it for this article, I couldn’t find it! But someone on Digg eventually managed to find it so here is the original article if you want to see it.

As email providers give away more and more storage space, more and more personal information is being stored in those accounts. People are increasingly using their email accounts for more than just email – it has become their online document storage area with backup documents such as passwords, bank account numbers, account usernames, scans of correspondence and much more. Even if you don’t use your email for this purpose, you may still be inadvertantly revealing personal information in general conversation emails to family and close friends. A 6GB Gmail account or an unlimited space Yahoo account is potentially an information bonanza source for identity thieves who manage to figure out your email password and then go snooping.

But if someone HAS cracked your email password, it may not be apparent to you. A snooper can easily read an email then mark it as unread again. So the best thing to do would be to set up an “electronic tripwire” so if someone breaks into your account, you’ll know about it.

Here’s how to do it :

1. Sign up for a website hit counter at www.onestatfree.com. You can leave a fake name and whatever URL you want (I used Google.com for mine).

2. You will then receive a welcome email from OneStat with a text attachment called OneStatScript.txt. Download this attachment to your computer and then delete the email (you don’t want any email snoopers finding it later). But before deleting the email, write down your OneStat account number as you will need it later.

3. Change the name of the text document to something that will make the email snooper salivate such as passwordlist. Also change the file format from a text document to a website page. So make it something like passwordlist.htm .

4. Email this newly-renamed file as an attachment to the email account you want to monitor. Make sure the email subject title also lures the snooper in (maybe something like List of Passwords. You get the idea :).

5. The trap is now set. Basically if someone opens the email and opens the attachment, OneStat will record a hit. If you then log into your OneStat account say once a day, you will see how many hits you have had to your attachment.

The OneStat account page then gives you details on each “visitor” including the date and time they accessed the web document and more importantly their location and IP address!

So how does having this information help you? Well first of all, it will alert you to change your password to something stronger. Secondly, if you see the snooper’s location and you only know one or two people there then it narrows down your list of potential suspects.

By the way, I recommended signing up for One Stat because the author of the original idea mentioned them. But if you know of any other hit counter services that send text documents to your email address, then please mention them in the comments. I don’t have any financial advantage recommending One Stat so I am perfectly happy to consider alternative companies.

6 Online Tools for Text to Speech you would not want to miss

Once in a while, all of us face a need to get some text synthesized into speech. Maybe we want to know how someone would pronounce a complicated word, or sometimes we just want an entire passage to be read out to us.

These online tools are a great help when you face such a requirement. Some of them will allow you only to synthesize a small passage; others would read out entire PDF or DOC files to you!

1. Vozme

vozMe an online text to speech tool with an ultra-simple interface; a baby could use it! You have a large text box where you type or copy-paste whatever you want to convert to speech, and click the ‘Create MP3’ button. That’s it. A new window would open, and in a few seconds, your MP3 file would start playing. Large chunks of text were translated – the text field seems to accept a pile of text easily.

Save as MP3 file. Integrate into websites or blogs (WP plugin available) Add as iGoogle gadget

2. Expressivo

This text to speech conversion tool from Expressivo has a maximum limit of 200 characters. So large chunks or text at one go are out. But it is easy enough to use. Type or copy-paste your text, choose one of the four voice options (You have female US-English, female Romanian, male Polish and female Polish accents as options), and hit Read Me.

Epressivo produces a short URL to the speech file you created which you can email, IM or blog Option of entering text directly into the address bar of the browser

3. Cepstral

At Cepstral, the text to speech conversion converts the text into a .WAV file. Type in the text, hit Say It, and you will be asked to download s small WAV file. The ability to save the file is a great convenience here.

4. Ivona Speech Synthesizer

The Ivona Speech Synthesizer text to speech conversion tool online has a charcter limit of 200, and the same voice options as Expressivo. Ivona, however, allows you to save the converted speech file as an MP3 for private, non-commercial use.

5. SpokenText

SpokenText is packed with features – but it wants you to register, a small hassle. The registration is a bit too comprehensive – but I think it’s worth filling it out. Once you click on the link in the activation email, your registration is ready to go.

Log in, and click on the button ‘Create a New recording’. Choose from one of the 5 voice options, choose a words-per-minute speed for spoken text and – there is no text box! You have to upload a PDF, .txt, .DOC or .PPT file.

Conversion from multiple file formats. Conversion status indicator Email notification on conversion Filter words Your own Spokentext web address to share your recordings

6. Talkr

Talkr is not so straightforward – but that’s only if you land up on the site looking for a text to speech synthesizer. Talkr is not for that exactly – have an RSS feed you want read out?

Yes, this one is for instant podcasts – it converts RSS feeds into MP3 files for podcast! Once you sign up, all you need to do is to point it towards a feed of your own or someone else’s and it converts it into an MP3 file.

• Player to embed the mp3 file into your blog
• MP3 voice mails
• Listen to text only blogs anytime!