Whatever the case, if you are one of these people you might be wanting to make your computer a little more user friendly. Here are a couple of handy tools to help you along.

NoSquint

Are you tired of having to squint your eyes at the computer screen? Do you find yourself unable to turn the font size up high enough? This Firefox addon allows you to zoom in and out of sites either globally, or on a per-page basis. You are able to override the default of the site on text only and full page formats, and change foreground and background colors to your specifications.

Readpal

Whether you have poor eyesight or difficulty focusing on text, this program for Windows can really help you. It isolates text and restructures it in an easier to view format that will keep you concentrating and reducing eye strain. It can be applied to compatible Windows applications such as Word, Notepad, Internet Explorer and Outlook Express.

Size Firefox Addon

URL’s are hard to read at the best of times, but when you have trouble with your vision it is especially difficult. The address bar can be increased, however, using this nifty little add on. It is compatible with the latest version of Firefox, and there is no configuration needed. Just download it and enjoy the larger URL bar.

Vischeck

Are you making a website and you want to make sure colorblind users are able to view it? Vischeck is an excellent program that simulates colorblindness in various forms, showing you want sites and images look like for someone who cannot properly process certain tones and shades.

Readable

This is a default format override addon for Firefox. It allows you to choose the layout, background color, font color and size of text and images. They have a manual select feature for simplified versions of the same text, as well.

Conclusion

You don’t have to strain your eyes or avoid certain sites. These tools are great for increasing the readability of any web page. What are some of the tools you use? Let us know in the comments.

Annie is a geeky blogger for Direct Sight, the premiere supplier of cheap glasses based in the UK.

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5 Tools to Make Your Computer Friendlier For Those With Poor Eyesight originally appeared on: Crenk
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Creating contracts only takes a few minutes after signing up (which in itself takes “ten seconds”, just as the banner promises). Basically, you first create a contact then create a template for your document using the rich text editor that’s built into the service. Then you create your document like in the screenshot below.

Before you send your document you have the final chance to customize it as you can see in the screen below. You can add in extra terms and monetary amounts. You can also decide if the document should have an expiration date. The feature I like the most was that you can choose several ways for the recipient to authenticate the document such as via Twitter or OpenID.

When you’re done, click ‘send and save’. Then, on the final page, customize the e-mail the person will receive and then send the document along with the documents URL (this is included as standard). This is an quick and easy way to process documents and contracts online.

Check it out at www.docshaker.com

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DocShaker: Easily Send, Receive and Sign Documents originally appeared on: Crenk
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What is the Zentact philosophy?
(Jared) We are creating a product that integrates into already existing work flows, helping our users build better relationships. We do this without any BS. (Eric would say the our product will make the baby jesus cry…)

Sharing information with your contacts is something that Mr. Marcoullier seems to be a fan of! What makes Zentact different to other content sharing websites?

(Jared) Social networks are a lot of work for traditionally very little payoff. CRM tools are worse.

(Eric) Zentact aims to flip that on its ear and provide loads of tangible results for little ongoing effort.

(Jared) Typical content sharing websites and apps have focused on the user always remembering whom to share with. We are trying, in effect, to whisper in the user’s ear and suggest whom they can share this with in a meaningful way – we make sure you share what matters. We will be adding more social aspects in the near future as well.

How has the web 2.0 landscape changed since the coneption and subsequent selling of MyBlogLog to now and the work you’re doing with Zentact?

(John) MyBlogLog allowed users to create profiles that traveled with them where they surfed, adding value to both the mybloglog member and website owner. More Web 2.0 apps today are leveraging this concept, be it scripts, widgets, and even in browsers. The value that is created by individual apps and even apps created mashing APIs together is significant.

Some commentators have said that they’d like Facebook integration, in particular to help when tagging – is this something you and the team are looking into?

(Jared) We will be integrating in with Facebook to help with both tagging, tracking last connection and posting to the wall.

Will you be looking to include integration with other social networking services – if so what is the liklihood of this happening before Zentact comes out of Beta?

(Jared) We are in a private beta now and working on launching our public beta. We will likely integrate with other social networking services and other communication platforms before leaving beta. We are also listening to our users – feedback will help lead the way.

What is really exciting you on the web (Zentact aside)?
(Jared) Gnip
(John) Apple app store

I would argue that 2008 has been the year of Twitter and that it will become more mainstream in 2009 – what do you think will be the big social media development in the next 12 months?

(Jared) We think that there will be a big movement towards information – instead of just data. More products will become contextual.

What has been the main challenge for Zentact since you founded the company?

(Jared) Our number one challenge has been to prioritize features since, as a team, we have many features we want to do quickly.

And what has been the achievement that has made you most happy?

(Jared) We have gotten feedback from users ranging for “wow” to “Zentact helped me close a deal”. This feedback is what makes us tick!

What are the next key milestones you’ll be looking to meet?

( Jared) Public beta and our IE version.

What can we expect from Zentact in 2009?

(Jared) A killer product that will seamlessly improve your life.

To try Zentact for yourself, we have a few private invites to test the private beta, which you lucky boys and girls can get here.

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Crenk Interviews… Zentact originally appeared on: Crenk
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Enter, stage left, Twingly.com, a Swedish blog search engine founded by Martin Källström.

According to Twingly.com’s ‘about‘ section, the philosophy behind their search system is to produce “a blog search engine featuring a spam-free, faceted, social search for the global blogosphere”. Nice, but aren’t Technorati and URLFan doing the same thing? Twingly uses relationships, ie how well linked each blog and article is, to work out how relevant to your search they are. Key to the service is a blog’s ‘approval’. If a blog is not approved by the Twingly team (meet them here), it could potentially be spam. If you are the owner of a blog that comes up as not being approved, you can of course resolve that little issue by sending the Twingly team a swift e-mail.

You can express your opinion on the blogs Twingly finds via a fluorescent green ‘links/likes’ tab. This shows you how many people are linking to the page and it allows you, once you’ve signed up to the service, to vote on if the post is relevant or useful – it’s the equivalent of Technorati Favourites.

Where it gets really interesting though is the blog profile page. With some nifty “research”, we can compare Crenk’s ranking on Twingly, Technorati and URLFan.

Crenk is ranked 3/10 (10 being the highest) with 43 blogs registering as being linked to various articles on Twingly. Technorati claims 80 and URLFan says 45, with 199 other mentions. These are vastly differing numbers, and you have to wonder if Technorati is brilliantly accurate  or if it’s not omitting that nasty spam.

Some other nice touches from Twingly include the ability to search within a certain timeframe, <em>as mentioned</em> you can search by one of the 12 supported languages, and you can also look  for blogs that have been officially approved, thus weeding out any other possible spam.

Twingly have also released their top 100 blogs by ranking, and if you are proud of where your blog sits in their 1-10 scale, you can of course throw on that all important badge to show it off. One rather large omission however,  is the Huffington Post.

With this in mind it is safe to say that Twingly isn’t the most accurate blog search engine, yet. However, the layout is simple and practical,  and although the ‘likes/links’ updating isn’t instantaneous (it took about ten minutes to register), the future looks very bright for the Twingly team who are currently overseeing about 25 million searches per month.

Twingly has the potential to be a very good blog search engine. It looks good, is quick when pulling together results and the blog profiles, in relation to each other, are very useful; it even has some pleasant widgets to pop alongside your page ranking.

They are very much into their feedback in Sweden, and you can vote for your most wanted features at the Twingly Tech Plan page.

Try Twingly.com out for yourself and let us know what you think.

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Twingly: The Blog Search Engine That Is Actually Moving In The Right Direction originally appeared on: Crenk
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