If you’re a frequent viewer of Netflix’s streaming fare, you’re probably numb to how inefficient the rental service’s browsing and search pages can be. InstantWatcher is a soothing balm of clean, fast movie browsing.
You’ll still need to be logged into your Netflix account to get much out of InstantWatcher, but once you’re in, you’ll find dozens of ways to filter and search films. Movies featuring Clint Eastwood and Shirley MacLaine? Just type in their names. Check which films won’t be available for streaming soon? Sure, just click one button.
Each page of results can be listed as straight-up titles, text with year, directors, and actors, a few lines of synopsis, or a picture-only box art view. Every result has a “Play” or “queue” link, and a left-hand sidebar offers related YouTube videos, Wikipedia and IMDB links for movie results, and nary an ad but on the right-hand side.
One of those web resources you truly hope the big enchilada it's working off of takes notice of—and soon. Free to use, no sign-up required.
Windows only: Portable system-fixing bundle Computer Repair Utility Kit puts 57 recovery tools into a single package. That gives you easy access to important system utilities without the fuss of building your own toolkit.
Windows only: ManicTime is a detailed time-tracking application for keeping tabs on where your workday goes. Get a handle on how you spend your time with tags, graphs, and reports.
The ability to tag idle time adds a great deal of functionality to the application: you can tag time spent in meetings, making phone calls, or even time logged at the gym. The tag system makes it easy to keep tabs on what work you're doing for different projects and clients—an especially handy feature for people who spend all their time using a similar set of applications for nearly every task at work. You can graph user specified blocks of time based on a variety of parameters like the basic active/idle cycles, by applications, or tags to see how your time is spent. ManicTime is freeware, Windows only.
Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Popular bookmark syncing Firefox extension Foxmarks has added tag suggestions for bookmarks—making this already great service just that much better.
Windows only: If you’re looking for a better way to manage your wish lists than Notepad, but aren’t interested in the more frilly web-based solutions, WishList is a lightweight and portable solution.
MP3 Search is a web music finder with a simple interface. If you’re in need of some quick tunes to listen to, or you’re hunting down pieces of an obscure mix, take a peek.
VetHelpDirect is a web-based assessment tool for determining whether or not your pet needs veterinary care, as well as getting reliable information about various animal behaviors and conditions.
If you're looking for a quick way to create a favicon—the tiny little logo that appears in bookmarks and address bars—for your web site, Favicon Generator offers dead simple image importing, editing, and conversion.