New media picks of the week is my weekly basket of tasty resources, tools and services that I have run into, have discovered accidentally or read about from other articles, feeds and newsletters I subscribe to.

A great set of new tools and resources has slowly piled up on the side of my screen this week too.

Photo credit: Marta Rostek

Connect, explore, discover and amaze yourself with some of these great new tools and services. Here is my latest pick of new media resources to give a good look to.

This week I have selected for you:

1. New Skype-alternative looks good


2. Compare airline tickets


3. Directory of open access audio recordings


4. BitTorrent seeding service


5. Work from home jobs clearinghouse


6. Gallery of best designed Web pages


7. Free digital image editor


8. Television meets Web conferencing into new system


9. No moving parts camcorder


10. Online video editing and post-production studio

Enjoy!

1. Gizmo Project
   
   
   The Gizmo Project is a Skype-like instant messenger that can act as a fully-featured Internet telephone. As for Skype it allows pre-paid calling out to traditional phone numbers, and integrates also Call Forwarding, Recording (!) and Conference Calls. Gizmo Project, like Skype also allows you to get a standard phone number (for now in the UK or US) that you can give out to your contacts. And when that number is called you can actually receive and answer back via your computer. Available now for Windows, with Mac and other versions coming later, Gizmo Project is completely free to download and use.
   http://www.gizmoproject.com/
   





2. Sprice
   
   Like many others online air tickets shopping service Sprice allows its users to check for flights and to find the lowest priced offerings. Unlike many others though, Sprice picks up its data straight from the airlines sources without any filtering or selection. This provides a much wider choice and access to many low-priced tickets that you will not easily see on other online booking services. In English and French.
   http://www.sprice.com
   





3. The Spoken Alexandria Project
   
   The Spoken Alexandria Project is a free library of spoken word recordings, consisting of classics in the public domain and modern works. The audio recordings are available in AAC, Ogg Vorbis, and MP3 file formats and can be freely downloaded and legally redistributed without requesting further permissions.
   http://www.spokenalex.org/
   





4. Tolver's Torrent Seed Server
   
   For $1 per month OR $10 per year, Tolver will seed one legal BitTorrent of your choice of up to 100 MB. Once you are verified through PayPal you will be allowed to upload any file to Tolver' server for becoming a BitTorrent stream ready to be leached. After Tolver's has leached the entire Torrent it becomes a 24/7 seed for your content.
   http://tolver.net/
   





5. Home Job Stop
   
   If you are looking for legitimate work from home jobs, Homejobstop supplies jobs that you can do from your own home. The online service offers an extensive catalog of opportunities continuously updated.
   http://www.homejobstop.com/index.html
   





6. Cool Home Pages
   
   Best designed home pages in a number of categories archived and classified in an orderly fashion. This cna be a great resource of inspiration, study and analysis of different design approaches. http://www.coolhomepages.com/
   





7. Brush Strokes Image Editor
   
   Brush Strokes is a free graphics editor with many of the features of a professional product. You can edit images saved in a variety of graphic file formats (GIF, JPEG, BMP, PNG, TIFF, PCX, BMP, TARGA, AVI) as well as create and view GIF animations. With Brush Strokes it is also possible to adjust colors in photos, apply filters, rotations and transformations, use the "magic wand" to make automatic color selection as well as using any picture as a brush or fill pattern. It captures individual frames from camcorders and it is completely free to download.
   http://www.pabird.supanet.com/~pabird/freesoftware/brushstrokes/
   





8. GoodMood WIP
   
   Here is a new web conferencing and web casting system from Finland that integrates audio over IP, video playback, PowerPoint presentations, videoconferencing, polling, text chat and more. The company has positioned itself as a webcasting service provider that combines a new form of event or corporate-based television and webcasting into a unique product. GoodMood provides infrastructure and content to redistribute content to its own partners. GoodMood trains, accredits and supports its global partners in implementing turnkey webcasting services. Services include the creation, delivery and publishing of video presentations and online events. See a number of demo recordings showcasing the different features and explaining also in English what the system and services can provide:
   http://www.picturethis.tv/webcast/index.htm
   More info: http://www.goodmood.fi/...
   





9. Panasonic SV-AV100
   
   The SV-AV100 is a 100% solid state camcorder that uses no moving parts at all. There is no tape, DVD or CD-ROM media spinning inside this camcorder and recording the video material shot. Everything is stored directly onto a solid state memory card like the ones we normally use on most digital cameras. Limited initially to 1GB maximum capacity this Panasonic camcorder remains a model of innovation, compactness, portability and engineering.
   http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_electronics/kaon/svav100.htm
   





10. FORscene
    
    FORscene is a revolutionary online video editing and post-production system allowing video producers, directors and editors to do online what was until now executed on dedicated software and hardware in a physical studio. FORscene provides multiple tools to allow editing and video publishing to a variety of media platforms and devices including the Web, mobile phones and traditional high-quality broadcast channels. FORscene runs on PCs, Macs and Linux without any software installation or hardware upgrades.
    You can upload DV content directly into your FORscene account via Firewire or, for large volumes, via a FORingest compressor. Once uploaded you can edit and browse content. Using your username and password you can view content anytime, from anywhere in the world. Free try-out available. Standard charges are detailed here.
    http://forscene.net/guest/