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It’s 2010 and the Winter Olympics have arrived, giving spectators an opportunity to watch countries compete in a wide range of winter-based events, from cross country skiing to bobsledding.

Not all of us are able to catch the events from the comfort of our couches, leaving some of us to make do with the streaming services available on the internet. For those of you looking to catch specific events on the internet, there are a number of options giving you the opportunity to stay on top of the festivities.

Before deciding which service you’ll use to track the events, you’ll want to settle on those competitions you’re looking to watch. A variety of events are occurring concurrently throughout each day of the Olympics.   For a schedule listing the start times of those events you’re looking to follow, visit the official website, where you’ll also find the results as they filter in.

After determining those events you want to watch, your next order of business is deciding on the service that’ll stream it to you. Most of the events are streamed right on the same site on which you reviewed the schedule. From there, you’re directed to televised broadcasts streaming from a number of countries.

If your sole interest is participation in these games by American athletes, NBC has a great resource that provides not only live streaming but a listing of all local stations that deliver coverage of the events. Entering your zipcode and the name of your cable/satellite provider will result in a list of local stations televising the games. Looking at the list of television stations, you can also check on those that are offering live streams on the internet.

While those are the official sites from which to get your Winter Olympics fix, you can also take a look at the two options below, both of which compiling an assortment of sites that are covering the events.

• Vancouver Olympics
• Olympics Online

There are other resources available, which a quick Google inquiry will point you towards, but these are the best ones I’ve been able to unearth.  No matter who you’re rooting for, enjoy the games and celebrate the spirit of friendly competition!

That quintessential streaming service, Youtube, has just launched a music delivery system called Youtube Disco. Something of an addendum to their already impressive catalog of music videos, this service is still in its infancy, which becomes obvious when you notice its lack of more advanced options available elsewhere.

Still, it serves its fundamental purpose — which is to stream music.

Easy to use, you’re given two options for your music search: You can search for an artist and all of the songs they’ve crafted, or you can find music that’s in the same vein of the music you originally ran a search for.

Barebones but simple in its execution, this is a great means of discovering new music and finding songs from some of your favorite artists.

Visit Youtube Disco here.

Users of Facebook know that it has a chat client which allows them to instantly message their Facebook friends when logged in. Until recently, that service was limited to just Facebook, preventing users from communicating with their Facebook friends when using other instant messaging clients (AIM, etc.) — unless those friends were already included in the user’s buddy list.

Some time ago, Facebook announced plans to link Facebook chat’s compatibility with XMPP-Jabber, the chat protocol implemented for Google Talk. Doing so would make Facebook Chat available for use with any IM client. After those plans were announced, Google never elaborated upon its development, leaving many to suspect the plans were scuttled.

However, just yesterday, Facebook announced the development of the chat client had been completed. With this available, users now have the option of using Facebook chat with any instant messaging client of their choice.

For those already using a multi-protocol client, configuration for use of this new feature is simple. All you need do is add a new Jabber or XMPP account, with the username following the username@chat.facebook.com model. Your password will be the same one you use for Facebook. For those who have not yet created a Facebook username, you’ll have to visit your settings page to create one.

After setup is complete, your Facebook friends will appear in your buddy list, becoming immediately available for chat sessions. Initially, it might prove a little confusing, as those Facebook friends who aren’t included on a friends list will appear in your instant messaging client’s buddy list. Without being automatically sorted, you’ll have to organize your friends by creating separate buddy lists. Though this might seem somewhat aggravating, it’s merely an additional step for those of you who absolutely need your friends organized in distinct groups.

This new service includes everything from your Facebook chat client, including profile thumbs and the ability to set your status as idle. Being new, the discovery of glitches are inevitable. Feel free to share them with us.

Social networking is all the craze, and this is just another means of staying tuned in to what your friends are up to.

You can read about the new Facebook Chat feature here.

With the internet occupying much of our time when using the computer, a number of services have become integral parts of our online routine, from twitter to flickr. Juggling the use of these services can become involving to some, requiring multiple keywords and applets to manage their use.

Quix is an astoundingly cool helper that consolidates commands for each service in one utility, significantly cutting down the time it takes to use these services. It works for both desktop and mobile browsers, giving you the ability to assign just a few keystrokes to the execution of popular features you make use of while using the internet.

Using just a simple window, you can send email, capture pages and clip them, run searches, update your twitter account and more. The list of available commands is impressive, sparing you the task of using multiple bookmarklets.

Pulling up just one window, enter your command and see the desired task completed.

Essentially, when using Quix, you’ll see a considerable diminishment in the time you spend configuring your browser for the use of these services. Once Quix is up and running, the benefits of its use will become immediately noticeable — it’ll almost become second nature after a few uses.

Along with a full list of available commands Quix offers, this overview helps you with the installation process.

You can grab Quix here.

Being a writer, distractions have always been problematic, their intrusion on the process of writing an annoyance that can often render a presumably easy writing task into one that occupies more time than you’d like.

CreaWriter is a very helpful tool that frees you of the many distractions that exist when using a word processor. Whether it’s that flashing icon in your task bar or the minimized Firefox tab that’s calling your attention, the modern experience of writing has become an endeavor hindered by our immediate access to other forms of information.

This tool wipes away all of those distractions, leaving a clean slate (literally!) on which to ply your writing.  As seen above, nothing else exists no your screen but the page to which you’re putting your words. You can further customize it, including the ability to add both background images and ambient sounds – both of which can be disabled, if you prefer just a white space.

In the digital age, distractions are inevitable, no matter how determined we are to avoid them. However, programs such as CreaWriter mitigate the frustration that results from them, making it a little easier to finish what you’re trying to compose.

This is a free program that’s available for Windows only, and you can grab it here.

If you’re a user of Twitter, that social networking phenomenon that depends upon succinct bursts of information from its community of members, you might be at risk of having your password compromised.

Twitter has begun issuing alerts to certain users, notifying them of the need to change their password. It reads as follows:

“Due to concern that your account may have been compromised in a phishing attack that took place off-Twitter, your password was reset.”

This is in response to phishing attempts that have resulted in users unwittingly surrendering their login information to hackers.

Phishing refers to a process where unscrupulous sorts set up a bogus login screen that dupes unsuspecting users into giving their user name and password away. The phishers then use that compromised account to send messages to other users, using the same scheme.

Aiming to thwart a recent series of phishing scams, Twitter has been informing users that they should change their password if they happen to be following an account by the name of @THCx. It’s suspected that this account may have been created for the purpose of phishing for passwords.

Geek Choice advises you to be very mindful of who you share information with. When logging into ANY account, always make sure to look at the url located in the address bar. Should there be anything that looks peculiar, it’s possible that it’s not the actual site you wish to log into.

Stay vigilant and protect yourself.

With the internet, cooking has never been easier, the sheer number of available recipes enough to tide you over until the end of time. Simply visit your favorite search engine, type in the name of a dish, and pore over the various recipes for your culinary favorites.

If Bing is your search engine of choice, you should know that Microsoft has spiced (pun intended, of course) it up with a neat addition that makes searching for recipes easier than ever.

Just visit Bing.com, type in an ingredient, and Bing will return with results culled from recipes sites the world over. When clicking on the Recipes link, you’re brought to a list of recipes that include the ingredient you searched for. Accompanying the recipes are pictures of the dish, a nutritional description, every rating it’s received, and the name of the site from which it came. Using the sidebar, you can filter through the results down to the category of cuisine and the convenience of its preparation.

For many, cooking is therapeutic, while others simply love to eat. Whatever your reason for hitting the kitchen, this site is an excellent resource to aid you in your effort.

You can visit Bing here.

E-readers are fast becoming as ubiquitous as smart phones, giving us gem of a solution that offers a veritable library of books in a handheld device. Amazon’s Kindle is one of the more popular e-readers, but you might want to try out its functionality before deciding to move forward with a purchase.

Amazon has released a free E-reader application that essentially emulates the functionality of the Kindle, giving you a chance to see if this is something you’d like to include in your arsenal of gadgets. It allows you to read books you’ve purchased from the Kindle store, along with synchronization that links your Kindle with a PC.

Installation is quick.

After that’s complete, it’ll ask you to sign in with your Amazon account, though registration isn’t necessary should you be without one.

Once signed in, its functionality will become obvious, with helpful tips included in balloon pop-ups that appear at the top.

After you’ve loaded a book, navigation is easy, the controls allowing you to bookmark a particular section or jump to one.

Font sizes are varied, with 10 different ones available.

Depending on what you prefer, navigation is available via your mouse or the arrow keys on your keyboard.

Want to switch to another book? From your Windows 7 taskbar, you can access a jumplist from which a new title in your library can be selected.

On the upper-right, there exists a menu that includes various options, such as synchronization of Kindle for PC with your actual Kindle reader – which ensures that your content on Kindle for PC mirrors that on your actual reader.

Want to add a book to your collection? Just visit the Amazon bookshop by clicking on the “Shop in Kindle Store” option.

While this is only for Windows users, a Mac version is anticipated. Additionally, even more features are planned, including the ability to rotate images. For those of you who have a touch-enabled laptop, this takes advantage of the Windows Touch feature, effectively transforming your touch screen laptop into a Kindle.

This is an excellent way to test drive Kindle, and you can retrieve Kindle for PC here.

In this era of social networking, where the internet has become our main channel of communication, sharing pictures has become a routine activity.

Finding hosts for those pictures is as easy as surfing to any number of free sites that offer storage and linking of as many pictures as you would like, where the simple generation of a fresh url allows you to link your image on whichever forum you’d like to broadcast the latest exploits you’ve captured.

Zscreen is an amazingly convenient tool that not only captures screens from your computer, but it also uploads those images to you the most popular image sharing services you on the net – TinyPic, ImageShack, Flickr, TwitPic, and others.  Additionally, those urls can be minimized with url shortening services like TinyURL and bit.ly.

Supporting more than two dozen services, Zscreen captures content and shares it, sparing you the hassle of having to visit a website to upload those images. Once the image link has been generated, you can share it with as many people as you’d like.

This is an excellent tool for those of you with a penchant for sharing pictures. It’s free and easy to use, but available only for Windows users.

If you’d like to make use of Zscreen, you can get it here.

Having so many friends on Facebook, it’s difficult to keep track of just how many photos of yourself that others have tagged. From that office retreat back in April to a family picture taken during the holidays, tagged photos can pop up out of nowhere, with you unknowingly present in some of them. Instead of asking them for a copy of that photo, you can use Photograbber, a neat utility that simply collects all of those photos in which your friends have tagged you and others.

Installation is simple. After its completion, Photograbber will scour the walls of your various friends for those pictures they’ve tagged. After selecting the Facebook friend from whom you want to grab, Photograbber will retrieve each and every one of the photos, storing them in a directory that you specify.

Photograbber doesn’t allow you to select which photos you want. When using it, Photograbber collects every tagged photo. Additionally, there is no way to preview the photos you’ve received, as Photograbber doesn’t provide any thumbnails of the images. You’ll have to open each photo to see what’s included.

We should also note that this will require that you’re actually friends with the individuals from whom you’re culling the photos. Depending on their privacy settings, you may find that Photograbber is unable to collect the photos.

If you’re someone who just needs to collect the photos of your Facebook friends, including those that feature you, this is an excellent and easy way to do so.

You can download Photograbber here.