MakeUseOf.com |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [June 25]
- How To Get A Skype-In Number For Free
- MindMapping Using Simple Idea Mapping Software [Mac]
- 5 Geeky Ways To Ask Someone To Marry You On The Internet
- SmarterFox Makes You More Productive In FireFox
- Meiga: One of The Best Linux File Sharing Programs
| Cool Websites and Tools [June 25] Posted: 25 Jun 2009 04:00 PM PDT
(1) Colnect - Social network for collectors and the place for managing personal collections (stamps, coins, phonecards etc.) online. The site has variety of collectible catalogs submitted and updated by collectors community. It is based on a wiki model, which means anyone can edit and update collectible catalogs, and as compared to printed catalogs, Colnect contains more up to date information on collectibles. Read more: Colnect: Site For Sharing & Managing Collections Online (2) GetRidOfThings - DIY guide that provides you with helpful tips on how to get rid of stuff such as home pests, insects, stains, bad smell, abusive boyfriends and other annoyances. You can search or browse site content by category. Each guide includes short set of facts on the subject and a set of tools and solutions most effective for the problem. Read more: GetRidOfThings: Learn How To Get Rid Of Stuff (3) IdiomSite - If you don't always understand some of idioms or sayings, you should check out this site, it contains definitions and meanings of common sayings that are often used in the English language. You can browse idioms alphabetically or search for a particular saying on the page using your search function. Read more: IdiomSite: Find Out Meanings of Common Sayings (4) Meta-iPod - Free Windows-only desktop app that helps you to clean up your iTunes library. It integrates with your iPod, allowing transfer of tracks and playlists from your iPod to iTunes library. It locates and fixes issues such as iPod to iTunes tracks and playlists copy, missing play counts, album art, ratings and labels, duplicate files, missing tracks and more. Read more: Meta-iPod: Clean Up Your iTunes Library (5) WhoAreIn - Dead simple event organizer that lets you organize meetings (parties, nightouts etc) and find out who will be attending. To start using it, you do not even have to sign up as it works with your existing Google credentials. The process is straightforward, you just need to create an event and forward it to invitees. When the recipients gets your invitation with event details they select one of the following options "Yes, I'm coming", "No, I'm not coming" or "Not sure". Read more: WhoAreIn: Easily Organize Meetings Online
These are just half of the websites that we discovered in the last couple of days. If you want us to send you daily round-ups of all cool websites we come across, leave your email here. Or follow us via RSS feed. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/ Related posts
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| How To Get A Skype-In Number For Free Posted: 25 Jun 2009 02:00 PM PDT
If you pay for Skype credit, you can call out from Skype on your computer to normal phones (wireless or landline) at a discounted rate. Also, for an additional cost, you may get a "Skype-In" phone number, which is essentially a Skype number disguised as a local land line, so that all calls to that number will be forwarded to your Skype account, allowing you to take the call anywhere and on any computer with Skype installed. This benefits the caller — if Skype is not available, he/she can always contact you simply by dialing a local number. It's a cool thing to have, but outside of this site's staff I don't have much use for the service (many of my friends are still using AIM for goodness' sake). That changed today when I signed up for phone numbers to forward calls to my Skype account, and unlike the Skype-In service, they didn't cost me a thing. Find out how I did it. If you don't have a Skype account, please be sure to set one up first. You'll need to provide your Skype ID when you register at Ring2Skype.com, which is where you get your free “Skype-In” numbers. There are a lot of countries to choose from, and you may register multiple numbers. For example, I've registered numbers in Windsor, Canada and London, UK as well as a US (New York City) number. My friend in Manhattan can call me up as if I lived there. Co-workers in London and Canada can now call me without ringing up international charges.
Here in the US, we have but a few choices as to our number's calling area. I could get a number (with a three-digit extension) in California, Florida, Maine or New York. Japan's numbers are limited to Tokyo, and Israel to Tel Aviv. It's going to be a bit odd giving friends in Louisville my Manhattan number, but these days when long-distance and local calling are often the same price, it shouldn't be too big a stretch. There really is no catch. Call quality for me was as good as a regular Skype, Gizmo or Mobile Phone call. I plan on giving these numbers out to business contacts, and once Google Voice (which I hope to review for you soon) allows forwarding my GV number to extensions, I plan on using this service with friends and family as well. While you’re here, you might like 30 free tips and tricks to improve Skype which Kaly wrote some time ago. How do you plan on using your Ring2Skype numbers? Let us know in the comments. Related posts
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| MindMapping Using Simple Idea Mapping Software [Mac] Posted: 25 Jun 2009 12:00 PM PDT
For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, here’s the quick description of ‘mindmap‘ quoted from Wikipedia:
Basically, here’s what happen in the process of mindmapping: you start with a main topic or idea as the center of focus, then expand the ideas with related points through branches - or children as some people prefer to call them. Each of these children could also be expanded to grand children, great grand children, and so on. If the main idea is too general, you can pick one of the children to focus on. Personally, I think nothing beats a large piece of paper and several color pencils for mindmapping, but there’s also nothing wrong about doing the process on your Mac. Especially if you have large monitor, and unreadable handwriting Here are three free, simple idea mapping software for Mac. 1. Personal BrainThis could be used not only for mindmapping but also for other uses such as visual bookmark manager, web site planning and site navigation, and also event planning. To draw mindmaps using Personal Brain, you write the main idea as the starting point. Expanding the diagram could be done easily just by clicking on one of the points and drag a new child out of it. For those who want to learn more about the app, the developer site provide users with a Learning Zone and Tutorials. This app is also available for Windows and Linux. The free version limits users to view only three generations of a map at one time. The ability to attach files is also reserved for the Core and Pro version. To get the complete list of what each version can do, you can see the features comparison between the versions. While this app has many powerful features, I think the price to go beyond the free version is a bit too ‘much’.
2. FreeMindFreeMind is open source, simple idea mapping software written in Java, so you can use it in any computer which supports Java. I think the interface is not too intuitive and takes time to get used to. I spent quite a moment sweeping through the main window trying to figure out how to start a mindmap diagram. Maybe it would be better if the “New” button is not so difficult to find. On the left pane, you can find so many icons without any explanation of their functions (I found out later that they are some kind of tags to mark the children). If you don’t mind the appearance, and willing to spend time learning it, this app is actually very usable. You can even create several maps within one window. The new map will be opened in the new tab. Then, if you feel like sharing your thoughts and ideas, you can submit your mindmaps in the developer’s wiki-style gallery.
3. MindNodeMindNode is a very easy to use mindmapping application. It features a very simple interface for quickly creating mind maps. Among the three, this one is the simplest. The interface is also the most Mac-ish. The default starting page already contains a field to fill in the main idea and instruction to drag to create a new node (child). You can also adjust the position of each node easily.
If you want to have more bells and whistles, such as the ability to create cross-connections and use the full screen mode, you can upgrade to the Pro version. To know the difference between the free and the pro version, read the full comparison list. For me, the free version is good enough. There are also video tutorials available on the site. MindNode is only available for Mac.
What’s Left On The Mind It’s possible that the error is at my side. I couldn’t be sure about that. But I felt it’s impossible to review any software without being able to try it first, isn’t it? To list some alternatives, give Ekpenso, Bubbl.us and Text2MindMap a try. Also, don’t miss out on the 6 Excellent Brainstorming and Mindmapping Sites by Kaly. Finally, if you have any thoughts, opinions, and experiences on the Mindmapping process and applications, speak up using the comment below. Related posts
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| 5 Geeky Ways To Ask Someone To Marry You On The Internet Posted: 25 Jun 2009 10:00 AM PDT
It goes without saying that these will all be Internet-based, so they’re perfect for the girlfriend who’s obsessed with the Internet - the one who can’t stop checking her Facebook account or surfing YouTube videos. These are also the sort of techniques that you can use to ask a girl to marry you when you’re in a long distance relationship, or maybe if you’re in the military and serving in a foreign country. Don’t let distance stop you. The following geeky tips will get her attention and they may even make her cry, but most importantly, they will also make her say “yes.” How to Ask Someone to Marry You on the Internet (And Get Them to Say Yes!)Let’s face it, it’s a web 2.0 world. The days of kneeling on one knee beside a restaurant table are long gone. Today, you’ve got text messages, instant messaging and email. Guys today need to be fresh and creative with their proposal ideas to capture the hearts of that special girl. If you’re one of those guys who have been thinking about “popping the question” for quite some time - stop thinking about it and start living! Ask her to marry you using the many web technologies that are now at your disposal. 1. Create a GPS Mission for Her to Find the “Ring”This is probably the most creative approach to asking someone to marry you. Geo-caching has been around for a number of years, but it’s especially taking off with a vengeance since more mobile phones have built-in GPS capability and more websites (eg: Waze.com) are offering features that make use of GPS positioning or cell tower triangulation. If the person you want to marry has a GPS device or a mobile phone, you can use the free mission creator at GPS Mission to send the girl you love on a mysterious chase for a final secret discovery.
The great thing about this free online tool is that you can give her clues along the way. Make it extra romantic by tying each location to things that you did together in the past, and test her memory. On the last waypoint, the “treasure” could be a picture of you holding the ring with the words “Will You Marry Me?” underneath. Or, if you want to be all James Bond-ish about it, you could hide a box with a DVD in it with a “watch me” note on it. When she goes home and pops the DVD into the player, she’ll see a video of you asking her to marry you. 2. Create an Instant Marriage Proposal WebsiteRecently, I wrote an article on several tools that are available for creating instant websites. In my opinion (and the opinion of several MakeUseOf readers), Weebly is clearly one of the best. You can aso try a Wix if you want a flash one. Another method to ask someone to marry you would be to create a single page website that features a big header “CATHY, WILL YOU MARRY ME?” complete with photos, “will you marry” me poems, a long and heartfelt “will you marry me” letter, and a whole mix of other content that will overwhelm her with emotion. She’ll be crying and yelling at the computer screen, “Yes! Yes, I’ll marry you, you big geek!”
With Weebly, you can build a great, meaningful one-page proposal website in no time, and when you’re done, just email or text message her the URL and wait for her reaction. Okay guys, stop laughing at my sample website above… it’s just an example!
3. Create a Photo Gallery of Your Life Together - Including MarriageIf you really want to get the point across, use photos. Recently, MakeUseOf reviewed a great tool called MyLiveGallery that lets you build an online photo gallery quickly and easily. Using this free tool, you could piece together a stunning photo montage of all of the things you and her have done together. Trust me, by the time she gets to the very last slide where you display a photo of yourself on bended knee and holding out the ring - she’ll be in tears.
The ease of creating a photo gallery with this web tool is creepy. You basically just go through a few steps, as shown above, and your online gallery is finished.
You’re allowed up to 10 photos, you can select from a number of premade templates, and the quality of the final gallery isn’t that shabby! Once you’re done creating it, just copy the link and email or text it to her. 4. Write an Article on “How To Marry Your Best Friend”Anyone who knows me very well knows that I love eHow because, not only can you instantly publish single-page “how-to” web pages for free, but they also pay you a portion of all ad royalties that your page earns. As a proposal tool, it’s very cool, because you could write a step by step, romantic “How-To” article on how to marry your best friend.
The cool thing about these eHow pages is that it’s a lot like the slideshow you created above, because in every step you can include a photo of you and her spending time together. The very last step would be, “Say Yes… Will You Marry Me?” She’ll be overwhelmed by the fact that you spent so much effort creating an entire article for her benefit. She doesn’t need to know that every time someone reads the article, you get royalties - that’s just icing on the cake! 5. Do It On YouTube For the World to See!Almost from the first moment YouTube became popular, men have occasionally used it to propose to their girlfriend. While it’s not the most original technique to propose via Web 2.0, it’s still unique and fresh enough to make the top 5 list. All you have to do is use any video editing application, such as any of the 18 online tools that Kaly reviewed, to create a customized movie professing your love for her, and why you want to marry her. Some guys get as elaborate as combining music, video, pictures and special effects, while other guys create a movie as simple as shooting streaming audio of themselves asking the girl to marry them.
Do whatever you feel would best convey your true feelings for the girl - but for Pete’s sake, do it right the first time. You only have one chance to get it right, and getting that simple “yes” is a moment that will last a lifetime. Do it right now, and it’s a memory that she’ll remember and treasure for years. Screw it up, and you’re likely to join the ranks of “losers” who couldn’t get a simple proposal right. No pressure or anything. Would you ever consider proposing to your girlfriend online? If you’ve ever used online tools to ask a girl to marry you, what approach did you take? Tell us your preferred method in the comments! Related posts
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| SmarterFox Makes You More Productive In FireFox Posted: 25 Jun 2009 08:00 AM PDT
I am talking about adding functionality to our favorite browser that well, should have been there from the get go. Well now, here is an awesome download called SmarterFox. It adds a bunch of new options to your already pretty awesome browser. First off, it allows you to search different search engines with text that you highlight via a pop-up bubble. It adds functionality to Wikipedia by adding a related-articles box, among other things. One of my favorite features is its ability to change a plain text link into a working URL. The plug-in was created by Yongq. To start, you would visit https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9825 and install the add-on to your FireFox browser. After you have successfully installed it and restarted FireFox, you should try it out. We can start by highlighting a chunk of text and checking out the pop-up bubble as you can see below:
Each of those icons represents a search you can perform on the highlighted text. This is a godsend for research!
To try it out, I highlighted some text from the add-on's page and hit the Google icon. It instantly returned the following Google Search page: Not to shabby! Next up, we will take a look at its control panel that lives in your FireFox's Tools menu. Simply click Tools and then SmarterFox to see your options. Here are the options below. Linkify text URLs is what I was talking about earlier. It will look for www.xyz.com that is not underlined or hyperlinked and actually make it clickable. This is very handy, so you don't ever have to copy and paste the link. The “add related articles to Wikipedia” feature will be shown a little further down and the enhancements to the AwesomeBar we did not try out because we do not use the AwesomeBar. But, according to the documentation, it will automagically add your search terms to the AwesomeBar as well as speed it up. The copy and paste section hosts a lot of great features. By checking the “Auto copy selected” box, you can copy text automatically by selecting it and pasting it with another key. Wow, this is out of control.
The qLauncher can be activated by hitting Control and Space. It can be configured to open in a new tab. What the qLauncher does is give you a new search window with lots of choices for your search engine. You can see a shot of the qLauncher below its options.
The qLauncher And the last option page lets us choose which search engines should show up on the bubble. You might also want to take notice of the “Display as a single row” button – this makes it easier to use with multiple options.
And as promised, here is the related-articles feature on Wikipedia. It is such a great idea – now why didn't the Wikipedia people think of that?
Do you have a favorite FireFox add-on? Give it a shout out in the comments and maybe you can help another user find their golden add-on or plug-in! Check out our posts on other popular Firefox addons: Related posts
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| Meiga: One of The Best Linux File Sharing Programs Posted: 25 Jun 2009 06:00 AM PDT
Meiga is one of the best file sharing programs to share files across your network or over the Internet. Meiga is available for Linux (you can access files from other operating systems as well). Download the deb packages for Meiga from here. If you use other non-debian based distributions, you would have to compile from source. Once installed, fire up the GUI. (Applications > Internet > Meiga in Ubuntu). You would be greeted by a minimalist window like this.
Click on add and browse to the directory you want to share, choose the share name, you should remove any spaces and make the name as simple as possible.
That is it, you have shared the folder successfully. Was it easy or what? The person on the other side doesn’t need to install anything as long as a web browser or an http download manager is available. She would have to know your IP address and the share name to be able to access the files. Meiga makes it easy by showing you the URL in the statusbar as you click on each share. This is the URL other person would have to visit to access the files.
If you are on a network (like your home network) chances are you would be knowing the IP addresses on your machines, so getting a file simply means browsing to http://[ip address]:8001/[share name] and you would see a list of all the files and folders within the shared folder.
If you are sharing files across the Internet, then of course, you would have to communicate the share’s URL to the other end via email or chat. If you have a dynamic IP and want to make your shares available for a longer period of time over the Internet, you might want to look into dynamic DNS which we discussed briefly. dyndns would map your current IP to a domain name, so that it points to your computer, irrespective of IP address changes. While the ability to share files with ease is the stronghold of Meiga, it can certainly do with some basic features like password protection the ability to view all shares on a particular computer. All in all Meiga is great for easy, no fuss file sharing with minimal effort. Do you know of any similar application that’s also a great file sharing program? Share with us in comments. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/ Related posts
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A lot of us here at MakeUseOf use 
As a writer, I often stuck on a topic. Getting ideas is one thing, turning the ideas into a “readable and understandable” piece of work is another. I found that one of the best ways to expand and organize ideas is by mindmapping.
One of the most nerve-wrecking times in a guy’s life is the day he finds someone that he realizes he actually wants to marry, and he needs to get up the nerve to ask her. If you’ve racked your brain for creative ways to ask someone to marry you, I’m here today to offer you a few suggestions that may help.
Have you ever wanted to make your FireFox smarter?
Sharing files on a network generally requires some amount of configuration, know-how and time. Things get even geekier when you have different machines running different operating systems. Damien showed you how to use 
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