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- Cool Websites and Tools [July 10]
- 3 Features of Google Driving Directions You Probably Never Knew
- 4 Free Thumbnail Generators To Create Quality Photo Thumbnails For Your Website
- Digital Video Formats and Video Conversion Explained
- Make Quick & Professional Looking Videos With Windows Movie Maker (Part Two)
- Find Recently Available Or Deleted Domain Names with JustDropped
| Cool Websites and Tools [July 10] Posted: 10 Jul 2009 04:00 PM PDT
(1) GetMooh - This automated call back service can help you escape any unwanted dates or meetings by calling you on your phone at a scheduled time and playing a message. It will give a credible sense of you being on an important call. The best feature of this site is that you can choose between extensive varieties of voices. Read more: GetMooh: Escape Unwanted Dates & Meetings (2) Kalooga – Search tool that lets you find images by searching only image galleries. Because photo gallery pages are usually maintained by someone who is an expert or an enthusiast on the subject, the images tend to be highly relevant. The users can search on Kalooga by keyword and also run specific searches for topics like Travel, Football, Celebrities and American Football. Read more: Kalooga: Find Images by Searching Web Image Galleries (3) MyLiveSignature – Website that provides you with multiple options to create online signatures. You may choose one of the 3 methods to create your signature – using the signature creation wizard, drawing a signature using the mouse or using a scanned image. Once you are done, you can download it to your computer. Read more: MyLiveSignature: Create Your Online Signature (4) MyStuidiyo – Online service which you can use to create fun and interactive multimedia quizzes in just minutes. You can insert pictures, videos, HTML text, customize quiz introduction and endings, monitor user feedback and scores and promote your quizzes by embedding them on your website or blog. Read more: MyStuidiyo: Create Multimedia Quizzes in Minutes (5) Untiny – Lets you view the original URL behind the short URL, so you know where it points to. You can extract original URL by visiting the website or installing its Firefox add-on in your browser. Alternatively, you can extract the original URL directly from the browser's address bar simply typing "http://untiny.me?url=" in front of the short URL (Ex: http://untiny.me?url=http://tinyurl.com/cfoep8). Read more: Untiny: Extract the Original URL Behind The Short URL
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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| 3 Features of Google Driving Directions You Probably Never Knew Posted: 10 Jul 2009 02:00 PM PDT
That is why I have compiled a list of 3 handy dandy features of Google Maps that you may not have known about – features that will help you make it through the day without hitting a pedestrian due to your frustrating experiences like the ones pictured above. Google Driving Directions – Drag and Drop RoutesFor those who really want to customize how they get from Point A to Point B, Google Maps has a tool that allows you to drag the route they have provided in certain directions say, because you know that the driving directions given will require you to traverse a heavily bogged down construction zone. New directions are provided on the spot, as if you had just searched for them. Here’s an example.
Now if I decided that I wanted to go on the Harbor Freeway, CA 110 for some crazy reason, I could drag the route:
Here is a side by side comparison of the driving directions. They are automatically calculated and changed as you drag your route. Pretty neat, huh?
One thing you may need take note of is that your constant dragging back and forth may be cumbersome to sort through. You may find that the final directions you obtain after fooling around with the path is an infinite loop. Although this is a very handy feature, make sure to double check that all of the directions are feasible. Congestion OverlaysIt is every traveler’s worst nightmare to run into accidents, construction, congestion, or an overall slowing down of traffic. This is most likely why Google Driving Directions has provided an extremely useful overlay of your map that describes current driving conditions, with a full blown legend that houses live traffic updates along roads. The only foreseeable downside to this feature is that it mostly only provides these overlays on larger roads, highways and interstates. Then again, larger roads are the ones that we worry the most about.
I’m sure all of you can read, so I won’t go into detail to explain what the colors mean. Certain icons mean certain things, for instance in the above screenshot, the warning sign denotes some type of accident or stoppage due to hazardous conditions, whereas a small man shoveling coal (or at least that’s what it looks like) denotes construction. A red circle with a line through it means that the current lane is closed. Let’s say you have a planned event, and you would like to know what the traffic conditions will most likely be like at that time. No problem! There is a feature that allows users to choose the day of the week as well as the time of day, and Google Maps will provide a prediction based on aggregate data it has compiled previously. This should give users a better idea of what to expect on certain roads during rush hour or things of that nature:
Search Box CustomizationsAlthough technically more than one “feature,” there are certain things to know about the direction search box that can prove to be useful when finding directions. Believe it or not, I have had more than one friend come up to me and ask me if there was a way to add multiple “checkpoints” to stop by on along their trip. It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you take time to read:
If we should decide to add a final destination (no pun intended), we can simply click the link and hooray, we have successfully set up segmented directions for a cross country road trip to the Empire State Building:
Google Driving directions also has a dropdown menu for you to choose by what medium would like to travel through. This service may be limited because most of it is still in beta, but certain locations DO give users the freedom to choose. As of now, it is limited to “by car,” “by public transit,” or “by walking”:
Finally, if we click “show options”, we can choose to have Google Driving directions search for routes that avoid toll roads or highways, or both:
So, there you have it. We hope that wherever you go, you drive safely and are aware of your surroundings. Google Driving Directions is an extremely powerful branch of Google Maps – it provides users with a lot of freedom and flexibility to roam around and explore new areas without actually going there. This article only provides a few of the handy features that Google Driving Directions encompasses, but there is so much more to learn about. Check out other features of Google Maps, as well as their new mobile phone feature! Has Google Maps helped you map your transit route or get your out of stuck traffic? Let us know how you have used it, in the 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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| 4 Free Thumbnail Generators To Create Quality Photo Thumbnails For Your Website Posted: 10 Jul 2009 12:00 PM PDT
Thumbnails as 'Tom Thumbs' of the real thing allow us to pack in more within the screen real estate. The ideal size of a thumbnail differs with use and the setting. Ideally, a scaled down but recognizable version of the real thing can be called as a thumbnail. For instance, Flickr generally uses 240 pixel-wide images. There's no end to the utility of thumbnails. From illustrations to photo galleries, they are thumbed for the bigger picture. How do we go about creating thumbnails? Well, it's easy as cherry pie (eating it… not baking!) with all the options on our thumb, err hands. I’ll be showing you the mechanical approach, as well as 4 free thumbnail generators in both Software and Online format. You have the freedom to choose which method you wish to use! The Mechanical PathNot the easiest but definitely the cheapest as we can work without spending a penny, using what we already have – the PrtSc (Print Screen) key and MS Paint.
MS Paint can be substituted with the better image editors with enhanced image resizing controls (Example: Using Actions in Photoshop). For more demanding needs, we need to turn to the various free thumbnail generators that are available. The Software PathEasy ThumbnailsThis 1MB software lives up to its name. The graphical interface is simple and it makes creating scaled down graphics a user-friendly task. The best thing about this free thumbnail generator is the batch processing feature. Select an individual image file or an entire folder. Setting the rotation, brightness, contrast and size of your images is easy through helpful sliders. A unique feature for such a freeware is the range of compression settings provided which lets you reduce the file sizes; vital for a large number of web images. And the image window lets you preview (in real time) the thumbnail's final look.
Easy Thumbnails runs on XP / XP64 / Vista / Vista64 / Windows 7 or on Mac OS / Linux in conjunction with Wine. RightThumbRightThumb is a tiny (398KB) context menu application which lets you create optimized thumbnails with a right click. Creating a thumbnail from any graphic file needs just a right click and choosing the option to ‘Create Thumbnail’. The program does not need to be installed which makes it ideal as a portable app too. To handle multiple images, just select all the images and right click.
With RightThumb, a thumbnail can be created as a Bitmap, JPEG, GIF or PNG graphic file or can be copied to clipboard, ready to paste. The only feature lacking are the image editing settings.
RightThumb runs on Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista. If you are looking for a free desktop variant for the Mac then take a look at Paparazzi! which takes screenshots with the option of thumbnails. But what if you are on a public computer without these software on the PC? Then, we must look towards the internet. The Online PathQuick Thumbnail
It's as simple as uploading an image (or providing a URL), choosing the resize options and downloading the thumbnail image. As added security, uploaded files are kept on the Quick Thumbnail server for only 10 minutes. Use a slider to resize by percentage or choose absolute measures in figures. Fixed size choices range from 32 pixels to 750 pixels. Images can also be scaled by using a drop-down list of standard dimensions like 100×75 for avatars and 150×112 for thumbnails. Added options include basic filter settings and watermark inclusion. Resizr
Resizr, like most image manipulation web apps has been designed keeping the unsophisticated designer in mind. Image resizing is free, requires no registration and also comes with some added options. The screenshot shows the options available. The slider easily lets you set the optimum size between small and big. Resized files can be saved as JPEG, GIF or PNG. The final image can be downloaded, forwarded to < a href=”http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/facebook/”>Facebook or MySpace, sent to a cell via MMS (US only) or simply emailed. There are other web apps of such ilk which make the thumbnail creation and image manipulation a snap. At MakeUseof, we have covered some of them over the course of a few posts such as WebSnapr: Free Website Thumbnail Screenshots and Thumbalizr: Website Screenshots. Also read an earlier post by Kaly which started out by reviewing Resizr but soon jumped into other exciting apps. Thumbnail creation by itself is something that any good image manipulation program can handle. It is about paying attention to the proportions and the quality. Which is your web app/software of choice? Do you use a dedicated application or an all purpose image viewer/graphics program? Share your experiences with us in the comments. Image: flikr Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Related posts
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| Digital Video Formats and Video Conversion Explained Posted: 10 Jul 2009 10:00 AM PDT
As for other video files – times evolve. The same filesize that allowed us to watch mediocre quality AVIs in the past, now allows us to store HD 720p MP4s. Technology moves on, and so should you. Converting your video files isn’t always easy. Although, more free apps that can handle the job hit the market every year, there are a lot of technical gibberish involved. If you want to know what you’re doing in the process, read on for a section-oriented guide with some easy-to-grasp, practical information about the concept and the different factors of video compression. Video Converting in a nutshell, if you will. Video Containers
The container is designed to store the different data types. These include audio, video, and sometimes even subtitles. They’re like the boxes in which we put our candy, or the cars in which we drive our kids around. There’s a great comparison of these container formats and their respective restrictions on Wikipedia. Note that the biggest difference between these containers lies in the support they give for underlying bits of information. Different containers provide support for different audio and video compressions. Some will enable the inclusion of multiple audio, or subtitle tracks, where others will allow only one, or none at all. If you want to add subtitles to an AVI or WMV file, you might have to burn them into the picture. Video/Audio CodecsThe real difference between most video files relies less on the used container (and if so, only by means of restriction), but more on the video or audio codec – what’s in the box. The video codec defines how the information is processed. Some of the most popular video codecs include
You should remember that the content, or the way the content is stored is not always defined by the container, although it’s often limited (e.g. some containers support multiple audio streams, whereas AVI only supports one). As a result, there are several different available combinations between containers and codecs.
Different codecs make for different sound or picture quality in relation to file size. The most famous and most often used are the AVI containers, with the DivX or (free) XviD codec (but between you and I – they’re a tad outdated and have a horrible quality/filesize ratio). I highly recommend using the uprising x264 codec (which has a delicious quality/filesize ratio). You can use it with a MKV container if you’re planning to use multiple audio and subtitle tracks, or else with a MP4 container. The MP4 container only supports one video and audio layer, but has a higher support rate and can be played on iPods, PSPs and most of the newer mobile phones as well. BitrateA bitrate defines the speed of the data transfer. In terms of video, this means more data is included in a shorter audio/visual interval. Most often, you can leave the bitrate as is, or play a little with it if you’re the adventurous type. Higher bitrate means a bigger datastream, so for the ultimate quality/filesize ratio, your bitrate shouldn’t be too low (which removes people from your car), nor too high (buying a bigger car than you actually need). In a lot of applications, it’s also possible to calculate the bitrate of a movie by providing a target size. This allows you to get the best quality out of your video, while staying under a set file size. Multiple PassesThis is pretty self-explanatory. Multiple passes defines how many times the application will process the entire film to reach the end result. These days, a two-pass encoding is standard.
Obviously, when working with multiple-pass encoding, it will take longer to convert your video. If your system’s equiped with a quad-core processor, this won’t be the most of your worries, but with an older computer, you’ll better run it at night or when you’re off to the pub. Conversion ToolsThere are a lot of applications that will do the job and MakeUseOf has reviewed some great, free ones in the past. Be sure to check out Handbrake – which is available for Windows, Mac and Linux – if you want to convert your DVDs to video files. For file-to-file conversions, take a look at Will Muellers Top Free Media Converters For Windows or Varun’s article on Linux video convertors. We hope you’ve learned from this guide, and will be able to process your files to a format that’s easier to handle and share. If you found this article interesting, be sure to check other MakeUseOf articles on movies, converting and surrounding topics, like how to add subtitles to your movies. If there’s anything you want to ask, or anything you want to share with us or your fellow MakeUseOf readers, the comments section below is open for everyone with a keyboard and a social mind. 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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| Make Quick & Professional Looking Videos With Windows Movie Maker (Part Two) Posted: 10 Jul 2009 08:00 AM PDT
There’s a lot more you can do with Movie Maker so I am just going to focus on the ones that enable you to bang out a good quality video. I’ll let you experiment with the other stuff yourself. If you want to see some live examples of what I am about to show you, you can check out my video blog which has most of these features in them. So last time, we ended the article with the footage having been dragged over from the top of the screen to the storyboard below.
If you press “show timeline”, you’ll see another view of the clips. This is the view you will need to look at if you want to add anything extra such as music, credits and extra footage in the right places:
At the top of the screenshot, you will see two little magnifying glasses (one with a plus and one with a minus). The plus one zooms in and gives you the timeline in a more detailed time frame. At the moment you can see the time being split up into 5 second intervals. Zooming in, you can have the timeline split up into one second intervals. Again, that’s good for inserting extra features at exactly the right moment of the movie. The minus magnifying glass zooms back out into bigger time chunks. To edit, take one clip at a time. Click on the “show storyboard” view and then click on the clip. It will immediately show up in the media player at the top:
When you press “play” and the footage starts rolling, a small button will then activate (shown by the red arrow in the screenshot above). This button is your editing button. When you get to the point where you want to remove a piece of footage, press the editing button. The footage will then be split in two and a new clip will be created. Keep that clip rolling till you get to the end of the part you want to remove. Click the button again and again it will be split. This results in a clip in the middle which is the piece you don’t want. Now, right-click and select “delete” to remove it from your storyboard. Repeat with other parts of the footage until you have removed all the embarrassing scenes and drunken rants from your movie masterpiece. It’s a bit difficult to explain this. It’s one of those things that will become apparent once you start doing it. It would be an excellent idea to backup your footage before starting the editing. That way, you can start over if you make a mistake. The next thing might be to improve the quality of the picture or the sound. You may have filmed a scene in poor lighting or the audio might be a little faint. Movie Maker provides some options for improving things like that. Click on the clip you want to alter and then right-click. A little menu will pop up. Choose “Video Effects”.
You’ll then see options for changing the clip. Some of them are very Photoshop-like such as “chalk and charcoal” but the main ones you should focus on are the brightness options, fade in and out, and slow down & speed up.
Just make your options and save. Now, replay the clip and you should see your changes. If you want to change the audio volume, click on the clip you want to alter and then press the audio button on the far left. Increase or decrease as desired. Remember to keep saving all your changes.
Now the credits. You can enter credits anywhere in the video but normally you would see them at the beginning and the end. So let’s do the start credits first. Go to storyboard view and click on the first clip. At the top menus, choose Tools–>Titles and credits. You will then see this.
Choose the first one and you will then get boxes to type your credits in :
The options are self-explanatory and as you do each one, the changes are immediately shown on the media player so you can see if they look the way you want them to. You have a variety of animations to choose from and you can change the font style and background colours. When it is finished, the credits will automatically be inserted into your story board. If it is in the wrong place, just click and drag the clip with your mouse to wherever you want it to go.
To do the end credits, just go to Tools–>Titles and credits again and choose the end credits option. Then repeat as before. The one limitation of the end credits is that you are not able to put too much text in it. So no long thank you’s can be inserted! There are three other main options to import material into your movie. Music (more on that in a moment), photos and other movie material. By inserting photos, you can perhaps put some music to it and have a musical montage! If you want to insert a clip from another movie file, just import it from your computer and drag it into the appropriate position in your storyboard. The last option I am going to tackle here is the music. You first have to edit your MP3 or WMA file in something like Audacity. You can get lots of copyright-free public domain music over at the Internet Archive and you then need to edit the file down to the correct length. Movie Maker allows you to fade in and fade out or you can put the fading in via Audacity. It’s up to you. To insert the music, go to “timeline view” and you’ll see an area below the pictures for music (audio/music). Next, import the music file into Movie Maker and wait till the file appears at the top of the screen. At this point, it’s a good idea to zoom in with the positive magnifying glass until you have one second intervals. Now drag the music file down into the “audio/ music” section until you have it at exactly the correct start and end positions.
When the music is in the right place, save it and play it back in the media player to make sure that it is all correct. Finally, it’s time to export the video file. Go to File—>Save movie file in the top menu and you will have to make some selections as to the file name and where you want to put it in your computer. When you are finished and clicked “start”, it will begin transferring the saved movie file to your computer in WMV format. It is normally quite fast (5 minutes or less for me). And that’s really it. As I said, there are other options and features (such as subtitles and narration) but I’ll let you discover them on your own. I just wanted to cover the basics to make a decent video but I’m sure you will find all the other stuff you can do. Or you can check Microsoft’s webpage on how to do stuff in Movie Maker. How do you find Movie Maker? Is it one of the best in your opinion or does another program do it better? Having problems working out any of the features? If so, let us know in the comments. **UPDATE** It has been brought to my attention that the Portable Movie Maker which was initially featured in this and the last article has a file which is being flagged by AVG as a virus. It is not a virus in my version of the program (which is how I didn't find out about it before the publication of part one) but a subsequent check of a new download of the app does indeed reveal the file is being flagged by AVG. To be on the safe side, all links and mentions of the portable app have been removed from this article. If you have already downloaded it, I suggest you delete it to be safe and use the full installed PC version of Movie Maker instead. Or at the very least scan your copy with a virus checker. Normally we thoroughly virus check everything before publication. However, since I downloaded the portable app several months ago and AVG initially passed it as safe, this one got past me. I apologise. 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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| Find Recently Available Or Deleted Domain Names with JustDropped Posted: 10 Jul 2009 06:00 AM PDT
Luckily, I have a resource for you that can conduct a domain name search for those which were recently released or deleted. People forget to renew domains or companies go out of business. With JustDropped, we can which domains have become available in the last day, week or even hour. The site is very easy to use but it does require registration. But as always, you can check out BugMeNot for a user name and password. If you will be using this service constantly, I suggest registering for your own set of credentials.
As you can see, the search engine has lots of available options. I started with filling in the “Domain should contain” field and put in a word I wanted in my domain name. Then, I chose the check box that says “contains only words”. Next, I made the maximum length 15 characters and then I clicked on the Domain Availability drop-down list.
I like to use Deleted so that I can see what I can buy right now. Choose your extensions that you want to search for, I strictly use .com. So my options looked like this:
Finally, hit the Show The Domains! button at the bottom and you will see the results from the domain name search on screen, like so:
It pulled up a list with more than 2000 items, and that is the maximum number of results displayed. But what I like to do is create a search and then have JustDropped email me a text file with all the names. I can then go through them in Excel. To do this, all you have to do is click this button at the bottom of your results page:
That emails me a list that looks something like this:
To me, this is an invaluable domain name search tool. They even offer some more paid services besides domain searching. But we won't go into that here. Do you have a free tool you use to help you find domain names? If you do we would love to hear about it in the comments! Haven’t got a clue for your new domain name? Check out 6 Domain Generators To Find That Killer Domain Name. From our directory, take a look at DomainTyper and BustaName. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Related posts
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There are many reasons why one would want to convert their videos. More so if we’re talking about DVDs. Sure, they’re the favourite food of your DVD player, but they’ve got a huge filesize and are impractically subdivided. To be honest, the only reason we’re still using the format is because everyone keeps buying DVD players. The VOB format is incredibly outdated, and several years behind on current encoding development.
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