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- Cool Websites and Tools [July 13]
- How to Morph Into Your Favorite Celebrity Lookalike
- Create Your Own Digg-Like Social News Site With Slinkset
- The Best Free Algebra Homework Help Websites
- Find Out What’s Hot Right Now On The Web With OneRiot
- Save, Restore, Fix A Broken MBR with MBRWizard [Windows]
| Cool Websites and Tools [July 13] Posted: 13 Jul 2009 04:00 PM PDT
(1) ColorSchemeDesigner – Online color scheme picker for your website or any other design project. The best thing about this tool is that it gives you a huge number of options both while choosing the color scheme and while previewing it. Color options range from mono, complement, triad etc, adjusting the scheme for brightness and contrast and previewing it in different formats, there are many other options to choose from. Read more: ColorSchemeDesigner: Online Color Scheme Picker (2) Meeting-Ticker – If you ever need a meeting cost meter to calculate the exact cost of your meetings, check out the Meeting-Ticker. It works just like a taxi meter, you simply enter the hourly wage and set the time. The meter will start as soon as you push the "Start" button. The Meeting-Ticker can be used to calculate the costs of both one-to-one or group meetings while they take place. Read more: Meeting-Ticker: Meeting Cost Meter (3) ThePhotoStream – Website which delivers buzz and newsworthy content to the users through a rich, eye-opening photo interface. If you are done reading news as a bunch of text then you will find this site's visual interface to be appealing. The home page of the site shows images of different sizes displayed together. When you hover the mouse on an image, you can see the news content on the footer of the page. Read more: ThePhotoStream: Get News In A Rich Photo Interface (4) TrackMyPeople – Free online time tracker that allows you to easily track your time, as well as your employees' if you manage a team. The multi-user functionality is what separates this from other such free tools like Toggl, TimeTracker, MyHours etc. It also offers cool features like integrated calendar, extensive graphical reports, desktop widgets and a comprehensive online time-sheet for you and your employees. Read more: TrackMyPeople: Online Multi-User Time Tracker (5) UnifiedSearch - Firefox add-on that unifies popular search engines like Bing, Wolfram, Wikipedia, Delicious and Stumbleupon in one place and lets you compare side-by-side with Google. Once you have it installed, simply go to Google and search for something. On the search results page, you should see a toolbar displaying different search engines. Clicking on the particular engine will open results from that engine next to the search results from Google. Read more: UnifiedSearch: Unified Search Engine Comparison Tool
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 Morph Into Your Favorite Celebrity Lookalike Posted: 13 Jul 2009 02:00 PM PDT
Let's see how it works in 3 easy steps.
Step 1: Upload PhotoIn order to save and share your cool morph creations, you do need to register at the site. With 30 million+ registered members and a clearly defined 'no spam, no sharing' privacy policy, I had no qualms registering with MyHeritage.com.
To begin, rather than using my photo for the morph, I decided to use MJ since that was how the whole idea started in the first place. Clicking on the 'Celebrity Morph' tab takes you to the following screen where you upload your photo.
After you upload your photo, it runs its face recognition magic, and you are presented with the best matching celebrity lookalike.
With over 4000 celebrities in its database, the site is sure to find someone you like and look alike! You can browse between a few matching celebrities for your target using the little green arrows. I usually found at least 6-10 choices when experimenting with photographs of different people. I chose another influential African American celebrity idol whose interview of MJ is fondly remembered by many people:
Step 2: Prepare MorphClick Next to go to the next step, where we prepare the morph. Celebrity Morph automatically sets reference points on the eyes. All you have to do is add a few, so that the morph becomes realistic. Click the '+' button to add points, and the hand icon to position them correctly. For best results, choose the borders of the face, the corners of the mouth, and the tip of the nose, like this:
You can choose the kind of output you want using the slider at the bottom: a still photo, a brief video, or a long video up to 150 frames. Click Preview to view the video: Step 3: Publish MorphWithout an easy way to save and share this with friends, this exercise would almost be pointless. Fortunately, the guys at Celebrity Heritage seem to know this as well, since they've made it very simple to share your morph video on various social networks.
If your preferred network is not there, or you wish to embed it in your own site, the 'Other' tab gives you the HTML code to embed it wherever you wish. I checked out posting to Facebook, and after the usual authorization process, it was very simple and worked flawlessly. Of course, even if you do not publish it anywhere, the site saves your morphs under your profile. You can create and play with as many morphs as you like. This can be a cool gift for your friends: take their photos, morph them into a celebrity, and surprise them! You can also use the site to create a Celebrity Collage. Simply upload your photo, select from various collage layouts, and share it. Other features are a look-alike meter to find out which parent your child resembles more, and auto-tagging people in photographs using face recognition. You might also want to check out these previously featured sites on MakeUseOf:
So who did you morph yourself into? Share with us 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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| Create Your Own Digg-Like Social News Site With Slinkset Posted: 13 Jul 2009 12:00 PM PDT
Done properly, this could be something that drives a lot of traffic to your website. The Slinkset features work perfectly (they even have a setting to ban members if they are abusing your service) and with a little fiddling of your website settings, you can have the Slinkset page to automatically redirect to the website page of your choice. Move over Digg, Mark O’Neill News is here!
Just add some feeds and the page will soon start to update with the latest posts. It doesn’t happen right away though so be patient.
When people start to comment and vote, it influences the position of the story. Stories voted “up” pushes their position more towards the top and stories voted “down”… Well, you can work it out. They get pushed to the bottom and finally buried. The commenting area resembles a bit like Reddit. As you can see in the screenshot above, there is a “submit” button for other people to submit their articles. If you are worried about spam, you can set the site to “private” or “editorial”. The first one is self-explanatory – no-one gets in without an invitation and is private to everyone else. “Editorial” is where only editors you appoint can add links. A bit more time consuming for you and your colleagues having to do all the work yourselves but this may be a good option if your page is being overrun by spam. Some other options are :
To have the page redirect to your own site, you need to alter something called the CNAME records on your website. We briefly touched on CNAME records in my last article about Google Apps. Just go to the CNAME section on your website settings and add a new record. Just tell it that the custom website URL that you make (in my case http://news.markoneill.org) is the same as your Slinkset news page. Save it and wait for the CNAME records to update (in my case, it took 20 minutes). Slinkset is so easy to set up and has become my new toy to customize endlessly. If you are interested in setting up your own social news site, you can’t get any better than Slinkset. If you have set up your own news pages, please let us know the links so we can check out your designs! Having problems getting it set up? If so, tell us what the problem is and let’s see if we can help you figure it out. 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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| The Best Free Algebra Homework Help Websites Posted: 13 Jul 2009 10:00 AM PDT
However, algebra concepts insert “unknowns” into equations and formulas that can really throw many students for a loop. Solving an equation for a factor that appears to be on the “wrong side” of the equal sign can feel like a very strange and impossible premise for those students. As usual, help is available on the Internet, and the following list are some of the best free algebra homework help websites that can make the process of learning algebra a whole lot easier. MyAlgebra – A Free Algebra Problem SolverA very simple and useful resource is the MyAlgebra online problem solver application. While this isn’t the first place a student should go for help, because it simply provides the answer to the equation, it is an excellent website for students to check their work.
Students can work through their algebra problems, and when they’ve come up with a solution that they feel is correct, they can simply enter in the equation and click “Answer.” Of course, solving for equations isn’t the only thing the application can do – there is a long list of funcions in the drop-down list to choose from.
Obviously, the most common choice will be to “solve the equation,” and the nice thing about this online application is that it converts both the problem and the solution into the same sort of format that it would appear in the textbook.
Unfortunately, “show steps” isn’t really a legitimate option, as it takes you to a website for Bagatrix, where you can purchase Algebra solving software that provides step-by-step solutions. Regardless, as an answer-checker the free online app proves very useful. Illuminations – Cool Algebra Activities and LessonsNothing is quite as frustrating for many students as trying to understand abstract concepts, and learning to do so by reading drab and boring textbooks that make you want to go to sleep. Luckily, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in the U.S. understands this problem and created a website called Illuminations that brings the subject (including algebra) to life for students.
The site includes high quality activities and lessons that cover all aspects of both math and algebra. Of all available free algebra homework help websites, this is definitely the one that’s the most fun and interesting. For lessons, you select grade levels and topics (one area is devoted to just algebra), and you get access to dozens of valuable lessons that teach important algebra concepts. However, my favorite part of the site is the “activities” area that offers some really high quality and valuable online applications that graphically show algebraic principles, such as this “pan balance” app that graphically displays what happens when you change different elements of equations.
Tutorvista – Free LessonsWhile Tutorvista isn’t technically a free site, because the primary aim is to get parents to sign up their children for an online tutor, the website does offer an entire algebra help section with well formatted lessons that teach students about the many elements of algebra, from foundation principles all the way to the more advanced topics.
Of course, if you do need tutoring for your child, you can actually submit an assignment and for an average fee of $5, a tutor will actually send back the answer in a fully worked-out step-by-step solution. However, before you start dishing out your cash for any paid tutoring, make sure to check out the next free Algebra homework help website that actually does offer many tutoring services for free. Algebra.com – Math Tutors Who Just Can’t Get EnoughOf course, the best place to get some free algebra tutoring is Algebra.com, an online community of mathematicians who are obsessed with the topic. You can turn their obsession into your child’s advantage by posting problems for the tutor community to answer. The website itself offers more lessons and information than probably any other algebra help website out there.
Just the algebra section includes pre-algebra, algebra I and algebra II – and of course there’s a quick and easy “Universal Simplifier and Solver” at the top that will either simplify or solve your algebra equations. At the top of the site, there’s a “Free Tutors” menu option that’ll take you to a section where you can either sign up to be a free tutor (a public service which gives you exposure for your tutoring business), or you can submit your own algebra questions to the tutors. There are almost a thousand active tutors – and the question/answer area is a huge community of fantastic tutors who are eager to help kids with their algebra problems. Math.com – Interactive Algebra HelpAnother valuable site filled with step-by-step instructions and lessons for students to learn the most important algebra concepts is Math.com. This site covers both the basics as well as advanced concepts under categories like “The Language of Algebra”, “Equations and Inequalities” and “Graphing Equations and Inequalities.”
The lessons at Math.com take students through an easy step-by-step “wizard,” and on each step there’s often a “show me” option students can click where the application offers examples or additional information that better explains a specific topic. It’s just like having a teacher available with instant answers to the typical questions that students often ask. Drexel University – The Math ForumThe Math Forum is a valuable public service offered by Drexel University that offers both students and teachers dozens of resources. Many of the resources are buried within internal links, but the Algebra Section alone offers classroom materials for teachers, Internet projects, public forums and even links to algebra software throughout the net.
The Math Forum is one of the largest math & algebra resources on the net, and if you can afford to donate it would be a valuable and worthy cause to contribute. Mathematics, and algebra in particular are critical skills for students to learn early on that can tremendously simplify their lives later on. Any free algebra homework help websites that exist on the Internet are very positive resources that should be promoted and applauded by everyone. Do you know of any additional algebra resources for teachers, parents or students on the Internet? Share them in the comments section below. Image credit: aussiegall 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 Out What’s Hot Right Now On The Web With OneRiot Posted: 13 Jul 2009 08:00 AM PDT
We used to say that about the rest of the Internet, but social networking has lead many of us to talk as if the rest of the blogosphere and Web has become some antiquated dinosaur of information sharing. The truth, however, is that the rest of the Web is still ridiculously fast as a source for information – if you know where to look. All those tweets and Facebook updates? They tend to come from stories or notices on the rest of the Web. But for breaking news in more than a couple of sentences, the Web is the dominant presence by far. That’s what OneRiot, a real-time search for the whole Web, is taking advantage of. Instead of tracking what people are saying, as Twitter search engines like Scoopler do, it tracks what they’re talking about.
OneRiot isn’t a traditional search engine, nor does it pretend to be. It’s not a place to find static information, or look up something interesting; it’s a place to find out who won the big game, or who got voted off of American Idol (not that I love that show or anything…). Information is sorted by timeliness as much as relevance, meaning newer material, even if it’s not the most complete source of information on a given topic, rises to the top.
You use OneRiot like you would any other search engine: go to the site and enter a search term. You can search either Web or Video (which is smart, because videos tend to be more viral than any other medium), and pick almost any topic. Underneath the search bar, there’s a list of “Trending Topics,” which tracks some of the most popular stories at the moment. Once you’ve searched, you’ll see a list of results, formatted to help you figure out what to see. The results page gives you a headline, a snippet of the page, as well as a few useful “real-time” tips: who shared it first, when it was most recently shared, and how many people have shared it. OneRiot gets these numbers from Twitter and Digg, as well as a number of popular OneRiot apps, like the Shareaholic plugin for Firefox. You can see, at a glance, how many people are talking about a story, and even expand the window to see what they’re saying.
You can see the results truly in real-time, or choose to see the “Pulse,” which lends more importance to popular stories, by clicking at the right side of the top of the results. Either see things as they’re coming in, or see what’s hot (and still pretty brand-new). On the right side of the page is the “Most Shared Today” list, sort of like the Digg frontpage. It’s got five hot stories, and is itself a great way to figure out what’s going on.
As events unfold and stories develop, it can often be hard to track what people are talking about, and what is being said about important issues. OneRiot sifts through it for you, and lets you tap into the whole popular Web to see what’s really breaking news. How do you find what’s popular and breaking on the Web? Photo: Ben Sutherland Related posts
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| Save, Restore, Fix A Broken MBR with MBRWizard [Windows] Posted: 13 Jul 2009 06:00 AM PDT
While installing the operating system, the installer takes care of writing appropriately to the first 512 bytes to allow the operating system to boot and detect partitions. Once that has been done, you do not have direct access to the MBR (which is generally not recommended). However, there are times when you need to take things in your own hand (like backing up MBR before restoring a hard disk image or an OS install, making a partition bootable, or recovering from a corrupt MBR etc), for such times there is a small utility you can use, called – MBRWizard. MBRWizard allows you to save/restore MBR, repair a corrupt MBR, you can hide/unhide hard disk partitions, make a partition bootable or delete it all together, make a flash disk bootable etc.
MBRWizard is a command line utility you can download from here. Fire up Command Prompt and browse to where you have MBRWiz.exe stored (or else add the directory to your PATH variable), type MBRWiz and you will see a list of all the options. You can then decide which option to choose according to what you are trying to accomplish. Here are a few examples. To create a backup of MBRMBRWiz /save=C:\savedMBR You can then use this backup copy to restore MBR in case you ever have to.
To restore MBR from the saved fileMBRWiz /Restore=C:\savedMBR
To see an exhaustive list of all the partitions along with attributesMBRWiz /List
To Hide a parition useMBRWiz /Hide=Yes /Disk=0 /Part=2 To delete a partitionMBRWiz /Part=2 Del You can find the complete documentation of all the options and how to use them, here. The site also lists how you can troubleshoot MBR problems when you cannot boot into the operating system. Although in such situations, you must have a way to boot from a CD, USB drive or (ahem..) floppy disk and be able to run MBRWizard. Check out how to make your own Windows Live CD, MBRWizard would be a nice utility to have on your live CD. MBRWizard is a great tool to have everything is working fine, as well as when you need to address MBR issues. You must have your favorite tools to jumpstart a problematic computer. We would love to hear about them so tell us in the comments. 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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After Michael Jackson's shocking demise, I was watching some slideshows on the web that showed his face changing over the years. I was reminded of cool morphing special effects in movies and wondered if there was any website that allowed me to morph my face into a famous celebrity. Of course, like everything else here at MakeUseOf, it had to be free. Pretty soon, I was morphing myself and my friends at a cool site, 
One of the things I have always been interested in doing is to create my own Google News / Digg-like site along with voting buttons and commenting features. Up until now, I haven’t been able to find something that I could easily integrate into my website but last night I finally found an easy solution – 
The grade level where children make the transition from math to algebra can be very easy for some students, but difficult and confusing for others. 
The blogosphere has discussed, at length, how real-time search is being affected by things like 
MBR, if you are unfamiliar, is the first sector of your hard disk. It is just 512 bytes in size, but boy are those 512 bytes important or what? The MBR is used for bootstrapping operating systems, holding the primary partition table of your disk and other important information. You take this information away and chances are you will not be able to boot the operating system.
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