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• Cool Websites and Tools [July 22]
• How To Start Your Own Internet Radio Station With Shoutcast
• Discover What is The Most Popular Type of Music on Twitter With The Hype Machine
• Technology Explained: How Does Wireless Internet Work?
• 18 Great Sites To Learn A New Language
• Learn A New Language With Anki’s Flash Card System
• Cool Websites and Tools [July 21]

Cool Websites and Tools [July 22] Posted: 22 Jul 2009 05:00 PM PDT Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. All listed websites are FREE (or come with a decent free account option). No trials or buy-to-use craplets. For more cool websites and web app reviews subscribe to MakeUseOf Directory.   (1) Go2Convert – Universal image conversion tool which lets you convert an image into more than 100 different image formats including popular formats like JPEG, PNG, GIF, PhotoCD, Postscript, SVG and others. Read more: Go2Convert: Universal Image Conversion Tool (2) DontBreakTheChain – Simple online calendar that helps you accomplish your goals, especially long-term ones. You pick a goal and start marking off calendar days on which you worked toward that goal. Once marked off days accumulate, they form a visual chain of your daily accomplishments, which motivates you not to break the chain by doing incremental investments every day or week towards your goal. Read more: DontBreakTheChain: Accomplish Your Goals Like Jerry Seinfeld (3) HealthFinder – Health portal where you can find the most reliable and latest health information and news aggregated from over 1600 government and non-profit organizations. It offers personal online health tools (online checkups, menu planners, health calculators etc.), healthy living guides, videos and podcasts on a wide range of health topics and provides links to organizations and health services nationwide. Read more: HealthFinder: Get Latest Health Information & News (4) PDFind – PDF search engine for finding all sorts of  PDF documents such as application forms, official documents, rental agreement templates, manuals, ebooks etc. Read more: PDFind: PDF Document Search Engine (5) PDFNewspaper – Web page to PDF converter that lets you create PDFs from web content. The application can extract text content from provided URLs and RSS feeds and present it in an easy-to-read printable format. Read more: PDFNewspaper Web Page To PDF Converter Submit Your Web App   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 makeuseof extra #27 (44) Finally Stick To Your Resolutions With StickK (27) Cool Websites and Tools [May 9'th] (8) Cool Websites and Tools [May 8'th] (8) Cool Websites and Tools [May 7'th] (12)

How To Start Your Own Internet Radio Station With Shoutcast Posted: 22 Jul 2009 03:01 PM PDT Internet radio is, quite possibly, one of the more interesting methods of listening to music. As of this writing, there are approximately 30,000 broadcasting SHOUTcast radio stations – all broadcasting a unique playlist of songs or other content. We’re going to show you how to start your own Internet radio station with SHOUTcast – and help you set up a player on your website. To start off your own Internet radio station, you’ll need the following:  SHOUTcast Radio DNAS server, Winamp, and the SHOUTcast Radio DSP Plugin. Also note that there are various legal implications for playing copyrighted works, which you can read at the bottom of the SHOUTcast download page. Setting up the SHOUTcast Server Download and install the SHOUTcast Radio DNAS server. Browse over to C:\Program Files\SHOUTcast\ and open sc_serv.ini in your favorite text editor (I prefer Notepad++). You’ll need to edit a couple values: On line 21, edit the MaxUser value. The comment above it tells you how to calculate your possible number of listeners – take the upload rate of your connection in kbps and divide it by the bitrate you intend to broadcast at. For example, my upload speed is approximately 993kbps, and if I wanted to broadcast at 96kbps, I could fit in roughly 10 listeners at once. On line 29, choose a password for the Password value. This will be used so Winamp can connect to your server, and for the web administration. On line 37, PortBase can be left alone unless you have an existing server that utilizes port 8000/8001. Download and install Winamp. Make sure to uncheck any offers to change your search engine, etc. Download and install the SHOUTcast Radio DSP plugin. Open Winamp, head to Options > Preferences, then scroll down to DSP/Effect under Plug-ins. Click on Nullsoft SHOUTcast Source DSP and a small window should open: Switch to the Output tab and under Address put “localhost” without the quotes. For Port use 8000 unless you changed the value in step 2, and Password uses the password you configured in step 2: On the same tab, click where it says Yellowpages and configure the settings, which should be fairly self explanatory: Switch to the Encoder tab. Set Encoder Type to MP3 Encoder, and choose an Encoder Setting. Keep in mind the number of users you intend to be able to broadcast to at once – multiply the number of users you chose in step 2 by the bitrate you select and make sure the resulting number doesn’t exceed your upload speed: Start the SHOUTcast DNAS. Make sure to let it connect to the Internet. Switch back to the Output tab on the Winamp SHOUTcast window, and hit Connect. Head back to the Winamp library, and pick a random song. The SHOUTcast plugin under Status should start showing a quickly increasing number. You’re free to close the plugin window now that it’s connected: Broadcasting on the Internet At this point, your server is accessible anywhere on your local network. You’ll need to port forward to make it Internet accessible, and there are a few solutions to get your broadcast playing on a webpage. You’ll need to port forward ports 8000 and 8001 to your local computer. If you need help port forwarding, select a router from this list, and select ShoutCast when choosing an application. To find the port you need to forward to, follow the first step of Ryan’s FreeProxy article here. To verify that your server appears on the Internet, switch to the SHOUTcast server window, and wait for the following to appear: [yp_add] yp.shoutcast.com added me successfully If it fails for any reason, see the error it provides, double check the steps, and consult this forum thread if all else fails. Embedding in a Webpage Assuming everything has worked perfectly up to this point, we’re assuming you need a way for people to listen from a webpage. For all of this to work, you’ll also need to grab your external IP address, which you can find at WhatIsMyIP. There are a couple of solutions at this point: WaveStreaming Player: This player requires you give them a name and an email address – but it’s pretty straightforward and requires no editing of code: Once they give you the code, just copy and paste anywhere you want the player to appear. StreamSolutions.co.uk Embedded Player Generator: Another simple solution, but doesn’t ask for your name or email. Simply give your station URL and port as directed, and select a version of the player. Note that this player is rather unwieldy in Firefox if the appropriate plugin is not installed. Minicaster: Download Minicaster and unzip the archive. Edit minicaster.xml in your favorite text editor. Replace all the code in the file with the following, replacing your_ip_address, your_port, your_website_url, and Your Title Here: <?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”iso-8859-1″ ?> <config version=”1T” xmlns=”http://www.draftlight.net/dnex/config/ns/1T/”> <mp3cast> <mount>http://your_ip_address:your_port/;</mount> <website>your_website_url</website> <title>Your Title Here</title> </mp3cast> <init autoplay=”0″ volume=”80″ reload=”5″ xfade=”0″ /> </config> Upload minicaster.xml, minicaster.swf, and to be utterly simple, EXAMPLE2.html. You could alternatively embed the following code in a web page that shares the same directory (or edit the parts in bold to reflect directory structure): <object id=”fmp256″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” data=”minicaster.swf” width=”180″ height=”70″> <param name=”movie” value=”minicaster.swf” /> <param name=”wmode” value=”transparent” /> <div> <h4>Minicaster Radio Playhead</h4> <p>To listen you must <a href=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer/” title=”Click here to install the Flash browser plugin from Macromedia”>install Flash Player</a>. Visit <a href=”http://www.draftlight.net/dnex/mp3player/minicaster/” title=”Draftlight Networks”>Draftlight Networks</a> for more info.</p></div> </object> That’s about it to starting a basic SHOUTcast server. If you have any comments or questions, please direct them below.  Also, let us know where to find your newly created radio station so we can come over and listen! Image Credit : LoopZilla. 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 Build The Perfect Music Playlist With MixtapeMe (7) 10 Really Cool Free Blackberry Applications (20) Using Your Linux Computer As A Media Server (Part 2) (14) The 5 Best Open-Source Social Networking Software (53) The 3 Best Online Radio Players For Your Desktop (11)

Discover What is The Most Popular Type of Music on Twitter With The Hype Machine Posted: 22 Jul 2009 01:01 PM PDT The Billboard charts for music are all well and good, but odds are, you’ve already heard of all of those bands. To sort through the rest to find the good stuff, though, will take you about 39 years. Whatever will you do? Increasingly, you’ll turn to Twitter. Twitter is rapidly becoming a place for people to share and discuss music, and is a great way to find new and interesting things to listen to. Lots of artists are active on Twitter, as are countless fans. But Twitter presents a new problem: how do you weed through that to find the good stuff? Well, for a long time, according to The Hype Machine, a tracker of popular music around the Web, there was no good answer. There were answers, sure, but none did what they were supposed to do. So The Hype Machine created the Twitter Music Chart, a brand-new way of tracking what is the most popular type of music in the Twitterverse. It’s the Billboard Hot 100 meets what you actually care about – a winning combination, in my book. The Twitter Music Chart is created based on a very particular formula, simply described on the website: “Each tweet gets points based on the user’s influence, then we add them up to find what’s hot in the past 3 days.” This is a novel, and smart, way of creating the charts. It’s not just measuring what people are talking about (though it’s certainly doing that) – it’s figuring out how many people are likely to be listening to a song that got tweeted. If Ashton Kutcher tweets a song, odds are some of his 2.5 million followers are going to listen to it – thus, it gets more points from The Hype Machine than if I tweeted it. When you go to the Twitter Music Chart, you’ll see the most popular songs on Twitter over the last three days. You can see the title and artist of the song, who originally tweeted it, who else has tweeted it, the number of points it got (the number used by The Hype Machine to figure out where the song belongs), and even gives you a chance to listen to the song. If you click on a song, it’ll take you to a page that lets you share the song on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere, as well as see more of who’s talking about it and how to buy it. If you vote for the track on Twitter, it’ll immediately get added to the votes on the Twitter Music Chart. The biggest problem is that the list is only pulled from, and The Hype Machine only cares about, links from Twitter to The Hype Machine. Because of that, the list tends to be very niche-heavy, but I’ll say I still loved a lot of the music that came up. Tons of remixes and mashups, as well as some old classics – the music really runs the gamut. If you’ve got an account with The Hype Machine, you can log in to favorite a particular song to your account, for easy access later. Otherwise, pretty much everything on the page is available to you. Across the bottom of the screen lives the player, where you can play, pause, or even buy a track from a variety of sources. If you’re a Twitter user, you can follow the Hype Machine Twitter Account for tweets of the latest popular songs – delivering the popular stuff right into your Twitter stream. One other thing I enjoyed about the Twitter Music Chart was the link, on the right side of the page, to check how many points The Hype Machine would give you for a tweeted song. It’s another measure of your Twitter influence, but is fun to cross-check with all the other people promoting songs. It’s not a perfect chart, and nothing will be until it deals with all the music around Twitter, but it’s a great step in the right direction, and a cool way to find new music online. What other online music charts are out there? 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 Scoopler – Cool Real Time Search Tool for Twitter (12) Four Free Sites to Share Your Music On Twitter (15) 8 Most Useful Plugins For Gnome-Do (6) 8 Adobe AIR Apps that DON’T Suck (45) 5 Unique Websites with Very Useful Tag Clouds (14)

Technology Explained: How Does Wireless Internet Work? Posted: 22 Jul 2009 11:01 AM PDT In my role supporting SCADA units in the field, I’ve often been asked how does Wireless Internet work. I usually answer with the question, “Which kind of wireless Internet?” Some people say that WiFi is wireless Internet, some think of radio-based Internet access as wireless, some even think of satellite Internet access as wireless. Then there is cellular based Internet access as well. At that point, you guessed it, glazed over eyes and wandering away. Please don’t do that – I’ll get to the point soon. Real wireless Internet access is most accurately described as the kind that is based on radio frequencies. You might see homes with the little white rectangular box mounted near their eaves trough. Those are folks with Wireless Internet Access. Let’s work this from the Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) to your computer. From your ISP there will either be cabling or a radio transmitter that will relay signals to a tower. It may go through several towers before it gets to your home, or you might be close enough that you catch it off the first one. See, the challenge with wireless Internet service is that it should be line-of-sight. That means that if you were to put your head in the middle of the receiver and look straight ahead, you have to be able to see the tower. (I do NOT recommend doing this since those signals could be less-than-healthy for you.) Once the signal makes it to your nearest tower, it then travels directly to your receiver.  From your receiver, it will go over ordinary networking cable (RJ-45) to your modulator/demodulator (you know it as a modem). When it is modulating, it is turning your outgoing information into something that the wireless network understands. When it is demodulating, it is turning the signal into something your computer will understand. Clear as mud? I thought so. Here’s a picture. As I said before, this is all done with radio frequencies. Do you have a cordless telephone? It will probably have numbers on it that read something like 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz, 5.2 GHz or 5.7 GHz.? These are the radio frequencies in which your cordless phone operates. Well, so does wireless Internet! The WISP’s use these frequencies because they don’t require a license to do so. Licenses cost money and come with severe restrictions, so why wouldn’t you use public frequencies? Ah hah! I heard someone say ’security’! You are correct. Yet communications over these frequencies are acceptably secure. That’s because encryption is added to the signal. They take something that someone might possible be able to unravel, put it through encryption and, voila, secure Internet signal. Well, as secure as it can be anyway. DES encryption is commonly used. Now, I hear someone asking why there are different frequencies. Think of them like highways – too many cars on it and everything comes to a standstill. So we use more than one highway. Something else to consider with wireless Internet is that the frequencies also offer different attributes. Have you noticed that you can’t take your new 5.2 GHz cordless phone three doors down and still be able to talk on it? Yet when you are in your house the clarity of voices on it beat your old 900Mhz phone easily. It’s similar with wireless Internet. Looking at Motorola’s Canopy receivers, you’ll notice that the 900 Mhz receiver has an effective range of up to 40 miles! Then the 2.4GHz receiver is limited to about 5 miles. That’s a huge difference! Go all the way up to the 5.7 Ghz receiver and we’re down to a measly 2 miles. However, the 900 Mhz receiver is more likely to have its signal interfered with by other signals out there. So, your choice, range or quality of signal? Choose wisely. Are you currently using stationary wireless a.k.a broadband wireless? Like it? Hate it? Does this article help you to understand better what is going on with it? Let us know, down below! 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 Find Totally Free Unlimited Internet Access Almost Anywhere (6) Measure Wi-Fi Signal Strength at Your Home with HeatMapper (4) How To Turn An Old Router Into A Wireless Bridge (33) How To Set Up Your Own Secured Wi-Fi Hotspot (9) How To Secure Your Wireless Network Connection (19)

18 Great Sites To Learn A New Language Posted: 22 Jul 2009 09:01 AM PDT In Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, interstellar travelers had a little fish, called a Babelfish, that they could slip into their ear and make them instantly literate in any language. We normal, boring humans, however, do not have this luxury, which is why we must rely on the internet. Although there are endless resources to learn languages on the web, it is often difficult to find quality websites that offer structured lesson plans for free. I, however, have scrounged the murky depths of the web to bring you the following, resource-packed sites; may they be the Babelfish for your future forays. BBC Languages BBC Languages’ site is very aesthetically pleasing, even though the organization is a bit confusing. The site is aimed at travelers, who only need to have a basic knowledge of a few key phrases in order to stay in a foreign country. Thus, BBC Languages offers “Quick Fix Phrases” in 36 languages to aid the weekend traveler in surviving abroad. However, for those inclined to pursue either French, Spanish, German, or Italian further, BBC Languages offers a total of six 12-week courses in those languages. BBC Languages’ use of multimedia resources, including audio recordings of dialogues and videos of people encountering language-related mishaps overseas, makes this site a worthwhile site to check out, especially if you’re learning a language to travel. LiveMocha LiveMocha is one of the most full-featured language learning sites on the web: not only does it offer structured lessons for over twenty languages, but it also links you with other users all over the globe who are learning, or already fluent in the language you are learning. As an incentive, LiveMocha uses a reputation system to encourage its users to submit flashcards and other teaching content, contact one another in order to practice speaking, and correct one another’s assignments. The only drawback of using LiveMocha is in the event you are learning a language that does not use a Latin writing system – LiveMocha does not teach other writing systems, so for languages like Korean or Mandarin, you are on your own. Check out Saikat’s review of LiveMocha here. Babbel Babbel’s premise is similar to that of LiveMocha – community driven learning. However, akin to previously mentioned Busuu, Babbel only offers Spanish, French, German, and Italian, and does not have LiveMocha’s structure. Babbel teaches mostly vocabulary, and offers a very limited set of grammar lessons and writing exercises. However, when it comes to teaching vocabulary, Babbel is very thorough: it offers almost ten different ways to learn words, including “Listen and Match,” and “Slideshow.” Like LiveMocha, Babbel also offers a chat, but rather than being one-on-one, Babbel offers five different chat rooms in the languages it teaches. In addition, Babbel hosts its own forum for users to interact and help each other learn. Foreign Services Institute The courses offered by the Foreign Services Institute were created by the United States Government and geared largely towards developing a verbal command for any particular language. All of the languages that FSI offers come with either a scanned textbook,  a large number of audio lessons, or both. Some of the more popular languages even come with a workbook. In terms of solid material, FSI has the most usable content, but its lack of social features that allow you to interact and practice with other people is a major drawback, at least for me. However, if you’re not me, and would rather not have a social component to your language-related pursuits, then that shouldn’t bother you at all. So today, I’ve introduced to you a few useful websites that will kickstart your language-learning adventures. However, the above sites may not be enough for you knowledge-hungry cosmopolitans out there, so indulge yourself in the following, language-specific links. Spanish Study Spanish - Best used in conjunction with Babbel, Study Spanish is great with grammar, but very limited with vocabulary. Voices in Spanish- A Spanish Podcast – for intermediate to advanced students. Learn Spanish at About.com – A conglomeration of other articles, the highlight being lessons on Spanish culture. Chinese Min Multimedia – Although the main page is a bit disorganized, the lessons are quite structured. Each has embedded audio, practice worksheets, and homework. Chinese Tools – Grammar lessons, in addition to useful tools for writing in pinyin, converting between simplified and traditional, etc. CRIENGLISH – Every lesson comes with a flash video, a review of difficult points, vocab, cultural tips, and more. French French Language School – Very well organized grammar lessons, but lacking interactive exercises. The French Tutorial - Lacks exercises, but the lessons are downloadable as a printer-friendly PDF textbook. Japanese Learn The Kana – Uses cute image association tricks to help students learn Hiragana and Katakana. Nihongo o Narau – A great collection of resources, including Japanese songs, to help you learn and practice Japanese. Italian Learn Italian at About.com – A collection of articles teaching various points of Italian grammar and vocabulary. Italian Language School - The most complete, free Italian lessons I can find; comes with podcasts too! German Deutsch Lernen - 34 German grammar lessons (10 beginner and 24 advanced), accompanied by exercises and tests DW-World – An impressive range of interactive lessons categorized by difficulty, and a progress meter for each lesson! Whew, that was a lot of links. In any case, you should now have no excuse not to play around with the links and learn something new. If links don’t cut it for you, check out previously covered AIR application Popling , which pops up vocabulary words in your chosen language, or watch some subtitled music videos! Are you dabbling in any languages? Do you have a tried and true site for learning languages? What do you think is the best method to learn a new language? Let us know in the comments! Almost everybody claims to speak English, so I wonder where people can find any chic at all in this language. And yet. Some Germans are especially disconcerting when they show off their English and look back at their fellow Germans with a satisfied grin. 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 Learn A New Language With Anki’s Flash Card System (2) Websites For Students: 10 Online Learning Tools (59) Students: Free Apps To Help You Excel at School [Mac only] (25) Practice Your Vocabulary With VerbaLearn (12) LiveMocha – Smell The Coffee & Learn The Lingo (18)

Learn A New Language With Anki’s Flash Card System Posted: 22 Jul 2009 07:00 AM PDT Have you ever needed to teach yourself something? Maybe you need to memorize something and you are having trouble with it? Well, Anki helps you learn and memorize vocabulary of a new language through the magic of flash cards. Yup, Anki is billed out as a spaced repetition system (SRS) or in plain English – a flash card system. It works on almost every operating system. I downloaded the application from here, installed and ran it on a Vista workstation and I was greeted with this screen after launching it: Very interesting! I can not only create my own deck of flash cards, I can also download the decks other people have already created! I love saving time. Let's see what's available. Alright, a lot of Japanese and Chinese language flash cards — that should be expected because of the nature of the product. Those are very visual languages. Not exactly what I was looking for but let’s use this English Vocabulary guide I selected in the above screenshot as a jump off point. I downloaded it and it opened automatically. I hit ‘Start Reviewing’ and I was off. Wow that was a little over my head.  Maybe a week of these and I will start writing articles that will make everyone grab a dictionary! You can mark a word as Hard, Good or Easy and that selects when it will be shown in the set again. Click ‘Again’ to show it soon and ‘Hard’ for 12 hours, ‘Good’ for 4 days and ‘Easy’ means 8 days. Do you have a favorite learning technique? Share it with us in the comments! Related posts 18 Great Sites To Learn A New Language (1) Websites For Students: 10 Online Learning Tools (59) Students: Free Apps To Help You Excel at School [Mac only] (25) Practice Your Vocabulary With VerbaLearn (12) LiveMocha – Smell The Coffee & Learn The Lingo (18)

Cool Websites and Tools [July 21] Posted: 21 Jul 2009 10:06 PM PDT Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. All listed websites are FREE (or come with a decent free account option). No trials or buy-to-use craplets. For more cool websites and web app reviews subscribe to MakeUseOf Directory.   (1) FindAClub – Nifty service by 24hourfitness.com which helps you find a fitness centre near your locality or in any city if you know the zipcode. You can customize your search by choosing the amenities which you prefer in the club. The options range from sauna and basketball court to pool, tanning and many more. Read more: FindAClub: Find Local Fitness Centres (2) FineReaderOnline – New web based image text extractor using which you can extract text from a scanned image in variety of formats (BMP, PCX, DCX, JPEG, PNG, TIFF etc.) and convert it into a most commonly used editable document formats such as Microsoft Word, Excel, RTF, and TXT, or PDF. Read more: FineReaderOnline: Web Based Image Text Extractor (3) BMI Calculator - Online calculator that lets you find out whether you are considered normal weight, overweight or obese. Just enter your weight and height measures into the fields and hit "Compute BMI". Read more: BMI Calculator: Find Out Your Body Mass Index (4) KissTunes -This application lets you play tunes using your keyboard and instantly record them online. Each recorded tune is automatically saved at its own URL, which you can visit later to play the tune. Read more: KissTunes: Play Tunes & Record Them Online (5) WhitePages – Free web based address and phone number look up service that lists numbers and addresses of 180 million US adults. Read more: WhitePages: Address and Phone Number Look Up Submit Your Web App   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 Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Related posts makeuseof extra #27 (44) Finally Stick To Your Resolutions With StickK (27) Cool Websites and Tools [May 9'th] (8) Cool Websites and Tools [May 8'th] (8) Cool Websites and Tools [May 7'th] (12)

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