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- Cool Websites and Tools [July 29]
- 6 Less Known Free Online Word Processors
- 3 Steps To Find Similar-Minded People On Flickr
- Use Hunch to Answer Your Questions & Make Decisions
- Create Your Own Top Movies of All Time List with Flickchart (FREE Invites!)
- Cool NASA Stuff: International Space Station Viewing, NASA TV, Videos and More
- Easily Kill Hung Processes on Windows with Super F4
| Cool Websites and Tools [July 29] Posted: 29 Jul 2009 06:01 PM PDT
(1) Computer Hardware Chart – If you are looking for a quick reference guide to computer hardware, check out Computer Hardware Chart. It is a useful downloadable poster that visually presents all the possible hardware parts (memory, A/V input/outputs, processors, hard drives… etc) in your computer. Read more: Computer Hardware Chart: Guide To Computer Hardware
(2) Courseopedia – College course directory that lets anyone search for college courses and programs in US. It aggregates listings from US colleges and private tutoring classes and lets others browse through all those offerings (courses, programs) from one place. Read more: Courseopedia: US College Course Directory (3) DocumentaryHeaven – Free documentary website that provides a handpicked collection of documentary films. All films can be watched online and there is no sign up. You can search for documentaries and browse them by categories such as activist, celebrity, conspiracy, mystery, war, technology… etc. Read more: DocumentaryHeaven: Free Documentary Films (4) PWNLast.fm – New online application that adds torrents to Last.FM, enabling anyone to easily download Last.FM music tracks and albums as they navigate the website. Read more: PWNLast.fm: Adds Torrents to Download Last.fm Music (5) Teambox – Cool web based project management and collaboration tool which can be used to create unlimited projects for free. It has many cool features like in-built calendar, tasks, pages and project chat rooms, all within a really clean user interface. Read more: Teambox: Open Source Project Collaboration & Management
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. Related posts
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| 6 Less Known Free Online Word Processors Posted: 29 Jul 2009 03:01 PM PDT
Google Docs and Adobe Buzzword are good moves to bring a lot of office documents online. Online word processing applications offer distinct advantages such as mobility, a paperless office, increased collaboration, and file security. Of course the biggest ace of online word processors over traditional software is the big elephant in this tight economy – COST. We all know the big players in this space of online word processing. We have Google Docs, Adobe Buzzword, Zoho Writer, and Thinkfree. Let us look at 6 more fab and free online word processors.
Writeboard is a text collaboration application from 37Signals. Although it does not have usual formatting tools found in other online word processors, this beast has excellent collaboration and revision tools authors, editors, and PR folks will love. After writing your text, you can invite other users to view and edit your copy. With Writeboard, other users can revert back to old versions of your document without fear of deleting or overwriting something. You can also compare between revisions with marked and highlighted changes. Writeboard is a useful word processing tool for multiple collaborators and writing teams. Check out full feature list and additional screenshots here.
Peepel WebWriter and WebSheet make up the Peepel Online Office Suite. Peepel lets you import your documents and spreadsheets into your Peepel account so that you can share files and work on them with your team. Peepel also offers a RSS feed update for revisions of your shared documents. Peepel’s contact manager will organize your members so that you can easily invite them to do specific tasks.
Distraction-free writing is an old theme for GTD workers and folks wanting to escape the temptation of Facebook and other time wasters. Somehow, the idea of having a blank black screen with green letters much like the old DOS-based office software became the formula for distraction-free writing. Darkcopy is one such web app. The idea behind Darkcopy is that you need only a black screen and neon green text to write – no twitter notification, finished downloads, or antivirus status messages popping up and bothering you. You can use the full screen mode for the full distraction-free effect, then save the document as text file once you are done writing.
Writer from BigHugeLabs is similar to Darkcopy but with more options such as word count view and PDF downloading. Unlike Darkcopy, you can change the color theme if you do not want the bland green version. Register for a free account to save your documents online and retrieve them from anywhere. Have a writer's block? A link at the bottom of the page will lead to the BigHugeThesaurus to help you with word usage. The nifty tool also gives story and blog post suggestions.
Shutterborg is another minimalist word processor with some formatting tools and saving options. Shutterborg lets you open a document from the web where you can revise an exact copy of a webpage. Just call the URL of the file and edit the document in Shutterborg. Shutterborg shines with its eye-candy interface. For me, Shutterborg looks the cleanest as far as online office apps go (try it in full screen). It is also fast and feels more streamlined compared to Google Docs even if it lacks key functions like online storage. Read more on Shutterborg here. WriteWith is a simple-to-use web-based word processor with real-time collaboration tools. Like Writeboard, writers can sift through revisions with ease and assign other people to edit/revise documents. Team leaders and other members can set deadline on their tasks for a more streamlined workflow. I personally like the tagging feature of WriteWith since it organizes my files well.
Other WriteWith features include integrated chat, post-to-blog, and export options to a large number of doc formats. Google Docs is still the king of online office suites – but these word processing apps have some nice things working for them. Whether you prefer distraction-free writing or heavy collaboration work, there are definitely tools out there that do specific things better than Google or Buzzword. Which web-based processor suits you the best? Head on down below and give us your suggestions! Image Credit : isaac bowen 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 Steps To Find Similar-Minded People On Flickr Posted: 29 Jul 2009 01:01 PM PDT
Step 1 – Show off your bestNo one is ever going to know what sorts of photos you are interested in unless you get some of them online. If you take photographs regularly, upload regularly. Really, what excuses do you have?
Second only to getting the images online is making sure they can be found. I've spoken about tagging before, but perhaps an example might help?
Needless to say, your list would differ from mine. I posted this a few years ago as well, and these days I'd probably add 'roller' and 'coaster' separately as well. But the focus here is to find other people's images, so let's move on. Step 2 – Join groupsAside from searching for images in Flickr, you can search for groups. Just in case there is any confusion, a group is like a set, except that it's designed for multiple people to use. Most groups are public, but you can also restrict the membership of a group.
Search for groups that contain things you are interested in. That could be objects (like roller coasters), colours (careful with your spelling), techniques, moods… I'll be surprised if you can't find at least one Flickr group on any reasonably broad subject, and you'll generally find hundreds. Join groups. Add images. Comment on other images you find there. Go on. Step 3 – Create your own group.Eventually, you might find that you're searching for something that's too specific for a group to already exist, and you'll need to create one of your own. That's going to take a little more work, so decide if you're up for it first. Just as an example, I like to take photographs of rusty things. Peculiar I know, but I've even exhibited on the subject, so I'm definitely not alone. Anyway, I became interested specifically in images that were rusty, and also blue. At this point, feel free to substitute your own obsession. I'm going to cheat anyway, as this group already exists. I'll create a similar one for yellow rust pictures. Creation
You can see that various types of groups are possible. Given that we're looking to find people, let's make it public. Supply a name for the group, and add some idea of what it's all about. Make a decision about whether there's anything that might be in the group that kids shouldn't see. Click Next.
Decide what non-members of the group should be able to see.
Decide what to call the administrators and moderators.
You can make a whole set of choices about administration, addresses, moderation etc. Just remember you want people to join. Which leads me to the next part… InvitationsYou can use all the means at your disposal to invite folk to your new group. You can email them, send them a text from your phone, put an advertisement on national television. Whatever you like. Flickr has its own method as well, so you can easily invite your contacts. Go to the main page for your group and look at the top menu.
Click the invite Friends link, and invite anyone you think might be interested. Of course for this to be useful it assumes you already know the people who might want to join. If you don't, you need to locate some images that might fit in the group, and invite them instead. Let's switch back to my real group of blue + rust to see how this works. Basically, other than images I stumble across in Flickr, I want to know about images which are tagged with both blue and rust. You see why it's important to correctly tag your images? Click the search link on the main Flickr page, and then click on advanced search. You want something like this:
Run the search, and depending on what you're looking for you'll almost certainly get back a stack of images.
Click on one that's of interest (such as my friend Kate's wheel), and fill in the boxes…
Hit Post Comment, and you're all set. Take a look at Kate's image to see how it comes out. MaintenanceOne of the toughest parts of running a group is keeping things moving. You always want new members, more images, interesting competitions and discussions. Assign some other folk admin privileges so things don't stall if you're busy. Start conversations. The query process above is great for getting things started, but it's not great for ongoing invitations. You need a way to be automatically told when new images arrive that might suit the group. That's where we add a little more technology… The Flickr API is able to generate RSS feeds on the fly, based on a query string. Then you sign up for the RSS feed, and every few hours you get some more images to invite. How this looks depends on both your browser and your feed reader, but the way it works is fairly clear in the link. http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?tags=blue,rust&tagmode=all&lang=en-us&format=rss_200 Take a look at the query. Just replace blue and rust with whatever you want to search for, separating any additional terms with commas. And that's it. Now you have a group, some members, some images, and a way to build on it. I'd love to know if you've used any of this and if you have any other tips or tricks. Let me know in the comments. Oh, and… any chance you might want to join my group? 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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| Use Hunch to Answer Your Questions & Make Decisions Posted: 29 Jul 2009 11:01 AM PDT
Decision-making is part of our daily lives, and with our increasingly faster lifestyles, there's not enough time to carefully take into consideration every aspect of the problem. You ask how can a website help you with making decisions? At first, I wasn't at all convinced that it would manage to provide any sort of meaningful advice, but after reading up on the technology behind, I was impressed. Created by very smart geeks from MIT, namely Matt Gattis, Weiyu Zhou, Peter Coles, Will Gaybrick and Tom Pinckney, Hunch uses the concept of 'machine learning', a process that analyses patterns in order to predict – in our case, decisions. The service leverages the so-called ‘wisdom of the crowds’ by aggregating answers and information from all the users that complete the various questionnaires available.
Like any computer algorithm, Hunch's artificial intelligence gets better by time. Each day, as more and more people answer existing questions and add new topics, the A.I. has more information to relate to your profile. The same goes for your own ‘decision profile’; the more questions you answer, the better Hunch will be at offering advice. Like any A.I. though, Hunch might make some people uneasy.
While the service is based on human input, should you ultimately trust a machine with your next travel destination or camera? The Hunch team have made it clear where the revenue comes from, which represents a plus for credibility, but you can never know for sure without seeing the backend code. Are the affiliate links to stores like Amazon enough to keep a company afloat, especially in this down market?
Hunch is very community oriented – providing users with the ability to comment on questions and advice, adding pros, cons and of course, your own questions on which the community can share its 'wisdom'. You're also able to follow questions and other users, in a similar fashion to Twitter or the Facebook newsfeed, directly from your profile page. Hunch also scores high points for the Settings panel which lets you easily delete your account, saved answers and profile privacy. In tone with the summer beat (and heat for us poor guys in the northern hemisphere), you should definitely check out some of the summer related questions and answers as well as some of the great tech related topics. Personally, I've found that the topics I went through all had relevant questions and perfectly reasonable suggestions. I especially enjoyed the 'Should I buy a Mac?' one, which takes you through all the important aspects of making the decision. Even by asking yourself the questions presented, you are able to make a more informed decision. A site similar to Hunch is Aardvark which also leverages the power of user opinion to help you answer your questions. David wrote about it here. Overall, Hunch gets my strong recommendation and a spot in my bookmarks bar. Visit Hunch and don't forget to share your impressions and favorite topics 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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| Create Your Own Top Movies of All Time List with Flickchart (FREE Invites!) Posted: 29 Jul 2009 11:01 AM PDT
Flickchart is dead-simple. It shows you two movies and you pick one over the other. It then shows you two new movies, and you pick again. If you haven't seen one or both, you replace them with new ones. As you go on making your choices, Flickchart builds your own Top Movies list.
There are three kinds of choices Flickchart throws at you:
You can undo a choice you made if you want to rethink. But soon, you will find yourself with a Top 20 list that doesn't seem right. There will be a few movies that appear just because they came up in your choices sooner. There are three ways in which you can tweak your Top Movies list. 1. Re-rank a MovieTo move a movie down in your Top 20 list, select it and choose to re-rank it. For example, I am not much into chasing tornadoes, and don't like Twister in my Top 20 list. So I opted to re-rank it, and Flickchart gives me three more movies pitted against Twister.
2. Use FiltersYou can filter by top movies, genre, year, or decade. If you're interested in getting Star Wars in your list as soon as possible, the By Year option helps. Top Movies gives you the ability to pick and re-order movies within your Top 20, 50, 100, and 250 lists.
3. Remove a MovieYou can also remove a movie from Top Movies list altogether. Simply click to go to that movie's information page and click Remove From My Flickchart. Your choices for that movie will also be forgotten. Get SocialYour Top Movies list is publicly visible, even to your friends not using Flickchart (see mine). When faced with a brutal decision, you can share it with your friends via Friendfeed (Twitter and Facebook support is in the works).
For each pick, you can add your comments justifying your choice. Certain matchups can lead to hot debates and discussions. Batman Begins vs. The Dark Knight? You can join in the top discussions around popular matchups. Flickchart shows a nice chronological view of both sides. RecommendationsFlickchart gives you a list of movies you haven't seen, which are the highest ranked by other Flickchart users. Similar to Aibek's tips in What Movie Should I Watch Next, Flickchart will give you recommendations based on the community rankings.
The ChartsTop users have ranked tens of thousands of movies and have hundreds of friends. All rankings are compiled to build Best/Worst Movies of all time lists, which can be filtered by genre, year, decade, etc. For example, you can see the Best Comedy Movies of the 2000s. The more movies you rank, the greater weight your opinion has in building the global list. This is Flickchart's unique crowdsourced voting model. Netflix integration is planned as well, so you can directly add movies to your Netflix queue from within the site.
The folks behind Flickchart love MakeUseOf readers, so the first 250 people clicking this link will get instant exclusive access. You can still sign up and get an invite even if you miss the boat. A word of caution though: Flickchart is addictive. If you're a movie lover, it will keep you hooked for just one more pick. How many movies did you rank? Share your Top 20 list with us and other MakeUseOf readers 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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| Cool NASA Stuff: International Space Station Viewing, NASA TV, Videos and More Posted: 29 Jul 2009 07:01 AM PDT
However, there are hundreds of day-to-day NASA activities and even bigger achievements that we know nothing about either because it doesn't make the news or because we simply do not understand what those achievements are and what they could mean. I was in the same boat until I came across the more “Interactive” side of the NASA website. There I was just browsing the other day when I remembered it was 40 years since man first set foot on the moon. I went onto the Wikipedia page to read up on the subject before I clicked on one of the sources which was NASA's website. First it was all just news, announcements and galleries of that historic day but when I sifted past all that I was greeted by dozens of interactive features that would keep the average adult or indeed the average ten year-old, entertained for hours and educate them whilst they have some fun.
First of all, I discovered that you can watch a live video feed from inside the International Space Station called NASA TV. Upon clicking the link I assumed that I would get a fuzzy picture refreshed every two seconds or so. What I did get was a flowing video with commentary from Houston and the ability to listen to the people working in the Space Station conversing with one another. I now fully understand how the American's toilet broke and why they all had to use the Russian one. A point to note is that you may have to install a Windows media plug-in to watch the video feed. IF you don’t have it, your browser will let you know how to get it. It's also best to keep the video at it original size. Blowing it up to full screen just distorts things; after all, it is coming from space! You can also download a NASA TV widget for 'Windows Sidebar' so you can keep yourself up to date with all the action in space right here . Simply follow this link and download it. Then, you must right-click on the Windows Sidebar and select 'Add Widgets'. From the list select NASA TV and you'll have a live feed from the International Space Station showing on your desktop. There are also tons of other widgets available from NASA such as RSS updates and weather. After half an hour of watching Canadians, Russians and Americans floating upside-down I decided enough was enough and I had to check out some of the other interactive features NASA had to offer. Given the anniversary of the lunar landing has just come, a walk around on the surface of the moon seemed appealing and with the Apollo Interactive feature you can do numerous things on the virtual lunar landscape. It was created from film taken by the two pioneering astronauts 40 years ago and as such everything is an exact digital copy of what the surroundings were after the first landing. You can move to different positions around the lunar landing site, see inside the landing module, watch videos of the American Flag being planted and read the actual transcript of the conversation between the men on the moon and Houston. I thought this was one of the best features; it requires no download and is easy to use. It's also really fun.
There are other features too which let you see the recent mission to the Hubble telescope and even repairs being made to a Japanese space structure. It's all very informative and at this point I was getting a good idea of what NASA and their international counterparts actually do after the countdown is over and the camera crews have packed up and gone home. I was also enjoying myself; two hours had passed since I first started using the site. Then things kind of went off on a tangent as I took a more educational turn. Whilst everything else before this point was enlightening, I was always fully aware NASA went to the moon. I wasn't aware that they had so much to do with the aircraft industry. Their interactive feature called 'NASA Aeronautics Features Onboard' gives you an account of what contributions they have made to air travel – and they are plenty in number. First, you're guided around the airport before being given a selection of aircraft; commercial, general, military and helicopters. When you click on each one you're shown the aircrafts and the airport and told, by way of bullet points, how NASA has improved the industry such as inventing new rotor blades, developing fighter jet thrusters and communication and navigation systems for commercial jetliners. On each one I saw it had at least a dozen facts that made me go 'Huh!'.
Finally, we get down to the basics – but the NASA basics are still brilliant. The website's multimedia section offers you podcasts, images, videos, news updates and a host of RSS feeds. I subscribed to a few because I was actually taken in by all the facts, figures and the general appeal of the NASA story. For anyone who is interested in NASA or who wants to learn more they are well worth a look. In my opinion, the best podcast is 'This Week @ NASA'. You are given the full run down on what has been happening while you have been pursuing our own life during the week. From interviews with the top dogs down to simply summarising the work done by the little guys, it's a great show. It's also available in either video or audio format which I liked a lot. They use all the major podcast feeds such as Yahoo!, Podcast Alley and iTunes to name but a few. All in all, the NASA interactive and media website is a great resource for everyone right around the world especially when there are big missions or anniversaries coming up. You can learn, be entertained and at points, dazzled by what the men and women, both in the spacesuits and behind the scenes, actually do every single day. 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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| Easily Kill Hung Processes on Windows with Super F4 Posted: 29 Jul 2009 05:01 AM PDT
But with this little 116KB download from GoogleCode you can force an application to close with Control-Alt-F4. This will effectively kill the application without any other intervention. The program also offers the option to press the Windows key + F4 and then click on the window you want to kill. These two options make this a handy dandy item for my toolkit. I downloaded the application and installed it. You have options within the installer to check for updates as well as making Super F4 start up with Windows. Once it is running you will see this item in your system tray:
Normally when killing FileZilla I would get a dialogue box that looked like this:
That means I have to actually click on the box and answer the question. If I want to be swift about it I just need to hit my Control-Alt-F4 and blammo FileZilla is closed with no pop-up. That means I can just continue on to do what I have to do. I simulated a failure in Excel and hit the Control + Alt + F4 and just like that it was closed! Sweet! Next up I wanted to give the other option a shot. I opened up everything and I wanted to try the Windows Key + F4 to choose the program I wanted to close. The mouse cursor turns into a Skull and Cross Bones. You simply click on the application you want to kill and that's it.
This is a great program for power users but remember if you have not saved your work in the application and you close it with Super F4 you will lose those changes you made since you last saved. Do you have another way of killing hung processes? Share them 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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Web applications have embraced the trend of online work productivity through online office suites and minimalist word processors. Most of the time, simple word processors will get the job done whether you are a scriptwriter, editor, or a student working on a paper. Expensive word processors may have all the biz-and-bang but when we just need to write, all the bloat found in expensive office suites can be a distraction.
Some people like to look at photos of roller coasters. I think this is the only one I have, so I'm not one of those people, but I'm not immune to wanting people to like it. So I've tagged the image with the search phrases I think people might use to find it.
After checking that a group doesn't already exist on the subject, create a new one 
There's no shortage of web 2.0 services these days (and certainly no shortage of useless ones) but 
I am a self-confessed movie addict. 
The idea on which 
I have been using the Windows hot key combination to kill a running program for a really long time now. For those of you who do not know it is Alt-F4. This will politely request that the open application on your screen is to close. If you have unsaved work, the program might ask you to save it or if the program was really hung it might not do anything at all.
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