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- Cool Websites and Tools [August 3]
- How to Set Up Microsoft Outlook to Schedule Email Delivery
- A Head-to-Head VoIP Review: Skype Vs Gizmo
- How To Use Your Domain Name As An OpenID Login
- 7 Tips to Make Gmail The Best Free Email Service For Productive People
- Move Your Music Library To The Cloud With Moof
- How To Print Maps & Take Google Maps Offline with Google Maps Buddy
| Cool Websites and Tools [August 3] Posted: 03 Aug 2009 04:42 PM PDT
(1) NatureFind – Web resource that makes it easy to locate nearby places for family outdoor activities. These include but not limited to camping and fishing spots, zoos, parks, wildlife sanctuaries and so on. Read more: NatureFind: Find Fun Family Outdoor Activities & Places
(2) Free-Tutorial-For.me – Google powered custom search engine that lets you search and download free PDF tutorials from among 38.000.000 tutorials online. Read more: Free-Tutorial-For.me: Download Free PDF Tutorials (3) FriendsCall.me – Useful web tool which serves 3 purposes: 1. It helps you to conduct a username availability check across a number of social networks. 2. It acts as identity aggregator by gathering all your web profiles at a single place. 3. It notifies you when a new social media site comes up so that you can quickly register the desired username with them. Read more: FriendsCall.me: Username Checker & Identity Aggregator (4) RoadsideAmerica – This is a website for those who love road trips and are aching to visit offbeat tourist attractions in US. Just put in the state name you want to visit, and you'll be presented with some of the wackiest and craziest attractions available. Read more: RoadsideAmerica: Locate Offbeat Tourist Attractions in US (5) Sharein – New link sharing tool which lets you quickly share interesting links that you stumble upon while browing. It can be used either via Firefox extension or a browser bookmarklet. You can manage and organize all your bookmarks, add contacts and check advanced statistics for each shared link. Read more: Sharein: Quick Link Sharing With Advanced Tracking
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
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| How to Set Up Microsoft Outlook to Schedule Email Delivery Posted: 03 Aug 2009 03:01 PM PDT
For instance, I need to send forth an email to a different time zone at 6 AM in the morning. The tireless way would be to wake with the birds and send it on the clock at 6 AM. The job's done…but the smarter way would be to compose it the night before and schedule it for email delivery at 6 AM. The job's done without me losing any sleep over it. So why lose sleep when an email client like Outlook comes with a schedule delivery feature built right in. And till the day Gmail comes out with it, the desktop Outlook is the way to go. The option was there in the earlier editions of Outlook too. A few simple settings and it makes Outlook work at the right time. Let's see how to set it up with Microsoft Outlook 2007.
There is no limit to the number of emails you can setup for scheduled delivery. Unfortunately, there is no simple way to setup a recurring scheduled email. It would have been really handy for nagging you-owe-me emails to a thrifty friend. That's a bit of a miss as it’s not possible to set up Microsoft Outlook to schedule recurring events like appointments and tasks. The recourse for recurring scheduled email is only through third party add-ins. I haven't come across a freeware add-in so far, so my hunt is still on. Read the official Microsoft Online page here. The scheduling of my emails lets me fire and forget. It is a little used but invaluable tool for productivity. That is, if you don't want to wake up at ungodly hours. Do you use this tool regularly, sporadically or not at all? Let us know the worth of this optional setup. Image Credit: WorldIslandInfo.com Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/ Related posts
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| A Head-to-Head VoIP Review: Skype Vs Gizmo Posted: 03 Aug 2009 01:01 PM PDT
Within just a few years of the advent of Voice-Over-Internet-Protocol, Skype emerged as a leader in the industry. The reason Skype became the leader was because, at least in the U.S., you could install Skype on your Internet-connected home PC and make completely free phone calls to any phone number in the U.S.
A Skype Vs. Gizmo Comparison Reveals Features and Flaws of BothIf you’ve used Skype, then understanding Gizmo is easy because it’s practically a perfect clone. In a few areas, the application is a bit too much like Skype, to be quite honest. With that said, there are some benefits to Gizmo that deserve mentioning, so this Skype vs. Gizmo feature will lay out those features side-by-side with Skype. At the end, we’ll review whether or not Gizmo has a chance of outpacing Skype in capturing VoIP customers. This particular review is focused on the PC-based application, but it should be noted that each service, both Skype and Gizmo, offers a very useful application for your mobile phone that can save a great deal of money in both calling minutes and text messaging. The first, basic part of any application to consider is the main page. In this respect, Gizmo has figured out how to make the navigation and control of the communication software much more clean and straightforward compared to Skype. In Skype, I’ve often spent a fair amount of time trying to remember how to get to the dialing pad or how to view message history.
In Gizmo, every major feature is clearly outlined in a tabular format at the top, and the most common actions, such as sending a text message to mobile users, adding a contact, or sending a message to other IM users, are clearly identified as large icons at the bottom. Basic Features – Dialing Landlines and Adding ContactsFor the most part, if you do a Skype vs. Gizmo comparison on the dialing feature alone, they almost come neck and neck. Skype’s dialpad is a bit more aesthetically pleasing with blue stylized buttons with large white numbers on the keypad. Gizmo, on the other hand, features a somewhat boring, standard gray keypad with black letters. But what it lacks in style, it makes up for with functionality by adding the ability to send various sound effects during your phone call. If you can picture how your friend would react when you click on the “BOO” button after they say something you disagree with, I’m sure you can imagine how funny some of these would be.
When it comes to adding a contact, Gizmo scores a point over Skype. As you can see below, Skype allows you to add other Skype users to your contact list. The one other IM app that Skype is integrated with is MySpaceIM. On the other hand, Gizmo offers users the ability to add contacts from GoogleTalk, Jabber, MSN, AIM and other major IM networks.
The one thing any communications company should understand is that not all users are every going to be using the same applications, and expecting everyone to adopt your application isn’t realistic. Interoperability is a key element to success. Advanced Features – Sending/Receiving SMS and Voice ConferencingOnce you start getting into the more advanced features, you’re more likely to discover fees or you may need to purchase the “pro” version of the application for it to work. Comparing Skype versus Gizmo on these terms reveals that in both cases the applications offer some very cool and useful features – but if you want it to work you’re going to need to be willing to pay some small fees of one form or another.
One of the most valuable features that I’ve found all of these VoIP applications have been adding over the past few years is the ability to send text messages to mobile users. While this is a feature that’s just sort of “neat” when you’re using it as a desktop application, when you consider that these applications have a mobile version, the value becomes much more clear. You can even disable text messaging on your mobile plan, and just use your Internet connection to send and receive SMS. Both services, Gizmo and Skype, offer this feature.
Another valuable feature is the ability to set up conference calls. In both cases, Skype and Gizmo allow this feature for free among their own users, but if you want to have a landline conference call, expect to pay for it in some way – either through the landline pricing or a fixed fee. Conferences are easier to set up in Skype, where you simply add users or phone numbers (who you call out to first). In Gizmo you need to go through setting up a conference call number that everyone can connection to. This is an extra step in Gizmo, but it does create the convenience of everyone having a central number to call in to.
Another interesting and valuable option for both Gizmo and Skype is the option to have a voicemail box. In the case of Skype, the voicemail feature isn’t available unless you pay for the upgrade to Skype Pro. For Gizmo, the voicemail feature doesn’t make it clear whether there are any charges or fees applied, however the feature itself does appear enabled in the free version of the software. Advanced Options and ConfigurationFinally, each application has a whole series of screens where you can configure your PC audio and microphone settings, videocam options and all of the other specific features of the software.
This is the one area of the Gizmo software that really raised my eyebrows. If you look closely, you can see how Gizmo developers apparently just reverse-engineered the options menus and screens from Skype. This section of the Gizmo software makes it painfully obvious that, at least in this area, Gizmo is very much a clone of Skype’s application. With that said, the additional features that Gizmo offers beyond the Skype features make up for this – but not by much. Ultimately, my own summation of this Skype vs. Gizmo comparison is that Gizmo simply does not offer enough additional free features or services to effectively compete with Skype. Have you ever used any VoIP software other than Skype? Which ones are your favorites? Share your own opinion in the comments area 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
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| How To Use Your Domain Name As An OpenID Login Posted: 03 Aug 2009 01:01 PM PDT
There are a lot of OpenID providers, but my favourite is chi.mp is because you can have yourname.mp and not a subdomain like many other OpenID providers. You can see mine here. But what happens when you want to use your own domain name and not a third party? Well, there is an open-sourced script called phpMyID that you can download which turns your own domain name into an OpenID login. I have turned my website Jack Cola into my own personal OpenID login. This enables me to log in to any OpenID enabled websites. Installation is pretty easy. All you have to do is download a small file from the phpMyID website.
You can either download a tgz or zip file by clicking the highlighted links as seen in the image above. In the files you have downloaded, there are the basic files such as readme's and changelogs, just as you would find in any script you download. Pay particular attention to MyID.config.php and MyID.php. These two files are the important ones. It is best that you upload the files to your server first and edit them online as a few settings need to be checked to make sure your web server is setup correctly. Once you have uploaded your files, visit your website where you have uploaded them. I suggest uploading them to http://yourdomain.com/openID/. Once uploaded, visit the MyID.config.php file. You will be shown a screen with text similar to this. Click on Login and make sure you can successfully login with the username and password of test.
Make sure you take notice of your Realm. If there is anything after phpMyID, your server is running in safemode and you need to change it in auth_password section. (See below) To set up phpMyID there are two steps. Edit the MyID.config.php settings and include two lines of code in your webpage’s root directory. Editing MyID.config.phpOpen up MyID.config.php to edit. The names of the settings are pretty self explanatory. auth_username: This is your login username. Set it to a username that you will remember. auth_password: This step is a little tricky. For added security, you need to encrypt your password using the MD5 algorithm. To do this, if you are an Linux or OSX user, you can use openssl. Just type in $ echo -n 'username:realm:password' | openssl md5 and remember to replace username with your username you specified in auth_username, the realm that was shown on the MyID.config.php page when you viewed it in a web browser, and the password that you want to use as your login. If you are a Windows user, you can download this app, or use this this website to encrypt your password. If you use the website, make sure you use the entire username:realm:password string is used to generate your password. Once you have your encrypted text, set the auth_username value appropriately. There are other settings in the config file that you don't really need to touch (unless you want to). Just read the README file provided and it will explain what they mean. If you want, you can edit your nickname, email, fullname, dob, gender, postcode, country, language and timezone, to use with the OpenID self registration component. Just remember to uncomment the lines out by deleting the # at the start of each line. Once you have your auth_password, visit the MyID.config.php webpage and make sure you can log in with your new username and password. If you log in successfully, you will see a screen like this.
If it doesn't work, have a read in the troubleshooting section in the README file. Edit your websiteNow the authentication is working smoothly, you just have to edit the index (or default) webpage for your website and add two lines of html of code to the head of the file. <link rel="openid.server" href="http://phpmyid.com/MyID.config.php"> <link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://phpmyid.com/MyID.config.php"> Remember to change the href tag to the location of your MyID.config.php file. Note: If you are using a CMS such as Joomla, you will need to edit the template's index.php file, and not the actual Joomla root index file. The Final StepWell maybe I lied. There is one more step. It is to log in to an OpenID-enabled website to check that everything works properly. I have a Wordpress plugin on my blog which allows you to register and log in using OpenID. If the website accepts your OpenID log in (and all is working) you will be prompted to enter your username and password. Remember that the OpenID login is your website’s URL.
You should now be logged into that site by using your domain name address. If it doesn’t allow you, try a different website, comment below, read the README file or ask in phpMyID’s forum. 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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| 7 Tips to Make Gmail The Best Free Email Service For Productive People Posted: 03 Aug 2009 09:01 AM PDT
Email can be a huge time-drain, particularly for those of us who get a lot of it – it can be overwhelming, difficult to deal with, and a huge pain in the you-know-what. Or, with the help of a few tips, tricks, and applications, it can be a productivity powerhouse. Gmail seems to be the cool kid on the block, and it’s one of the best free email services that’s taking over a huge portion of the email market. So, in an effort to help this rapidly-growing crowd, here are seven tips, tricks, and tools for making Gmail into a productive, getting things done machine:
1. Use Quick LinksQuick Links, a little white box that lives in the sidebar of Gmail, can be hugely useful once you figure out how to use it. All it does is store links – these links can be to just about anything. If you're always referencing a particular page when you write emails, or always copy and paste a particular Web address, don't put it in your bookmarks, put it in Gmail's Quick Links; that way, it's available to you anywhere Gmail is – which is pretty much everywhere. The sky's the limit with these links – I have a particular email I send often (resume attached, cover letter in body) set up in my links, and can open it, edit it, and send it with only a few seconds. 2. Use Tasks
Tasks just became a fully-fledged feature of Gmail, and with good reason – it's a super-lightweight, simple way to manage the things you need to do, and it lives right within Gmail itself. With Tasks, you can add an email right to the list, and get it out of your inbox. You can create subtasks, due dates, multiple lists, and more, all from within the Gmail window. 3. Use Your Own Task-Manager
Maybe you've already got a system you use for tasks, like Remember the Milk, or Todoist. Because so many people consider it to be the best free email service, more and more of these applications have ways of integrating with Gmail, whether by an extension for Firefox or a gadget within the Gmail sidebar (here are RTM's and Todoist's). A quick search with Google, or through your task manager's site should find exactly what you're looking for. 4. Make Gmail BetterThere are three or four reasons I can't stop using Firefox, and they're all extensions. Number one on the list, by a country mile, is Better Gmail. This extension adds tons of useful things to Gmail that really ought to be there anyway – showing the number of unread emails first in the title (or even in the icon), automatically showing message details, creating hierarchy among your labels (they're more like folders this way), and much, much more. It makes Gmail much more smooth and functional, not to mention more productive. 5. Close Gmail More OftenIt's easy to get sucked into the trap of keeping your Gmail window open all the time, constantly checking and checking to see if you have a new email. I'm as guilty of that as anyone, and I know how much of a waste of time that can really be. Instead of playing that futile game, try downloading a notifier that tells you when you've got new emails, so you're only checking Gmail when you actually need to. There's one for Firefox called Gmail Notifier, one for the Mac Desktop called Gmail Notifier, and one for Windows called Gmail Notifier. They're not clever namers, these developers, but they do good work. 6. Send it all to Gmail
One of my biggest pet peeves is when I click on an "email me" link, and then my computer tries to open Outlook Express, or Outlook, or Entourage to send the email – none of which I've ever used, so I have to exit out of three different setup windows just to get to where I wanted originally, which is Gmail. Thankfully, there's a solution in Firefox. Go to "Preferences," and then click the "Applications" Tab. There, find "mailto" under "Content Type." Using the dropdown, select "Use Gmail." From then on, anytime you click on a linked email address, or something that says "Send me an email!" it'll open directly within Gmail. (This works with Yahoo Mail too.) 7. Use Talk ProductivelyEveryone says IM clients are a waste of time and energy, and are just a huge distraction. I say nay! Google Talk, if used right, can actually be really helpful. First, try adding IMified as a friend – you'll be able to add tasks, calendar events, send updates on Twitter, and more. Or, try Ping.fm, which is a social networking powerhouse – you can update almost any network you can think of right from within Talk, once you've set up your account with Ping.fm. If you've got questions, you can ask and answer questions with real people over IM, thanks to Aardvark. How do you turn Gmail from a time-sink into a lean, mean productive machine? Would you call it best free email service out there? Share your thoughts in comments. Image Credit: KatieKrueger 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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| Move Your Music Library To The Cloud With Moof Posted: 03 Aug 2009 07:01 AM PDT
I'm still debating that issue and I'd sure be glad to hear what you think. Meanwhile, let's take a look at Moof, the newest attempt at moving your music library to the Internet.
It's easier, just open it and have some background music while your work. Or instantly search and listen to an entire album that a friend recommended.
While similar streaming services, notably Mixtape, incorporates some social networking features, Moof sticks to the basic functionality of playback and playlists creation. There's another quite striking difference between Moof and other similar services – it uses YouTube to provide playback. If your song wasn't uploaded to YouTube, you won't be able to play it back. Personally, I think that the API did a great job of retrieving songs – finding even some of my most obscure artists. Unfortunately for hard-core indie music fans, there's no feature that allows manual uploading of songs, something that the Lala Music Mover does automatically. To sum it up in a sentence, Moof is basically a front-end to YouTube, with an interface that resembles a desktop media player.
It's worth mentioning that Moof also allows you to import your iTunes Library XML file – which means you will be have a sort of a backup of your music. You won't be able to use the service to re-download the songs in case your hard drive crashes, but at least you could listen to them online.
The interface resembles iTunes although it doesn't provide the same feature set. Some more picky users will notice that there's no way to rate songs or view track numbers. I do prefer this layout to Groovesharks's Apple-esque cascading menus. While Moof doesn't bring anything groundbreaking to the equation, as the idea of a cloud music library was already implemented some time ago, it's definitely worth checking out. Visit Moof and don't forget to tell us what you think 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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| How To Print Maps & Take Google Maps Offline with Google Maps Buddy Posted: 03 Aug 2009 05:01 AM PDT
It would be totally awesome if you could somehow take the map along. Google offers a print option but you can only print what you are able to fit on the screen which is hardly the solution you are looking for if you want to get a map of the entire city at the desired zoom level. You can save the map as image files and go through the pain of stitching them together in Paint or Photoshop. Or you can spare yourself some trouble and get Google Maps to work offline with Google Map Buddy, which does everything for you in a click.
Using the Google Map Buddy interface you can browse to the Google Maps site you want. Search for or navigate to the location you wish to create the map for. You can zoom in or out so that you can see the entire region for which you want to create the map. Let’s say you want to create a map for the city of Paris with all the major roads, landmarks and public transit stations. Such details are visible when you are zoomed in pretty close, in which case you cannot fit all of Paris on your screen. So Google Map Buddy allows you to zoom out to a level where you can see the entire Paris on your screen (don’t worry if you can’t see the details at this zoom level) and specify the area you want to create the map for.
Now click the draw button, and draw a rectangle encompassing the entire Paris at your current zoom level. You don’t need to zoom to the desired level of detail because Google Map Buddy lets you specify the zoom level of the map that it will create. So you can zoom out to fit the required region on the screen, and then specify a higher zoom level inside the application’s toolbar to get a more detailed final map.
Once you have specified the details, hit create map and the application gets to work. It downloads the required tiles and stores them all on your hard disk. Once it has downloaded all the images it then stitches them together to create a complete detailed map according to your needs. It can take quite some time to download and stitch all the images, so you would have to be patient while it is working. It would be nice if the application displayed a progress bar or current activity information to let the user know what it is up to.
After all the downloading and stitching together has finished, your map is viewable as a image file. You can scroll and zoom inside the map image just like any other image file that doesn’t fit completely on your screen. Put it on a USB drive, your iPod, your mobile phone (or maybe print it) to take it along. The tiles that it used to stitch together the map are also available just in case you need them, you can keep them or delete as you wish. Do you know of any similar application you use with Google Maps? Let us know about 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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Isn't timing everything? In the business (and also the personal) world, schedules are something to stick by. In communication, selecting the right time to communicate is sometimes the difference between a sizzle and a fizzle.
While I’ve never been one to jump on any technological bandwagon early (I resisted upgrading from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 for almost five years after Windows 95 came out), when it comes to VoIP I embraced the technology the moment it became viable.
Email, in this crazy digital world, is where a lot of our communication happens, where a lot of information is stored, and is often the thing with which we spend the most time.
I don't know why everything these days needs to be in the ‘cloud’. Is it a legitimate effort to update old business models to our current computing environment? Or are developers taking advantage of investors predisposition to invest in young, untested web technologies?
Gone are the days when you would purchase maps after landing at your destination. These days we plan our trips and rides before hand using 
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