Latest Tips from MakeUseOf.com |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [August 24]
- The Next Link In The Google Social Network : iGoogle Social Features
- 5 Sites To Help Prepare You For Flu Season
- How To Resell E-Books For Free Online
- Review & Discuss Your Favourite Gadgets With Gdgt
- Notely Helps Students Get Organized Online
- 20 Must-Have Bookmarklets For Your Web Browser
| Cool Websites and Tools [August 24] Posted: 24 Aug 2009 06:01 PM PDT
(1) Kalender – In case you ever decide to make your own 12 sided calendar Kalender can help you. It lets you quickly generate 12 sided calendar that can be pritnted out and easily put together. The calendar details like year, language, week day can be customized.
(2) MyPlantId – Next time you stumble upon some interesting plant that you want to identify go to MyPlantId.com. It is a user-powered plant identification database where members can search for plants by its properties (arrangement, shape, margin, vein etc) or submit plant images and let the community of users identify them. Read more: MyPlantId – User-powered Plant Identification Database (3) SampleWords – Extensive resource which provides you with printable sample letters, calendars, forms, spreadsheets, planners and other kinds of business document templates free of charge. Sample documents are nicely organized into different sections. Read more: SampleWords – Free Business Document Templates & Forms (4) Talkinator – Simple web service that provides you with free live chat rooms to add to any website or blog. There is no registration and no downloads. Just pick chat room name, get the code and paste it into your website or social profile pages. Read more: Talkinator – Free Live Chat Rooms To Add To Your Website (5) TicketFlow – This site gets you the best ticket deals for upcoming sport events, music concerts and theater performances. It searches hundreds of trusted ticketing sites and local providers, and filters the tickets based on what you need. Tickets can be filtered/sorted by the location, the price, seating and many more parameters. Read more: TicketFlow – Get Best Ticket Deals For Events
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
| ||
| The Next Link In The Google Social Network : iGoogle Social Features Posted: 24 Aug 2009 03:01 PM PDT
But now I am going to take a look at another link in the Google network chain by discussing a new iGoogle feature – social features. This newly introduced set of features, which are still rather in the spartan stage, allows you to add social features to your iGoogle page. This could be anything from playing chess with another Gmail user to sharing and collaborating information. Let’s take a look at what there is. I can’t cover them all but I can give you a broad overview.
The little crowd logo in the top right hand corner shows that the module belongs to the social gadgets group. Now when you open it up, these are the options you will find :
You can start a new game (either by inviting a Gmail user from your Gmail Contacts or starting a game and waiting for someone to come along and accept), see your current games and you can even be taken to chess rules and techniques on Chess.com if you feel you are getting your butt whipped by your opponent. There seems to be no limit to the number of games you can take part in and each game has various limitations on how long you have to move. If you started the game, you can choose or if your opponent started the game, they get to decide. It’s a lot like “ItsYourTurn” which I have profiled twice in the past here and here.. But chess is not the only thing you can do on iGoogle. You can also play scrabble with other Gmail users but for some inexplicable reason, this game is only restricted to US users. Bah! Google, please remove this stupid restriction – I want to play Scrabble!
Moving swiftly on, you can also show your Flickr and/or Picasa photos and see others which your Gmail Contacts are also showing under “shared photos”.
As far as collaboration tools are concerned, the only current one is a basic yellow notepad where you can add tasks and then share it with other Gmail contacts who presumably can add to it or delete from it. The collaboration column is to the right where you can specify who you want to share with but they must have this app installed too on their iGoogle page – or it won’t work.
If you wanted any further proof that Google is snipping away at Facebook, then take a look at iGoogle’s new “TimeLine” where you can say what you’re reading, listening to, watching and where you are at that moment – and read the same from your Gmail contacts. When you start typing, you will start to get a drop down list of possibilities :
and eventually when you have filled in everything, it should look something like this :
As you start to play around with everything, you’ll see that it is all fully functional, but nevertheless a bit rough around the edges. The notepad collaboration is nothing to rave home about but obviously with a bit of improvement, this could turn out to be a lot better. They should also expand their list of social gadgets and maybe ditch some of the useless ones (a tile game is perhaps a bit pointless – at least to me anyway). But once again, we are seeing another piece of the Google social network being slotted into place alongside Reader. What will be coming next? 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
| ||
| 5 Sites To Help Prepare You For Flu Season Posted: 24 Aug 2009 01:01 PM PDT
There isn’t much we can do about it, flu season will come, people will get sick, and flu season will go and then we’ll go about our Christmas shopping. But maybe we can get a bit of a heads-up and get our favourite remedies to help prevent, or at least get us through it a little less miserably. Here are some sites that could help you prepare for flu season.
Google Flu Trends
Although the trends are not based on any medical evidence, Google professes to be able to, “estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional systems.” It’s an interesting system, and easy to use, as most things Google are, however it’s geographically limited to the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Mexico. Hopefully this will grow into a global system that can help us prepare. FluTrackers
There are plenty of authoritative articles on flu prevention such as a videos titled Prevent Illness – Wash Hands Video and How to Sneeze in Public – Video. It’s amazing how many people just let it fly when they sneeze, or sneeze in their hands and then open a door. The DoD Worldwide Influenza Surveillance Program
Although a lot of their data is restricted to tracking military personnel cases, it can still be a reliable indicator of what’s happening in your area. They also publish their influenza care guidelines and policies which could be very useful, should the flu get out of control. Forewarned is forearmed. World Health Organization
With great fact sheets that summarize things related to influenza, the WHO can be a good resource for the non-medical professional as well. Personally, I found the ten things you need to know about pandemic influenza article to be pretty enlightening, if not a bit alarmist. Centers for Disease Control
The CDC has a great resource in their Influenza section of their website. There are some excellent free downloads that you can share with your family, or maybe your workplace, or child’s school. Also interesting is their Weekly Flu Report. Currently, it’s saying that the number of incidences and such are well below epidemic levels for the last week. That’s good to know. Do you know of any other online sources for preparing for flu season? Let us know about them 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
| ||
| How To Resell E-Books For Free Online Posted: 24 Aug 2009 11:01 AM PDT
I came across a number of online pyramid schemes on the IBM mainframe-based email system I was using at the time. I’d received an email from a friend and it sounded convincing, and way too good to be true. So what did I do? Well, I tried it. It was one of those deals where you send a dollar to the five names on the list, replace one with your own and then email it to a number of your own friends. It didn’t take very long for the mainframe admins to suspend my email account and issue me a stern warning against using the University system for pyramid schemes. My response was, “What’s a pyramid scheme?” The fact is, you can quickly become sucked into a marketing scam without even knowing it, and the world of reselling ebooks for profit is no exception. You’ll find volumes of websites out there on buying “resell rights” or “private label rights,” known as PLR, for ebooks that you can turn around and sell on your website for tremendous profit. It sounds too good to be true, as they always do.
The Right Way to Resell E-Books For Free OnlineHow do you tell the difference between a legitimate ebook business and an online marketing scheme? All get-rich-quick schemes have two things in common: first, they involve little to no effort on your part in order to get filthy rich; and second, they don’t work. The primary reason that these particular scams don’t work is because when you purchase a book with “resell rights,” you don’t own exclusive rights. In other words, a hundred other people could also own resell rights to that same ebook, and they’re all trying to sell the exact same book on the Internet. With that said, there are legitimate ways to make some decent money when you resell ebooks for free online, but it comes down to the source of your “free” ebooks. The following article will cover the three best sources for ebooks (not all of them completely free) that you can resell so that you can get your online ebook business off to a decent start without getting ripped off. #1 Offer To Publish and PromoteIf you can come up with unique ebooks that are in hot demand – you’ll do very well in terms of ebook sales. The only way you can do this successfully is by becoming a “publisher” of those ebooks and maintaining exclusive rights to the writing so that only you and no one else owns it. It also helps if the ebooks are well written and cover popular topics. One way you can do this for free is by becoming an online publishing house and ebook store and attract up-and-coming writers who just want to get published. There are a few examples of such sites that offer writers the opportunity to get published online if their writing is “accepted” for publication.
For example, sites like Nocturne Horizons offers new writers the opportunity to get published online and get their work and name “out there” for the world to see. Many of these sites are accepting free writing from authors that they turn around and publish in a magazine, e-zine or other medium which they sell for profit. Many times writers receive nothing more than a copy of the magazine, if that. This is possible because the goal of most writers is just to get their work distributed and their name out there. However, you’ll need a contract that clearly lays out the fact that you publish those ebooks for sale in an online bookstore and the author would agree. #2 – Offer to Pay Royalties Or An Up-Front PaymentAnother approach, and one that I personally consider a bit more equitable (but not completely “free” for you) is to offer the writer either an up-front payment or royalties per sale for the ebook that they produce for you. This is not only fair, but it’ll attract a greater number of high-quality writers.
Knowledge Base Publishing, shown above, is one example of one website that does just that – each month they pay accepted authors a royalty check for all ebook sales that month. The cool thing about building your business this way is that you aren’t doing any of the work to create the content yourself – you’re simply serving as the middle-man to sell the ebooks for the author and taking a cut in the process. DPdotcom is another good example of such an online ebook publisher.
DPDotcom takes a 50% cut, which may seem like a lot but in reality you’re providing an important technical service for these writers who may not have a technical bone in their body. Once your website is set up and you have writers signing up, you can sit back and enjoy the profits. You could also just post requests for ebook writers on the topics that you want at the many freelance writing forums and boards across the web and you’ll have lots of writers knocking at your door and ready to produce your ebook for you. After you pay a one-time payment for exclusive rights (meaning only you own it and can sell it), you can resell the ebook as many times as you like and earn quite a bundle. #3 Rewriting PLR EbooksThe last approach I want to cover is a bit more geeky, but I really like it as an alternative for the person who really doesn’t want to write an entire ebook from scratch. There are loads of sites out there that sell Private Label Rights ebooks, with basically two options. You can either buy them for cheap, like at the Canadian site BestChoiceforEbooks, or you can pay a monthly membership where you get free access to thousands of titles, such as the PLR Ebook Club. I would not suggest paying a monthly membership unless you plan to offer a high volume of Ebooks for sale. Either way you go, you’re going to need any easy way to modify the Ebook to make it unique, otherwise you’re selling the same exact book as everyone else. To do this, you can either hire a writer or you can do it yourself using software. One of the best applications out there that’s customized specifically for this purpose is WordFlood. The software is free, but for the activation code you just have to sign up to receive a newsletter.
The reason WordFlood is the best option is because all the other “article spinner” applications out there that promise to automatically rewrite text just turn an excellent article into garbage. Writing an algorithm that can replace the mind of a good writer is just about impossible, so WordFlood offers the next best thing. When you insert the original article, it immediately identifies and highlights the phrases and words that you can modify without significantly changing the meaning of the text.
If you place the mouse over any of the blue text, you’re offered alternatives from the thesaurus for those words. The underlined text are phrases, and the software offers alternatives for those as well, as shown above. As you go through and change the article by simply clicking on the alternative text that you determine flows well within the context of the article, the software displays the percentage that you’ve changed the article. The closer you are to 100%, the better.
As you can see here, in about 5 minutes or so, I’ve changed the article by 22% just by going through and changing the words where it made sense and leaving it be where it doesn’t (this is where most automated systems fail). By combining both the human touch and the software approach, you’ll end up with a unique Ebook that you purchased dirt cheap, but which you can sell at a huge markup for huge profits, over and over for as long as you like. Have you ever attempted to start an Ebook sales business? Do you have any tips or advice for readers? Share your feeback in the comments section below. 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
| ||
| Review & Discuss Your Favourite Gadgets With Gdgt Posted: 24 Aug 2009 09:01 AM PDT
I think it’s a very interesting concept that might have its followers in other subjects. The idea is that you can make a profile for yourself with all the gadgets you own. It feels good to collect them and see them nicely lined up. But it doesn’t stop there. All of the gadgets on the site are added by users, making it a sort of “Wikipedia of gadgets”. It’s possible to start a discussion around a gadget and ask owners questions. Another nice feature is that you can also note that you want a certain gadget or have owned one. This way you can impress everyone with your 1st generation Gameboy!
Make your profileOf course you start by signing up and making a profile. If you want to use gdgt as just a gadget database, than you don’t need a profile, but of course it’s more fun when you use all the features – and you get to show off your gadgets! Start by signing up and filling your profile with some information about yourself and perhaps a nice avatar. Find tips for making avatars in this MakeUseOf article. Find some friends on the site or persuade some friends to join. As a start you can always befriend me of course. Find and add your gadgetsYou can add a list of all the gadgets you have, want or have had to your profile. This makes for a perfect way to get nostalgic over your Amiga console or Gameboy, but also for keeping track of that new SRL camera or Android phone. You’re able to view reviews of a gadget or ask questions to owners. To find your gadgets go to the gadget finder and search on name, category or company.
If you can’t find the gadget you’re looking for, than just click add gadget to do just that. You can also add companies or tech terms to the database. This way gdgt could become the Wikipedia of gadgets. Once you’ve made your list, a widget becomes available for you to share your list on your blog or facebook page. See a working example below. Discuss, ask questions and read reviewsAs with any community based website, the site is as good as its community. I haven’t seen growth or user numbers but I can tell there are already enough people around to have a question answered or have a discussion about your favorite camera. But it’s not really crowded yet. Just go ahead and read some of the concerns of fellow gadget owners. Maybe you can help someone with a question or improve the database by correcting a specification. I really enjoy the way that it’s a central hub of reviews for items too. Users can add reviews from professional sites or write their own review. All in all this creates a great center for the true gadgetgeek. And I think we all have a little gadgetgeek inside of us. 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
| ||
| Notely Helps Students Get Organized Online Posted: 24 Aug 2009 07:01 AM PDT
Being a student myself, I'm always looking for ways to improve the way I manage my time, and more importantly, the various array of tasks that seems to grow exponentially with every semester. Since the statistics say that more than 90% of college students own a computer with an Internet connection, why not take a look at a web application that helps students easily achieve GTD nirvana: Notely.
The list can go on, with countless examples of how you can stitch together various web services to fit your needs, but it's not exactly easy to manage, and while most of these solutions might appear on the radar of a tech-oriented student, what about arts & literature folks?
This is what Notely does; It takes all the tools that a student needs to be organized and get stuff done and brings it together in a shrink wrapped package for anyone to use. Signing up for an account is completely free and takes just seconds – it will even work with an existing OpenID login. After that, you can start adding courses, to do's, notes – all on a single website. While manually inputting 20 classes doesn't look that enticing, it's a one-time only thing and you're not going to regret it. After the initial bump, you'll be gradually adding stuff and the feeling that using Notely is yet another task will dissipate.
The great thing about Notely is that it was developed by a student – and not by a committee of bored programmers in an office, so all the features actually belong to the application and make sense once you start using it daily. And it's not one of those 'roach motels' – you can easily get your data out of the application, exporting notes and calendar events is a breeze.
It's also got a Tools section, which contains a scientific calculator, a comprehensive unit converter and a dictionary that makes use of the Google Translate API. Another nice touch is the Facebook integration. Once you've added friends, you can share notes with them, quite handy if you have the habit of skipping lectures. But the killer feature is, of course, the iPhone web application. It has most of the functionality of its biggest brother, and is great for checking up on which room you're supposed to go to for your next class, duration, even taking short notes or adding to do's. It's small things like that that can make a big difference, saving you time every day. To sum everything up, Notely helps students with: a Calendar, To-Do List, Homework organiser, Manage Courses, Write and Save Notes, Organise Links, Contacts and Files. You can sign up for Notely here, or view a live demo. Don't forget to share your choice of tools in the comments. Check out more posts on MakeUseOf about GTD by visiting this page or read this round-up by Daniel Pataki. 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
| ||
| 20 Must-Have Bookmarklets For Your Web Browser Posted: 24 Aug 2009 05:01 AM PDT
Backup your bookmarks – and bookmarklets – and use these bookmarklets across all platforms. All bookmarklets were tested on Firefox 3.5 and Safari 4. Here’s our list of 20 must-have bookmarklets for your browser – feel free to add your suggestions in the comments! To add a bookmarklet to your browser, click on the bookmarklet and drag and drop to your bookmarks toolbar. Want to save space? Organize your bookmarklets into a folder in your bookmarks toolbar.
Some other great resources for bookmarklets (other than nagging the tech guy at your job) include: Bookmarklets.com, marklets.com, and Jesse’s Bookmarklets Site. Which bookmarklets do you use? 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
|
So far I have looked at how 
Sorry, my friends, but fall is on it’s way. Soon those yellow things that whisk away our kids to those places of fancy book-learning will be lining the streets. Soon, there will be children packed tightly together, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, sharing their summer stories, and whatever diseases they have been exposed to. And so begins flu season.
Google has done something pretty interesting with their search statistics. It seems that they analyze what people are searching for, and if they are searching for flu-related subjects, it takes into account where they are searching from and trends that out.
This could be the most extensive site dedicated to influenza. Mostly it functions as a forum for journalists, medical professionals, and average folks to discuss influenza.
Since an army runs on it’s stomach, I suppose it can’t run well on a vomiting stomach. That’s why the Department of Defence has it’s Global Emergence of Infection System.
The World Health Organization is a UN creation that is intended to track disease and provide policy on disease control. So you can imagine what kinds of resources they have at their disposal to do this.
One can hardly mention the WHO without mentioning the CDC. Although the WHO is an international organization and the CDC is an American organization, it seems that they function together to help keep the world healthy.
One of the initial lessons I learned when the Internet first started becoming popular in the early 1990’s was that “entrepreneurs” are persistent, determined and often very annoying marketers at times. They will use any means necessary to get you to open your wallet and hand over some cash.
There has recently been a new addition to the gadget websites. You might think there are enough gadget blogs and news sites already, but that is also exactly what the creators of 
The long and hot summer days are slowly but surely starting to fade away which means it's time to dust off the textbooks and prepare to return to a more scholastic routine.
As we’ve | You are subscribed to email updates from MakeUseOf.com To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
We're impressed with the return on investment we've received since working with this restaurant marketing firm! Their data-driven strategy guarantees that every marketing dollar is used wisely, resulting in genuine business growth.
ReplyDeleterestaurant marketing company