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• Cool Websites and Tools [August 2]
• 4 Ways To Use a USB or External Drive Like Your Own Mobile Computer
• Download & Play a MMORPG Called Ragnarok for Free
• The 7 Simple & Great Tricks to Tweak Your Dock on Mac OS X
• Internet Security: How Criminals Hack Other Peoples Computers
• July Roundup: MakeUseOf Authors
• Jinni Recommends You Movies You Should Enjoy (500 Invites!)
• 10 Great Google Gadgets For Your Gmail Sidebar

Cool Websites and Tools [August 2] Posted: 02 Aug 2009 04:08 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) Click2Try – Web service which allows you to test open source software in the browser itself so that you don't go through the hassle of downloading and installing the software. There are various software under different categories like business, education, linux etc which you can test. Read more: Click2try: Test Open Source Apps In Your Brower (2) PickMusic – This site offers a cool collection of music videos on the web. It claims to host more than 1 million music videos which can be easily searched using the artist or the song name. Read more: PickMusic: Watch Uncut Music Videos & Create Playlists (3) ShareFlow – Web-based dashboard that allows a group of people easily communicate and collaborate on different projects without all the mess caused by group emailing. Instead of sending messages back and forth among a group of people, you join a relevant conversation thread ("flow") and start adding your comments to the stream. Read more: ShareFlow: Online Group Messaging and Collaboration (4) Vizzl – Search engine which helps you visually search and browse Amazon, Ebay and Youtube. The visual interface is very intuitive and easy to use. There are 4 different view options like compact view, tiny view, extended view and list view. Read more: Vizzl: YouTube, Ebay & Amazon Visual Search Tool (5) 99Stats – Free online web statistics tracker that lets you analyze the traffic of your website or a blog. It lets you monitor your daily traffic, view its geographical distribution (continent, country, city) and visitors' info including their browser, OS and screen resolution. See referring URLs and search keywords used by visitors to find you online. Read more: 99Stats: Free Online Web Statistics Tracker 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 (45) Finally Stick To Your Resolutions With StickK (28) Cool Websites and Tools [May 9'th] (8) Cool Websites and Tools [May 8'th] (8) Cool Websites and Tools [May 7'th] (12)

4 Ways To Use a USB or External Drive Like Your Own Mobile Computer Posted: 02 Aug 2009 03:01 PM PDT These days we all have places to go, people to see, and things to do. Life is just like that; we’re never in one place anymore! As busy as we all are, and as much as we are always on the move, it ends up being a real pain trying to carry our laptops around with us. With our laptops, we need to make sure to bring our peripherals, including our power supplies, mouses, and possibly even our printers and such. Today I want to share 4 methods of using a USB drive or an external hard drive to make your computing portable so that you can leave your laptop at home for once. This way, you can use any local computer you want, taking advantage of the convenience of just carrying your portable hard drive with you. For each one of these methods, there have been previous posts written (both by myself and here on MakeUseOf) so I will link to them as I go. (1)  File Syncing: The first option is possibly the easiest option and is done with the least effort. The basic idea is to have a copy of your most needed files saved on a portable external hard drive. This is handy because any computer you end up using these days will have USB ports so you can gain access to your files. You also want to make sure that all of the most recent changes to those files are with you. You can do this by “syncing” (or synchronizing) them.  Here on MakeUseOf, Shankar has written an article showing how easy the process can be. Just make sure that when you return to your computer, you sync the USB files and the originals on the computer. With all of your files a portable hard drive away, your important functions will be as portable as your portable drive is. BUT, what about those programs you leave behind on your own PC? (2) Portable Applications: Portable applications (aka portable apps) are programs that you can install on an external hard drive to be run on almost any computer with a USB port. All parts of the program are typically located in one folder and therefore it is portable. This is very handy because you can find many useful programs (Aibek lists 100 Portable Apps in this post) that you can carry with you, feeling confident that all of your settings are staying the same. Now, any computer you come in contact with will have your favorite programs right there for your use. Portable applications, along with your personal files synced, will make your computing experience virtually portable.  Check out a review of a cool suite containing many portable applications, including a standalone programs menu, called PortableApps Suite. BUT, what if you enjoy having a consistent Operating System experience? (3) Virtual Operating System: Mojopac offers a solution you may like. It’s almost like Windows XP installed on your external hard drive.  This means that you can have your OS settings, programs, and files just the way you like running on any computer that has an external hard drive (and that runs XP but most if not many still do so it shouldn’t be much of an issue). The programs installed in the Mojopac installation are all located on your portable hard drive so it enables true portability. I did a review but if you want cool screen shots and a video, check out the 4 Ways to Carry your PC on iPod or USB Thumbdrive that was published earlier on MakeUseOf. What if a “virtual” OS isn’t good enough?  What if you want the safety and flexibility of actually booting from your portable hard drive? (4) Operating Systems Which Are Boot-able From An External Hard Drive: Another solution for making your computing portable is to install an operating system that can be booted straight from your thumb drive. There are several operating systems that you can use in such a case, one of which being Windows XP! Basically if you can get a bootable live CD version, you can use an external portable hard drive instead of a CD!  Check out some of these links showing how: How to make your own Windows Live CD (check out this added help from Lifehacker), UNetbootin Creates USB-Bootable Linux the Easy Way. There you have it, four methods for making your computing portable! Which of these do you typically use? Can you think of another method that doesn’t fit in these four categories? Let us know! Image credit: Wheels00 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 Awesome Apps To Make Things Easier On A USB Drive (26) USB Office Showdown: Tiny USB Office vs. Portable Apps (8) Tweak Your Windows OS With Portable Ultimate Windows Tweaker (9) Toss Broken Keyboard to side with Portable On-Screen Keyboard (11) How to Sync Files between PC and USB Thumb Drive? (23)

Download & Play a MMORPG Called Ragnarok for Free Posted: 02 Aug 2009 01:01 PM PDT It’s finally here. Well, it’s probably been here for some time, but I can safely say that gamers who enjoy Mass Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG) can now freely play Ragnarok Online for free. Ragnarok Online is a freely downloadable client much like Gunbound or Rakion, the only difference being that you have to pay a subscription in order to play. This is originally a Korean based MMORPG, but since its inception in 2001, the game has been sponsored by various regional ventures which have been given much freedom in determining how they would like to run the platform. Recently, the U.S. region has decided to try out a “free to play” server called “Valkryie,” supplemented with a shop where gamers can pay real money to purchase certain items and such. Ragnarok Online is based off a manga called Ragnarok, and there is obviously an amazing story filled with fairies, swords, magical items, and evil powers at work. If anyone who is reading this has played Diablo 2, World of Warcraft, or other games of this nature, Ragnarok Online has the same taste. Players can gain experience points and obtain more powerful weapons by accepting quests or just going out into the open and fighting monsters. But what makes this game so fun is the gameplay and the community. People form guilds, fight larger battles, and interact with each other. I personally played this for some time, and the players on the servers are helpful, gregarious, and fun to be around, which is not something we can say about all online games these days. In addition to the fun atmosphere, what’s truly addicting about this (and probably all MMORPGs) is the battle system. Players all start out labeled “novice,” and as they gain experience and level up by battling monsters and passing so-called “exams,” they move up by being able to choose more specified professions ranging from high wizard to mechanic to clown. Here we are fighting some Porings and Chonchons: If you don’t want to battle monsters, you can also fight other players via the nature of PvP, or player vs. player. There are certain arenas split by level bounds that players can duke it out in. Death in some arenas result in penalties such as a loss of experience points. We could sit here all day and discuss the game, but the best option is for you to go out and try it! Here is a small trailer of the game when it first came out (you may want to watch it in HQ): The downside to playing Ragnarok is that the engine updates and patches every couple of days, so if you don’t play for a long time, you will have to wait a while for the system to update itself. System Requirements Intel Pentium 500 MHz equivalent At least 128MB RAM At least Direct X 8 8MB graphics card At least 1 GB Hard Drive Space As stated before, the game differs from region to region, so if you don’t live in the U.S., you may want to check if your country supports the game and has the free server available. If you DO live in the U.S., you can get it here. Note that you will want to download the Ragnarok “Valkryie” option to get the free version so you can play Ragnarok for free, do not download the premium version. 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 Xiah Rebirth – Martial Arts Themed MMORPG (3) Asda Story – A Soul Mate MMORPG (4) The Top 3 Online Multiplayer Games (MMO) For Youngsters (18) Runes of Magic – The Best Free Internet Multiplayer Game (15) Quake Live – Free Online Shooting Game in Your Browser (18)

The 7 Simple & Great Tricks to Tweak Your Dock on Mac OS X Posted: 02 Aug 2009 11:01 AM PDT Just like the Start Menu for Windows, Dock is one of the characteristics of Mac OS X. While every Mac user knows and uses Dock, describing it might be a bit difficult. So here’s the definition of the Dock according to Apple’s Dictionary: An application launcher that comes with Mac OS X. The Dock is located along the edge of the screen. It contains icons for many of the applications available on the computer, and you can drag icons to and from the Dock. The Dock shows that an application is running by displaying a small black triangle below or next to its icon. Most Mac users just accept the Dock as it is. But maybe they shouldn’t. There are many ways to tweak the Dock, and here are several of them. Part One: On The Dock First, we’ll start from the obvious: the Dock itself. 1. Resizing the Dock You can easily resize the dock by hovering your mouse on the dock, click on the dividing line, then drag up or down to adjust the size. If you just click and hold, the magnification effect will be off temporarily until you release the click. 2. Right click options If you do right click (or Control + Click) on the dividing line, a pop up menu with several options will appear. Among them is changing the location of the dock. If you choose to open the Dock Preferences, you’ll get more or less the same options with the right click. But if you right click or click and hold on one of the application icons, you’ll get options for that application instead. 3. Removing icons You can just drag out an inactive application’s icon from the dock to remove them. Part Two: Inside The Terminal Now we’ll move onto the real stuff. If anyone wants to do serious tweaking on Mac OS X, there’s no better (and scarier) way to do it than using command lines on the Terminal. 4. Add Spaces between icons Except for the two icons beside the dividing line, all icons in the Dock are located next to one another without too much space. Using Terminal’s command lines, you can add a separator in the form of blank space between icons to group them. Write (or copy and paste) this command to Terminal: defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add ‘{ “tile-type” = “spacer-tile”; }’ Hit Enter/Return, then write: killall Dock Hit Enter/Return one more time and the Dock will be restarted and missing for a few (milli)seconds. After the Dock return, you’ll find a blank space in the Dock. Drag this space to the location that you want. Repeat the process to add another blank space. To remove the blank space, simply drag out the space from the dock. Alternatively, you can right click or click and hold the space and a pop up menu will appear saying “Remove from Dock”. Click on that command to remove the space. 5. Show only the active applications Sometimes you feel that the Dock contains too many items. You can reduce the crowds by making the Dock shows only icons from the active applications. Use this command line in Terminal: defaults write com.apple.dock static-only -bool TRUE Hit Enter/Return, then write: killall Dock Hit Enter/Return one more time to restart the Dock. To reverse the process, change the “TRUE” into “FALSE” (sans quote). Part Three: Other Terminal Commands We are still discussing Terminal commands to tweak the dock. Since the general process is the same, I’d like to simplify the explanation by only mentioning the command lines. Please remember to always hit Enter/Return after each command line, continued by “killall Dock” command and another hit at Enter/Return key to restart the Dock to enable the change. 6. Flattening the Dock You can change the appearance of the Dock to the flat 2D view like the older version of Mac OS X by using this command: defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES To reverse, change the YES into NO. 7. Make the hidden applications transparent Sometimes Mac users hide some of the open applications (by using Hide menu or Command + H). This process could be enhanced by making the hidden applications icons in the dock transparent. Use this command to activate this effect. defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool YES Replace YES with NO to reverse the effect. Do you know any other tweaks for Dock? Please share them using the comments 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 Supercharge your Mac Dock with these 4 tools [Mac only] (18) 5 Tools to Make Windows XP Look Like Vista (83) Tweak Mac Leopard’s Hidden Settings With xMod (0) Three Quick Registry Tweaks to Customize Windows Like a Pro (8) Stretch Your Windows Desktop for Maximum Space (2)

Internet Security: How Criminals Hack Other Peoples Computers Posted: 02 Aug 2009 09:01 AM PDT For those of you that work in Information Technology and started in the last 20 years or so, chances are you were inspired by movies such as War Games, Sneakers or even Hackers. Remember that 80’s T.V. show Whiz Kids? That was cool too. I so wanted to be one of those kids. Of course, those movies were exaggerating the power of computers or how they worked, but it was fascinating! The idea of taking control of something or figuring out how it worked by poking around and analyzing it. It was this endless world of possibilities that got us pursuing some of the most thankless jobs in the world. So how do criminals do things like hack other people’s computers? It really doesn’t take a lot of skill at all. Let’s assume I’m the criminal for the sake of this story. Disclaimer: I have never been charged with any crime. I do not do the things I’ll talk about here. You shouldn’t either! Do not try this at home – do it somewhere else. The easiest way to hack someone’s computer is to get your grubby little hands on it.  If I got your computer AND found that your Windows XP accounts were password protected, I would simply use a bootable password reset disk to change or remove the passwords. Then I’m in. I’m not going to tell you where to get these utilities, however, I’m sure you can use Google. If you had Windows Vista on the disk, with it’s BitLocker technology, it would be harder to get around the protection for certain. But it can be done. I’m sure this isn’t the only method out there. “Okay smarty-pants! You’ve gotten into my account but I have passwords on all the documents that have my important information!” Really? First, I don’t believe you since very few people even know that they can password protect documents. Second, there’s a good chance you use the same password for all the documents. Chances are you figure that having a strong password on the Windows account is good enough, that you’ve used a pretty weak one on your documents. Any sort of password cracker using a rainbow table or dictionary attack will get through those in a matter of seconds to minutes. What if you had set a BIOS password, so that I couldn’t even get to the operating system without knowing it? Well, that’s another step in the right direction, but, yet again, it can be done. The thing is, now I have to do a lot of work. Steal the computer, crack the BIOS password, crack your Windows protection, and crack the document protection. Since most people who steal, steal from people they know, I’ll probably know that you do these things. I’ll look for an easier target. Lazy criminal laggards! “But Guy!” you say, “what if  I do all of that but you want to get at me over the Internet?” First off, why do you keep calling me Butt Guy? (Seriously, I NEVER get tired of that joke!) Second, um, yeah, I could do that. However, I’m less likely to try to actually hack your computer. What I’m likely to do is hack websites that you use to gather the information I need to steal your information or money. Even with some creative web searching I can get an awful lot of information on you. Seriously. Try searching on your name and aliases you use on the web. You’ll be amazed by the social profile one could build on you, to steal your identity. So, be careful about what you put out there. It’s out there, pretty much forever. If you would like to trace someone online MakeUseOf lists a numbers of really good free tools in the post about 15 Websites to Find People On The Internet. Let’s say that I’m going to hack right into your computer remotely. The easiest way to do this is to trick you into downloading software that will allow me to take control of your computer. This kind of software is known as a Trojan Horse. I may send you an attachment, or link, in an e-mail that, once you open it, installs the Trojan program without you knowing it. Or, I may set up a web page on a popular topic, that will attack your computer and drop the Trojan Horse onto it. Here’s a story on exactly that. Once that Trojan is on there, I can use it to take information from you, or I might use it to set up a proxy for me to get to other computers. The nasty part of that is that it is possible for you to then be implicated in whatever crime I committed. Sure, a good lawyer would get you exonerated, but how many lawyers are good enough with computers to understand what just happened? By the time you pay for the lawyer, and dealt with the embarrassment of being charged, you’re already done in. Then I’m long gone. So what do you do? Well, you keep your operating system updated, you keep your software updated, you keep your antivirus and firewall on and updated. You should also disconnect your computer from the Internet when you are not using. But really, who does all that? Every computer is like a house – locks on the door, but a glass window right beside it. Just as my dad often said, “Locks only keep out honest people.” 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 Steal Your Friends Passwords and Software Licenses! (30) Ophcrack – A Password Hack Tool to Crack Almost Any Windows Password (15) Keeping Under the Radar and Securing Your PC Files (20) Keep Your Passwords Secret On A Public Computer With KYPS (13) How to Make Your Hotmail Sign In More Secure (2)

July Roundup: MakeUseOf Authors Posted: 02 Aug 2009 07:31 AM PDT July has proved to be a very productive month indeed! Our website has been up and online 99% of the time despite heavy traffic; we’ve taken on board several new and high-spirited writers with creative ideas; and we’ve published not one, not two but three PDF manuals! Karl helps beginners find their way around a tricky device, and teaches advanced tricks to seasoned users in the Windows Mobile Guide. Stefan, whose name is now beginning to sound very household, reveals the secrets to building your own Media Center; and lays the groundwork to master your iPhone. If you haven’t checked out these PDF manuals, go ahead! They’re all free to download without any strings attached. Simon Slangen is our PDF Manual Editor, so if there are any subjects you would like to see turned into a downloadable PDF manual, enter your ideas in the comments below or send him an email at simon@makeuseof.com. You may also find the past manuals here. Right, let’s get down to the stories MakeUseOf dished out in July, shall we? Karl – Ask The Admin How to Find out How Long Your File Transfer Will Take [Windows] Set Up Active Desktop Wallpaper With WallPapa [Windows] Convert Foreign Currencies The Easy Way With CurrencyConv [Windows Mobile] Milo- Find Cheapest Local Store for the Item You Want to Buy Make Printable DVD Movie Covers with DVD Print [Windows] Search Popular Rapid Share Downloads Easily with RapidShare123 Find Recently Available Or Deleted Domain Names with JustDropped Pay Your Friends to Do Things for You with Do Stuff For Money Hide & Protect Your Files with Easy File Locker [Windows] Alice – Your Personal Shopping Assistant DistortIt – Free Photo Morphing Software to Have Fun With Pictures [Windows] Create a Watermark with WaterMarkLib to Prevent Photos From Being Stolen [Windows] Track Your Reading and Catalogue Books with BookTomb [Win] How to Restart or Shut Down Your Computer Remotely using Microsoft Outlook Learn A New Language With Anki's Flash Card System Clean up your PC with Windows Installer Clean Up Utility How To Easily Convert Video Files to DVD, MP4, VCD, MPEG, AVI … with VideoSpiritLite How to Use a USB Jump Drive Like a Super Geek with Tech Tookit 2.0 (Windows) Easily Kill Hung Processes on Windows with Super F4 The 6 Best Websites To Waste Time On Search For The Manual You Need With Manuals Online Varun – Tech Crazy Sneak Around & Watch Videos at Work with Double Vision [Win] Hamster – Time Your Tasks & Track Your PC Hours [Linux] Discover the Hottest Top Internet Searches with Chromomulator Easy GUI Management of Grub and Usplash Settings with Startup Manager [Linux] 3 Tips for Quick and Free Translation Between Languages Save, Restore, Fix a Broken MBR with MBRWizard [Windows] 6 New Labs Features Introduced For Google Calendar 10 More Cool Things You Can Do With YouTube Videos How To Protect Sensitive Information by Erasing Your Hard Disk Completely How To Customize Your Linux Desktop With GnomeART-NG A Beginner's FTP Command Tutorial For Ascii or Binary File Transfers Saikat – The Things I Do 10 Places To Get Cool Media Clips For PowerPoint Presentations How to Recover Deleted Pictures from a Digicam Memory Card How to Fix & Repair the Lost Link to The iTunes Music Library 4 Free Thumbnail Generators To Create Quality Photo Thumbnails For Your Website Manage Application Updates With The 'Google Updater' Service [Windows] 10 Websites For Free Mobile Phone Ringtones & Other Mobile Downloads 5 Ways To Do A Site-Specific Search Using Search Engines How to Use Mozilla Firefox in Safe Mode Plagiarism Checkers: 5 Free Websites To Catch The Copycats How to Make Index Cards in Microsoft Word 2007 How To Solve Any Windows Problem with Event ID How to Create Top Quality Computer Desktop Wallpapers How To Discover The RSS Feed Of A Webpage If A Link Isn't There Simon – Wombat Labs Cue Online – Astonishingly Realistic 3D Pro Billiards Games The 4 Retro Gaming Classics & Their Modern Counterparts BonusLevel – Create Your Own Video Game Levels Digital Video Formats and Video Conversion Explained Xiah Rebirth – Martial Arts Themed MMORPG Multi-protocol Downloader KCeasy Handles Gnutella, Ares and OpenFT File Sharing Ophcrack – A Password Hack Tool to Crack Almost Any Windows Password 3 Funny Flash Games That Make Fun Of The Gaming Industry How To Set Your Browser Homepage in 5 Browsers Final Fantasy IV : Free ReMix Music Album You Actually Can Earn Money by Taking Online Surveys Exteel : Third-Person Online Robot Shooting Play Baseball Like a Pro With MLB Dugout Heroes Ryan – BetterContent 5 Free Website Stock Tickers for Financial Geeks 4 Rotten Websites That Everyone Should Hate How To Get Companies To Send You Free Stuff With No Catches How To Get On YouTube At School Using Mobile Internet Ogame – A Free Online Strategy Game of Space War The Best Free Algebra Homework Help Websites Create Printable To Do Lists To Get Organized With iDailyDiary 4 Top Sites to Get Event Tickets Instead of TicketMaster Break Free From iTunes With Amazon Music Downloads How to Find a Free eBay Seller Template [eBay Tips] Top 10 Disgusting Websites to Share With Friends Learn Interesting Geographical Facts About Mars On Google David – The 2.0 Life Get Bite-Sized Reviews Of Everything With Blippr Find Cool New People With a Twitter Search Using TwitterHIT Ask & Answer the Web's Questions with Aardvark [Free Invites!] Find Out What's Hot Right Now On The Web With OneRiot How to Use Twitter with Multiple Accounts with Seesmic Desktop Manage Your Bookmarks & Reading List with Instapaper Discover What is The Most Popular Type of Music on Twitter With The Hype Machine Check Out Hilarious Stand Up Comedy Routines And Jokes With The Laugh Button Tim – Twenty Ounce 4 Better Alternatives To eBay's Smart Search Tool 4 Cool Fake Viruses to Make Your Friends Freak Out Download Torrent Files Hassle-Free with BTaccel [Free Invites!] The 4 Fixes to Common Problems with iTunes for Windows XP How To Install The Recovery Console in Windows XP How To Make A Customized Background On MySpace How to Make Your Hotmail Sign In More Secure How to Set Up a Dual Boot Windows & Linux System with Wubi How To Download Free Hulu Movies To Your Computer Guy – Extreme IT 9 Free Ringtones That Sound Like Real Phones Publish Your Own Book For Free With Some Help From PublishAmerica 5 HTML Tips to Create a Fast Loading Free Website Technology Explained: How Does Wireless Internet Work? Convert eBooks to MP3 Audio With Spesoft Text to Speech Software Technology Explained: How Does Satellite Internet Work? 3 Sites To Help You Identify Different Kinds Of Drugs Technology Explained: How The Internet Works Jeffry – Super Subconscious 3 Free Uninstallers to Clean Up Obsolete Files [Mac] Students: Free Apps To Help You Excel at School [Mac only] 4 Fun And Simple Things You Can Do Using Terminal [Mac] How To Easily Manage Photos from Multiple Cameras [Mac] Play and Download YouTube Videos On Your Mac with MacTubes Folx – An Automatic Download Manager for Mac 3 Useful Booklet Printing Solutions For Mac Users How to Change The Brightness Of Your Mac Display Beyond Default Levels Three Free Calendar Applications For The Mac Mahendra – An Unquiet Mind 20 Tips to Define And Manage Your Social Networks [Part 1] 20 Tips to Define And Manage Your Social Networks [Part 2] How to Morph Into Your Favorite Celebrity Lookalike How to Color Your Pictures Like Famous Paintings With FlauntR 15 Best Windows 7 Tips and Hacks 12 More Windows 7 Tips & Hacks Create Your Own Top Movies of All Time List with Flickchart (FREE Invites!) How to Set A Bing Wallpaper Desktop Slideshow In Windows 7 Stefan – The Tux Geek 5 Free Password Generators For Nearly Unhackable Passwords Opera Unite – File Sharing, Messaging, Note Taking & more Right in your Browser Free Security Suite for Windows: Microsoft Security Essentials How To Analyze A Windows Blue Screen Of Death With WhoCrashed Use Hunch to Answer Your Questions & Make Decisions Technology Explained: How Does Skype Work? Jack – JackCola.org Measure Wi-Fi Signal Strength at Your Home with HeatMapper How To Access Hotmail Email Messages from Your Gmail Account How To Access Hotmail Email Messages from Your Gmail Account [Part II] Choosing A Laptop: 9 Great Review Sites Leon 5 Websites to Check Out Latest Buzz and Viral Videos 3 Features of Google Driving Directions You Probably Never Knew 3 Great Websites For Beginners to Learn How to Hit a Golf Ball 8 Tips To Effectively Boost Your Wireless Router Signal Wez – The Tutorial Blog Make The Perfect Screencast With These 6 Great Tips PulpTunes – Share Your iTunes Library Online With Ease 3 More Cool Twitter Tools To Do Your Tweeting With Angelina – Nothing Major How To Mix Your Own Music Online & Be An Internet DJ 18 Great Sites to Learn a New Language Audio File Formats Explained in Simple Terms Jason – Third Error How To Find Out Which Sites Have Embedded Your YouTube Videos How To Start Your Own Internet Radio Station With Shoutcast Stream Games To Other Computers With StreamMyGame Jim Henderson – Different Perspective How To Easily Create a Blog with Tumblr 3 Steps To Find Similar-Minded People On Flickr Michael – Doodler Blog The Ultimate, Free Online Color Schemer To Help Complement Your Colors How to Color Correct RGB Images Quickly & Easily Using Photoshop Israel Top 5 Tools To Make A Home Movie Online For Free 6 Less Known Free Online Word Processors Darko – FinderMind What Language Is This? 5 Tools to Identify Unknown Languages 3 Forum Search Engines to Search 40.000+ Message Boards Grant – The Grant Blog The 5 Best Free RSS Icon Sets For Your Website Cool iPhone Keypad Codes To Get Phone & Network Information John Top 5 Free Websites for Quality Copyright Free Photographs Tobias – personal tobias 9 Steps To A Great Start In Friendfeed Eyal – ProductiveWise 5 Recommended Bookmarklets To Simplify Tedious Tasks Sandra – Your Fashion Oasis The 3 Best Online Radio Players For Your Desktop Tim Lenahan – timmyjohnboy How To Use Facial Recognition in Picasa Web Albums Brad – OwensDomain Best Online Resources For New and Experienced Dog Owners Travis – TQuizzle Legacy Locker – life insurance for your online identity Dean – Ten Amp Talk Cool NASA Stuff: International Space Station Viewing, NASA TV, Videos and More Ellie – Ultimate Geek Girl 10 Essential Software Apps For Web Development On A Mac 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 September Roundup : Make Use Of Authors (0) October Roundup : Make Use Of Authors (0) November Roundup : Make Use Of Authors (0) May Roundup: MakeUseOf Authors (0) May Roundup : Make Use Of Authors & Sponsors (0)

Jinni Recommends You Movies You Should Enjoy (500 Invites!) Posted: 02 Aug 2009 07:01 AM PDT The number of films I watch has declined greatly in these past few years. I used to go out to the video rental, and read the back of every DVD I hadn’t seen before. Not so much anymore. Time has become too precious a thing and, after all, how do I know I’m even going to like those films? Usually I rely on my friends now. The word of mouth. It’s amazing how many voluntary test-animals walk this earth, and they’re my primary source of information. That is, until recently. What’s truly great these days, is the intelligence of technology. No, Skynet is not upon us, but new algorithms are being written and tweaked everyday, to further dissect our characteristics and our very behaviour. Imagine it, a website that knows your every taste in movies. Now that is what I call technology! Jinni Jinni is a movie recommendation site, a spontaneous and intelligent search engine constantly trying to quantify your tastes. One might call it StumbleUpon for movies, but it’s much more than that. Jinni isn’t the only one competing in this league, so a little scepticism is allowed, but it’s the only one that works this well. My account was set up in no time. After we broke the ice a little, and talked about movies I liked, it took over control. Now instead of questions, it’s showing me movie recommendations – and good ones at that. Jinni’s like that movie-geek from college, only this one knows what you’re after better than you do. Building a Profile The first thing you have to do after signing up is getting familiar with the interface, and letting the interface get familiar with you. If you want to get something out of this service, you need to demonstrate what kind of person you are – a rather small pain. Start by searching and rating movies you’ve seen, the great ones as well as the bad ones. Meanwhile, if you encounter any interesting titles, you can tag them for later reference. Easier still is to take the movie quizzes. There’s one for every taste type – Introspector, Hero, Individualist, Drama Addict, Social Animal, Extremist, Alternate Realist, Escape Artist, Master Mind, Idealist, Strategist and Social Philosopher. Honestly, a lot of my own scores came as a surprise, but that was mostly because I hadn’t thought about it before. You will be presented with a number of genre-specific movies and you have to rate the ones you know. The other ones, you can tag as ‘likely to see’ or ‘not for me’. Based on those ratings, Jinni will then calculate how big a part of your taste type mix the genre is. The scores are dynamic, which means they will automatically adjust as you continue to rate movies. Last but not least, you can specify which genres and plot types you like, and further tweak your recommendations. I recommend you not to limit yourself to only one of these possibilities, as we want the recommendation engine to be as accurate as possible. Recommendations Once you’ve provided enough information to the website, it’ll start making movie recommendations. You’ll be surprised how many times they hit it right on the head. I almost had to delete the first page in its entirety because it was full of great movies I’ve enjoyed in the past. You can rate or neglect movies in your list, at which point they’ll disappear from your list. When you click on the titles, you can see more information, as well as an embedded trailer. If you’ve got an online NetFlix account, you can team it up with Jinni. Head straight from your recommendations to the rental, or even filter out movies that aren’t available on NetFlix yet. Intelligent Searches Nevertheless, one of the best features of Jinni is the intelligent search engine. It’s yet another great way of discovering movies. When indexing movies, Jinni doesn’t only look at the obvious stuff like genre, actors and producers but also assigns tags of meta-data. Each film will have some of these tags, defining the mood of the film, the type of plot and ideal audience. Using these tags, Jinni can make connections between movies that share certain grounds, or even ambience. In your inquiries, you can specify if you want to perform content- or title searches. The interesting thing about content searches – which will browse films’ characteristics – is that you can find great stuff without knowing what you’re looking for. Sample inquiries include ‘Like: title’, which will only show you results somehow related to a specified movie, or ‘Plot: assassination’ which will only return a certain type of movie plot (in this example, films focused on an assassination). This search lingo is really very intuitive, and not even necessary in most cases, Linni speaks fluent English. Type in ‘movies with animals’, or ‘thought-provoking sci-fi’, and the semantic search engine will provide you with results. If you’re still not happy with the results you’re getting, you can filter them down by assigning other characteristics to the movie you’re looking for, like mood, genre, attitude and time period. That ought to do it! Private Beta? – Here are 500 invites! Jinni is still in private beta at the moment. This means it’s still closed for the public and you can’t get in without an invitation. But fear not, because the nice people at Jinni have supplied an invitation link for our readers to sign up right now! Register via this link to get into the Jinni private beta (500 invites)! The invites are limited, so be quick! If they’re done for, perhaps you can share a few of yours in the comments section below, because every member gets 10 additional invites! If you manage to get an invite, please do come back and let us know what you think of the site. How accurate is it for you? What did the site recommend you watch? MakeUseOf had some other great websites for movie addicts, Aibek’s post on What Movie Should I Watch Next? is one of them. Other articles related to movies can be found here. 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 Get Bite-Sized Reviews Of Everything With Blippr (4) Create Your Own Top Movies of All Time List with Flickchart (FREE Invites!) (12) User Generated Content (Episode II) (2) Opera 10 Beta ‘Turbo’ – Does It Still Have What It Takes? (83) Boxee – Cool Media Center for Mac and Ubuntu (86)

10 Great Google Gadgets For Your Gmail Sidebar Posted: 02 Aug 2009 05:01 AM PDT Gmail offers more than just email – you can add gadgets to your Gmail screen to add more functionality or just for plain fun. Before we get started, you must activate Gmail Gadgets by navigating to Settings then Labs and enabling “Add any gadget by URL.” Now navigate to Settings > Gadgets to add new gadgets to your Gmail account: All of the Gadgets listed must be installed by URL. Simply copy the URLs below and paste into your Gmail Gadgets settings box and press “Add.” 1. TwitterGadget makes it easy to view and update your Twitter account without visiting the Twitter homepage. The URL for the Twitter Gadget is: http://www.twittergadget.com/gadget_gmail.xml 2. Wikipedia Search helps you search Wikipedia directly from Gmail – whether it’s for research or just for fun. The URL for Wikipedia Search is: http://www.google.com/ig/modules/wikipedia.xml 3. Use FriendFeed? Get the FriendFeed Gmail Gadget, so you can keep track of your friends on this popular Social networking/sharing service. The URL for the FriendFeed Gadget is: http://friendfeed.com/embed/googlegadget/spec 4. A must-have gadget for those of us who communicate regularly with people around the world is the World Clock gadget. It has locations all around the world and continuously updates the time, so you know when it’s bedtime in Paris and not to expect a speedy response to your emails! The URL for the World Clock Gadget is: http://gad.getpla.net/poly/clock.xml 5. Track the current trends on Digg with the Digg Gadget. Features include selecting stories by sub-section and access to your settings. The URL for the Digg Gadget is: http://digg.com/goog/ig.xml 7. Quickly shorten links with the Bit.ly URL Shortener Gadget. Whether you are emailing links or sending to friends via Google Chat, shorten long URLs with the Bit.ly URL shortener gadget. The URL for the Bit.ly URL Shortener Gadget is: http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/107368512201818821991/bitly-shortener.xml 8. MySpace can also be accessed via Google Gadget. Install this gadget and log in to your MySpace account to access friends, notes and more. The URL for the MySpace Gadget is: http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/100080069921643878012/myspace.xml 9. Use the Google Calculator to perform simple and complex math problems or convert weights from metric to English or vice versa right from Gmail. The URL for the Google Calculator Gadget is: http://calebegg.com/calc.xml 10. And just for fun, add the Chuck Norris facts Gadget to Gmail. Get a couple of laughs a day and some funny facts to share with friends. The URL for the Chuck Norris Facts Gadget is: http://marsupialmusic.net/stu/scripts/chucknorris.xml Which Google gadgets sit on YOUR Gmail sidebar?   Let us know 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 Use Twitter From Gmail With TwitterGadget (4) Track Your Short URL Links With tr.im (9) Su.pr – An Extraordinary URL Shortener from StumbleUpon (13) Send Tweets & Make Video With The New & Improved Twhirl (9) Run Web Apps on your Desktop with Prism (6)

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