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- Cool Websites and Tools [October 3]
- How To Create Free Websites Instantly To Share Information Fast
- Sweet Home 3D – Be An Amateur Architect With Virtual Room Plans
- Top 5 Vista Tweaks To Increase Internet Speed
- Display and Quickly Access Information With a Tabbed Desktop
- Mindopia (Beta) – Get Complete Occupation Descriptions For A List Of Different Careers
| Cool Websites and Tools [October 3] Posted: 03 Oct 2009 06:01 PM PDT
(1) AskCh – Neat healthcare related Twitter tool which lets you easily get cost information for prescriptions as well as definitions for common health issues. The way it works is pretty simple – follow @askch on twitter, send them a direct message regarding your question and get an automated reply via direct message. Read more: AskCh – Save Money On Prescriptions Via Twitter
(2) DoubleFeatureFinder – This site lets you browse showtimes in local movie theaters anywhere across US. Simply enter your area zip code, movie title (optional) and press "Go". Then pick a theater from a list and see a back-to-back schedule of the movies playing there or pick a movie and see a list of local theaters where you can watch it. Read more: DoubleFeatureFinder – Browse Local Movie Theater Showtimes (3) iNudge – Free and fun music synthesizer that lets you create you own sound patterns by selecting steps on a 16×16 matrix. It seems dumb at first, but once you start creating more advanced sound patterns it gets very addictive. Read more: iNudge – Addictive Online Music Synthesizer (4) MyAvatarEditor – Online tool for creating and editing avatars. There are many settings you can apply to your avatar including weight, height, hair style, facial features, nose style and others, available from a bottom bar. Once you have created your avatar, you can or share it online using its unique URL or download it to your computer for later use. (5) YourVersion – Interesting web recommendation engine which finds content on the internet in real time. And as you come across new stuff, you can easily bookmark as well as share it with friends on various social networks. You can get personalized real time information from blogs, news and multimedia sites and social sites like twitter. Read more: YourVersion – Personalized Real-time Web Recommendation Engine These are just half of the websites that we discovered in the last couple of days. If you want us to send you daily round-ups of all cool websites we come across, leave your email here. Or follow us via RSS feed. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/ Related posts
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| How To Create Free Websites Instantly To Share Information Fast Posted: 03 Oct 2009 03:01 PM PDT
You can easily create free websites instantly in order to share content with the world. Here are some web applications that will allow you to share files and emails, create anonymous web pages and annotate links you share. Note that all the applications presented here are registration-free and only require one or two mouse clicks to get going. Another advantage is that they save the time of opening attached files or reading text offsite. After you set them up you can easily share them via Twitter, email, Facebook and so on. Transform an email into a webpageMoomeo is a nifty little web service that transforms an email into a public webpage. Just forward any email to post@moomeo.com and within a minute you’ll get back a link you to a webpage you can share. The webpage contains exactly the email you sent, with the attachments displayed in a sidebar, along with some sharing options (Twitter, Facebook and more). At the bottom of the page people can comment. See a screenshot below or visit a live example.
Go ahead and try it right away! Send an email to post@moomeo.com. File to webpagefile2.ws is a great tool for sharing files by using them to create free websites instantly. It can handle numerous kinds of files, including images, audio, documents, programming source code, web documents, and archive. To set up a file based webpage, click ‘Choose file‘, browser for a file on your computer (up to 15 MB), and click ‘Start conversion‘.
Once uploading is done, you’ll see a link to the webpage. People with whom you share it will be able to see the file without downloading or opening it. If they do wish to save the file to their computer – there is a direct link at the bottom of the page. Here is an example of an Excel file I’ve shared. Start from scratchSeveral services will let you create a standalone webpage from scratch. Copytaste, Dinkypage, and Pastehtml will all do the work, each with its own special features. The services vary in the ability to comment, adding or not adding advertisements and so on. All work within a single click and allow you to edit the HTML or just write plain text. Annotate any webpagePagetweet is designed to let you annotate webpages before you share them. You can add a 140-character comment at the top of any webpage.
After you enter the page’s URL and add the comment, you’ll get a link to the exact same page, with the comment at the top of it. People who visit this link will see the webpage along with your comment. If they forward it – other people will see your comments as well, so it is better than just sharing a link via Twitter or email. See below how an annotated webpage looks like. Visit the actual page here.
Do you know other cool ways to share content online? Share it with us in the comments! Image Credit : Immagina 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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| Sweet Home 3D – Be An Amateur Architect With Virtual Room Plans Posted: 03 Oct 2009 01:01 PM PDT
I can think of all types of situations this would help with. A friend of mine is in this exact situation. They are going to be doing some renovations themselves and they have almost no budget. How do they draw up plans? Right now it is on graph paper and nowhere near printed to scale. I looked and I looked and could not find much. But then it happened… Just like that I found a program that is either installable or available via the internet that lets you virtually plan out rooms. It is called Sweet Home 3D. We will be looking at the web version today which is located at Sweet Home 3D. Did I mention it works on Mac and Linux as well? Well it does, so I hope that calms down some of you who feel we leave you out Let's take a look at how it works. When you first arrive here, you will see this screen. Note you can register to save your design or if you are a privacy nut feel free to design and run!
Then you can drag your item to anywhere on your grid. You can start virtually planning out rooms or start by laying out windows and walls. It is very easy. On top of that you can modify the size of each object so it can relate to your real world situations. Just double click on the dimensions and you will see this screen:
You can check the check box to display the name you give the item or leave it alone to suppress it. there are so many options to play with for each item including angle, elevation as well as color, mirrored shape or hidden (visible). Next let’s drag some items to our canvas. Here is me adding some bathroom fixtures and a door.
And here is some more creativity:
You see, as I add the items in the top portion, it is rendered below so you can get a feel for it. Excuse me as I go design my pseudo playboy mansion. Maybe I could let some Sims live in it until I can afford it. Do you know of any free autocad virtual room planners that are easy to use and have a small learning curve? We would love to check it out as well. Leave comments, thoughts or death threats in the comments kids! In the meantime, check out these equivalents by Anthony and by Ryan. 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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| Top 5 Vista Tweaks To Increase Internet Speed Posted: 03 Oct 2009 11:01 AM PDT
So I’m taking this opportunity to share the wisdom that I’ve gained from that experience so that, possibly, I can save the next poor soul the trouble and heartache that I had to suffer through. Am I being over-dramatic? Maybe. But what you have to understand is that at the very center of my livelihood is the Internet. I earn income, learn and unwind all on the Internet. When I lose that connection to the virtual world – I’m not a happy camper. Rewind several months to the day when I purchased a new, shiny Sony Vaio laptop. I brought it home, excitedly opened up the box and turned it on, expecting the brand new laptop with a build-in wireless ethernet card to instantly sense my home network and connect almost completely automatically. Unfortunately, it sensed nothing. Many hours later, after an unmentionable amount of coffee consumed, I finally had my new Vista laptop on the Internet and screaming. To save MUO readers out there who find themselves in this situation countless hours of aggravation, I’d like to offer the most important lessons I learned about Vista during this ordeal. Earlier, Aseem offered applications you can install that will improve your PC performance. However, I’d like to present the top five ways you can tweak Vista itself to get your Internet connection working, and increase your overall Internet speed.
The Most Important Vista Internet Speed Tweaks – Once You Can ConnectNew technology is fabulous when it works, but I was quite disgusted to learn that Microsoft implemented IPv6 on Vista and upon install it is set as the default. The silly part is that it simply doesn’t work well with devices that still utilize the IPv4 protocol – and to assume that most home networks are fully upgraded to the IPv6 protocol is a faulty approach to setting defaults. Many people upgrade their PCs and laptops long before they consider replacing that old outdated router that’s been sitting in the basement for five years and still works perfectly. So, when they bring home that shiny new laptop with Vista installed, guess what – the laptop and the router simply refuse to talk. So, if you’re unlucky enough to find yourself in this situation – the very first thing you should do before we can even get started speeding up the Internet, is to disable IPv6 so that you can at least get on the Internet in the first place. Here’s how it works. First, go to Start -> Network -> Network and Sharing Center, and then click on “Manage Network Connections.”
In this screen, you’ll likely have a wireless connection displaying that it can’t connect to any network. Right-click on that icon and select “Properties.”
You’ll discover both IPv6 and IPv4 enabled. Go ahead and uncheck the box for IPv6 and click “OK.” You’ll need to reboot your computer, but afterwards if the protocol incompatibility was your problem (and it very likely was), you’ll find that your computer can now communicate fine with the router. Maybe. There is one other complication Microsoft introduced into Vista just to encourage you that much more to upgrade your router – it’s something called “autotuning,” and it’s also the next Vista tweak. Vista Connection Tweak #2 – AutotuningThis is another case where the cutting edge technological advances being enabled on Microsoft’s operating system by default is a recipe for disaster for users who have older networks and older network devices (specifically older routers). Vista comes installed and enabled with something called “Receive Window Auto-Tuning.” On advanced networks, it’s actually a pretty cool technology where the transfer of data is monitored and Vista automatically “tunes” the TCP window field to optimize packet transfer. Older routers simply do not “play nice” when it comes to that kind of window resizing. This spells trouble for home users who don’t know the difference between a packet of data and a packet of sugar. What was Microsoft thinking? Luckily – there’s a way for you, the home user, to turn this default feature off as well. First, click on “Start” and type “cmd” and right-click on the command icon. You’ll see the following window.
Click on “Run as Administrator.” Then, in the command box, type “netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled” which will disable autotuning.
Now that you’ve got your new Vista finally communicating with your router (hopefully), you’re ready to tweak Vista even more in order to dramatically boost the Internet speed. Vista Tweak #3 To Increase Internet Speed – Take Back Your BandwidthAnother unnecessary default setting that Vista (and actually XP as well) comes with is a 20% “reserve” of your available bandwidth in order to accommodate certain applications like Windows Update. This tweak is a pretty common one most old-school users of XP already know – it’s not at all detrimental and you can immediately gain 20% of your bandwidth back, increasing Internet performance significantly. This is called the QoS Reserve Bandwidth Limit, and to reduce this on any version of Vista you need to edit the registry. Go to Start and type “regedit“. You may have to deal with the UAC, unless you’ve read Sharninder’s advice on how to speed up your Vista by turning it off! In Regedit, navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows”
Right-click on Windows and create a new key called “Psched“, then right click on the right and create a new “DWORD” entry. Name it “NonBestEffortLimit” and set the value to zero to disable reserve bandwidth. Vista Tweak #4 – Modify Your Browser For Optimum SpeedBelieve it or not, not only is your Vista operating system not configured by default to blaze the Internet as fast as possible, but neither is your Internet browser! These instructions include how to increase your browsing speed on Firefox and IE. First, in Firefox type, “about:config” into the address bar (and ignore any warnings). In the filter field, type “network” and scroll down to “network.http.pipelining” and set it to TRUE, and set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” from 4 to anything from 8 to 12.
I use Firefox almost exclusively, and this one change increased my page-load time by what felt like a factor of 50%. Of course, there’s a similar tweak for Internet Explorer as well, but you have to edit the registry. As before, go to Start and type “regedit.”
Navigate to “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Internet Settings” and find “MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server” and “MaxConnectionsPerServer.” Set these to at least 10, or a little higher if you would like. You should also see an increase in performance for IE after making this change as well. Vista Tweak #5 – Increase DNS CacheThis tweak is one that anyone should do anyway, as it can significantly save time while surfing the web, especially if you tend to visit the same sites often. What the DNS cache does is store information retrieved from the nameservers (IP information) so that the next time you visit the same site, your browser doesn’t have to waste time retrieving the same information from the DNS servers. You can optimize this by increasing the size of your DNS cache. This is another registry edit – so go back in there (Start and type “regedit“) and navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dnscache\Parameters” and then right click on the white space at the right and add four DWORD values: CacheHashTableBucketSize, CacheHashTableSize, MaxCacheEntryTtlLimit and MaxSOACacheEntryTtlLimit.
After checking a list of sites for the optimum setting for these values, the consensus seems to be decimal settings of CacheHashTableBucketSize to 1, CacheHashTableSize to 384, MaxCacheEntryTtlLimit to 64000 and MaxSOACacheEntryTtlLimit to 301.Of course, instead of using those old DNS servers, why not use OpenDNS? When you’re done making all of the changes above, restart your computer and when it boots back up you’ll find yourself with a Vista PC that screams on the Internet. Did these Vista tweaks increase your Internet speed? Do you know any other cool tweaks for Vista that work even better? Share your insight in the comments section below. Related posts
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| Display and Quickly Access Information With a Tabbed Desktop Posted: 03 Oct 2009 07:01 AM PDT
Stick is an application that lets you attach tabs to the sides of your screen so that you have a convenient tabbed desktop. The tabs can contain a wide variety of content ranging from contents of a folder to web pages to RSS feeds to Notes to a calendar or calculator. Let’s have a look. You can download stick from iWonderDesigns. The application is available as an installer as well as a portable version that you can run off your USB drive. When running for the first time, Stick prompts you start building a tabbed desktop by adding the tabs. Go ahead and create some that you would like. You can create 6 types of tabs:
It can take some time to think out a perfect tab setup for your desktop. You can of course add as many of them as you want to begin with and then narrow down or refine your choices to get the perfect setup. I have a To Do tab, some other random note tabs, a Gmail tab, a Twitter Tab, another for a quick Google search, and some that point to local folders that I access often.
You can simply move the tabs around to stick to any edge of the screen. You have to move the tabs one by one to wherever you want them to be which is a pain. It would be nice to have the ability to move all the tabs as a group. Stick offers you a dedicated Tab Manager that you can use to create and delete tabs. In addition, the Tab Manager lets you change the properties of any tab. Properties include options like always on top, autohide, autoshow, keyboard shortcuts to toggle visibility of any tab, transparency and themes. You can store a set of options for the tabbed desktop as a template and thus change the options of all tabs together in a snap. This comes in handy when you would be working full screen or want to get rid of all the distraction for whatever reasons.
Stick is loaded with options and lets you tweak almost every aspect of the tabs to your liking. It is a great alternative way to display information which I prefer over gadgets and sidebars that keep staring at your face. Do you have other creative desktop setups or favorite applications you use for similar purposes? Please mention them 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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| Mindopia (Beta) – Get Complete Occupation Descriptions For A List Of Different Careers Posted: 03 Oct 2009 05:01 AM PDT
With the Web, information isn't a problem…information overload is. A few clicks and you find yourself navigating away from the information you wanted. What we all want is a single window giving us career occupation descriptions on a list of different career choices. Mindopia seeks to answer that call by cutting short the path from career research to job hunting. Mindopia calls itself a career discovery website. Positioning itself as a single point source for job seekers to get the 'inside scoop on careers'. Old fashioned career planning wasn't bad, was it?Not at all, but don't you feel that it was a bit too toilsome? Starting with a gut feeling about what we wanted to do…getting influenced by our peers or parents…going after subjects of our interest…oops, only to find that the reality of 9 to 5 work life was a bit different from what we had conjured up. A generation back we leapt before we looked. Some of us landed on our feet and some didn't. Those of us who didn't, started wishing that we researched a bit more before the leap.
Is the web a better career hunting ground?Mindopia (beta) is a new fangled Web 2.0 career discovery site to view career occupation descriptions and other details about a comprehensive list of different careers. So let me roll back my years and see how I would approach a writing career with journalism.
Trawling through the Editor/Journalism info given on Mindopia, I have got a fair idea of how to approach my choice of vocation. Mindopia succeeds to an extent in bringing me closer to my career. Is Mindopia a one stop solution?It can be a stepping stone but being a beta site it still suffers a few drawbacks. The first noticeable one is the still limited selection of careers. New age careers like being a radio jockey or an instructional designer are absent. Topical careers like environmental sciences should have been a default addition. The profile page also seems a bit threadbare. A more targeted bio would have served a candidate better than generic information. I found uploading a photo particularly hard with its limitation of 104×25 maximum sizes. The absence of a Help section or a FAQ also sometimes made me feel lost. But the cons apart, what I really liked about this work in progress site were its comprehensive sections on the careers. Expert-speak videos arranged around questions a beginner usually asks, makes taking the first step a lot easier. Job searching is generally a local activity so it will benefit US residents directly. Of course, international students can find it worthy of a visit too. A beta site needs all the feedback it can get. Let us know if you like what Mindopia offers in theory and fact. 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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Have you ever felt envious of bloggers for having the platform to share whatever is on their mind? Well, nowadays there is no need to maintain a fully fledged blog in order to share cool things you find, interesting email you get and other things that require setting up a web page.
Do you love home design? Maybe you are moving into a new place and want to lay it out before you move in to see where everything should go. What do you do to achieve this goal without a budget? Auto Cad costs a small fortune and there are not many other options.
They say that life’s most difficult tribulations also result in the greatest insights and wisdom once you’re through it. Let’s just say that purchasing a brand new laptop with Vista installed on it was one of my greatest tribulations to date.
Tabbed interfaces have become popular with time for a simple reason that they can present a lot of information without making you feel the ill effects of information overload. There are tabs in your browser, file manager, dialog boxes and other places. So why should the screen be left behind?
Does your job fit you like a glove or is it a straitjacket? When I come across the current crop of job sites, I wish we had Web 2.0 in our career planning days; a search engine, a bit of social networking and a host of sites willing to flash your resume to prospective employers.
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