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- Cool Websites and Tools [October 6]
- 3 Reasons Why Students Should Be Using Dropbox
- Wikia – A Wiki Community Portal With Any Topic You Care To Know About
- Top 3 Sites For Nintendo Wii Game Walkthroughs
- How To Create Your Own Unique iPhone Ringtones Using Garageband [Mac Only]
- How To Convert A DAT File Into A Word Document
- A Free Open Source Alternative to Microsoft Visio
| Cool Websites and Tools [October 6] Posted: 06 Oct 2009 06:01 PM PDT
(1) TuneMyBass – If your guitar or bass went off tune, now you can tune it online using a guitar tuner at TuneMyBass.com. It is easy to use and contains preset tuning notes for guitar and bass in any tuning. It's also more fun than tuning with a fork or a pitch pipe. Read more: TuneMyBass – Tune Bass & Guitar Online
(2) TypeIt – Next time you want to type a text in a foreign language with characters (accents, umlauts etc.) not present on your keyboard, head to TypeIt.org. It hosts multi language keyboard for 18 European languages, as well as foreign currency and type symbols. Read more: TypeIt – Virtual Multi Language Keyboard (3) Just-Traceroute – Web tool that lets you run traceroute command for any website or IP address from 4 different geographical locations. This comes in handy when your site loading is slow, and you are not sure what causing it, your host or the network in between. Read more: Just-Traceroute – Run Traceroute Online (4) OtherPage – If you regularly shop for non-branded products from Amazon and eBay then OtherPage is a site you should bookmark. It claims to feature the same merchant products at better discounts. You get better bargains because you buy directly from the merchant's store. Read more: OtherPage – Get Better Bargains From Small Merchants (5) Fliptext.org – Simple online service that lets you write text upside down and backwards. Just enter your text into the field and press on the "Flip Text" button. You will get the flipped text instantly. Read more: Fliptext.org – Write Text Upside Down And Backwards
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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| 3 Reasons Why Students Should Be Using Dropbox Posted: 06 Oct 2009 03:00 PM PDT
Read on for just a few of them! 1. Switch Between Computers With EaseOne of the primary reasons students need laptops at school is for the sake of portability. However, with Dropbox, you could be stuck with a desktop and still be able to access your work from anywhere. I own a laptop and a netbook, so anytime I’m working on a project or an article, I drop the associated files into my Dropbox, and after it syncs, it’ll be online and ready for me to use at any other computer.
For even more convenience, you can use a syncing utility like SyncBackSE, and schedule it to run every night, syncing Dropbox with any folder on the computer containing your homework. Then, you can be sure that you’ll always have the most updated version of your essays and notes the next morning. 2. Keep Your Parents Up To DateMaybe you don’t have release forms to sign anymore, but for (previously) underage teenagers like me, there are release forms for everything. In addition to those, I had Chinese assignments that I always had my parents spell check for me. For parents who are as technology-impaired as mine, it was always easier for me to tell them to pull a file out of a designated folder.
If you’re the type who likes writing home, now you can save money on paper and stamps by just typing out your letter and dropping it into your Dropbox. Or, you can leave your parents lists of things you need mailed to you, or nicely phrased requests for money. 3. Be Smarter About Collaborating On ProjectsUntil now, Google Docs was one of the go-to tools for collaborating on projects. Unfortunately though, you need to have a Gmail account in order to utilize the sharing and editing prowesses of Google Docs to their full potential. Nowadays, that might not be too hefty of a requirement, but it does mean that the adamant Yahoo and Hotmail users are out of luck, unless they wanted a completely new email account.
Luckily for them, Dropbox doesn’t require so extensive a commitment to use its features. Although those who you want to share folders with will have to sign up for an account before they can access the files, the sign up process is quick and relatively painless. If you really don’t want to deal with sign ups though, each file in the Public folder has a link associated with it that you can share with anyone you’d like.
The best part about Dropbox as a collaborative tool, is that two people can edit the same file simultaneously. In that situation, Dropbox saves two distinct copies of the same files, each with a person’s edits to ensure that both edits are preserved. Further, there is no need to have endless email chains back and forth in order to keep each other updated on the latest going-ons of the project. With Dropbox, all that your collaborators need to do is just open up the Dropbox folder, and pull out the most recent version of the file. So today, I’ve given you a few more (hopefully) compelling reasons to use Dropbox. Personally, Dropbox has made switching between my laptop and netbook a lot less painful than it otherwise would have been. Perhaps you’ll find it will do the same for you. Do you have any other ways of keeping your files with you on the move? Let us know by leaving a comment! 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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| Wikia – A Wiki Community Portal With Any Topic You Care To Know About Posted: 06 Oct 2009 01:01 PM PDT
Just like a farm, a wiki farm is a collective effort…grouping many smaller web communities into a larger whole. Another feature of a wiki farm is that a user can log-in to multiple wikis using the same account username. Thus, an enthusiast need not limit himself to one wiki community but can hop from one community to another. As we get into Wikia, a major wiki community portal, we will learn about the power and potential of the crowd driving the knowledge mines through wikis.
Wikia should not be confused with Wikipedia. Both are entirely different web and creative entities. They are not even sister projects. Both though share some content and are based on the same MediaWiki software. To clear the air, this Wikia page marks out what Wikia is and what it's not. A 50,000 strong community should cover anything under the sun. Wikia does; with communities as diverse as steampunk to the more unvaried ones like politics and sports. The communities are arranged around Hubs which are akin to categories. Hubs are the broader collections…the big topics covering the many smaller but related sub topics. For instance, entertainment has movies, TV shows, and books under it.
All Wikia sites can be edited by a visitor. Creating an account is not binding but it does make one feel part of the community that's behind the wiki. A Wikia account can be easily created by clicking the green Create an Account button that's on the top right of all pages. The green Log In button is right next to it.
Searching for your favorite wiki is easy using the search box on the homepage. All wikis also have a search bar on the left hand side of the page below the wiki logo. A Search link also takes you to the Special Page for more specific needle hunting.
Some pages come with an Edit link which allow visitors to edit or correct any detail. Edits can be done via a text editor and updated instantly. Pages where the Edit button is not available are locked for changes. Wikia editing is simple using the markup language common to all wikis.
Creating a wiki in the Wikia community portal is as easy as planning out a topic, logging in and filling out a creation form. The creation form lists the wiki's name, URL and category to place under. From then on, you can add your content. Ultimately, Wikia is about the content. Thousands and thousands of pages of it. Consider the World of Warcraft page…said to one of the largest in Wikia at 78,000 pages and is also one of the top 1,500 websites in the world according to Alexa. The Wikia gaming page in all has ended up with 500,000 pages of content and growing.
Did you know that the word 'wiki' comes from the Hawaiian word 'wikiwiki' which means 'fast'? It's fast to setup or edit but with the huge amount of information; it certainly will be slow going for the reader. Have you visited Wikia? Let us know your favorite wiki amongst the heap. Image Credit: Goran Zec 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 3 Sites For Nintendo Wii Game Walkthroughs Posted: 06 Oct 2009 11:01 AM PDT
Agreed, cheating is an honorably questionable thing to do, but for those who are absolutely stuck, a little pointer can do wonders. That’s why we’ve got walkthroughs, gaming guides that’ll take you by the hand and tell you what to do. Just don’t overuse them, because they can be incredible spoilers.
Nintendo Wii Game WalkthroughsMost Wii games don’t need as many pointers as their PS3/Xbox/PC counterparts, but that doesn’t mean they’re not needed. A lot of people still get stuck in puzzles or adventure games and need someone to point the way. Below, we’ll be taking a look at the best sites for you to find Nintendo Wii game walkthroughs. IGN GuidesIf you’re serious about gaming, you should’ve heard about IGN. If you haven’t, I’ll tell you all about it. IGN is one of the top sources for everything related to gaming – and has been so for a while. It’s a great place to grab a hold on the latest gaming reviews, news items and overall know-how, but it’s also one of the best places to go looking for a review.
Unlike the other sites we’ll be discussing, IGN offers a separate direction of walkthroughs – no useless searching, it’s there or it isn’t. Many of the more recent guides are extremely high quality, and written by, or in order of IGN themselves. This site should definitely be present in your bookmarks – it’s the first place to look for a more-than-decent walkthrough. GameFAQSGameFAQS is a project of GameSpot. For a long time GameSpot enjoyed a much more prominent place as a game source as well. It still does, although it has been under fire for some time, on the grounds of accepting money for improving their reviews. Even if you don’t trust their reviews anymore, you can’t look past the sheer quality of GameFAQS. You’ll find a ton of info here, including planned release dates and – of course – Wii game walkthroughs.
You can browse games by alphabet, or use the search box. If there are any – and most of the time there are plenty – your walkthroughs will appear on the game’s overview page. The biggest batch of guides are written by users, and although extremely helpful, aren’t on the same level as the official IGN guides. For plenty of games, however, you’ll also find an official GameSpot walkthrough. MyCheatsMyCheats is the cheating/walktroughs part of 1UP, our third major (print and online) gaming sourcebig UP, you’ll be referred here for all yo. Whenever you’re browsing games on the ur less honorable gaming needs.
Again, you won’t be able to browse an index of walkthroughs. Instead, look up the game you’re interested in – alphabetically, or through a query – and see if there’s one present. Still nothing? – Google is your Friend!
Nothing fancy like index pages or game overviews, but if it exists, you’ll be able to find it on Google. Just hit up the search box and be sure to use the right keywords – title, ‘Wii’ and ‘walkthrough’ or ‘guide’. If your search returned blank, you can finally let go of all your hope and start to despair. Hopefully this guide was of help to you, and you’ve made some fresh bookmarks. What walkthrough sites do you use for the Wii? Tell us in the comments section! 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 Create Your Own Unique iPhone Ringtones Using Garageband [Mac Only] Posted: 06 Oct 2009 09:01 AM PDT
I was very proud to own the gadget that cost me a few months of my salary, because only a few people could afford cellphones in those days, and not all cellphones from that era could play monophonic ringtones. Most could only beep.
While you could buy ringtones for your cellphones if you want to, creating one feels more rewarding. As a bonus, you could show off to friends and relatives your unique ringtones that nobody else has. And if you use an iPhone, your path to being able to create one of your own ringtones is very clear. Grabbing goods from GaragebandMaybe there are many Mac users who are not aware that they have a tool to create their own quick and unique iPhone ringtones: Garageband. This easy to use music creation software comes free with every purchase of a Mac unit as part of the iLife suite. To create your own ringtone using the latest version of Garageband – v ‘09, you just have to choose the “iPhone Ringtone” menu from the start up screen, then choose either Example Ringtone (to use and edit pre-made sample), Loops (to use and build a new one using Apple Loops) and Voice (to user your own voice as the ringtone).
The next step would be giving a name to this project and choosing the place to save it. Unless you speak music language, I suggest that you not meddle with the song adjustments (tempo, signature, and key). And actually you don’t need to because we wouldn’t deal with complicated song building anyway.
For those who chose Example Ringtone, you’ll see the 17 second sample. Click the play button to listen to it. Should you want to use it, you could export it as a ringtone (more on this later). The same thing applies if you choose Loops. But here you could enhance your tone by adding more loops from the loop library on the right pane.
Recording your own voiceVoice option will give you two pre-configured tracks: Male basic and Female basic so you don’t have to adjust anything to optimize the recording.
There are many other voice configurations available from the track info pane on the right.
You’ll also have an alloted 20 second loop to use, but you could adjust this by dragging the end of the yellow loop bar to the time position that you’d like. Actually, the one that we call the ringtone could be anything from a standard song to a spoken word. If you have a deep broadcaster voice, for example, you can just speak out your own ringtone. But Voice option is also a good place to start if you could sing (or not) and want to record a mini-choir of yourself as the ringtone. Garageband allows its users to create songs from many tracks like Voice 1, Voice 2, Voice 3 etc. To add tracks, go to Track –> New Track menu or use Command + Option + N
Using songs from iTunesI personally would like to choose part of an existing song from iTunes as the ringtone. So after the main Garageband window opens, I’ll just delete the existing track (Command + Delete) and choose the Media Browser from the lower right corner of the window.
Then I dragged and dropped a song from the list to the main pane. The song was converted into Garageband track and ready to be edited.
To determine which part of the song will be converted into a ringtone, I adjusted the loop bar to the position that I prefer. This loop bar time should be 40 seconds or less. Exporting to ringtoneTo export the part of the song into the ringtone, I went to Share –> Send Ringtone to iTunes menu.
Another conversion and export process will take place and…
The ringtone will be placed under the ‘Ringtone’ folder in iTunes as a m4r file and will automatically be synchronized to iPhone the next time it connected.
Non-iPhone users could also use Garageband to create their own mp3 ringtones, but that process requires a different method and enough to be written as another article for another time. Have you tried to use Garageband to create iPhone ringtones? Share your opinions using the comments 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
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| How To Convert A DAT File Into A Word Document Posted: 06 Oct 2009 07:01 AM PDT
You probably wonder what a DAT file is in the first place. Simply put, DAT files contain data in text or binary format. They are typically found as winmail.dat files in eMail attachments, created by Microsoft Exchange Servers. But many other programs can create .dat files as well. So if the name doesn’t give it away, it’s difficult to tell whether you’re dealing with text, pictures, movies or something completely different. Giving advice on how to open a DAT file of an unknown source is difficult because there are so many options, depending on the original source of the file. But say you were supposed to receive a WORD document and what you did receive was a document with a .dat file extension. Basically, you have two straight forward options to open and convert a DAT file into a Word doc.
Second, you could simply try to open the .dat file with WORD or notepad or the program you suspect created the original file. To do this, right-click on the .dat file, select Open With from the menu, then select an application from the list or click Choose Program… to pick another. Once you successfully opened the DAT file, you’re at least half way to converting that DAT file into a Word doc. But once again, there are several options. Say we’re still dealing with a .dat file that originally was a .doc file. You changed the file extension and now that you open the file in WORD it looks fine. In fact, you already “converted” your file – congratulations!
If you managed to open with WORD, the easiest way to “convert” your file from .dat to .doc, is to save the document using WORD. And there you go. It wasn’t that hard, was it? Now let’s get a little more serious. All the strategies above didn’t work and your file doesn’t display properly? Maybe it’s time to use a file converter. If Microsoft Outlook messed with your attachments, chances are that Winmaildat.com will get you out of the mess. From within the Extract tab browse for the respective .dat file on your computer, send it and wait for the Results to show in the respective tab. The file size limit with this service is 5MB.
There really isn’t more to it than that. To successfully retrieve data from a .dat file or convert it to its original file format, you need to know the source or the original file type. Is there another smart trick that I missed out on? Please share your knowledge 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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| A Free Open Source Alternative to Microsoft Visio Posted: 06 Oct 2009 05:01 AM PDT
Most people in the corporate world use the industry standard (and expensive) Microsoft Visio. So what do you do if you are in need of Visio but you can't afford it or don't want to use another Micro$oft product? Are there any free Visio alternatives? Well I think we have a solution! I was almost shocked to find such an awesome application for the low low price of FREE! Open source is a wonderful thing and I would like to thank all the users that helped created this package – you rock!
After installing the application I launched it and was shown this screen:
At first glance it looks just like Visio with a different logo! Let's see how it works… You will see flowcharting as the default purpose of the application but with the click of a drop down menu and choosing Network we can do what I do in Visio… Chart networks.
That changes our tools to be computer network related like servers and firewalls. You can see the items shown below:
Just like Visio all you need to do is drag and drop icons onto your graph paper like so…
Icons are easy to resize and re-orientate by simply clicking on and manipulating the icon. You can make it point in a different direction or whatever you need. Icons snap together if you wish intuitively. You can add text labels by simply hitting tools – text like so:
Then click where you want to add text either inside an icon or outside like so:
Really anything you can do in Visio you can do in DIA. Why would I want to use Visio over this, seeing as it also opens all file formats that Visio does? The community goes on to say this about the product:
For me this free Visio alternative is wonderful! What do you use? Questions comments, death threats ? Leave them in the comments! DIA – http://dia-installer.de/index_en.html. 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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Gaming is achievement mayhem. You’ve got to hit one after the other, and sometimes you get stuck. That’s where cheating comes in.
I bought my first cellphone at the end of 1998. It was a state of the art product with a black and green screen, the ability to send SMS and making calls, and – are you ready? – monophonic ringtones!
So you’re stuck with a DAT file (.dat file extension) that was supposed to be a WORD document and you don’t know what to do with it? Don’t worry, help is here!
Do you diagram? Chart? Maybe you sketch room layouts or wiring schematics? How about flow charts?
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