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- Cool Websites and Tools [October 23]
- 3 Free Microsoft Software Offerings You Might Not Know
- Top 8 Things For Bored Teenagers To Do Online [Part II]
- How To SEO Optimize Your Blogger Blog Titles For Higher Search Results
- 10 Keyboard Techniques To Create Cool Symbols
- The 3 Best Sites To Watch Your Favorite Classic TV Movies For Free
- When Is Good – Easily Schedule Your Meetings With Co-Workers
| Cool Websites and Tools [October 23] Posted: 23 Oct 2009 06:01 PM PDT
(1) Personalized Money Generator – Ever wondered how would you look like on a US dollar bill? Or how about putting yourself on a UK pound instead of Queen? Check out Personalized Money Generator, this simple online tool lets you quickly create custom money bills with your own photos on them. Read more – Personalized Money Generator
(2) Google Flu Trends – This tool uses "aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity" in a certain country. Basically, this app consists of an interactive map that responds to your cursor as shown in the screenshot. When you place your cursor over some country you'll get an indication of the flu intensity in that country from 'Low' to 'High'. Read more: Google Flu Trends – Track World Flu Activity With Google (3) Buildy – New web based service which lets you easily create floor plans of your house or apartment and then share it with others. It comes in handy especially for those who are looking to rent out their premises. They could include their created floor plan in the adverts so that prospective tenants could have a better idea about the rooms. Read more: Buildy – Create A Floor Plan Of Your House (4) LocaFollow – Website that helps you find twitter users by searching only their Bio and Location fields. Since these are the fields that users fill in their Twitter profile, Locafollow is your best shot in finding friends that share your interest or are in the same zip code as you. Read more: LocaFollow – Locate & Follow Twitter Users with Same Inerests (5) CrimeReports – Online service which lets you view crime reports by zip code, city or a particular neighborhood. Currently limited to North America, this tool gets its data from various law enforcement agencies. It shows crimes like robbery, theft, homicide, assault etc by default through symbols/flags of various colors on the map. Read more: CrimeReports – Check Crime Reports By Zip Code or Address
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 Free Microsoft Software Offerings You Might Not Know Posted: 23 Oct 2009 03:01 PM PDT
You should know, however, that Microsoft isn’t just about money. They do provide an awful lot of free software that is really cool! So I went digging on their site and sniffing around for some free Microsoft software and here are 3 cool programs I didn’t know Microsoft had. Scalable FabricDon’t let the name fool you. It’s not a fabric of the cloth variety. What they’re talking about is a window management application. Essentially, it replaces the function of the minimize button on the top right of your window. With Scalable Fabric installed, if you click on the minimize window, the window merely shrinks and moves to one side of your desktop. If you drag that window towards the center of the screen, the window gets bigger until it becomes full size. Vice-versa as well. The program does make some annoying noises, but those can be shut off. Really, it’s something you have to try to really understand. However, as always, here are some pictures!
What this shows is how the large window scales down when moved to the periphery and scales up when moved to the center of the screen. You can also set the boundaries for where this scaling begins and ends. That’s what the blue square represents. The usefulness of this is limited. However it meets a specific need by keeping your window’s content visible on your desktop. Yes, this feature is available in operating systems newer than XP, yet this is a nice add on for XP and earlier versions of Windows. Microsoft Producer for PowerPoint
If this free Microsoft software was used on all PowerPoint presentations, we might not have the saying Death-By-PowerPoint. People would find it much easier to add audio and video to their PowerPoint through the time-line editing feature. It works much like any basic movie editing software would, like Microsoft MovieMaker. So you can have music spanning several slides, and have a richer visual experience. This product is also ideal for creating stand-alone presentations that don’t require you to be there talking. A person could create a kiosk-style presentation and leave it running on a computer or monitor for the public to see. That’s a good thing, because to get someone to develop a presentation in Flash or other methods is terribly expensive compared to doing it yourself in this freeware. I could see this being ideal for a small-business owner or village, or any other organization with a limited budget. A presentation with this could really raise your profile. Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2009
This free Microsoft software application is like a mini-version of Microsoft Money or Intuit’s Quicken for free! If you have XP or Vista, you can download this great free app to help you with your small business. It can integrate and share data with Microsoft Outlook, Access and Excel. What I find really exciting is that I can use this with eBay and PayPal to list items I want to sell as well as create the invoices for the customers. Apparently you can process credit card payments too, but I didn’t venture into that feature. If you need to share your books frequently with your accountant, you can also do that through Office Live with this package. Incredible really, for free software. Now, think about this. Microsoft, the world’s most successful IT company and creator of dozens of filthy rich people made and distributes this software for free. These programs can increase your productivity, market presence and profitability. Maybe they couldn’t make money off of Scalable Fabric, but certainly the other two could be sold for at least $40. No, Microsoft does give back. So, maybe I’ll back off on the trashing of Redmond’s finest – at least for a little while. Do you use any other freeware from Microsoft? If you do, I’d love to hear which ones and what your opinions are on them. Drop me a line in the comments below! Related posts
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| Top 8 Things For Bored Teenagers To Do Online [Part II] Posted: 23 Oct 2009 01:01 PM PDT
Today, I will continue with the article in a slightly different perspective and add four more entries to the list. Hopefully, they will prove to be of good use to bored teenagers with too much time on their hands. Again, these will all be things that can be done online. 5. Start a blog, Tumblelog or TwitterIn this time and age, I won’t be surprised if every teen has their personal blog or a Twitter account. If you don’t, sign up for one. Start a blog, Tumblelog or Twitter account and use it as an emotional and creative outlet. Start by jotting down how you feel, what you’ve done, what you’re looking forward to. Think of it as a diary for the world to read.
Personally, I prefer a Tumblr account to a Blogger or Wordpress blog. It’s much easier to set up and is perfectly suited for those with very short attention spans who couldn’t be bothered to compose full-length posts all the time. Tumblelogs allow its users to upload short blips of text, photos, links and quotes quickly and easily. However, don’t feel restricted — this doesn’t mean that you can’t try your hand at a short story or other works of the written word. Let your creativity flow. Who knows, blogging could just be your sally forth into professional writing or journalism. 6. Read“The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn’t know how to read.” — Benjamin Franklin. Reading is, without a doubt, one of the most rewarding past times. Why waste a perfectly good chance to get some reading done? There are an abundance of sites which provide you access to free ebooks, both fictional and non-fictional. The most widely known one is probably Project Gutenberg – a collection of over 30,000 free ebooks in over 50 languages. They also serve up audiobooks (either human-read or computer generated) and loads of other stuff. Their site is massive and navigating around can get pretty messy. Start by checking out their Top 100 books or the ones which were most recently added.
Our next candidate spreads its wings over more than just fictional work. ibiblio is the fruit of collaborative efforts between two departments at the University of North Carolina. The result – one of the Internet’s largest collections of software, literature, music, art, science, politics, and cultural studies.
Munseys is where you should go if you’re looking for a good read. Most of their 20,000 books are off-mainstream titles and are available in 10 different formats including PDF, Plucker, iSilo, Kindle and MS-reader.
7. Get an online jobProbably one of the best ways to spend your time online is to make some money while you’re at it. Be aware, there are currently a lot of scams going on that require you to sign up for a membership before given a chance to work. Personally, I’m very skeptical and prefer not to part with my money before I can earn any. Thankfully, there are some safer job alternatives. If you have a good grasp of the English language, you can easily earn a buck working online. Ryan Dube shared some of his suggestions, which include working as a freelance writer and getting paid to review movies. Or if you prefer (or think that you spend too much time online anyway), you could spend some time looking for a part-time job. Interacting with others in the workplace will teach you to harness the essential communication and public relations skills required after you graduate and step forth into the job market. Furthermore, work trains you to be responsible and to adopt proper time and money management. Having several previous jobs listed in your CV with good references will certainly impress your future employer and provide you with an advantage among your potential colleagues. If the idea of holding a job sounds attractive to you, we’ll go on step further and point you in the right direction. Charnita described 8 sites to hunt for the job you want, provided you already roughly know what you want to do. In another article, Ryan listed 10 more sites to help you with your job search. You shouldn’t have trouble looking for a job with all those resources! Or, closer to home, MakeUseOf is always hiring. 8. Plan Your CareerBefore graduating from high school, you should already have an idea about your job choices. If you still haven’t made up your mind about your future profession, you should start now. What exactly does an editor do? What qualifications are required to pursue a career in fashion? What makes a great CV? There are several great websites that will guide you while you’re making these tough decisions. CareerAdvice springs straight to mind. This UK-based website details everything you need to know when making career decisions i.e. what the job involves, what qualifications and experiences employers look for, working hours and of course, the expected salary. It’s a fantastic place for teens to spend their free time, researching on the types of work they’re interested in. It also shares valuable advice on nailing an interview and how to come up with an impressive CV.
Another great site is the Occupational Outlook Handbook by the US Department of Labor. The handbook is basically a collection of every known profession in the United States, with detailed descriptions about the job nature, work environment, required qualifications, earnings and employment rates.
The last career-related website that I’d like to feature is CareerOneStop. As the name implies, it is a one-stop resource for information about the different types of jobs in the US, sub-categorised by states. On top of offering CV and interview advice, the site also features the hottest jobs, jobs with the most openings as well as the highest paying jobs in the country.
That wraps up my post and the top 8 things for bored teenagers to do online. I hope that you’ve enjoyed the article and got an idea or two on how to spend your free time online. As a wise man once said, “Lost time is never found again.” Make full use of the time you have today! Image credit: SAMAEL TRIP 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 SEO Optimize Your Blogger Blog Titles For Higher Search Results Posted: 23 Oct 2009 11:01 AM PDT
As he discussed here in How To Start A Blog That Gets Instant Traffic, it's vitally important that you write content that is SEO optimized for search engine traffic. Yet there is one SEO trick that is overlooked quite a lot by Blogger users which could boost their traffic; how they appear in the search results. And I'm not talking about where they appear, but how they appear. Below is a screenshot of my new blog in the Google search results next to MakeUseOf in the search results. Notice anything different between the two SEO-wise?
So in short, my advice is to change how your blog's title appears in the search results. One of the best ways to do this for a small to medium blog is to reverse the order in which the blog title and post title are displayed so that the post title comes first. This will SEO optimize every post. Here's how. Log into the Blogger dashboard and select your blog. For demonstration purposes we'll be breaking out the MUO test blog again. By the way, it has changed significantly in appearance since my last blogger post, because I used it to test coding and themes.
Select your blog and then click 'Layout' along the top. Underneath this, select 'Edit HTML'. Using CTRL + F, find the following piece of HTML code:
In most templates it's around 5-10 lines from the top. Replace that code with the following code: <b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == "index"’>
Once you have pasted that into the HTML as shown in the above screenshot, your Post titles should appear first in Google search results (not immediately though, Google will have to crawl your blog first before it changes). However, the SEO optimized results will be noticeable immediately in the tab along the top of your browser.
For more tips about how to SEO optimize your blog so it gets more traffic, see Ryan's post entitled How To Start A Blog That Gets Instant Traffic. For more ‘Blogger’ tips see my recent article entitled 4 Easy Tips to Improve Your Blogger Blog. 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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| 10 Keyboard Techniques To Create Cool Symbols Posted: 23 Oct 2009 09:01 AM PDT
Symbols existed even before the alphabets. Over the years they have been part of folklore, myths and legends. Some have stayed on as indelible marks. Some, like the swastika, are better forgotten. Symbols have remained potent. If you doubt their visual power, then look no further than logos. People shell out millions for a three-pointed star on a sleek hood or a prancing horse. Puzzled? The first one is the Mercedes logo and the latter is Ferrari's. In this post we will take a look at some symbols or images that we can reproduce using just the keyboard. The superset of creating images using letters/symbols on the keyboard goes by the name of ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) art. You need two things to draw ASCII art anywhere online…a keyboard and lots of patience. How Do We Create Cool Symbols Using The Keys On Our Keyboard?Text art/ ASCII art can be drawn using any text editor, online or offline. The simplest is Notepad on Windows or TextEdit for Mac. More advanced word processors have features which are more adept at selection and alignment functions like Overtype and Insert. Can text art be learned and are there any special techniques to create cool figures?
Some basic techniques for keyboard symbols are :
5 Websites for ASCII Art LoversThe ideas for the ASCII figures mentioned in this post have been collected from the web. Here, I would like to particularly mention a few sites where you can go and see the visual impact created using just keyboard symbols and a text editor. Looking at them will give you an idea of the techniques involved. Chris.com's ASCII Art CollectionA treasure trove of ASCII art collected by Christopher Johnson from the corners of the net. Check out the categories on the left frame. The Halloween, Batman and the space ship Enterprise come from this complete collection. If you want to see what's possible then this is the resource for you.
The site also has quite a few detailed tutorials on how to start off with ASCII art. Read all of them for a complete education on how to draw with letters and keyboard symbols. ASCII Picture CollectionsA roll call of text artists arranged alphabetically. I have taken the image of the house from the works of Yvonne Adams.
The ASCII Art Dictionary
A resource created by Andreas Freise listing all his creations. He has also sorted his gallery according to the sizes of the figures – Big, Small, and Micro. ASCII World
A lot of ASCII art arranged in categories. You can also send them to recipients through a direct email from the site. AsciimationI included this for the love of Star Wars. Checkout the ASCII Star Wars Movie. Just shows you that ASCII art can be really cool. The thing about this art form is that you don't need special skills or special tools. An eye for detail may help though. What's more important is a will…to make mistakes, rub it away and start over again. So, open your text program, bring up your favorite image and start tapping away. Also check out Simon’s article on 3 apps to view ASCII art. Do you have your favorite ASCII image or your favorite ASCII website? Let us know. 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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| The 3 Best Sites To Watch Your Favorite Classic TV Movies For Free Posted: 23 Oct 2009 07:01 AM PDT
Hidden in dusty attics and in dark corners of your movie rental store, old treasures lie hidden. Of course, a lot of these can also be purchased on a shiny new DVD disk. These great classics have slipped from under copyright over the years, and can now be found on the internet, entirely legal and 100% free! Watch classic movies right from your browser, or download them to your computer via the following great sites. Internet Archive – Moving ImagesYou’ve probably heard of the Internet Archive before, they’re the guys who brought us the Wayback Machine, a tool to watch internet pages from way in the past. But archiving the internet isn’t limited to static HTML. If you take a closer look at the website, you’ll see that they’ve also collected a ton of audio, text, software and – moving images.
Movies can be browsed by subject, keywords, language or popularity. Once you’ve found your flick, you can stream it directly from the page, or download it in MPEG2, Ogg or MPEG4 – all in incredible picture quality. Classic Cinema OnlineClassic Cinema Online is another place to find your classic flicks. I especially like it because of the site’s interface, and use it to uncover ‘new’ titles that I haven’t seen before. The ‘Now Playing‘ bar shows – in cinema style – some of the newer, featured films. Alternatively, you can browse by popularity or film genre.
Unlike the Internet Archive, Classic Cinema online doesn’t host any of the films locally. Instead, they embed from popular video sharing sites like YouTube or Google Video. This means that – even though the streaming rate is very fine, the availability of classic movies to watch is less stable. If one of the video hosters decide to get rid of a film, you won’t be able to access it anymore on Classic Cinema Online. Archive Classic MoviesLast but not least, Archive Classic Movies, abbreviated ACM. They’ve also got an impressive film archive, though noticeably smaller than the two preceding sites.
Archive Classic Movies does appear to host most of its movies locally. You can stream them at a decent rate, or download them as a surplus. The videos are encoded as MP4 files, and average around 400 MegaBytes. As well as classic movies, we have also previously discussed where to get your horror movie fix online, how to choose new movies and where to find old movie trailers. I hope you’ve had some use of this post and earned yourself a few new bookmarks. Do you know any other sites to watch classic movies? Tell us and your fellow MakeUseOf readers in the comments section below! Image Credit : MarinaFoto @ deviantArt 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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| When Is Good – Easily Schedule Your Meetings With Co-Workers Posted: 23 Oct 2009 05:01 AM PDT
Up until now I have sent out meeting invitations via email for a date and time that I wanted to meet on. Then the responders would send me back comments on whether it was good for them or not. If it wasn’t, and they were crucial to the meeting, we would re-schedule. But how about a meeting scheduler you can use before the meeting? Wouldn't it be nice to send out a link to your attendees where they could click on several possibilities for the meeting? You can then use the results to gather when it would be best to have the meeting. Have you used the new cover sheets on the TPS reports? No you haven’t? Well then we will need to have a meeting about that this weekend. Let's use the meeting scheduler When is Good to schedule it. You do not need to sign up or pay for an account to use the functionality we will talk about in this article.
I clicked on pricing and then created an event under the Basic heading. Then you are off to create your event. You will see a calendar and a button to create an event. First you will need to name your event and hit that button.
I named my event Test Event 1 and hit the create event button to continue on to selecting dates and times that are good for me.
Then you will see a message that instructs you to choose times and dates for your events. These will be the tentative times shown to the respondents of your email.
I notched off Saturday October 31st (Halloween!) at 2pm and Sunday November 1st at 1pm, 2pm and 3pm. These will be the only choices the users can choose between to keep things simple.
Once you have completed everything, you will get a super secret code. This code will enable your non-registered users to see the results of your survey. You can see mine below and actually use it to retrieve my results.
Now you are ready to compose an email, shoot out so instant messages or even send out a snail mail mailer. You will be given the link to send out, the link to go to where you will be able to review the responses from your survey. If you actually want to see how the user will see it, follow this link and feel free to make a selection or two and submit it.
You can also choose if you want the meeting scheduler to email you the responses as they come in:
You can go and view the results of my survey here. This is the page that the user will see to make their choices:
To check the results of your survey, hit the enter results code link on the home page. This is the screen where you can enter your results code:
And now the moment you have all been waiting for….the results!
This is the screen you should hope to see. You will get this when one item matches across all the respondents. If not you will see something (more likely) like this:
Good luck on your meeting! Do you use a better free meeting scheduler? We would love to hear about it in the comments! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Related posts
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The best things in life are free. How trite. I think the best things in life are free things that don’t suck from a company that gets picked on a lot. Don’t worry, I’m not standing up for Microsoft. They’ve got broad shoulders and can take care of themselves.
Earlier this week, I compiled a list things for 
As some of you may know for my 
So now when people search a phrase that appears in the title of a post on your blog, your post will appear higher in the search results. This is a much more likely scenario than someone searching for the actual title of your blog.
All of us use the keyboard to create symbols daily. Look at the thumbnail. That's a simple symbol created with just four keys.
Some people seem to think that the moving picture has only been with us for a while. Those people are wrong, and miss out on a lot of beauty because of their arrogance.
We are having more and more meetings around my office. Sometimes it feels like we are having meeting about having meetings. As more and more meetings are popping up, a lot of them have been overlapping. How do you find a common time that is good for everyone?
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