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- Cool Websites and Tools [October 27]
- Livestream: A Free Video Streaming Host To Share Your Live Video Feed
- How To Easily Make An Attractive Cover Page In MS Word 2007
- ChromePlus – A Google Chrome Alternative With Some Spicy Extras
- How To Share & Synchronize Research Data To Other Computers
- How To Terminally Delete eMails In Thunderbird By Compacting Folders
- How To Watch NCAA Sports Games Online For Free
| Cool Websites and Tools [October 27] Posted: 27 Oct 2009 06:01 PM PDT
(1) SafeMess – New browser based text encryption tool that lets you quickly encrypt your text. It uses secure XXTEA 128-bit block cipher algorithm and the encryption is done with JavaScript locally inside your browser, no text or password is stored online. Read more: SafeMess – Browser Based Text Encryption Tool
(2) BedPost – Quirky web app that allows you to track your sexual activity online. It acts like an online calendar which you mark on whenever you have sex. The idea behind this is after a few months you can look back at your history and reflect. Read more: BedPost – Track Your Sexual Activity (3) Sawlogs – Online dream network with a dedicated community where you can share and discuss your dreams with others. There are also some additional features which can help you find out what dreams mean. Read more: Sawlogs – Discuss & Find Out What Dreams Mean (4) SpeakingFaces – If you believe in the saying, "first impression is the last impression" then it is important for you to make a solid first impression. SpeakingFaces is a fun site which helps you in making a perfect first impression. The concept is simple – pose in front of camera, take a picture and upload it to the site. And then get rated by the community of users. Read more: SpeakingFaces – Check What Kind Of First Impression Do You Make (5) GoAnimate – Online cartoon animator that allows you to create cartoons featuring some of your favorite toon characters and stars from TV. You can also create you own characters to insert yourself and your family and friends into your clip. This online cartoon animator is really easy to use with everything displayed neatly on a fully clickable window. Read more: GoAnimate – Cool Cartoon Animator Online
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
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| Livestream: A Free Video Streaming Host To Share Your Live Video Feed Posted: 27 Oct 2009 03:01 PM PDT
Livestream, originally known to some as Mogulus, is a free video streaming host that provides a live stream solution which allows you to create your own internet TV channel for broadcasting on your website through their player or on your channel page with them, 24/7. Livestream provides the “studio”, an elaborate flash app on their website where you can create a team of reporters, cue webcams, manage your library, record shows, control an “autopilot” that manages your channel, and manage a video-on-demand for your viewers.
Each channel also includes a library area where you can add videos from files, YouTube videos and more and then arrange them into storyboards and folders for playback on the channel when you’re not live.
Embeddable video players from Livestream can be downloaded to allow you to post your channel’s live feed and/or your channel’s chat feed on your own website, MySpace or even as a Facebook application. Livestream’s Studio also allows for Twitter integration, which will automatically send out tweets on your behalf when you’re live. You also have the ability to invite other contributors to your channel and then host a web show with multiple people in different places.
Although Livestream is free, they do insert their own video overlay ads on your channel to make money to cover bandwidth fees, but they do offer a somewhat pricey premium account upgrade which lets you remove their branding, broadcast in widescreen HD, add your own ads and more.
Procaster also allows you to broadcast feeds of computer games, which makes it perfect for gamers looking to show their skills to all. Also check out other MakeUseOf articles on how you can stream live to the web from your phone and how you can stream video live through Twitter. Do you use a similar service to Livestream to share or host a live, streaming video feed? What do you think of Livestream’s service? Let us know in the comments below. Image Credits : Dryicons 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 Easily Make An Attractive Cover Page In MS Word 2007 Posted: 27 Oct 2009 01:01 PM PDT
There are a lot of things which can go into creating a professional looking document. But when we are talking about first impressions, then we have to speak about the first thing that catches the eye and that's the cover page. The cover page is the very first page of your document. Its purpose right at the beginning is to give the reader the Big Idea about the document. The why and wherefore is communicated through a specific title, the author name, date, a one-liner on the subject and any other bit of important information on the cover page. If Black Text On A White Page Is A Turn Off…One of the reasons I am writing this post is that Microsoft Word makes it painless to create a professional cover page. Unlike the previous versions, Word 2007 has Building Blocks which are pre-formatted templates for cover pages, headers, footers etc. Learning how to make a cover page in MS Word is as easy as a few clicks. So let's move away from the monochromatic black on white to more colorful beginnings.
Adding a cover page to a document not only helps in stylizing it but it also gives a sketch to the reader about the contents. You can create a generic cover page for your company and save it in the gallery for frequent use. Another use is to create a document in Word with a nicely laid out cover page and save it in PDF. It can add oodles to the way you present your document (and you don't have to have any designing IQ). If a book can be known by its cover, so should a document. Most of us don't commonly employ a cover page with a document. Or do you? Let us know the benefits you find in inserting a well designed cover page. 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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| ChromePlus – A Google Chrome Alternative With Some Spicy Extras Posted: 27 Oct 2009 11:01 AM PDT
Although there are a whole bunch of Firefox spin-offs, Chrome is still pretty much solitary – at least, it used to be. ChromePlusCreated by Maple Studio, ChromePlus is a Google Chrome alternative that uses the Chromium source code. They’ve released a Chrome spin-off, with some additional features that should make the browser even more fun to use.
Super DragSuper Drag is an incredible feature that’ll speed up your browsing and research work infinitely. It gives you two nifty extra functions.
Most straightforward is link-dragging. By dragging a link, and releasing it anywhere on the page, the link will automatically be opened in a background tab. This is especially useful on laptops, where you don’t have a scroll button and would have to work with Control-click.
If you start dragging around pieces of highlighted text, a whole other thing happens. Release your mouse anywhere on the screen and a Google search query will be opened in a new tab. Next time you’re reading a text and encounter something you don’t wholly understand, grab a hold and flick your mouse. This makes ChromePlus into an amazing research tool. You can specify if the new tab needs to open in the background (default) or foreground of your browser in the options, or disable the function altogether. IE TabIE Tab isn’t new. That is, to Firefox users. It’s one of the most famous Firefox add-ons. The biggest difference is that it’s now implemented in Chrome. Innovating or not, IE Tab can be a life-saver. Although the practice is dying, some web-developers still feel the need to limit their web experience to Internet Explorer browsers. If you ever encounter a webpage that you can’t access with your Chrome browser, don’t close the app. By pressing the browser logo at the right of your address bar, you can make your browser seem like Internet Explorer.
New tabs should open up in Chrome mode by default. If they don’t, reversing the process is as easy as you’d think. This time, hit the Internet Explorer button to switch worlds. Arrow TraceWe already told you how Super Drag was going to make your browsing a lot faster. Here’s another feature that’ll give your productivity a boost. By holding your right mouse button, and drawing on the screen, you can execute a variety of commands; scrolling up and down, switching tabs, opening a new page, and so on. We call these “mouse gestures”.
To give you a general idea, here are a few examples:
They’ll take some getting used to, but can make your life a lot easier! If you don’t feel like it, you can once again disable it in the options. Double-Hit-CloseNot that much of an innovation, but you can close a tab by double-clicking it. No more marksmanship required with that little ‘close’ button. Download Manager IntegrationThose using Chrome have probably noticed that it doesn’t support a hell of a lot of download managers. Most of the time, you’ll still be obliged to copy-paste your links.
ChromePlus has integrated download functionality for a whole bunch of popular download applications. Next time, just right-click your links to have them sent over to your download manager. You can download ChromePlus here Do you use Chrome yet? Why, or why not? Tell us about it in the comments section 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
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| How To Share & Synchronize Research Data To Other Computers Posted: 27 Oct 2009 09:01 AM PDT
From my writer’s point of view, crafting science fiction is as exciting as – and so much even more challenging than – reading it . The science behind every great science fiction is always based on the real science that really exists in our real world. That’s why making the story believable requires an extensive amount of research. But science fiction is not the only genre that requires research. Any kind of writing involves some process of data gathering. That’s why research tools are an indispensable part of every writer’s life. Scrap everything to ScrapbookOne of the best research tools that I’ve come across so far is a Firefox extension called Scrapbook. Basically, this tool acts as a filing cabinet for all of your digital research data. Whenever you find something interesting on the net, you could add it to your scrapbook, either by dragging and dropping, right clicking or using shortcut keys.
One reader suggested Scrapbook+, a modification of Scrapbook with some improvements here and there. But with the exception of the highly visible 6 highlighters, I personally couldn’t spot the differences between these two. I use the plus version based on the developer’s claim that it’s faster.
As much as I love Scrapbook+ and Scrapbook to aid my research, they both have one similar major drawback: my data is only available on one computer. If you are a person who works with more than one computer (home, office, mobile, library, and any other possible variation), you’d wish that you could share your data from every one of your working points. Well, my dear friends, with some modification and a little help from another tool, your wish could come true. Access your Scrapbook data everywhere
After installing the client (available for Windows, Mac and Linux), this service will create a Dropbox folder and everything inside this folder will be synchronized to your online account and to other Dropbox folders in other computers which installed under your account. It’s also possible to share folders with other Dropbox users. As time has gone by, I found other uses of Dropbox aside from being a mere backup tool. One of them is using it to remote trigger file and torrent downloads. While trying to find a solution to have my research data available on other computers, I suddenly realized that I could use Dropbox to achieve that goal. The first thing to do is to create a folder inside the Dropbox folder to put your Scrapbook data. Mine’s called “Scrapbook” but you could name it anything you want.
If you install the Dropbox client on several computers under one account, you can continue on to the Scrapbook setting up process. However, if this is not the case and you still want to be able to access your Scrapbook data from another computer, right click on the Scrapbook folder and choose “Dropbox –> Share this folder” from the pop up menu.
You will be taken to the Dropbox site under your account. Write down the email addresses of the Dropbox accounts to whom you want to share this folder with. These accounts would be the accounts of computers where you want to access your Scrapbook data.
This arrangement opens up another possibility: you could collaborate with others on data collecting. Configuring Sharing on ScrapbookThe next step is configuring Scrapbook. Open Scrapbook using the key combination Alt + K and click the little arrow button next to Tools. Choose “Options” from the po up menu.
Choose the “Organize” tab and click the “Save data to” option. Click “Browse” to determine where Scrapbook should put your data. Choose the “Scrapbook” folder inside the Dropbox folder.
Please note that from my experiment, the above method is working with a fresh install of Scrapbook but not with an already built database. Alternatively, you could choose “Enable Multi-ScrapBook” to have several sets of data collections. This way, you could put your private data on one local location and share non-private data through the Dropbox folder.
Click the little arrow next to the “Multi Scrapbook” icon on the left of Tools and choose manage.
On the next Scrapbook management window, you could Add, Edit and Remove a scrapbook. Click Add.
Give a name to the new scrapbook and choose a location to save the data. Since our goal is to make the data available on other computers, choose the Scrapbook folder inside the Dropbox folder that we’ve created earlier.
Do the same thing on the other computers: accept the Dropbox shared folder if it’s installed under a different account, and set Scrapbook (either using “Save data to” or “Multiple Scrapbook“) to store its data in the shared Dropbox folder. Another solution for sharing partial Scrapbook data is using the “Export – Import” feature from the Tools menu.
The combination of Scrapbook and Dropbox will enable us to work using the same data on multiple computers under different OS’s as both Firefox and Dropbox are available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Just remember to pay attention to your Dropbox quota and the size of your Scrapbook library. 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 Terminally Delete eMails In Thunderbird By Compacting Folders Posted: 27 Oct 2009 07:01 AM PDT
Did you know that eMails in the Thunderbird eMail client are not terminally deleted? Even if you empty the trash folder, they are not physically removed, neither from the trash folder, nor from the original folder. Yes, this does mean that you can recover those eMails. However, that will be the subject of another story. The issue here is that Thunderbird will grow to an enormous size if all the spam and mails you have trashed are never actually removed. In fact, the traces are multiplied if you move mail from one folder to another and this will add to the size of each of these folders. So let me explain how you can finally and forever get rid of deleted eMails and thereby reduce the size the Thunderbird eMail client takes up on your hard drive. The process of terminally removing traces of moved or trashed eMails from folders is called compacting. There are two ways to do this and they’re both rather simple.
Automatic CompactingPer default, automatic compacting is not enabled in Thunderbird. To enable it, go to > Tools > Options > Advanced tab > Disk Space section and check the box next to > “Compact folder when it will save over …” and set a KB value. The default value is 100 kB.
Thunderbird will now start compacting folders automatically, whenever it saves a reasonable amount of disk space. WARNINGThe problem here is that your Thunderbird eMail client may not respond well at random, at moments when the critical value was reached to set off folder compacting. Besides, you should not do anything other than reading eMails while folders are being compacted. Otherwise folders can get corrupted or you could lose data. For example eMails you were writing when compacting started may refuse to send or save. In other words, automatic compacting can be very annoying, especially in situations where you need to use it urgently. SOLUTIONThere are two solutions. If you’re an experienced user, you can customize folder compacting using the Config Editor. If you can’t be bothered with config editing, you should compact folders manually. Customize CompactingAutomatic folder compacting is still feasible if you make Thunderbird ask for permission before it starts. That way it’s still automatic and you don’t have to think about it, but you won’t be interrupted for good at random intervals. To open the Config Editor, go to > Tools > Options > Advanced > General and click the > Config Editor button in the bottom right.
In the > Filter: line type > mail.purge.ask to see whether the entry exists. If it does, double-click to set the value to > true.
If the entry does not exist, right-click on any entry and select > New > Boolean and enter > mail.purge.ask as the preference name. Finally, select > true and click OK.
Manual CompactingTo entirely avoid random disruptions due to automatic folder compacting, do it manually whenever you deleted a bunch of spam or an eMail you want to remove for good. This process is incredibly simple as well. Just right-click on a folder you wish to compact and select > Compact from the menu.
The status bar will display the progress of folder compacting. As stated in the warning above, be sure not to do anything within Thunderbird, while the process is underway!
The status bar will also announce when compacting was completed.
For a trash folder I had never compacted and which contained almost four thousand messages, compacting took less than a minute. If you run into problems, please refer to the comprehensive coverage regarding Compacting Folders on the mozillaZine. How do you keep your eMail client slim and speedy? 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 Watch NCAA Sports Games Online For Free Posted: 27 Oct 2009 05:01 AM PDT
For those of you that do not know what NCAA stands for, chances are this post is NOT for you! The National Collegiate Athletic Association has some great college basketball going on and you want to watch NCAA games online for free do you? Well there are a bunch of free alternatives to watching the games on the old boob tube. We will take a look at two of them. Our first option is NCAA.com. That is the NCAA's on demand site. If you browse on over there you will see this:
You can click here to forward this information on to your buddies. Seeing as I can't show you this year’s games as they have not started yet, here is a peak at what the service has looked like before:
You get the full action on your computer or mobile device and best of all you can hit that magic boss button at the top right hand side of the screen to minimize your action and display a fake Excel-like spreadsheet. I don't think that would satisfy my boss but hey maybe you work for a pushover (or a dummy!) Here is what that boss key brought up last year. Maybe it will stay the same, maybe it won't. But their press release has already stated that the boss button will still be present.
If you look closely you will see it is a spreadsheet with details about NCAA's Video On Demand service! How funny is that? Why not a chart of women's breast sizes? That would be just as relevant wouldn't it And if we take another look at the video window we will also see a perpetual score at the top of the video, buttons to hide the video or audio, a stats button (this is something every fan will love!) and a button to share the video with others.
Another advantage to watching online instead of regular television, besides the fact you can do it at work, is that you can click around the web while you are doing it. You can look up facts or even save the video for another viewing. I wonder if the option is available for Pro games? Not likely huh? They need to make their money somewhere right? How about advertising online on the side of the game? That has to be a viable option. Maybe we will start to see that soon. Another option for catching NCAA games online for free requires a little technical knowhow and a sling box. But if you have a Sling Box at home chances are you don't need me telling you how to use it! It allows you to watch your TV at home over the internet. Do you know of any other ways to watch sports online? If so, 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
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Finally, Livestream provides a free software download called 
Clothes make the man (and always, the woman!) but how much care do you put into dressing up your documents? Is it all title, headings, subheadings, bullets and paragraphs or do you put some more thought into the Word document?
Not many people know this, but Google Chrome is based on Chromium, an open source browser project. Everyone willing can 
I love reading science fiction stories. Not only because they allow our imagination to soar free, but also because they are – as one writer philosophically puts it – the way for humans to question their humanity.
My other indispensable tool is a data backup/synchronization service called 
Hey sports fans! How many of you watch your sports online nowadays? It sure is convenient and a awesome option in case you can't TiVo the game.
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