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- Cool Websites and Tools [October 28]
- Your Turn To Join MakeUseOf On Twitter!
- Wordpress.tv – The Best Wordpress Tutorials Ever!
- LAlarm Laptop Security Makes Your Laptop Scream When Stolen
- TubeRadio.fm – A Slick & Cool Internet Music Player For YouTube
- DOWNLOAD: The Internet Music Guidebook
- 3 Sites To Get News That’s Good For A Change
- Milpon – The Only Remember The Milk IPhone App You’ll Need
- Use Household Register 2010 To Maintain A Home Inventory
| Cool Websites and Tools [October 28] Posted: 28 Oct 2009 06:01 PM PDT
(1) TwitCritics – New Twitter based movie ratings and reviews site that gathers positive and negative tweets about movies, and presents their overall scores. You can search for a movie by name, browse site alphabetically or check out most popular movie titles. Read more: TwitCritics – Twitter Based Movie Ratings
(2) ChartsBin – Nice web resource which hosts colorful and interactive charts created from different demographic data sets sourced through various research reports. Most of the charts present a really interesting data. Read more: ChartsBin – Check out Interesting Charts Online (3) GoogleBuildingMaker – Online tool by Google which lets you create and add 3D models of buildings to Google Earth. Currently available for 50 cities, this tool uses Google SketchUp for editing and modifying the 3D shapes and requires the Google Earth plugin to function. Read more: GoogleBuildingMaker – Add 3D Buildings to Google Earth (4) Vorbeo – Next time you need to create a poll for your website, head straight to Vorbeo.com. It is a website that provides quickest and simplest way possible for creating embeddable polls online. Read more: Vorbeo – Free Instant Poll Creator (5) Timetonote – If you run a small business and cannot afford CRM tools like Salesforce then Timetonote is a nice alternative. While it doesn't boast of the advanced tools which paid solutions like Salesforce and Zoho offer, for a 100% free service it isn't bad at all. Read more: Timetonote – Free Online CRM Solution For Businesses
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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| Your Turn To Join MakeUseOf On Twitter! Posted: 28 Oct 2009 05:31 PM PDT
You’ll be notified everytime there is a new post on the MakeUseOf Blog, a web app review on the MakeUseOf Directory or something new on Geeky Fun. Plus we would love it if you would re-tweet the posts and discuss them, so more people get to know about us and join our community. Thank you! 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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| Wordpress.tv – The Best Wordpress Tutorials Ever! Posted: 28 Oct 2009 03:01 PM PDT
The other option is actually purchasing web-space (don’t care what some people say, paying for webspace is the way to go), installing Wordpress in the purchased web space, and setting up your “self-hosted” Wordpress blog. Either way you choose to go, if you are new to blogging AND Wordpress, you have some things to learn before getting too far. For instance, what are widgets? Sidebars? Headers and footers? For veteran bloggers, these terms are second nature but for a newbie (please don’t be offended at the term), they have to learn. Enter video WordPress tutorials! I love being able to help people get started with new technology. I just recently helped out a few friends with Wordpress sites and it was a blast. I did a video tutorial or two but what I found out was that much of my work wasn’t really needed! When I ran into Wordpress.tv, a site with some of the best WordPress tutorials out there, I almost fell over!
Here are a few of the best Wordpress tutorials that may someday help you help someone else getting started with Wordpress: How to sign up at Wordpress.com… An introduction to the dashboard… How to create a static page… How to write and publish a post… As you can see, Wordpress.tv has a wealth of well-done video WordPress tutorials to surf through. What I like about the video tutorials is how professional they are, the high video quality, and the very smooth voice integrated into each tutorial. Also notice that it is easy to turn subtitles on and off (good for those who are hearing impaired). ALSO, it’s very easy to embed and share the videos (very cool for reviewing and sharing them on sites like MakeUseOf.com!). What I didn’t mention before is that Wordpess.tv also has a whole section dedicated to presentations done on various Wordpress-related topics from tips to the future of the Internet and the part Wordpress is playing. Here’s a small selection of the presentations you’ll find: Chris Molitor on Finding the Perfect Theme for You or Your Business… Martin Buckley on Self-Hosting Multiple WordPress Blogs (technologically sophisticated)… Mark Jaquith on BuddyPress and the Future of WordPress Plugins… The site is fairly simple to navigate. If you look across the top you’ll see links to the two basic categories of videos (Wordcamp TV and How-To). Notice that you can also search Wordpress.tv for a specific topic you may be looking for.
Once you’ve arrived at either location, the easiest thing to do browse the category column off to the left (once you scroll past the intro spot at the top with some featured videos).
Once you’ve arrived at a specific category, you are then offered a listing of videos to choose from.
It’s really that easy. As you’ll be able to tell when you browse the site, they have tutorials for novices and the more experienced. I think you’ll be pleased by what you find at Wordpress.tv. Tell us, what other sources do you know of that offer good Wordpress tutorials? Please share 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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| LAlarm Laptop Security Makes Your Laptop Scream When Stolen Posted: 28 Oct 2009 01:01 PM PDT
LAlarm is a free laptop security alarming software. It has several different alarms to help protect your laptop, the most important of them being the Theft Alarm. Install LAlarmDownload and install the free laptop security software here. LAlarm is free for personal use, and version 4.0 works with Windows Vista, XP (SP2 or SP3). On Windows 7, you can try the latest beta version 5.0. The download is less than 1MB, and the setup program looks the same as the main program that you launch after installation.
Improve Laptop Security and Protect Against TheftSecuring your laptop is simple and can be done in two ways: 1. If your laptop is connected to a power outlet, simply lock it with the Win+L key shortcut 2. If there is no power outlet available: a) Use a neck-strap or USB extension cord with any old flash drive and insert it into a USB port b) Tie the neck-strap or cord to a firm table c) Lock the laptop with the Win+L shortcut The LAlarm website shows an example of how this is done:
That's it. Now, when someone attempts to steal your laptop, either the power cord or the USB flash drive will get disconnected from the laptop. This triggers the Theft Alarm, and the thief will get a nasty shock because the laptop will emit a loud siren like a car alarm. In my testing, I was worried about neighbors rushing to see what was happening! The alarm stops only when you unlock the laptop by entering your login credentials. For additional laptop security, you can also enable the Inattention Alarm in the Options > Alarm tab. This will trigger if there is a specified period of inactivity on your laptop in unsafe zones. Let's see what "unsafe zones" are next.
Restrict Laptop Use To A Safe AreaYou can use IP addresses to define "Safe Zones" in which your laptop is considered safe. If anyone tries to use it outside the pre-defined safe zones, it triggers the Perimeter Alarm.
The Inattention Alarm also makes use of these zones, so that alarms don't go off when you take a lunch break at work. Email and SMS AlertsAfter installation, one of the first things you probably want to do is setup email alerts for the alarms, for which you can only use a Gmail account and need to supply your Gmail password. As this is software installed locally on your laptop, you need not be concerned about supplying your Gmail password. LAlarm sends you a test email to verify that the email is working properly.
You can also configure SMS alerts to your mobile phone using Email-to-SMS gateways. Note that these alerts will work only if there is an Internet connection present at the time of laptop theft. Automatically Destroy Data In Case Of TheftIn case your laptop does get stolen, you can configure LAlarm to automatically destroy pre-defined data folders. You set these via the Options > Destruction tab.
In addition to destroying data, you can also run any custom programs you want to execute in case of theft from the Options > Theft Response tab. Battery and Disk Protection AlarmsLAlarm also has Disk and Battery protection to help you maximize your laptop battery life and warn you of impending hard disk failure. The battery alarm is triggered at low battery levels that you can customize, and works with Li-ion type batteries. Doesn't this laptop security software sound too good to be free? Will you use it to protect your laptop against theft? 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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| TubeRadio.fm – A Slick & Cool Internet Music Player For YouTube Posted: 28 Oct 2009 12:01 PM PDT
The makers of this Internet music player have perhaps got the right note when they describe it as iTunes meets YouTube meets Spotify. TubeRadio.fm is YouTube at its core with the look of iTunes. And functionally it offers the streaming access to millions of songs like Spotify. It's better as an alternative because Spotify is not available in a lot of countries including my own. The free web app has Last.fm behind it. We have many online jukeboxes and we can always go to YouTube and 'listen' to the tracks… So Where Exactly Should We Put TubeRadio.fm?TubeRadio.fm wraps it all up and comes out as a slick dedicated Internet music player for YouTube. But the power of the web app is not merely playing the music but it's in the way it lets you find and organize the music videos. Search for your favorite artist or band and add the track to your custom playlist. From just this single search, you can get all their available albums and build a complete playlist with a couple of clicks. And another click can take you to Amazon if you desire to purchase the albums. The whole process takes seamless seconds.
Let's Build Our First PlaylistLet's dive in (with a free registration) and see if TubeRadio.fm can walk the talk. Let's build a playlist with some tracks of a favorite band of mine.
You can get into your playlist and fine tune it (Edit, Delete, and Find Replacement) by clicking the little gear icon next to each track. Your own playlists (My Playlists) are searchable from the search box on top. The Shared Feeling
These days no web app is complete without a community. TubeRadio.fm lets you share public playlists. Enter the name of the band and click on Public Playlists. Click on it to see the tracks and click on the Subscribe button to bring it under your Shared Playlists. Shared playlists also get updated across the board if there are any changes to it. Unsubscribing from one also takes just a click. You can also rate the shared playlist by giving it stars. What about the Player Itself?
If it's the visual experience you want, you will be disappointed because the YouTube video player gets the shrinking treatment. It takes up very little space at the bottom of the browser. TubeRadio.fm is more about listening rather than watching. Of course, you can click on that little video and open it up in all its YouTube glory in a separate browser window. What I liked though was the extra information (Lyrics, Bio, Similar bands, Releases) that's available with a click.
The track management features are simple. You can sort the tracks by clicking on the columns or custom sort them to play in definite order or just keep them shuffled. You can move the videos around between playlists and edit video information by clicking on the gear icon. Don't like the video; then just replace it with another one from the same gear icon. The Final NoteTubeRadio.fm is a wonderful attempt to bring all of YouTube's musical goodies under one interface. It's smooth and not difficult to navigate. For iTunes users it will be easier still because of the similar looking interface. The video player does not get much prominence but then it was supposed to be about the audio in the video anyways. The only problem that might raise its head is with the quality of audios themselves. Not all YouTube videos have high bitrates. Bitrates in the region of 128kbps should be good for casual listening. Little things like the high definition tag on the playlist videos and YouTube star ratings for the videos would have made selection and sorting easier. But that's minor bellyaching when the web app has the other nice things on offer. Play TubeRadio.fm and let us know if this Internet music player struck the right chords with you. 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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| DOWNLOAD: The Internet Music Guidebook Posted: 28 Oct 2009 09:41 AM PDT
More and more, media is making the switch from digital storage to the cloud. Away with digital storage, here comes the internet! This change is becoming ever more apparent with online music stores and streaming audio portals springing up all around. There’s a musical buffet waiting for the internet audiophile, but if you aren’t properly informed, you can be sure you’re missing out. MakeUseOf is proud to present The Internet Music Guidebook, a manual for the internet audiophile. An introduction to the World Wide Web of Sound!
In fourty illustrated pages, Will Mueller from willm.me tells you all you need to know about free internet listening to music, streaming audio to your computer, and free download music sites to get all your favorite songs and albums in a whim. Learn how to share music with others and track a band’s performance and album releases! Don’t wait, download the Internet Music Guidebook now in PDF, to view it offline and on your computer, or read it online on Scribd.com. No strings attached, this free eBook is entirely for you to enjoy! If you liked this release, you should also check out our other MakeUseOf PDF Manuals. 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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| 3 Sites To Get News That’s Good For A Change Posted: 28 Oct 2009 09:01 AM PDT
Well, we can be happy that there are serious journalists who desire to bring us the good news, who feel that if they can share someone else’s successes with us, we can see that there is more than just hope. There is, in fact, at least as much good news as there is bad. There are millions of people in the world who care, and strive to do the right thing. It’s just finding these stories is hard. Well, let’s get a prod in the right direction. The Optimist
Here’s something interesting. Go to the page where they list the Optimists. Look through all the pictures of the self-proclaimed optimists there. Did you notice that they all look healthy and happy?
Very few of them are overweight and those that are, are so only by a little bit. Do you think maybe there is a direct correlation between finding the small joys and being healthy and attractive? I think so.
Good News Network
The On This Day feature is a really nice change from what it usually is in the newspapers. It’s ALL good news that happened on this day in the past! So, not only is now a good time, so was the past. If that doesn’t get your warm-fuzzies going, there is the wonderful Inspiration Point, that provides a positive quote from some of the world’s greatest minds. I was particularly fond of this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson:
That’s pure wisdom people. I don’t know about you, but the present is seldom depressing for me, until it becomes my past and I dwell on it. What could I have done better? What did I do to deserve that? Why did that person hurt me? Forget it, just keep swimming! Good News Gazette
The categories here are very similar to what you’d expect to find in any newspaper: Arts and Entertainment, Business, Health and so on. The stories are funny, inspiring, thought provoking and some will bring you to tears. Not of sadness, but compassion and maybe some humbleness.
After a week where so much has happened in my own little town, I’m glad I sought out the good news and shared it with you. The sting of 15 students getting suspended in one day at the middle school and a 13-year-old girl, on her way to school, getting hit by an alleged multiple-conviction drunk-driver made for a tough week. Well, the good news was needed. Also check out Sara’s article on good news websites. If this article and the sites listed have helped lift your spirits at all, please share that with us. I’d also love to hear about any other good news sites you can recommend. Head on down to the comments and be heard! 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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| Milpon – The Only Remember The Milk IPhone App You’ll Need Posted: 28 Oct 2009 07:01 AM PDT
To users who would much rather not pay $25 a year to access RTM through their iPhone, luckily, there is an alternative to RTM's own iPhone app. Milpon is the only iPhone todo app in the iTunes store that is both free and functional for managing your RTM tasks.
The first line following the arrow is where you input the name of your task. Unfortunately, unlike the RTM website, you can't add priorities and other details by using hash tags. To set a due date, click the calendar icon, which brings up a full sized calendar.
This calendar is possibly my favorite feature of Milpon. You can scroll through the months by clicking the left and right arrows by the Month and Year entry, and then pick the exact date you want by clicking the corresponding box on the calendar. This will bring you back to the main Add page, where you can set the other details like which list you want the task in, etc. Another great thing about Milpon's Add page is that, when you are assigning tags to a task, Milpon brings up a list of the tags that you have already created, and adds the tag you tap to the task you're creating.
When you are done creating a task, it will be filed with all of your other tasks, where it will be viewable in three ways. The screenshot above is of Milpon's home screen. By clicking Overview, you will see a screen like the very first screenshot above, that details all the tasks due in the next week. If you click "List," you'll see all of your lists, followed by the number of tasks in that list. If you click "Tag," you'll see a list of your tags, followed by the number of tasks that have that tag.
I find the option to sort your tasks by their tags extremely useful, because you can set contexts (such as the location that your task should be completed at) as your tags, and then sort your tasks so that they are location specific. Then, you can view all of your "@phone" tasks while you're making calls, and call everyone in one sitting. Since Milpon is a relatively new app, it is still undergoing active development. For example, the latest update features automatic syncing! Instead of having to manually sync like in the previous releases, Milpon now syncs when you open the app. Unfortunately this means that you’ll still have to sync manually after making changes, but that’s still better than no automated syncing at all.
You can sync manually by clicking the refresh icon in the upper left hand corner of the home screen. Syncing usually takes quite a while, which is a bit of a drawback, but you can still view and edit tasks while syncing, so that shouldn't be too much of a concern. I've been an avid fan since Milpon first launched, and it's come a long way since its infant days. I foresee it making great progress as it gains more users, and I hope that it will become the RTM iPhone app of choice for non-Pro users. Do you use Remember the Milk? Give Milpon a shot, and tell us what you think of it, in comparison to RTM's own iPhone app. Related posts
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| Use Household Register 2010 To Maintain A Home Inventory Posted: 28 Oct 2009 05:01 AM PDT
Let us take a look at Household Register 2010 which is a 6.8MB download. Once it is installed you can launch it from your start menu. You will see a screen that looks like this:
You are now ready to begin. Hit the add button and you will get a type of wizard to fill in your information, as you can see below. There are places to fill in all your data and several tabs to do it on. The interface is very intuitive and simple to use.
If you hit the down arrows after certain fields you will see a List that you can choose from like this one for the item below:
Next up is the value field asking you about how much it cost, what credit card it was purchased with and appraisal value etc.
The model tab is where you fill in manufacturer, serial number and who you bought it from. Simple and easy so far right?
The warranty tab shows you normal and extended warranty information such as the date, phone number for repair and cost. The more you fill in the better off you will be when the item is broken or stolen.
There are two more tabs, one for notes and the other to insert an image of the item. Then hit OK. That will bring you back to the main inventory screen as you can see below. Hit add to continue adding items until you are complete.
You can run reports against your items in the home inventory list and save them as PDF's, HTML pages or just print them. Some of the included canned reports are warranty information, details, valuation, location, category and a bunch more. I love some reporting!
This program helped me save my data so the next time I need something – I already have it. You will thank your lucky stars that you have this when you need it. Take the hour or so to do this! What do you use to keep your home inventory list? Do you keep serial numbers? Do you not? Do you wish you had after an incident? Share your experiences in the comments kiddies! 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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If you have discovered MakeUseOf just recently and are one of our 100,000+ subscribers please consider 
If you haven’t heard, Wordpress is like the best blogging software, like, EVER! If you want to do it the easy way, you can always start a blog by going to Wordpress.com and signing up. Easy-peasy!
Laptop theft is growing at alarming proportions. One laptop is stolen every 53 seconds, according to Gartner. A study by Dell 
YouTube is not only about crazy videos going viral. It's also a huge archive of videos of the musical kind. From garage bands to the platinum artists, you will find them there. I don't know whether you have the feeling (or not) that watching music videos is not exactly the same thing as listening to them. Sometimes you just like to be left alone with the tunes. That's where 
The internet is no longer ‘just’ a source of information. It’s riddled with online communities, and of course, online media.
U.S. might invade Iran. Click. 2 Canadian Soldiers Die in Afghanistan. Click. Unemployment Up 15%. Click. Click. Click. No matter where you look, it seems like the apocalypse is upon us. Websites, television, radio, Twitter. It’s no wonder antidepressants are one of the most popular medications these days. What is there to be happy about?
In a clean and light-hearted website, you’ll find seriously good news from around the world. The Optimist is a community based site, bringing you news in the categories of: Charities Doing Things to Inspire, Companies with Conscience, Travel Tips and Global Goodness, Sports with a Positive Spin, Stories from Optimistic People, and if reading the good news isn’t enough – watch it on Optimist TV!
Started in 1997 with a goal of bringing news stories to the Web that might inspire or at least combat the negative news that abounds. Things seem to be going pretty well with that goal. The site is still around over 10 years later. The news comes in many categories as well. In addition to all of these news categories, there are some other very uplifting features.
I take great relief in noticing that this site doesn’t have the same news as the Good News Network, which doesn’t have the same news as The Optimist. That tells me that there is plenty enough good news to go around for everyone. There is no just reason why the good news doesn’t lead the 6 o’clock news.
In particular, I am moved by the story of the man that wants to do 1 million deeds of kindness in his lifetime. That’s it. That’s his whole message. No matter how small the deeds may be, maybe they’ll spark someone else to do the same. Maybe 10,000 people will get that spark. Imagine the power that would wield to make our world a place where good news happens everyday.
Do you keep a list of all the items in your home? You do? Really? And how about serial numbers, warranty information, purchase dates and how much that special something is worth? I recently had to create a home inventory list for the insurance company and now here is a great program that will let you track this data on your computer.
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