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- Cool Websites and Tools [October 29]
- The Top Five Idle Time Facebook Games
- How To Easily Download & Convert Video Files From MegaVideo
- Question Of The Day – What Time Do Online Workers Start Work?
- How To Do A Niche Industry Analysis With Free Online Tools
- Top 10 Sites To Download Free Photoshop Textures
- Give GMail A New Appearance With Themes & A Firefox Extension
- Find Lost Space On Your Hard Disk With Space Sniffer
| Cool Websites and Tools [October 29] Posted: 29 Oct 2009 06:01 PM PDT
(1) ColorJive – If you are planning to paint your room and not sure what colors to use, ColorJive can help. Using this website you may upload an image of your room and apply desired colors to the walls to see how the room looks with that color. Read more: ColorJive – Choose The Right Paint Color By Painting Your Room Online
(2) Icones.pro – Next time you need an icon for you website or design project make sure to check out Icones.pro. It offers a huge collection of free downloadable icons. There are currently more then 15,000 high quality icons available in PNG and ICO formats and in several sizes. Read more: Icones.pro – 15000+ Free Downloadable Icons (3) BookLookr – If you frequently shop for books online then Booklookr is a service that could save you some money. It is a book price comparison engine which claims to get you the lowest price for a particular book. Start by entering the title, author name, ISBN or keyword and click search. Read more: BookLookr – Book Price Comparison Engine (4) Newsy - Online news aggregator which shows news videos on different topics and from different sources. You can find news videos from BBC, CNN, ABC News and even channels like Al Jazeera, all at one place.Read more: Newsy – Online News Videos Aggregator (5) Drinkolic – Simple yet comprehensive online resource for alcoholic and non-alcoholic drink recipes. Drink mixers, bartenders, or plain hobbyist can go to Drinkolic and find thousands of recipes to get started. Read more: Drinkolic – Make Perfect Drink Recipes
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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| The Top Five Idle Time Facebook Games Posted: 29 Oct 2009 03:01 PM PDT
An idle time game is what it says. It’s a game you play in your idle time. The beauty of idle time games is that they are designed to provide you with some down time away from the game too. Certain components require specific time frames to complete with no interaction from you, thus leaving you time to go back to doing other stuff. When you have a break from email, work, and checking out all the other MakeUseOf tips, programs and websites, log in to Facebook, click "Applications", and check out the top five most popular idle time Facebook games. On top of the list is FarmVille, by Zynga, with nearly 60 million "active monthly users".
A similar game by Slashkey, called Farm Town, ranks fifth, with nearly 18 million users.
These two top Facebook games are very similar, allowing me to kill two digitally rendered, unreal virtual birds with one stone.
Barns, pathways, water features, and fences are just a sample of the items available for purchase with your earnings to personalize your farm. As you progress in levels the items you can buy get more enticing and more profitable seeds are available. You can also increase your farm’s size. There are a few differences in the two games which may determine which you prefer. Take both for a test drive and decide for yourself. You might get addicted to both, like me. Farm Town allows you to earn coins and experience by helping other farmers who aren’t your neighbors and includes chat features. Both games have animals you can purchase, but only FarmVille allows the animals to be "harvested". Cows give milk, sheep give wool, and so on. Mafia Wars, another Zynga game, boasts 26 million users. If you’re in the mood for stealing, robbing, or icing someone in cyberspace this may be your game. It’s a dashboard-only game, meaning you do not have an avatar or a character to move around. If you want to do a job, you click a button, and the results are displayed. Many other idle time games are designed this way, and as someone used to Grand Theft Auto action, I personally don’t enjoy this type of game.
You earn money for doing jobs which include robbing a pimp, collecting on a loan, and other mafioso tasks. You recruit friends to be part of your mafia, and you can fight other people’s mafias. Websites outside of Mafia Wars have popped up where you recruit people other than your friends to be in your Mafia. The more members you have, the more successful you are. You can purchase items, and you level up by building experience with jobs and fights. Energy, stamina, and health are important, as jobs require varying levels of these traits to perform. This is where the game invokes idle time. Once your resources are depleted, a clock is displayed and you have to wait it out until they begin being refilled. Pet Society by Playfish is a cute game that seems to be designed for the younger crowd, yet it claims fourth place with 19 million users. This game allows you to have a customizable pet that interacts with the environment. The pet has a home and a community to explore. The community includes a home improvement center, a cafe, and a grocery store, among others. You can decorate your home, play with your pet, and feed your pet. This game has a mini-Sims like feel as it has three status bars you try to keep maxed out to ensure your pet is healthy, happy and clean. The feel is cartoon-like, but it’s is a relatively simple and safe game for children if you allow them to use the computer during your idle time.
Similar to Pet Society, YoVille is an interactive community with people-based avatars, but this game includes chat features. You work at a "job" to earn coins. You can only work so often and at specific intervals, thus the idle time feature. Your character is given an apartment to live in and you recruit your Facebook friends to be your neighbors and coworkers.
All of these games share common traits. You earn coins and experience to purchase cooler items and to level up. They encourage your friends to play as well, as some features can’t be unlocked unless you have a certain number of neighbors, co-workers or mafia members. Each has a gifting feature where you can choose a gift to send to your friends or neighbors. The gifts are items they could eventually buy within the games, but they may not be at the level where the gift is unlocked. If you just don’t want to wait on a harvest or a job, you can use real money to purchase game money. However, all games are free to play. Most of the games are beta, so you may have some connection issue or other issues from time to time. The biggest drawback to these games is their addictive nature, turning them from "idle time" to "all the time". Which Facebook game takes up all your time? Let us know all 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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| How To Easily Download & Convert Video Files From MegaVideo Posted: 29 Oct 2009 01:01 PM PDT
One tiny little snag however; the people who make such films and shows aren't too keen on us enjoying them for free. Yeah, sure you can always use a site such as MegaVideo which in my opinion is the best website for films, shows, documentaries and home made clips on the internet. Two things really get on my nerves about that site though. 1. The time limit – for some reason you're restricted to 51 minutes of viewing at any one time. It used to be 72 minutes but they amped it up recently. 2. There is no well-known download option that is free. Well in this article I'm going to show you a technique I used recently to download and convert video files for episodes of my favourite TV shows and loads of films right onto my iPod – from Megavideo. For free.
When you've found a good link to the video you want, click on it.
From the video's page copy the URL. Normally this is an option in the media player. With Megavideo it's the button below the screen that looks like two forward slashes '//'.
If you entered a MegaVideo or Vreel URL then you'll have to paste the video page's source code into the box in the screenshot. This is to override extra security measures these services have taken in recent times. To find the source code, simply go to the video's page. Right-click outside of the video player and select the option to view the page's code. The exact phrasing of this will differ from browser to browser. In Firefox and Internet Explorer you can simply click 'Edit' along the top menu bar and select 'View Source'.
Select all of the code and paste it into ClipNabber. Then click 'Nab It' again. This will bring up a download link. Click on that to download the video. Once the download has finished you'll have a .FLV file. This will be playable on media players such as Real Player but it won't play on most portable devices. You can watch the full video on your PC but if you want to put it on your iPod then there is one more step; you need to convert the video file. Download any one of these conversion tools featured here in this article on MUO. I'd suggest using the 'Any Video Converter' tool as it's the most basic and it worked a treat for me.
All of these video converters are very basic with three main steps to follow: 1. Select Input File and select your input file. 2. Select Output File location and format (.mp4 for most devices) 3. Press 'Convert' and play the waiting game. Once the you convert the video file, you will have downloaded a movie from Megavideo and have it sitting on your PC in .mp4 format ready to be transferred to your iPod – all without spending a dime! When you click convert, don't be tempted to exit the program if it appears nothing's happening. There is no status bar in most of these programs so it might appear as though there is nothing happening but there is. I almost exited a program just when a little box popped up to tell me the conversion was complete! It should take around 10 minutes to convert a 25 minute episode of a show and considerably longer for a film. 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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| Question Of The Day – What Time Do Online Workers Start Work? Posted: 29 Oct 2009 12:01 PM PDT
And here it is : If you work online, what time do you normally start working? Are you an early-to-rise kind of person or do you like to have your long lie in bed and start working in the afternoon? What time do you do your best work? Let’s light up the comments section below with your replies! Image Credit : Juanpol Related posts
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| How To Do A Niche Industry Analysis With Free Online Tools Posted: 29 Oct 2009 11:00 AM PDT
Many companies spend a fortune for a complete niche industry analysis. I should know – I used to conduct the research and write up niche industry reports for a company that sold those reports to big businesses. Today, I’d like to share some inside secrets with MakeUseOf readers and reveal the naked truth – you don’t need memberships to special databases or statistics firms to uncover those industry niches, all you need to know is where to look for the information yourself and you can create your own free industry analysis. Always Start With Your GovernmentThe truth is, almost every government in every nation devotes a great deal of effort and resources to measuring the just about every aspect of society – from how many pounds of potatoes your country produces to the number of people born with specific diseases. Regardless of the industry you’re looking into, the odds are pretty good that there’s a government agency that produced a report on the topic. For example, when I was digging into Real Estate markets, I discovered a report on Mortgage Loans produced by the special “Office of Thrift Supervision” within the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Seriously, there’s such an office. The mortgage loan data they provided (for free, I might add) was exactly what I needed.
The best place to start when you’re creating your free industry analysis is at an online government office listing directory such as my favorite, USA.gov for the U.S. or Direct.gov for the UK. The individual agencies that you’ll find offer their own library chock-full of statistics, charts and detailed demographics that you’ll be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. For an international listing of government agencies around the world, the FDA (of all places) offers a fairly comprehensive list.
Schools and University Studies and ResearchIt’s almost comical that companies spend so much money for a private corporation to produce a niche analysis on an industry when there’s so much free information available on the Internet. Aside from government agencies, Universities and Colleges from around the world constantly conduct studies and collect data and then publish the results online for free. These are typically published in the form of “white papers.” One of the best way to find these studies is by using Google Scholar, a white paper search engine that will turn up those results for you.
The quality of data that you will find from these results and from the various University research projects are amazing. For example, while researching the real estate market, I uncovered a detailed Harvard study on rental housing.
If you’re looking for data, graphs and charts that uncover industry trends, social demographics and reveal the sort of niche opportunities for your business – you’ve got it all right here. Don’t only search for the larger schools, if you’re interested in your local market, make sure to check on any local studies your local community college or University might have completed – you may be very surprised what you find. The Pew Research CenterIn almost every niche analysis report I’ve ever written, I usually always come back to the Pew Research Center for research. The motto of this organization is, “Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World.” This is no exaggeration, Pew publishes some of the most obscure and eye opening social trends of any research organization I’ve seen.
It’s from Pew that I learned that middle-age women make up the largest demographic of users for online games, or that more teen girls use social networks than boys do. If you want to uncover any niche opportunities for a potential business, this site should be at the top of your bookmarks. Using Google Trends to Reveal Global DemographicsNow, this article wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t mention the single tool that I’ve used above all others to uncover unique niche opportunities. It goes without saying that the Internet has become an important gauge of public sentiment, and of course since Google Trends reveals “the big picture” for particular keyword searches, then it makes sense that you should be able to use Google Trends to identify industry trends. In a simple example, if you’re thinking of investing in rental properties and becoming a landlord, it stands to reason that you would want the trend of people searching for “apartments for rent” to be rising.
Well, look at that. Google trends reveals that while interest in apartments held pretty steady (aside from the annual fluctuations) from 2004 through 2008, there’s been a sudden upswing in public interest in apartments in 2009 – interesting! With Google trends, you can dig even deeper than this. By copying each annual graph and overlaying them together (using your favorite image editing software), you can also reveal seasonal patterns. In this case doing so would reveal what part of the year more people usually hunt for apartments.
As you can see here, most people are looking for apartments during midsummer, and then that interest tanks as the school year approaches, recovering only at the end of the year. While this particular trend isn’t very shocking, you would be very surprised to see some of the fascinating seasonal trends that Google Trends sometimes reveals within certain industries. So, whether you’re just curious about the current market for your small business idea, or you’re thinking about opening an enterprise on a much larger scale, just remember that the tools and resources are available on the web so that you can identify those awesome niche opportunities yourself. Have you ever started your own business? What online tools and resources did you use to research your market? Share your insight in the comments section below. Related posts
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| Top 10 Sites To Download Free Photoshop Textures Posted: 29 Oct 2009 09:00 AM PDT
Amazing TexturesAmazing Textures list various free Photoshop textures nicely sorted into different categories. You can find textures representing wood, bricks, glass, metal, fabric and many more. You can browse the site as it is, however if you want to download higher resolution images you would have to register with the site. The registration is free.
DeviantArtDeviantArt is renowned for this kind of creative work. You can find some amazing textures to work with. Many of them created by users themselves rather than from photographs as on other sites, you can thus find some really unique textures here.
Lost and TakenLost and Taken works like a blog. There are regular posts listing free Photoshop textures that pertain to a particular theme. You might want to point your RSS reader there if you like collecting resources for design work and inspiration.
Grunge TexturesGrunge Textures specializes (hold your breath…) in grunge textures! There are all kinds of textures with a one common aspect – all have a grungy feel to them. According to the site, there are 1355 high resolution images in 18 categories that you can browse through to find what you are looking for.
ShizooShizoo lists various resources like brushes, icons, patterns and much more that you can make use of. The textures section lists some nice colorful textures which you won’t find on every site.
Texture GalleryNicely designed site listing textures organized into various categories. One thing (besides the textures) I like about Texture Gallery is that most of the site is in a neutral gray, this helps in any avoiding any influence that the site’s color may have on texture choice.
ToybirdsToybirds not only lists textures but also lists other resources you may find handy in your design work. There are occasional posts featuring brushes, patterns etc. Although the latest post dates back to 2008, it is nevertheless a worthy resource to browse when looking for design resources.
Texture KingTexture King offers stock texture images for free. While the textures may be low on count, you can find large high resolution textures for your work.
Urban DirtyUrban Dirty also lists stock texture images, most of them have a grungy feel to them. In addition, the site also lists a few examples in which the texture images have been used, just in case you are looking for some inspiration! You can also check out the Urban Dirty photos in action on Flickr
Texture Library and Texture ArchiveJust because we love to throw an extra one to make that 10 an 11 here are two more resources you can check out when looking for textures. Both of them list textures in various categories which often overlap. However, these are indispensable resources listing lots of textures to have in your bookmark directory.
Which site has the most variety of textures and appealed to you the most? Do you use any other site when looking for textures? Shoot a comment, we would love to know about them. Related posts
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| Give GMail A New Appearance With Themes & A Firefox Extension Posted: 29 Oct 2009 07:01 AM PDT
I am also the member of those email junkies. And given the nature of my mobile work, I prefer to use webmail instead of desktop client. This choice enables me to check my email anytime and anywhere no matter what device that I use. Speaking of webmail, Google Mail is one of the popular choices for many internet users. As per July 2009, there are about 146 million users who stare at their Gmail inbox every month. If you are one of the users who has been using Gmail since it become available for general public (February 2007), it means that you’ve stared at more or less the same old inbox interface for over two and a half years (roughly about a thousand days or so). And the number is multiplied for those who’s been using Gmail since the “invitation only” beta release back in April 2004.
Have you ever felt bored of the look?
Changing the Gmail themeThe Gmail interface is not bad. I guess it’s designed with efficiency and practicality in mind. But it’s not the prettiest thing either. Most Gmail users just accept the sight that they’ve got everytime they log into their account. They have never noticed that they can change the theme of the Gmail interface if they wanted to. Here’s how to change your Gmail theme.
If you choose the option to choose your own color, you’ll have a new window appear with several editable fields. If you bring your mouse to the left side of the field, a small arrow will appear. Click on this arrow and you’ll have a color picker box popping out. You can choose your preferred color combination for your Gmail theme.
Using Firefox add-onBeside using the available themes provided by Google, there is another way to change your Gmail interface: using a Firefox add-on. Even though this method will limit the facial-lift to Firefox only, the new refreshing look is worth a peek. I stumbled upon this one add-on called Google Redesigned purely by coincidence. As the name suggested, activating this add on will completely redesign the look of three popular Google applications (Mail, Reader and Calendar) under Firefox. Each app has its own style and each style can be used individually or together as a group. This is achieved by using Cascading StyleSheet (CSS) files which are loaded on the client’s browser. Google Redesigned does not use any remote images, however it does load style sheets from a remote server. Users can manually update the themes by clicking the Google Redesigned logo at the bottom of the Firefox window and choose “Check for style updates“.
This is the look of Gmail using Google Redesigned under Firefox.
While you’re at it, why not add another Firefox add-on called Integrated Gmail that will combine Google Mail, Google Reader and Google Calendar all on one page? Have you changed the look of your Gmail? Do you know of any other methods to give your inbox a new look? 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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| Find Lost Space On Your Hard Disk With Space Sniffer Posted: 29 Oct 2009 05:00 AM PDT
Do you know where your 200GB is on free space? What's that? You only have 72MB free? What is using all that lost hard drive space? What do you mean you don't know? It looks like you are in need of a virtual canine application called Space Sniffer… Get it? Like a dog. Umm well, the software is MUCH better than my joke – I assure you. No, really!
Go ahead and grab the download from here. It is a 1.1MB file. Once you get that file downloaded, go ahead and extract the executable file from the zip file. It is called SpaceSniffer.exe and it is completely portable!
On that first screen, select the drive you want to analyze or sniff for lost hard drive space. I selected my C:\ drive. And hit Start. That starts the action and you will see a moving representation of your selected drive as it sorts out what is on your drive. You will see something similar to this as it runs:
If you click on any of the drive portions, you can "Zoom In" like so (even while you are still scanning). I double-clicked on the desktop portion occupying 5.4GB of data and saw this:
It is pretty damn cool to see the directories or drives broken down like this. My drive did take some time to complete. In the area of 15 minutes. But I was using the system as I went for normal day to day activities. Then it was complete.
Now let's take a look at your options. You can see them by hitting Edit – Options. Then, you can see each of the four tabs below: The first tab denotes if you should show free space, show unknown space, sort item and the minimum size of an element (this is the smallest items), proportions of items against each other and initial detail level. Mess around with them and see what works for you.
Hmm dynamic zoom as a effect? Let's enable it and see what happens. After enabling this feature it, shows the effect of "Zooming in". It's cool but not very useful. It did not use as much memory as I expected.
Scan alternate data steams? This had me stumped so I checked my friend Google and read this:
That sparked my interest enough for me to check the box and re-run my scan.
My new scan showed free space but no Alternate Data Streams – but I will scan my servers tonight and let you guys know via the comments how it went later on.
The last option in the preferences is the colors of items placed on your map. Tweak them to your heart's desire and let us know how it works out in the comments!
Do you use a similar free program to find lost hard drive space? We would love to hear how you keep your hard drives in check! Voice it out 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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Do you get bored when working at the computer or do you fill all your time with a million different activities? If you get bored often, you may want to consider an "idle time game". What constitutes an idle time game and what are the top idle time games on Facebook?
I love Family Guy. I'm also a Simpsons fan despite what people say about the new episodes. I'm also a guy who enjoys 
Then go to 
Today’s “Question of The Day” is for all you online workers out there – the bloggers, the stay-at-home employees and anyone else who can do their job with a keyboard, webcam and internet connection.
Have you ever had a fantastic business idea that you’re absolutely certain will make loads of profit with hardly any effort? Maybe you’re considering opening up a shop or offering a service in your part of the world. One of the more difficult aspects of starting a new business is putting together an accurate analysis of the local market and trying to determine if there’s a demand for your service. Even better, if you can analyze the industry and uncover a unique “niche” that is either unserved or underserved, you could create a wildly successful business.
Textures are indispensable if you do any kind of design compositions. Not only do they provide an environment or background that you can use in your designs, a skilled designer can use them to set the overall feel and mood of the composition as well. If you have a decent camera, you can mostly create the textures you want using a photo of the desired object and some Photoshop magic. Here are some sites you can look up to find free Photoshop textures in case you are feeling lazy or don’t have the appropriate resources to create your own textures. The sites are in no particular order.
In one informal talk between MakeUseOf authors, everybody said that checking email is one of the few first things they do in the morning after waking up. Most people that I know always check their incoming messages regularly. Some even have to know their inbox status all the time that they have bought themselves a mobile phone with push email capabilities. This shows how inseparable our lives are with the thing that we call electronic mail.
Do you know what is on your system? I mean do you really really know what is occupying your hard drive's space?
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