Latest Tips from MakeUseOf.com

---

• Personalize Your News With Custom Sections In Google News
• Cool Websites and Tools [November 6]
• Quiet Read Saves Weblinks For Later Reading [Mac]
• The 3 Useful Office Apps To Reduce Your Paperwork
• How To Connect Your Nintendo Wii Console To The Internet
• Read 650 Magazines Online for Free With Maggwire
• Celtx – The Ultimate Screenwriting Suite [Cross-Platform]
• How To Tag Your Friends In Photos On Flickr

Personalize Your News With Custom Sections In Google News Posted: 07 Nov 2009 04:01 AM PST The men in white coats (or white T-Shirts) at Google are at it again. They just gave us another way to overload ourselves with information culled from the web. Lot of us read Google news for headlines from around the world. The Google News service collects breaking news as published by the news services from around the world. Just as all news is not bad news; all news is also not suitable news. News reading is an individualized experience. What's news to me may be just white space fillers for you. Acknowledging the need for individuals to tailor their reading to their kind of news, Google has made it easy to create Custom Sections for news on specific subjects. The recent change on the part of Google News has made it easy to personalize your Google News page by pigeonholing specific news to specific sections. Quite simply, it's a filtering mechanism that uses keywords to search out and display the kind of news you want on your front page. Does it sound like a form of customized news feed? Here's how Custom Sections for Google News works… Log-in to your Google News page. Create on Add a Section on the top right corner. The Customs Section Directory lists a lot of default custom sections for you to browse through and add. Some have been created by Google and some by users. The search box allows you to search for sections on topics you might be interested in. Each section also shows the number of users and user ratings. If you see a section you like, you can click on it and see the current news gathered under it. The Add this section button adds the news feed to your Google News front page. Create a custom news section in five easy steps For example, I found a section called Open Source Software and added it with a click. But then, I searched for Web 2.0 and didn't find any. Worry not; I get to create my own section by clicking the large blue button that says, Create a custom section. To create my own personalized news section, I have to fill in a few fields as shown in the screenshot below. As soon as I start feeding in the keywords, the page updates to reflect news relating to the keywords I put in the box. A dropdown also gives me a few friendly suggestions. Google tells us to be relevant and creative with the keywords. Keep tweaking the keywords till you feel that the results on the right hand side are matching your needs. In the dropdown for the Editions, you can go for searches from within Google's local language editions or opt for a more enveloping – All editions. The Source Location field is optional and allows you to further restrict the search to a geographical unit like a country or a state. For now, only U.S states are supported. A checkmark against Publish this section to the directory makes your effort viewable in the public directory for everyone to view, use and rate. Finished? Just click on Create. All added sections get listed on your Google News front page. The custom section can also be edited or deleted by you anytime you wish from this page. Custom sections help to direct the power of Google news search and let you create another layer of news items specific to your needs. All you have to do is pick the right keywords. Do you think this adds to your individual selective news experience? Image Credit: aloshbennett 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 Google Fast Flip – Call It A New(s) Reading Experience (6) Ways to Stay on Top of The News (12) The New RSS Feed Reader Wars! (40) Read Complete Magazines Online in Google Books (8) How to Filter out Undesirable Posts in your RSS Reader (8)

Cool Websites and Tools [November 6] Posted: 06 Nov 2009 05:01 PM PST Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. All listed websites are FREE (or come with a decent free account option). No trials or buy-to-use craplets. For more cool websites and web app reviews subscribe to MakeUseOf Directory.   (1) Map-Of-The-Market – Cool visual stock market map from SmartMoney.com. It allows you to easily watch hundreds of stocks at once. The stocks are nicely organized by industry and you can customize the map by using the control panel on the right side of the map. Read more: Map-Of-The-Market – Visual Stock Market Map (2) Givv – This site allows you to create a list of non-profit organizations you want to support and donate to all with one monthly payment, from one place. It doesn't matter how much you donate, the money will be automatically split between organizations you choose and you can cancel your list at anytime. Read more: Givv – Makes Donating to Non-Profits Very Easy (3) USPS Mobile – Although you can always access USPS' (United States Postal Service) main website from your mobile phone and track packages, it is always better if one gets a simpler, trimmed-down version of the site on the small screen of the cellphone. USPS Mobile offers you just that. Read more: USPS Mobile – Mobile Package Tracking Site (4) Head-To-Head -  Simple online application which allow you to have a video and audio conversations with random person online. All you need to do is go to the website and click on the "Find Stranger" button. Head-To-Head will then look for a random stranger and connect you. Read more: Head-To-Head – Video Chat With Random Person Online (5) StarCommentator – Ever wanted to present on Sports Centre? Well ESPN and Skype have teamed up to give one lucky person the opportunity to do just that. They have launched a new program dubbed Star Commentator whereby entrants use video recording service embedded on the site and submit a small video application; the winner will present a sport segment on the Asian edition of the show. Read more:  StarCommentator – ESPN Sports Presenter Competition Submit Your Web App   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 makeuseof extra #27 (74) Finally Stick To Your Resolutions With StickK (50) Cool Websites and Tools [September 9] (15) Cool Websites and Tools [September 7] (9) Cool Websites and Tools [September 6] (20)

Quiet Read Saves Weblinks For Later Reading [Mac] Posted: 06 Nov 2009 02:01 PM PST I’m a huge web geek and I spend hours, literally, crawling the Internet for cool apps and ideas for my next article. Sometimes I’ll stumble upon a really great application, then another one and another. Before I know it, my browser is filled with opened tabs and Safari is hogging up all the memory. I would use a social bookmarking website but honestly, I don’t find them very useful since I’m almost always on my MacBook and I hardly use another computer. In this case, the perfect solution would be a desktop app to store all my links of interest so that I can go through them slowly after I’ve settled down. In a previous article, I’ve detailed the steps needed to use Stacks to store URL’s so that I can browse them later. This minimizes bookmarking clutter since it provides an alternative location to temporarily store bookmarks. The problem is, I tend to forget about the URLs after a while. The Stack doesn’t exactly yell out, “Hey, look at me! You have 20+ sites yet to read here!” I needed a more centralized solution that would display the number of sites I have saved but haven’t yet read. That’s exactly what I found with Quiet Read. This app sits quietly (no pun intended) in the menu bar awaiting links. Whenever I’m in the middle of a power search (you know, those frantic searches where you open lots and lots of webpages in the hopes of finding the thing you’re looking for but hardly ever do) and I think that I’ve found a seriously awesome app, I’ll drag the link and drop it over Quiet Read. The indicator refreshes automatically to display the number of items it currently holds. That’s one of my favorite features; I don’t get that when using Stacks. In fact, nothing else happens whenever I add a link into Quiet Read, proving it to be really very unobtrusive, thus permitting me to carry on with my power search or whatever it is I was doing. Now, allow me to elaborate. What exactly can you store in Quiet Read? Basically, any web link in almost any form can be saved. I can click and drag a link from any browser; in this case, I’m using Safari, and drop it in the menu bar icon. Links are listed chronologically, not alphabetically — which again, is really great because I can determine the order in which they were saved. I can also click and drag the favicon from the address bar and drop it into Quiet Read. Additionally, any highlighted (selected) URL can also be dragged into the app. Now, maybe I feel that some of the URL titles don’t really work for me. Some of them aren’t very descriptive. Well, Quiet Read allows me to edit them by Option-clicking on a title. When I’m done reading a saved site, I simply click on the menu bar icon, select the title and press Command-Delete to remove it from the list. Easy peasy. I like Quiet Read because of its simplicity and the fact that it doesn’t do much more than it’s supposed to. No frills — just the way I like it. Quiet Read is completely free and runs on Snow Leopard. What do you use to put aside websites to read later? Bookmarks? Read It Later Firefox extension? Tell us 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 Use Stacks To Save Websites For Later Reading [Mac] (17) Manage Your Bookmarks & Reading List with Instapaper (7) How To Print A Web Page The Way You Want It (7) Get The Awesome Read it Later Extension For Firefox 3 (19) Build an Online Reading List with “Read It Later” (24)

The 3 Useful Office Apps To Reduce Your Paperwork Posted: 06 Nov 2009 12:01 PM PST The world of business is a tough one indeed. Anyone will tell you that. From the guys at the top earning billions per year to the lowly freelancer, tucked away in a small home office. The big jobs are often the easiest. There’s nothing like landing a huge contract or finishing off that job you know will earn you more work. The small things however like administration and document control are annoying. For all the small business owners, and indeed the tech geeks who just love new apps to play around with; here are three great online office apps that will help you reduce all of that paperwork. Online OCR This tool will take care of a lot of boring transcription that we all have to do now and again. I often find myself transcribing accounts and business plans into a text editor when I really should be using this tool. To put it bluntly, it takes a scanned image of a document or a PDF file and transforms it into an editable text document such as MS Word or MS Notepad (*.txt file). This service is free – to an extent. There is no registration required and you can convert five pages every hour as an unregistered user which is plenty for small business owners. For registered users, the first five pages are free but after that every page costs 10 cents. I’d imagine this is only for large businesses who would be scanning documents with hundreds of pages in a short period of time. We have previously covered other OCR applications such as Varun’s review of JOCR and Saikat’s Top 5 Free OCR Software Tools. Fill Any PDF Many of us will have to fill in several forms when tax returns are due, insurance policies are required or indeed for business procedures. It’s common practice to receive those forms in PDF format either by e-mail or by downloading them and then printing them out to fill in by hand. FillAnyPDF is an extremely easy-to-use online PDF form editor that allows you to fill in a PDF form using a text editor or freehand writing. What’s more, you can also create your own PDF forms and share them online with other people and request they fill them in using this editor. Obviously security is a big issue when dealing with confidential forms online so FillAnyPDF gives you the option to ‘whiteout’ certain areas and only make those areas visible to the person the form is intended for. The last thing you need is somebody having access to your social security number and personal details. We have discussed in the past various other options.   Ones that immediately spring to mind are Karl’s review of PDFVue and Jackson’s review of FormulatePro which is a Mac option. WatchDox As we touched on above, security is paramount concerning business documents. But you can’t exactly put a PDF in a briefcase and handcuff it to yourself. It’s impractical and sort of weird. Plus I’m sure every thief that sees you will definitely want that briefcase. Anyway, this is a method of sharing pretty much any document online, in a secure environment with the intended recipients. Here is how it works: You upload the document, enter the recipients e-mail address and set the security measures on the document such as an expiration or curtain. You add instructions for the recipient concerning the document (optional). Then the recipient gets an e-mail with a link to the document. They can view the document with registration or downloading anything. He or she cannot copy or download the document without your direct permission. Once the expiry date comes the document is destroyed and is no longer viewable online. I think this is actually one of the best ways of sharing documents in business these days because, as governments and banks around the globe have shown us, CDs, e-mails and hard copy documents have a habit of going missing along with tonnes of valuable information. Hopefully these three tools will make your office life flow a little smoother.  Which office apps do you use regularly? Image Credit : foundphotoslj 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 Acrobat.com : Work. Together. Anywhere (10) 5 Contacts to SUPERCHARGE Your eMail (6) PDFtk – One App to Collate, Split, Rotate and Watermark PDFs (10) Overcome Online Forms With Formulatepro [Mac only] (7) 3 Excellent Sites to Get Free Document Templates (59)

How To Connect Your Nintendo Wii Console To The Internet Posted: 06 Nov 2009 11:01 AM PST If you have yet to connect your Nintendo Wii to the Internet, you’re definitely missing out on a lot the console has to offer. Utilizing the Wii’s built-in 802.11b/g Wi-Fi or connecting through a USB-to-Ethernet adapter, you can gain access to the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service. From there, a slew of great online connectivity features are available, including the Virtual Console for downloading games, Friend Codes for connecting with other players, WiiConnect24 to stay connected to the Internet while on standby, and various channels like Forecast for weather reports and News for current headlines. All that and much more is up for grabs, but first you’ll have to get your Wii online. With access to your broadband connection, there are currently two ways to connect the console to the Internet: through a wireless router or a wired access point using the Wii LAN Adapter. Ready to get more out of your Nintendo console? Let’s get right to it and find out how to connect your Wii to the Internet. Wireless Connection — Search For An Access Point Probably the easiest method to get your Wii online is through a wireless router. Nintendo has information on choosing a router compatible with the Wii here. First, you’ll need to search for an access point. On the Wii main menu, click on the Wii button, located on the lower right-hand corner, to get to the settings screen. Then, hit Wii Settings and click on the blue arrow on the right side to go to the second page. Select the Internet button and go to Connection Settings. Click on one of the buttons to create a new connection. From there, click Wireless Connection and then hit Search for an Access Point. The Wii will start searching for any access points nearby. Once it’s finished, click OK to continue and view the found access points. Choose your access point from the list. The closed padlock icons mean that a security code is required and you have to input the password or key. Continue to save the settings and the Wii will test the connection and then perform a system update if available. Wired Connection — Wii LAN Adapter Since the Wii doesn’t have a built-in Ethernet port, you’ll need something called the Wii LAN Adapter. Available from Nintendo and third parties, the USB-to-Ethernet adapter is used to connect the console to your home router. First, plug in the Wii LAN Adapter to a USB port in the rear on the console. Connect an Ethernet cord from your modem or router to the Ethernet port on the LAN Adapter. Then, turn on the Wii and follow the same steps of going into Wii Settings and clicking on Internet. Go to Connection Settings, create a new connection, and click on Wired Connection. Click OK to initiate a connection test and you can then perform a system update if one’s available. Using either of these two ways to get your Wii online, you should be all good to go. It should be noted that there’s also a device called the Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector. The accessory establishes a Wi-Fi connection via a broadband-connected PC, but it has since been discontinued. You can learn more about it on Nintendo’s site. How do you connect your Wii to the Internet? Let us know in the comments. Image Credit: Apeture 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 4 Free WiFi Software Downloads to Get Most of Wireless Networks (31) Technology Explained: Understanding The Internet Speed (25) Technology Explained: How Does a Router Work? (31) WiFi for Dummies: 9 Common Mistakes Setting up a Wireless Network (22) Top 3 Sites For Nintendo Wii Game Walkthroughs (7)

Read 650 Magazines Online for Free With Maggwire Posted: 06 Nov 2009 10:01 AM PST That's true…articles from 650 magazines for you to read. But instead of flipping the pages, you will have to click the mouse at Maggwire. Who reads magazines these days? Plenty of people, I would say. My mother is one of them because the digital world is still like a mystic's ball to her. Me? For me the differentiation doesn't really exist because what I read is mostly spewed out by the search engines, RSS feeds and bookmarked portals and blogs. Content rules, and the web we all would agree, is full of it. But I do pick up the occasional magazine at the airport or while on a long drive. Some memories die hard and knowledge picked up from old favorites like Reader's Digest (upfront) and Cosmopolitan (on the sly) still holds good. Magazine articles are written by top-notchers, usually with weeks of research and editorial pen drills. Rich in content and relevancy, there's a lot that goes into making those articles grab our eyeballs. It is only the cost factor and decreasing advertising revenues that's pushing magazine publishing off the racks. But the digital juggernaut still hasn't achieved world dominance. Maggwire (beta) is an online destination for those who are interested in free online magazines. You may subscribe to a few, but it's impossible that you can read them all. Maggwire brings to you popular content from 650 magazines around the world. Articles from these many magazines are arranged according to the categories they represent and it is across the board. From world news to bridal stories you will find it all. Maggwire doesn't ask you to register; you can start browsing the free online magazine list from the homepage itself. But a simple user account gives you some control features over the articles you read. More about that later, first let's meander through the site for a look. Discover articles with Maggwire Let's say I like reading about technology-related stuff. I click on the Tech category dropdown to select one of the subcategories like Computers & Internet. The navigation is easy to understand and arranged around what's really popular with the readers. Maggwire says it uses a kind of social intelligence gathered through reader ratings to arrange the most popular articles on the top.You can again get the articles according to time horizon by clicking on Latest, Today, This Week, This Month or This Year. As is wont of all sites, you can also directly check out what's hot and what's been most talked about from the corner placed What's Hot on Maggwire. The articles are 'discovered' from some of the most popular publications out there. A sampling for Computers & Internet gives you – PC World, Wired, PC Magazine etc. You can click on the article headline and it opens up at the magazine's online page on a separate tab or window. With the reading done, you can choose to read what others think about it (via Comments), share it through the bookmarking and sharing services or you can hide the magazine. Hiding the magazine lets you tailor your reading according to the magazines you prefer. Commenting, rating and hiding articles requires a log-in. Between the covers This is one of the simpler reviews I have written because the site itself is simple. The real deal is with the articles you get to go to and read from Maggwire's rated links. Admittedly, this feedback is the result of a few days of browsing. The articles are all free content that's been aggregated by Maggwire. I doubt if premium content is being covered without a penny being charged. Maggwire does have a premium service in the offing which will take care of that. Some categories are still not covered with well known publications but we can agree that all good things take time. Maggwire is a beta service. We can access free content even without Maggwire but the site does the good job of shoveling the good stuff onto a common screen. Check out Maggwire and tell us whether your newsstand guy is going to be shy of a few dollars or if there's still more to be done for your dough. Image Credit: Mannobhai 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 Top 8 Things For Bored Teenagers To Do Online [Part II] (9) The 3 Best Sites To Read Manga Online (16) Read Complete Magazines Online in Google Books (8) Mobipocket – An Awesome ebook Reader Which is Free (14) 4 Sites with LOTS Of Completely Free Ebooks That Don’t Suck (37)

Celtx – The Ultimate Screenwriting Suite [Cross-Platform] Posted: 06 Nov 2009 08:01 AM PST A lot of old-school writers and producers still use the familiar pen and paper. Others have migrated to the digital world and are using Open Office or MS Word. Personally I’ve never felt quite at home in Word to write a story. Instead, I’ve always been using creative writing suites or pre-production packages. That’s right, there is screenwriting software that’s specifically designed to help you formulate ideas and work in a simple, but flexible creative environment. Celtx I’ve written an article about yWriter in the past, a tool that would help you with outlining and working on your stories. A creative writing suite, if you will. Celtx is different. Oh sure, Celtx will be able to help you with your creative writing, but it’ll do so much more. Celtx is screenwriting software that aims to aid in all media pre-production. So what does this mean? Whether you’re working on a novel, a film, a comic, a radio or podcast broadcasting, or even a video game, Celtx will help you put down those ideas and help you plan them in a quick and efficient manner. With all types of features and support, you won’t have to jump over and through between five different screenwriting software applications anymore (if you even used any). Everything can be written, planned and colaborated from within Celtx. Below we’ll take a look at some of the most prominent features in the application. Believe me, if you’re in the creative business, this is one application you’ll want to add to your arsenal. Writing Suite For the storytellers, Celtx comes equipped with the same basic tools you’d expect and a few more advanced ones as well. With a place to list your characters, locations and the like, you don’t have to worry about losing track again. When outlining a story, you can also use the storyboard feature you’ll be discussing below. One cooks with the ingredients at hand, and in our case there’s a buffet already laid out. One of the most important aspects of Celtx – and its greatest features – is the ease with which one can embed other types of media. If you feel the need to add a picture, drawing or movie fragment to your work, or even an mp3, you can do so with a few clicks of the mouse. One of the reasons I prefer to use the Celtx screenwriting software sis that it doesn’t try to force you into certain ‘development roads’. You can use your own creative way to get at your destination. In the writing category, Celtx comes with a few different editor flavors: Screenplay, stageplay,  AV scripts, audio play, comic book and text. It doesn’t matter in what branch you’re working, Celtx does not discriminate. Storyboards I have already mentioned the storyboards. Although you can indeed use them when you’re writing a novel, they’re much more commonly used in film production. Create different sequences and easily add individual pictures and drawings, or even do a batch import. Label and narrate your pictures to create a detailed and intricate storyline. If you want, you can even specify the camera shot you intend to use. Drag and drop groups of images to change the order of events. When you’re done (for the moment), print the pages or share them with your partners. If you want you can even play them in a full screen diashow. Download Celtx for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux at Celtx Believe me, this doesn’t even begin to describe what Celtx can do. I’ve been using a lot of software, but this is certainly one of the most amazing screenwriting software suites I’ve ever seen. If you’ve got something to add, or are left with an unanswered question, head for the comments section below. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/ Related posts Top 8 Things For Bored Teenagers To Do Online [Part II] (9) NaNoWriMo.org – Write a Novel In 30 Days! (8) yWriter – A Word Processor For Creative Writing (15) When Is Good – Easily Schedule Your Meetings With Co-Workers (4) Want to Type Faster? (Not Another Touch Typing Course) (21)

How To Tag Your Friends In Photos On Flickr Posted: 06 Nov 2009 06:01 AM PST Now you can tag your friends and all other people in your Flickr photos. This may sound familiar from other services like Facebook. It took Flickr a while to implement the feature, but as you’d expect, they really made the Flickr tags work well. Especially the way you have control over where you show up yourself is handled well. I think this might sound convenient to some of you who have suddenly shown up on Facebook on that photo some kid made at a party where you tried to set the world record for beer bong drinking. Ouch. As you know there are too many examples of people getting busted calling in sick for work. But Flickr has implemented this well and it could be a really nice tool. Both for organizing your own photos and the people who are in them and finding other people’s photos you are in. So how does this work? The new feature is called People in Photos and it lets you add any Flickr member to a photo. But it’s also possible to highlight people who are not registered on Flickr, although they have to give their permission by email. You tag someone on the photo by typing in their name, just like you would with a Flickr tag for the photo. For Flickr users who are familiar with notes, it should be easy to draw a face boundary on the photo. People in photos is hooked up to Your Activity, so you’ll always know who has tagged you in other photos or when other people have added faces to your photos. The Flickr team has done a lot of work on all the privacy preferences. You can allow certain people to add you to photos or add other people to your photos. You can even decide per photo if you want to be on it, so that’s good news for that one embarrassing surprise photo when you were just waking up. Of course many people use Flickr as their photo storage or at least have a Yahoo account which you can use for Flickr. But even when they’re not a member but appear on your photos they can be invited by e-mail. They then have the same level of control as Flickr members have over on what photos they want to show up. To learn more about People in Photos have a look at FAQs provided by Flickr: What is People in Photos? How do I add a person to a photo? Who can add me to a photo? How can I remove myself from a photo? How will I know when I'm added to a photo? The complete People in Photos FAQs are available here. Up until now Flickr is mostly used for more professional arty photos, while Facebook or a Twitter service like Twitpic is used for quick snapshots, perhaps made with a camera phone. Do you think this new feature will change this? Have you been waiting for this or do you use it on Facebook? For more information on a way to use Flickr more for sharing on Twitter read this article on Twitpic and Flickr2Twitter. More Flickr tips and tricks can be found here. Image credit: allyaubry 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 3 Steps To Find Similar-Minded People On Flickr (8) Take Flickr Straight to your Desktop with Interactive Wallpaper Updates (13) Take A Closer Look At Your Pictures With Cooliris (18) 5 Ways to Create Beautiful Slideshows of your Digital Pictures (15) Use Pixer for Easier Image Batch-resize Tasks [Mac Only] (4)

You are subscribed to email updates from MakeUseOf.com To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610