Latest Tips from MakeUseOf.com |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [November 17]
- 10 Programs You Should Add To Your New Android Mobile Phone (Part 1)
- Creaza – An Online Toolbox For Creative & Educational Fun
- How To Make Lala Your Music Player of Choice
- How To Install Google Android On A Windows Mobile Phone
- How To Show iCal Tasks & Events On The Desktop [Mac only]
- Play-By-Mail: Play Fun Online Games Casually
| Cool Websites and Tools [November 17] Posted: 17 Nov 2009 05:01 PM PST
(1) Honk – New social network for car buyers. It uses existing networks like Facebook (Facebook) and MySpace (MySpace) for organized opinion gathering. By using both platforms, users can get valuable info about cars from their friends and family members on the social networks they already use. Read more: Honk – Social Network For Car Buyers (2) Mobile-OK-Checker – Simple online tool for webmasters that tests mobile friendliness of any website. It runs few tests checking website on variety of parameters including its page size, network, markup, page structure, layout, style sheets, images etc. It then generates a detailed report where each point is clearly explained. Read more: Mobile-OK-Checker – Check If Your Website Is Mobile Friendly (3) Typekit – Crafty web design tool that gives you quick access to online library of free and commercial fonts. All Typekit fonts are hosted online and can be easily added to your site. You can find fonts by browsing through tags and styles, choose from serif, sans serif, script, and exotic styles. Read more: Typekit – Online Font Library For Your Website (4) FluShot – Flu shot locator from Google, created especially for this flu season. It helps you find nearby locations for both seasonal and H1N1 vaccinations. Simply visit the site, click on the "Change location" link, type in your address, and Google will display the seasonal (red marker) and H1N1 (blue marker) vaccination locations in your area. Read more: FluShot – Flu Shot Locator From Google (5) YouScrobble – New website that have cleverly combined YouTube music videos with the data from Last.fm to create a great place to find high quality music videos along with other features and related info. Read more: YouScrobble – YouTube and Last.fm Combined 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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| 10 Programs You Should Add To Your New Android Mobile Phone (Part 1) Posted: 17 Nov 2009 02:01 PM PST
This can take a while because the Android Market, which is the Google equivalent of the Apple iTunes store, has lots of good stuff. Granted not as much stuff as the Apple iTunes store, but it’s slowly getting there. So, just like a kid in a candy store, you are likely to start installing everything to see what it is all like. But in the long term, you can’t install everything you find (phone performance would take a serious hit if you installed the kitchen sink) so finally you have to scale back to the best, most essential apps. To help all you fellow new Android users out, here’s the ones I personally consider to be keepers. After less than a week, I am still looking and refining my phone but the following are ones I will find really hard to get rid of. To find them, just go to the Android Market on your phone and search for them.
Meebo
An online account from the Meebo website doesn’t seem to be needed for this app. Just add your instant messaging ID’s and passwords and log in. You may be asked to confirm all your contacts again (it asked me to confirm 5 of my contacts who have been on my Pidgin IM list for over a year) and then you will see everyone in a neat vertical list. If you are more of an AIM fan, check out the Android app Hi AIM. Yahoo Messenger fans can download Hi Yahoo, ICQ users have ICQLive (does anyone still use ICQ?) and Windows Live Messenger users can use Hi MSN Beta. But honestly, if you use more than one of these apps (and who doesn’t these days?) then Meebo is an easier tidier option. Skype Lite | ||
| Creaza – An Online Toolbox For Creative & Educational Fun Posted: 17 Nov 2009 12:01 PM PST
Creaza is a web based tool designed for learners and educators. But spend a few moments with it and you realize that Creaza has scope beyond that. All of it underlined with fun. What if I gave you four tools that inspire creative, fun ideas – a mindmapper, a cartoon creator, a movie editor and an audio application and asked you to let loose your creativity. I am sure you could come up with a lot of creative and fun ideas. That's the canvas Creaza gives you to play around with. Creaza is a suite of four apps for making planning, creating and publishing digital content, or for the fun of it, let's say digital stories. The four creative apps are :
Mindomo – Organize Your Thoughts
The first step for any creative process is the organization of thoughts or ideas. That's why you need to start with a mind mapping tool. Mindomo is a Flash based mind mapper. Like any other mind mapping application, you start with a central idea and branch it out to associated ideas, linking them to each other with relationship connectors. Mindomo is a simple but rich mind mapper which lets you add images, hyperlinks and symbols to beautifully render your thought process on screen. Like a versatile mind mapping utility, it lets you select from a variety of map style and layouts. Cartoonist – Artwork for Your Thoughts
The hard work of putting your ideas into shape starts with the cartooning tool. Cartoonist is a simple tool with a very short learning curve. The first step lets you select your cartoon theme from the eight provided. For instance you can go for a Manga look or take the one which resembles the classic cartoons of the past. Each theme comes with its own characters, backgrounds and props.
Combine all the artwork in the cartoon editor. You can tell a whole story using sequential cartoon slides. Change the mood of the characters with a single click, change day into night, give the characters dialogues using speech bubbles or do a bit of freehand drawing – just some of the things your creativity can play around with. The inbuilt player lets you playback the frame where each frame gets displayed for four seconds. You can print out the work or show it on the web. AudioEditor – Sound Bytes for Your Thoughts
Podcasts have made listening to audio clips cool. The AudioEditor lets you do just that. Make your own audio clips, edit uploaded clips on the timeline or record sound and re-use it, the editor lets you do all that. The audio application also comes with a library of default clips and sound effects. MovieEditor – Motion Clips for Your Thoughts
If a cartoon is not realistic enough for your story, move to the MovieEditor. The MovieEditor has the same feel and look as other online movie editors (except that it starts with two themes). The Library hold many default video clips as well your own uploaded bits, the Timeline where you drag film, sound, or music clips, as well as your still shots and arrange them into your final movie, and finally the Media Window is the inbuilt player to see how things are shaping up. Sound effects and special effects have their place on the timeline. The provided media clips might not stretch your story, but the editor gives you the option of uploading your own. Creaza gives us lots of flexibility to make our own multimedia shows. There are some limitations like the free membership on Creaza entitles us to only 25 MB of storage space for personal media files. But even that's sufficient for publishing a few stories. The only minus is that the finished product can be shared through a URL – there’s no provision to export it as a finished Flash file. The full version though opens up many more import and export options for the multimedia content and provides more themes. Creaza is mostly geared as a teaching aid. The free tools make it easy to translate ideas through easier to understand multimedia presentations. For instance, take a few cartoons or a video clip and put together a small show on global warming. The cartoon strips can be used to explain anything from eclipses to ethics. The web application also seems to have collected some recognition for itself as a teaching aid. But its possibilities are limited only by the word we started our post with – creativity. What uses can you put this tool to? 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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| How To Make Lala Your Music Player of Choice Posted: 17 Nov 2009 11:01 AM PST
Lala has become my main jukebox and is used ten times more than I use iTunes. With my setup, it doesn't take much effort to access my Lala account. This article explains the method I use as a Mac user. I'm sure there are similar applications for PC users. What You Need | ||
| How To Install Google Android On A Windows Mobile Phone Posted: 17 Nov 2009 10:01 AM PST
One of those occasions was very recently. With its own mobile operating system, Google has been challenging Windows Mobile (not much of a challenge) and the iPhone. If you’ve got an HTC Windows Mobile phone, you might not have to buy yourself another device to enjoy the hype. Nevertheless, porting this operating system has proven a tedious task, and not all phone types support it yet. Newer GSM devices will have a better chance, and to date CDMA is scarcely supported. Right now it’s not yet possible to boot Google Android as the default operation system. Instead we’ll be using HaRET, a Windows Mobile boot loader. Note that we’re not running or emulating Android in Windows Mobile, but using it to reboot the phone into Android. 1. Gathering FilesDifferent phone types require different base Google Android files. Even for supported phones, the files will be scattered over different sites and developer areas. I will supply links for some of the most popular HTC phones. Again, if you don’t see your phone listed, don’t give up. Do a Google search with your own model – because it’s a user-generated wiki, some major advancements aren’t listed on the site yet. When going off-site, always double check your sources, making sure that you aren’t downloading any malicious content.
Most sites will supply file bundles, others will put a directory of files online. If need be, download all of those files, we’ll be telling you which to use in the next step. 2. InstallationIf you’re already running a custom ROM, you might want to format your phone. Conflicts can occur when double-modding, and you’re probably going to be using Google Android anyway. First, let’s put the files in place. Connect via USB and navigate to your phone’s root (this is the mother-folder, the highest directory level). After unzipping your Google Android release, transfer the files you’ve just downloaded. Putting them in any other directory won’t work. You should have something like this:
It’ll help to shorten filenames. Some have a date or programmer suffix that can be deleted. Next, configure your default.txt. Open the file in Notepad and make sure all the values are right. How do you know? Check out a list of Boot Options here. You might need to change phone model, screen resolution, internet access and the like. This will take the most time, but if you keep your eyes open, it isn’t a hard job.
Finally, disconnect your phone and use your Windows Mobile file manager to locate HaRET.exe (it should still be in your phone’s root). You might want to add it to your applications shortcuts. Open HaRET and press Run.
HaRET will reboot your phone with the Android files. Perhaps in the (near) future, we might be able to install Google Android as the standard operating system. But even though progress is unstoppable, it moves at its own pace. Did you like the tutorial? Let us know in the comments if you experience any problems. Or better yet, direct that at the your phone type’s site. They’ll be able to help you with the really technical business. 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 Show iCal Tasks & Events On The Desktop [Mac only] Posted: 17 Nov 2009 08:01 AM PST
If I could do that, I could just use Expose’s shortcut (Command + F3 in my MacBook) – or the Show Desktop we’ve discussed before – to show the desktop to see everything that I have to do printed there. Of course, those with large screens will have everything visible at all time even without the trick. With my recent adventure with GeekTool, everything comes full circle. Now my tasks and events can be shown beautifully on the desktop, and I can look at them anytime I need to with a single stroke of a shortcut key combination.
In short, iCalBuddy is a command-line utility that can be used to query the OS X calendar database for items. Being a command-line based application, iCalBuddy is the perfect scripting solution to be used along with GeekTool. The installation used to be something that ordinary people would try to avoid – involving working with command lines in the Terminal. But the latest version of iCalBuddy comes with an “install.command” file, which will make the process a snap. All you need to do is double-click it to start the installation in Terminal and then continue the process by pressing any key (or Ctrl + C to cancel).
Now that the installation is done, let’s add some to-dos and events to the desktop After installing iCalBuddy, displaying iCal’s to-do and events on the desktop is a matter of adding new shell items from GeekTool. This means dragging out shell geeklets from GeekTool prefPane to the desktop and editing the items. The most important part of the geeklet is the Command pane. This is the place where you write the command line to tell GeekTool what to do. This is the basic command line for iCalBuddy:
The “******” is where you put the customization strings. There are a whole lot of variations that you could use with iCalBuddy’s command line. There are some manuals that come with the installation file of iCalBuddy that you can refer to for further information. You could also access the program’s manual page by running “man icalBuddy” in the terminal to read the documentation for all of the arguments you can use when calling icalBuddy.
As for me, these are the strings that I use for my desktop. To display iCal’s to-do, I use:
While to display iCal’s events, I use:
These strings are not mine. I picked them up from a discussion between iCalBuddy users and the creator. So, the credit goes to them. And as you can see, what the customization strings do are:
You could do your own experiment adding and removing strings (or not). Beautifying the lookHonestly, I spent so much more time experimenting on the look than on the function; dragging the position, changing the color, adjusting the size, that sort of thing. And here’s the final result (for now).
You could just let your creativity run loose and design your own. But in case you are wondering, I’m using Apple’s standard wallpaper, and Gill Sans – Regular and Thin – for the font. As for the layout, size and color, I think the screenshot has revealed them all. While doing this article, I also found out several communities of GeekTool users who “show off” and share their desktop designs. If you’ve tried GeekTool and think that your design is cool enough, you could share them using the comments 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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| Play-By-Mail: Play Fun Online Games Casually Posted: 17 Nov 2009 06:00 AM PST
Chess is a historic example for a play-by-mail board game. The game known as correspondence chess even kept the greatest figures of history entertained. A match was said to be played between King Henry I of England and King Louis VI of France in the early 12th century. Also Voltaire and Frederick the Great were engaged in play-by-mail chess during their time. In 1943, the FBI allegedly suspected Humphrey Bogart to be sending secret enemy codes to correspondence chess players overseas. Today, eMail and websites make play-by-mail games quicker and more convenient than ever before. However, eMails play only a minor role. However, play-by-mail remains a fun way to find fun games to play online throughout the day, without devoting too much time to it. Besides, you don’t have to be online at the same time your match partner is. Here is a small selection of online games. SoundChessThe SoundChess website is the link between you and your partner. Either one of you can set up the game and make the first move. With each move you can also include a message to your partner. The site shows the current board and provides some resources on possible chess openings.
After you made your first move, you will see the history of exchanged messages on the very right of the site. ItsYourTurnHere a hub for play-by-mail games, including Backgammon, Halma, Checkers, Jamble, and many more. There are 13 standard games, and dozens of variations to many of the games. To play, you must sign up. You can get into a game in several different ways. You can start a new game and post it to the waiting room. You can also go directly to the waiting room and see which games are seeking a partner. A screenshot of the waiting room is posted below. The time limit refers to the time each player has to complete one move. The minimum is 3 days.
If you already know who will be your partner (they must be registered), you can start a match with a specific player.
Finally, you can be auto-matched for up to 5 different games of any type and at the same time. Communication happens through ItsYourTurn’s internal mailbox. However, notifications of new messages are sent to your eMail. All games and standings are listed on the game status page.
For my example I picked Halma. All moves are recorded and shown below the board. With each new move you can add a message for your opponent.
With the free account you can play up to 20 games at once and make 15 moves per day. Phoenix
Due to its complexity, the game has a very steep learning curve. However, sufficient material and an active community is available to guide players through each step. If you don’t mind reading and communicating with other players through forums, this game is for you. After signing up and defining your mission preferences in a short questionnaire, you start out with your own ship. Head over to > Turns > Access and access your ship. It will then appear under > Turns.
To get familiar with your ship, its options, and available orders you should start a training session. Carefully read the mission, then head over to > Orders and give the first orders, so your ship takes off and heads to its first destination. My mission was to dock in Balmoral on the planet Shiloh and issue a special action applying for the job as courier for the reserach labs of EEM Balmoral.
After making your orders you have to wait for the mission to progress. When you play-by-mail you hardly ever know your partner personally and you cannot control how fast the game will progress. The advantage is that you can sit down and continue with your moves whenever you have time. What are your favorite online games? Image credits: lusi 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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