Latest Tips from MakeUseOf.com |  |
- How To Run Google Chrome OS From A USB Drive [Windows]
- Cool Websites and Tools [November 22]
- Geeky Fun: Latest Hilarious Picks
- 7Zip – A Free Program to Unzip Uncommon Archive Formats
- Sublight – Search, Download, and Play Subtitles of Your Movies
- How To Create, Discover and Follow Twitter Lists
- Enrich Your iTunes Experience With GeekTool & TunesArt [Mac]
- 10 Fun Free Windows Mobile Phone Games
| How To Run Google Chrome OS From A USB Drive [Windows] Posted: 23 Nov 2009 04:00 AM PST
Before You Get StartedBefore you decide to download Chrome OS, there are probably a few things I should tell you about it. It is in the very early stages of development, so there is still a lot of stuff that doesn’t work. In fact, it may not work for you at all. You should also be made aware that this operating system is very simplistic by design, as it is intended for use on netbook computers. By definition, a netbook is a small and inexpensive laptop intended for very casual use such as web browsing and simple office tasks. When you launch Chrome OS, pretty much all you get is a web browser. Don’t be surprised if you go through all this and say to yourself, “I did all that work just to log into a freakin’ browser?” RequirementsFirst of all, you will of course need a USB drive you can use to try it out. The disk image is 2,988,442,112 bytes, so you’ll probably need a 4GB thumb drive to be able to use it. If you have any files on your USB drive that you need, be sure to back them up to a safe place because this will wipe all the data from your USB drive. Consider yourself warned. You will also need a computer that allows booting from a USB drive. You’ll need to instruct your computer’s BIOS to boot from the USB drive instead of the hard drive like it normally does. When you boot up your computer, it should provide you with information as to how to bring up a boot menu. On some machines it is the F8 key and others the F12 key or some other key. If it all scrolls by too fast, some computers will allow you to pause the boot sequence by pressing the Pause key. That should give you all the time you need to read all that stuff on the screen to see if you can find out what the boot menu key is (if there is one). If you don’t see anything about a boot menu, you could also try editing your BIOS settings to boot from the USB drive. You may wish to consult your computer (or motherboard) manual on how to do this. You will also need a little bit of luck. Chromium OS may or may not work on your computer hardware. I did successfully run it on two home-built frankenstein computers (with ASUS motherboards), but it did not successfully recognize the network adapter on my Dell laptop. All of this work may be for nothing, if it ends up that Chromium OS does not like your network adapter. Ah yes, I forgot to mention that you do also need a computer with a network adapter. Finally, you’ll need to download the necessary files to put Chromium OS (that’s what the open source version of Google Chrome OS is called) onto your USB drive. I’ve packaged it all together in a torrent for you: Download the Chromium OS for USB Torrent You’ll need a good BitTorrent client like µTorrent to download it. If you’re new to BitTorrent, be sure to check out our Big Book of BitTorrent. You’ll learn more than you’ll ever want to know about it. The torrent has a zip file that includes the disk image, as well as a Windows tool for putting the image onto a USB drive. The program you’ll use to create the Chrome OS USB boot disk is called Image Writer for Windows. It’s a nifty little tool for writing disk images, it’s free, and it’s open source. You don’t need to download it seperately because I’ve already included it in the torrent. I just wanted to mention the good folks that developed the great application and send them some link love as well. Installing Chromium OS to your USB DriveUnzip chrome_os_usb.zip, and launch Win32DiskImager.exe. If you need a program to unzip the archive, you can download IZArc. If you get the warning below when you launch Image Writer, don’t sweat it. It’s looking for a floppy disk that’s not there.
Once you’ve got Image Writer running, click the folder icon and select the chrome_os.img file (it should be located in the same place where you extracted the zip file and launched Win32DiskImager.exe).
Connect your USB drive to your PC. If you have autorun enabled, you may want to wait a few seconds for your computer to do its thing. Just close whatever window may pop up. Next, click on the Device dropdown and select the drive letter that corresponds to your USB drive. Then, click Write and the program will commence writing the disk image to your USB drive. Boot Up Chromium OSYou’re now ready to boot up Chromium OS! You can just leave the USB drive in your machine and reboot it. When the machine boots, press the boot menu key on your keyboard. Select your USB drive from the menu. In about 10 seconds or so, you should see the Chromium OS login screen.
Login with chronos and password. This will log you in as a local user. Once you log in, you should see what looks almost just like the Google Chrome browser. If you click on the Chrome sphere in the upper left corner, you should see a Google Accounts login page telling you to log into Welcome. Log in with your Google Account.
If you do not see this page and you get a browser page that says it could not find the page requested, then unfortunately luck is not on your side. It means that Chromium OS doesn’t like your network adapter. You could still however try it out in a virtual machine if you so desire. If you were able to succesfully log in, you should then see the application page.
As you can see, it is all in the cloud. All the applications you see on the app page bring up different webpages, and everything you do takes place within the browser. In my experience, although it did boot up relatively fast, the browser tends to run a bit slow and is a bit jumpy. Although the calculator and notepad launch properly in little popover windows, the apps don’t work and nothing loads into the windows at all. The To-do List application doesn’t work either, and you get a Google.com account login page. Note, this is not the same as a Google Accounts login so you won’t be able to log in with your Google Account. The Google.com login page is only for Google employees. The Contacts application brings up a Google Talk gadget that doesn’t appear to work. As I said earlier, a lot of the stuff isn’t working right. You’ll also see right at the top of the application page a message that says UI under development. Designs are subject to change. All the other applications are simply links to webpages. One thing that I found rather amusing is that when you click on the Hotmail icon, it takes you to Gmail. However, the Yahoo! Mail icon does indeed bring you to the Yahoo! Mail login page. I suppose Google likes Yahoo! better than they do Microsoft. So what do you think of Chrome OS? Do you think it is the netbook operating system of the future? 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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| Cool Websites and Tools [November 22] Posted: 22 Nov 2009 04:00 PM PST
(1) FeedSweep - Web application that allows you to turn any RSS feed to a widget that you can later embed onto your website, blog or personal web page. You can customize your widget in terms of size, layout, color, font, code output, alignment, effects etc. There is also an option to add case-insensitive keywords and conditions that determine which articles appear on the widget. Read more: FeedSweep – Turn RSS To Widget (2) CutMyPic – Simple online picture cutter online where you may upload an image from your computer and crop out desired section. You can also rotate images, add shadows and rounded corners. When changes are completed, the image can be shared via email or saved back onto computer. Read more: CutMyPic – Online Picture Cutter (3) StereoMood – StereoMood is a free music website which has playlists according to various moods. The moods are presented in a cloud formation. Simply select the mood you're in and it will play music according to your mood. Read more: StereoMood – Plays Music According To Your Mood (4) SaveEveryDay – A recent study reported by the Wall Street Journal showed that daily money-saving reminders to people increased their savings rate by 6%! This is why SaveEveryWay was created. The site is a free web service reminding you in multiple ways (Twitter, Email, SMS, RSS feeds) to save your money. Read more: SaveEveryDay – Free Daily Money Saving Tips & Reminders (5) Imfy – If you have a shortened URL that you want to share with others say on Twitter or other social networking site but don't want the contents of the page be indexed on search engines. Enter Imfy.us, a free online tool that provides you with the link protection that you need. Read more: Imfy – Generate Anonymous & Scure Short URLs
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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| Geeky Fun: Latest Hilarious Picks Posted: 22 Nov 2009 03:00 PM PST
Check out the top picks from MakeUseOf Geeky Fun during the last week.
If you would like to keep up with all latest Geeky Fun additions, please subscribe to the Geeky Fun feed here. You can also subscribe and get the latest additions via email.
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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| 7Zip – A Free Program to Unzip Uncommon Archive Formats Posted: 22 Nov 2009 02:00 PM PST
So I then did a little digging around on MakeUseOf for free unzip programs that support the format and stumbled upon a 7Zip, an open-source file compression/extraction program which supports a multitude of compression formats. Although there is also a IZArc which MakeUseOf recently recommended in its 15 Must-Have Free Software Programs I still decided to go with 7zip. While both seem to be rather popular among techies, I went ahead with 7zip mainly for its high compression ratio. 7Zip – How ToSo in this article I’m going to get down to basics and show you how to extract and compress files that aren't of the common variety. First, download and install the free unzip program, 7Zip, from here. After it has installed, start up the program from ‘All Programs’ under the start menu. The home screen should look like the screenshot below.
ExtractionYour first step is to locate the file you want to extract. Normally, after you install 7Zip it should automatically recognize supported archive formats and integrate extract options to Windows context menus. When you right click on the file, there should be a 7Zip option.
Clicking on one of the Extract options will extract the files form the archive. OR Alternatively, you can just run 7Zip directly and open the archive from the program interface. You can either paste the file location into the text entry box or browse for it using the icons shown at the bottom part of the above screenshot. Once you have located your file, click on it once. This will highlight it. Then, press the minus sign ( – ) in the menu bar across the top. The window below will open.
Fill out the details below including where you want the extracted file to go and a password (if any). Then select ‘OK’. It shouldn’t take too long to extract and once it does your file will be ready and waiting for you beside the original compressed file provided you didn’t specify another output location. CompressionCompression follows along much the same lines as extraction. Navigate to the file you want to compress within the 7Zip window and highlight it. Then click the plus sign (+) up in the top left hand corner. The window below will appear.
Enter in the information such as compression level, compression method and password. Then click ‘OK’. Now the compressed file will be beside the original file. A bit more on compression. 7Zip offers a compression ratio that is about 10% better than WinZip. Moreover, by compressing a file into its native 7z format, you can achieve a compression ratio up to 70% higher than the zip format. 7Zip supports many other formats for extraction and compression. Some the main ones are listed here:
To conclude, 7Zip will take care of most of your extracting/compression needs when your standard extractor isn’t up the the task. And unlike many of its competitors it’ll do the job for free! Related posts
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| Sublight – Search, Download, and Play Subtitles of Your Movies Posted: 22 Nov 2009 12:00 PM PST
Many movies that we download for viewing on the computer don't have hardcoded subtitles. Sometimes they are included in the subtitles download as a SRT or a SUB file. If not, there are lots of online sources where you can download subtitles in your preferred lingo. Then, there are several methods to include them with your movie. Including the subtitle file in the same folder and letting the media player recognize it is probably the simplest. But there is a little piece of free software that takes away the pain of manual scrounges on the web and makes watching movies with subtitles as easy as a click. Sublight is a must have freeware for movie junkies. The simple tool is a desktop search tool to download movie subtitles and a bit more. Let's ditch the manual locate and download method for once and try out the Sublight way. Choice of default media player
Let Sublight know your preferred media player for playback. Right now, the wizard provides only two choices but you can set your own by giving the custom paths in Settings. Choice of subtitle search plugins
Let Sublight know which search engines it should use. Check all for better results. Choice of file types for Explorer integration
Let Sublight know which file types should bring up a subtitle search feature in the right-click context menu. Check all for complete cover. The Sublight interface itself
Sublight – Is it worth a download?Hey, it's free! Sublight gives a lot of control over the way you handle your subtitles. The Settings let you control some of them like changing the default formatting. A registered user also can collect points for contributing pro-actively. A registered user is rewarded with higher priority service, especially downloads. Some drawbacks like subtitle synchronization need to be handled on a case by case basis. More search engines would certainly help (especially with foreign films), but these hiccups aside, Sublight is a software worth checking out if you are a movie junkie. Sublight is a good choice for not only the English-speaking movie lover but also for the guy who speaks and watches in another language. In the end, the freeware makes subtitle search and download a quicker, more controlled process. Sublight v1.7.0 is compatible with Win98/98SE/XP/7 and requires Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0. How do you go about watching a movie in a different language? 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 Create, Discover and Follow Twitter Lists Posted: 22 Nov 2009 10:00 AM PST
Let's see how you can make use of this exciting new Twitter feature! Popular Twitter clients like TweetDeck and Seesmic have supported creating Groups of users. However, these Groups were specific to the client and could not be transferred if you changed your client. Lists are the “official” Twitter Groups, meaning that once you create a Twitter List, you will be able to follow it from any client that supports Twitter Lists. Almost all the Twitter clients will eventually support Twitter Lists, with Seesmic Beta and Brizzly already doing so. The advantages of using Twitter Lists are:
In this article, we will see how you can create and follow Twitter Lists using Twitter's web interface. Create a ListIt is simple to create a list. On the Twitter homepage, you will see a Lists section below the search box, with a New List link. Clicking it brings up the Create a new list dialog.
Specify a name for the list, which will used for creating the list URL. If you use spaces in the name, they are converted to dashes. So a list named "my good friends" gets a URL of twitter.com/yourname/my-good-friends. Public lists are visible to everyone and anyone can follow them. Private lists you create are only visible to you, and not even visible to the members of the list. Once you click the Create list button, you have created an empty list. Next step is to add members to the list. Add/Remove MembersThere are multiple ways in which you can add people to a list. Once you create a list, Twitter shows you a Find People search box to add people to your newly created list.
Alternatively, you can add people to a list from their Twitter profile page. All Twitter profile pages now include a Lists button that you can use to add or remove people from a list.
Another way is to add people to a list from your own or anyone else's Following or Followers pages. Each user in the list of following or followers has a Lists button that you can use as shown below.
As you can see, you can also use any of the above 3 ways to create a new list and add the corresponding user at once. In the same way as adding people, you can also use any of the 3 ways to remove people from a list. On the list page, you can Edit or Delete a list from the links at the top right. Follow a ListSuppose you want to follow all the MakeUseOf writers on Twitter. On the MakeUseOf Twitter profile page, you will see @MakeUseOf/staff under the Lists section on the right. Clicking it takes you to the @MakeUseOf/staff List page.
From here, click Follow this list to follow the list – simple! Once you start following a list, you will see a link to it in the Lists section on the right on your Twitter home page. Click on it to see the tweets from members of that list. As in the above screenshot, you can see how many people a list follows and how many people follow the list. Discover Cool ListsThe best place to discover cool lists is Listorious, a third-party website that tracks popular lists.
You can find the most popular Twitter Lists on different subject areas. Lists are categorized using tags into sections like News, Art, Sports, Politics, Humor, Health, etc. Of course, if you have friends on Twitter, you can always see which lists they are following as well. Are you excited about this new Twitter feature? Share your favorite lists with us in the comments and don't forget to follow the MakeUseOf staff list! 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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| Enrich Your iTunes Experience With GeekTool & TunesArt [Mac] Posted: 22 Nov 2009 08:00 AM PST
But even the best will still have room for improvement. I was looking for a GeekTool script to display my “currently playing” song’s data on the desktop when I found TunesArt. After playing with the app for a while, I consider TunesArt as one of those must-have iTunes software downloads. And combined with GeekTool, TunesArt would create a lovely and functional iTunes desktop. Tunes at your finger tipsTunesArt is a menubar application that will do its job while sitting quietly in the background. If you click on it when iTunes is not active, you’ll have the option to turn on iTunes.
And if iTunes is running, you’ll get full iTunes control and more right from the menubar; including the ability to set the song rating, option to display lyrics, title and artist of the currently playing song.
One of the true strengths of TunesArt is the ability to assign shortcut key to various iTunes control. So, even if your fingers are busy typing your next best seller, you could tell iTunes to skip the track that you hate without even have to leave the word processor. To activate this ability, you have to go to TunesArt Preferences, and open the “Shortcuts” menu. Check the “Enable Hotkeys” option, and click in the shortcut fields to assign your preferred combination for each available control.
The Preferences window gives you many other options to tinker with. From the General menu, you can choose whether iTunes will launch and quit along with TunesArt and whether you want to fetch lyrics from the net and attach it to the songs with no lyrics.
On the eye-candy side, we have Cover Art and Notification menu. The Cover Art menu lets you choose which cover art style you want displayed on the desktop.
Meanwhile, the Notification menu deals with how (and for how long) you want TunesArt to display notifications every time iTunes plays the next song. You can use TunesArt’s own notification, or Growl (or both).
TunesArt notification will appear under the menubar icon.
If you want to, you can activate the Last.fm feature that will connect you to Last.fm and send the list of songs you’ve listened to and recommend other songs based on the list.
It’s obvious that you need to have a Last.fm account before you can use this feature. Tunes on your desktopTunesArt is an iTunes software downloads that will place a cover art image of the playing song on your desktop. And if you activate the feature from Preferences – Cover Art, playback controls will appear everytime you hover your mouse near the cover art display. The lyrics display is a nice addition for those who like to sing along. You could edit (and add) the words directly from this window. TunesArt also has a (supposedly) very nice feature to add lyrics to songs automatically from the internet. But from during my few days of trying the app, this feature was always non-functional.
User could do a quick search of iTunes library via the search window and jump to the chosen song. Assuming that you have set the shortcut key combination, all the navigationa could be done without lifting a single finger from the keyboard.
The geek and the tune comboAs I mentioned at the beginning, I use TunesArt in conjunction with GeekTool script to display iTunes information. The duet is proven to work wonders in beautifying my desktop.
The GeekTool script that I use is:
where XXXXXX is one of the metadata of the song such as: name, artist, album, etc. You can get more metadata fields by referring to iTunes’ column headings.
Please refer to my previous article about GeekTool on how to utilize the scripts. Some drawbacksPlease note that you will not be able to close iTunes if you are using the above iTunes script in GeekTool. The script will keep on re-opening iTunes everytime you try to close it. This issue will not be a problem for those who always keep iTunes open. The possible solution is to put the scripts in a different group with other script so you could uncheck and deactivate them anytime without disturbing the rest of the scripts. I’ve also mentioned one bug that I found in TunesArt — fetching lyrics. Maybe because it’s still in its beta version, the lyric searching feature of TunesArt is still not working. Hopefully the developer will fix this issue in the future release. Personally, the drawbacks are minor issues. I found the GeekTool – TunesArt combination to be truly amazing – a great alternative to Bowtie in terms of appearance, and to GimmeSomeTunes (mentioned here) in terms of functionality. Do you know other alternative iTunes software downloads to enrich your iTunes experience? Please share using the comment 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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| 10 Fun Free Windows Mobile Phone Games Posted: 22 Nov 2009 06:00 AM PST
Do you remember Snake on those old cellphones? Well, to be honest, the default mobile games never got much better. Now we often find Bejeweled spin-offs and Frogger fakes. There’s a whole different story with Windows Mobile phone games. Because it’s almost like a tiny computer, there are a ton of gaming possibilities. Add that touchscreen, and let the games come in. Standard free Windows Mobile games are still mediocre, but downloading additional ones is hardly a hassle. Today we’ll present you ten fun games for your Windows Mobile. Skinz SudokuSudoku is a free Windows Mobile game that should be present on all mobile phones. Although it’s possible on a standard keypad, things become infinitely more fun when using a touchscreen.
Skinz Sudoku both looks good and is an incredible time-waster. You can play sudoku on 4 levels – easy, normal, hard and insane. The puzzles are generated on the spot, so don’t be afraid to run out. For the die-hards among us, it’s also possible to make small number annotations – almost necessary when playing hard or insane. Tangled BugsTangled Bugs is an incredibly fun game. The concept has previously been pursued in a number of flash games, but it never gets old.
The goal of the game is to make sure none of the threads cross each other. You achieve this by moving around the bugs and rearranging the pattern. Don’t be fooled at first, this game gets incredibly hard – the right screenshot above is merely the fourth level. Pocket GravityI’m not sure if Pocket Gravity can be considered a game. It was actually more of an experiment. But it’s fun to play around with, and that’s what matters.
Pocket Gravity is a mobile physics simulator. Build free, anchored or pivotal shapes and let the laws of nature come into motion. Look at the screenshots above for some inspiration, but the real fun begins when you start making cars and muppets. PipesMost of you puzzlers will recognize Pipes. The objective is to make sure that all tubes are connected in a close circuit, accessing all the little blue nodes. Make sure that water can flow through your structure unhindered, and you clear the level.
Again, there are multiple difficulties; very easy, easy, normal, hard, very hard and insane. Be sure not to overestimate yourself. This game shows you why plumbers deserve their paycheck. DoubleSkillDoubleSkill is one of my personal favorites. It’s a combination of a brickless breakout and an unnerving balance act.
With your touchscreen, you both move the top- and tilt the lower bar. Although you have to catch the falling objects every time, you need to be very careful not to drop the lower ball. DoubleSkill is a fitting name, and high scores are a matter of long practice. BinaryNot generally regarded as interesting for most people, Binary is a game designed for programmers. After all, you need to be able to compute binary (pun intended).
Click on the bricks to switch their value. You can make a line disappear when the Byte’s value is the same as the line number. 32103210 is a very original game. Instructions were originally not included (the developer thought they’d confuse the user more than just ‘finding out’) but I’ll give it a shot.
The lower cannon shoots balls in the air. The balls bounce off the surface until they lose their momentum and stop mid-air. Hovering around, the ball will grow until it touches any other surface. By hitting them with other balls, you decrease their value. If you manage to hit them thrice, they disappear. Score points by making as much balls disappear as possible. You die when a ball crosses, or grows back over your dotted line. Aquella BallAquella ball is another very familiar free Windows Mobile game. The objective is to ‘clear’ more than 75% of the playing field.
When striking you stylus – horizontal or vertical – a barrier slowly grows until it touches two sides of the field. Have a ball touch your growing barrier is fatal, but a finished barrier is lasting. BlackFlipThe goal of blackflip is to coat the whole field in a single color – black or white.
Switch colors by tracking a path over the squares. You can track back or cross your path, but doing so will wipe out all progress in between. Chain ReactionHitting the screen anywhere sets off an explosion. Reaching any of the white dots will set off consequent explosions. The goal is to ignite as many of the 50 balls as you can, with that one hit.
Each game consists of three rounds, with the points adding up. How to win? Try to reach 150! These are just ten free Windows Mobile games. Visit XFlib Games for ten more! Do you know any other cool mobile games? Tell us in 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
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Just a few days ago, Google announced the 
The other day I downloaded a .RAR file. I saw them here and there but to my surprise never extracted one in the past. I really needed the app which I found in 
There are some movies where actions speak louder than words. Then there are some movies where words are all that matter. Most of us have pretty good ears, but even then subtitles help us understand some language nuances better. Clint Eastwood's drawling sarcasm is sometimes hard to catch in those classic westerns. And if you are a fan of Chinese martial arts movies, then the subtitles are the only way to movie pleasure (that is, if you aren't a Chinese!).
Using Twitter Lists is a great new way to follow groups of people at once. Anyone can create Twitter Lists, share them, and follow any public Lists created by others. You can also create private Lists that nobody else can see or follow.
I don’t think I need to give a long introduction to iTunes as many consider it to be the best digital music manager and player available today. MakeUseOf has even dedicated an entire PDF Manual for it: 
In the dentist’s office, when standing in line at the supermarket, or just to kill some time in a boring meeting, mobile games come to the rescue.
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