Latest Tips from MakeUseOf.com |  |
- EvilLyrics – A Lyrics Search Tool For Your Music Player
- Cool Websites and Tools [November 27]
- Listomator – Powerful Yet Simple Text List Manipulator [Mac]
- MoneyManager2 – Easily Manage Your Money On Your Mobile Phone
- How To Mask Yourself Online & Use a Fake IP Address
- Dizzler – A Desktop Entertainment Hub With Free Music, Videos, Radio & Games
- The True Power of the Wolfram Alpha Knowledge Engine
- 5 Free Tools To Quickly Convert A CD To An MP3 Collection
| EvilLyrics – A Lyrics Search Tool For Your Music Player Posted: 28 Nov 2009 04:01 AM PST
EvilLyrics is not the anti-hero; it is in fact a savior for the music lover who wants the text behind a tune instantaneously. EvilLyrics automatically displays the lyrics of the song being played on your music player in its window. It is a standalone software but stands alongside some of the popular music players in an adjoining GUI. This has been a distilled explanation so far. There is a lot more that EvilLyrics can do. So let's take it from the top. Get It & Run ItEvilLyrics is an 814KB free download for Windows. Installation is snappy and the only screen to pause and ponder is when you have to choose the media player for EvilLyrics to work with.
The Interface
Sitting alongside today's sleek desktop players, EvilLyrics is an ugly duckling. No marks for beauty but full marks for an uncluttered interface. There's a tool strip on top with easy to understand icons. The long search bar is where the song name for the lyrics search goes. The rest of the software is a large white area for the lyrics (you can change the color in Preferences). There's also a bottom placed status bar which shows the search status and a few indicator icons. The Highlights
EvilLyrics gathers together a nice bundle of features for those of us for whom words matter as much as the sound. But like all search engines, EvilLyrics is only as good as the query entered by us and the resources queried by it. Where's The Evil In EvilLyrics?The free software belies its name because there is nothing grossly bad about it. The one complaint could be its vanilla plain interface. That apart, there were few misses in my lyrics hunt but then absolute perfection from a search tool is tough to expect. One thing to look out for is to keep the filters updated as they are often the cause of errors or lack of results. EvilLyrics (ver. 0.1.9) allows us to get to the lyrics as soon as we hear the song. That's its calling card. Let us know your sound opinion and if you have any other tool that does a snappy job with music and lyrics. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Become a MakeUseOf fan on Facebook? – Our photos, MakeUseOf specials and more. Related posts
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| Cool Websites and Tools [November 27] Posted: 27 Nov 2009 05:01 PM PST
(1) Calendarika – New web app that lets you create personal calendars online. It has a number of ready made templates to which you can add images, text and customize month and year. Read more: Calendarika – Create Personal Calendar Online
(2) HTML and CSS Rounded Corner Button Generator – If you're looking for some buttons for your website make sure to check Rounded Corner Button Generator. This simple tool allows you to generate rounded corner buttons along with the CSS code. Read more – HTML and CSS Rounded Corner Button Generator (3) What Does The Internet Think? – Website which uses search engine results to tell you what the internet thinks on a particular subject. You can choose between Google, Yahoo and Bing, all three or just two. However, choosing more than one means that the results can be a couple of minutes coming depending on your internet connection speed. Read more – What Does The Internet Think? (4) AnimeCrazy - Great anime site which has compiled hundreds of full length anime episodes and movies for users to watch online, for free. You don't even have to register to watch them. The media player is good and the videos download very quickly – they're also very vivid and of a high-quality. Read more: AnimeCrazy – Watch Full Length Anime Episodes Online (5) ThankfulFor – Simple website that asks you one question: "What are you thankful for?" You can post small personal thanks, share it to the community, and then read what others are thankful for today. Read more: ThankfulFor – Share About Positive Things in Life With Others
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! Become a MakeUseOf fan on Facebook? – Our photos, MakeUseOf specials and more. Related posts
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| Listomator – Powerful Yet Simple Text List Manipulator [Mac] Posted: 27 Nov 2009 02:01 PM PST
Listomator is a Mac application that can — simply put — manipulate text lists in so many ways — and then some more. Listomator has a feature which I direly needed — to reverse the order of every item in a list. I thought it was a very trivial task but was stumped when neither Pages nor any of the other text editors I had could do it. It wouldn’t surprise me if you launched your favourite text editors right at this moment to check if they are equipped with this feature. There are so many different capabilities in Listomator that even I have no idea where to begin. But let’s start with one of its simplest, Sorting. Listomator has the option to sort list items alphabetically (in both ascending and descending order), by item length (by number of characters) and by second word (according to the first letter of the second word in the item).
To help you visualize and put everything together, here’s a screenshot of the main window.
What say you we take a short tour of the app? To use Listomator, your list has to be in plain text. Alternatively, you could select and copy your list to the clipboard (the formatting doesn’t matter in this case). Upon launching the app, it will show the ‘Open file…‘ window, and here’s where you need to select your text file. If you’ve copied your list to the clipboard, then you can safely close this window and start a new worksheet by click on File->New. Paste your items in by pressing the “Add items from clipboard to list” button. Either way, you should have a new list window displaying your items. Here’s mine. It’s a list of my published articles. Currently, it’s in chronological order according to their publication date. Everything’s about to change in a moment. Keep your eyes peeled.
With a click of a button, I’ve instantly reversed the order of the entire list.
And now, I’ve reversed the word order. OK, it looks kind of scrambled so I’ll just reverse the word order again and bring it back to normal.
Here, I arranged the list alphabetically.
And then, by item length. I think you get the drift by now. I’m just trying to show you that it’s incredibly simple to use. Everything I’ve done here only required a click of a button. That’s one click.
Lastly, I’ve selected every second item. Note that I can also invert the selection.
Exporting the list will depend on how you initially loaded it. If you opened a text file, then you can choose to save it. If you pasted it from the clipboard, then the only option is to copy it back to the clipboard. Currently, there’s no way to create a new text file, I’m afraid. I suspect that it doesn’t work properly in Snow Leopard. I’ve recently contacted the developer to confirm this. Nevertheless, it’s not what you call crippled. Listomator is free and operates on Tiger and Leopard (officially). This is an app that literally has countless uses for it. What do you think? Is there a text editor that can perform half as many functions as Listomator? I’d love to know. Maybe I’m missing something here. 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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| MoneyManager2 – Easily Manage Your Money On Your Mobile Phone Posted: 27 Nov 2009 12:01 PM PST
I’ve always taken a special interest in managing and saving money, mostly because I don’t always have an abundant supply of the stuff. Recently, I found a great mobile app that helps you manage your money in a simple yet effective way. It’s called MoneyManager2. It’s an app for basic Java cell phones – and as I say in most of my articles about Java apps, it’ll run on basically any phone post-2004.
So in its simplest form, MoneyManager2 keeps track of your spending to eradicate this problem. All you have to do is enter each time you withdraw or spend money – and tell the app what it was for.
Starting Off
Once you’ve created your payment methods, go back to the Settings menu. Using the Categories, enter in different types of spending such as 'Gas Bill', 'Insurance', 'Petrol', 'Food' and so on. Each transaction you make will have to be paired with a category. As such, it may be necessary for you to come back later and create new categories as the spending occurs. Using the other options on the 'Settings' menu, continue to set up the app by selecting your currency, security settings and preferences. Making TransactionsWhen you spend money, open the app and log it. This is done by selecting the method you used for payment from the main menu. Then enter the amount into the app and select the appropriate category. Do this for each transaction whether you’re spending or receiving money. This will keep your overall balance updated. At Month’s End
The first, and most basic, way is to simply select ‘Statistics‘ from the menu. This will present you with a screen displaying each category and how much you spent in each one. And of course your total spending followed by your current balance. The second way, and perhaps one of the best features of this app, is to export your monthly data as an Excel, Quicken or CSV file via e-mail to your PC. This is very easy to do. Simply select e-mail from the menu, enter in the e-mail address and select what file type you want to export it as. Then send it. I found the ability to export your spending as an Excel very handy because I use the program to do my monthly budgeting. No transcribing necessary! While this app is small, it’s extremely useful. It solved a big problem for me as I never liked having to remember what I spent and note it later. With MoneyManager2 the process is quick, easy and instant. You can download it here from GetJar. For those of you with Android mobile phones, there is also a similar application called MoneyManager. You can find it in the Android Market. If you have Windows Mobile phone, Budget Diary should be a good option. If you decide to try it out, let us know how you like it. Image Credit: Kiki99 Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Become a MakeUseOf fan on Facebook? – Our photos, MakeUseOf specials and more. Related posts
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| How To Mask Yourself Online & Use a Fake IP Address Posted: 27 Nov 2009 11:01 AM PST
However, bear in mind, that it is possible to find your location, but they would need a legal case against you to force your Internet Service Provider to hand over your details. However, if you are still worried and would like to surf the web anonymously, you will need to mask your IP address. Before I get started, I should mention why people want to do this.
There are many more reasons for masking your IP address, but I will not go there. There are a few ways in which you can do this. Change Your Proxy Settings In Your Web BrowserA quick and easy way is to tell your web browser to use a proxy. So how on earth do you do that? It is quite simple actually. But first of all, you have to find a proxy to connect to. Digital Cyber Soft has an up to date list that you can use. Just simple select a random proxy from the list.
Once you’ve picked one, just enter the settings. In Firefox: Tools –> Options –> Advance –> Network –> Settings
Then just select Manual proxy configuration and enter the proxy IP address in HTTP Proxy and the Port number. Hit OK. In Internet Explorer: Tools –> Internet Options –> Connections –> LAN Settings. Tick Use a proxy server for your LAN and enter the Address and Port number.
Hit OK. Once that is done, you can go to CanYouSeeMe and check that your IP is different to the one before you made the changes. Install GlypeProxy On Your Web ServerIf you own a webserver, you can install a free script called GlypeProxy. This script provides you with an admin control panel so you can see what sites visitors have been searching for and other cool features. By installing it on your own server, you can ensure that no one will be stealing your information, they won't show you ads and you will be much safer. Before you go ahead and do this, make sure you are allowed to install it by your web hosting provider.
There is also another script that does not give you an admin panel and that is phpProxy which you can download at Sourceforge. Install Software On Your ComputerAnother way to mask your IP address or to use a fake one is to install software onto your computer. One such program is Hotspot Shield. It works by you downloading and installing a program onto your computer which creates a Virtual Private Network (or VPN) from your computer directly to one of their servers. Use Web ProxiesOne of the most common and easiest ways to hide your IP address is to use a web proxy. This is exactly the same as what I mentioned before in installing Glypeproxy, but it’s another script on another server. There are thousands of these on the internet, so its just a case of finding one that you like. Some of the most popular, and better web proxies are: Please use these sites at your own risk! Connect to a VPN NetworkBy connecting to a VPN network such as your workplace or educational institute, when you browse the internet, your external IP address would be the place to which you are connected to. Once you connect to a VPN network, the rules of what you can do on the network will depend on the network you connect to. For example, they may block access to torrents and adult materials through their internet server. Dave has previously discussed how to set up your own VPN with Hamachi. So that is an overview on how you can mask yourself and use a fake IP address. However, please be very careful when you use these services, especially from other websites as you do not know what malicious code they may have put on their sites. If you use a proxy, which one do you use? If you have any other tips, please tell us 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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| Dizzler – A Desktop Entertainment Hub With Free Music, Videos, Radio & Games Posted: 27 Nov 2009 10:01 AM PST
Just like the flavors of music, we have different flavors of playing them. From desktop apps to music streaming internet players, the choices are ours to pick. Sandwiched in between these two are players which are desktop interfaces but which search and source music online. Dizzler is one such app. Though Dizzler has a vanilla plain online player, it is the desktop app which might draw your eye.
Just to remove any confusion – the Dizzler Media Player does not download any music, videos or video games but instead streams it over the web. The About Us page also answers the question as to how Dizzler sources all the media content :
Using Dizzler is as simple as it gets. Search & Play MusicSearch for a song, artist or band. For instance, I searched for Fleetwood Mac and Dizzler gave me 226 results. Click on your choice and the song stream starts playing. You can also listen to any random song using the Browse Randomly feature.
Dizzler gives us a few features which aren't any different from any media player – like creating playlists and marking favorites. You can also share any song via a Dizzler link with a friend that appears as an embedded player on a Dizzler page.
Music also being a social experience, you can see who else is online and peek into their playlists. Popular Searches is also a shortcut to what's hot and in. Search & Play Video
Dizzler searches YouTube and brings you the video you want to watch in its nice little window. You can press CTRL+Enter to watch it in a larger size (though not full screen). Again, you can create Playlists and watch them in a bunch. The video player is nothing fancy but a simple YouTube interface. Search & Play Radio
Tap the airwaves by listening in to a variety of online radio stations from around the world. Search according to your taste by browsing by genre, listen to U.S specific state radio stations or go across the oceans by browsing for available stations in other countries. If you are confused, then the easiest way is to do a search by keyword in the search bar. A little Internet Explorer window pops up and starts streaming from the station. Search & Play Games
Browse Flash based free games in a variety of genres and get to play them in the pop-up IE window. The Flash games are sourced from Bigassgames, so the single site selections are a bit limited for some genres. For instance, in racing, I found only two games. A User's OpinionIf you want a simple desktop app which lets you entertain yourself with music, videos, radio, and games then Dizzler doesn't give any complaints. Streaming is pretty fast and the interface is a breeze to handle. An occasional irritant is the IE window which opens up. Dizzler is more music centric because the video section is limited to YouTube while games are also sourced from a single site. More wide ranging choices would have helped. The player gives you a large gallery of skins to decorate your player (some really cool ones!). The online website gives you a lyrics search too which is missing in the desktop app. Another noteworthy feature is that you can also access Dizzler from your Smart Phone or iPhone. If you want to stay on the web, use the embed codes to bring the online player into a host of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. The Dizzler website also lets you promote your own music using a tool called WebDominator and the Dizzler embeddable player. For serious listening, I can always come back to my Winamp or iPod but Dizzler does give me some casual moments of fun while I am browsing the web. Dizzler (Beta) is totally free and runs on Windows XP and Windows Vista. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Become a MakeUseOf fan on Facebook? – Our photos, MakeUseOf specials and more. Related posts
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| The True Power of the Wolfram Alpha Knowledge Engine Posted: 27 Nov 2009 08:01 AM PST
Computational aid, like Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha. In fact, declining these readily available tools is cheating. This discussion will lead to a rethinking of education. Does one need to know how to build a car to drive it? What, in fact, are we learning? Although I will save this discussion for the comments, Wolfram’s demonstration of Wolfram Alpha was an eye-opener. Like a lot of you, I’ve read and played with this ‘computational knowledge engine’ before. Like most, I didn’t know half what it was capable of. In this article, I will try to shed some light on the three most important aspects that make up Wolfram Alpha. If, at the end of this article, you have added Wolfram Alpha to your search arsenal (as I recently did), I will know I have succeeded.
Data AggregationIn most articles I’ve read, the biggest focus lies on Wolfram Alpha’s ‘intuitively accessible’ knowledge database. In words easier to swallow, this means that you can easily pull up relevant facts on a subject, instead of having to browse through several pages worth of related information. This is very well demonstrated in Guy McDowell’s preceding article: Wolfram Alpha – A Step Closer to Star Trek’s Computer. On the site, type in any name, date, city or company, and a factlist should pop up. For instance, after entering a specific date, Wolfram Alpha shows the time difference for today, the day’s position in our current year, observances for the date (including major and minor holidays), events on the 23th of March (including anniversaries and obituaries) and even the phase of the moon.
Entering a company name will summon a different flood of information. You will see the obvious information, like financial information and their recent returns, but also a lot of rather unexpected numbers and data visualization, like different models of stock projection.
This intuitive database that Wolfram Alpha gives us is of course incredibly important – but it is not all there is to it. Mathematical SuperpowersIndeed. Wolfram Alpha has mathematical superpowers. And why should it surprise us? After all, Wolfram Research is dedicated to the development of mathematical computing. Like with Google, Wolfram Alpha solves simple mathematical equations. One plus one equals two, that kind of thing. However, Wolfram Alpha goes a little further than Google with its calculations. Entering ‘x^2 sin(x/2)/(x-3)’, otherwise said
Even when asking for the taylor series of the squared inverse cosinus function, ’series of acos(x)^2′, Wolfram Alpha fails to disappoint us. If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry. Just be aware that it’s awesome – and it isn’t even the limit.
You already guessed it. Wolfram Alpha’s mathematic abilities make it the perfect homework tool. Combining DataSo Wolfram Alpha is a master in data aggregation. It’s also a math superhero. But what makes Wolfram Alpha really incredibly is the third aspect; it can make connections. This is a skill that we try to teach humans. Taking one piece of information and relating it to another. Combine this with a database of facts and mathematical prowess, and you’ve got Wolfram Alpha. So what are the implications of this? For instance, type in ‘what was the weather on the day Steve Jobs was born?’. Wolfram Alpha first looks for Steve Jobs’ birthdate, then connects this to its weather records. You can make it more specific if you want; ‘what was the weather in Belgium the day Steve Jobs was born?’
Want to take those mathematical skills into account as well? To give an example, we asked Wolfram Alpha (ordered, really) to ‘compare Apple and Mircrosoft’ (see screenshot below). Or, if you want to puny yourself, ask to ‘compare MakeUseOf.com and eBay.com’.
With these three skills combined. There’s only one limitation; your own imagination. Wolfram Alpha shows us the future of search engines. And we’re now one step closer to a computer taking over the world. Related posts
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| 5 Free Tools To Quickly Convert A CD To An MP3 Collection Posted: 27 Nov 2009 06:01 AM PST
On the other hand, my iPod lets me take more than a hundred CDs worth of songs and is perfectly at peace sitting in a corner of my backpack. So is there even a choice here ? For folks like me who have a small fortune invested in CDs of their favorite artists, the best option is to convert all those CD tracks to MP3’s and that is what this post is about. A list of 5 tools that’ll help you convert your CD’s to an MP3 collection. iTunesiTunes is one of those software that almost everyone has on their computer – either because they own an iPod or because, well, they like it. It is a resource hog, I’ll admit, but is also a very capable media player. What many people don’t know is that iTunes is also a very good software to rip audio CDs to MP3 and the process really couldn’t have been simpler. iTunes, by default, saves songs imported from CDs in the AAC format. To change the default to MP3, open the Preferences Window (Edit->Preferences) and click the Import Settings button.
Now all you have to do is insert the audio CD in the computer and as soon as iTunes detects it, it will pop-up a dialogue box asking for your permission to “import” the CD to it’s Library. Click Import and let iTunes do its job. FreeRIPOne of the reasons that I like FreeRIP is its support for the lossless FLAC file format but FLAC is not the only format FreeRIP rips to and it is equally at home with the MP3 format also. If you’re ripping songs to put on your iPod, MP3 is what you want to stick to. Just insert the audio CD in the CD tray and select the Rip Selected Tracks to MP3 option from the Rip menu.
BonkEncBonkEnc is another easy to use free and open source CD ripping tool that can also be used as an audio converter for converting audio files into different formats. The process of encoding is as easy as it can be. Insert the CD in the drive tray, press the CTRL+E key combination and grab yourself a cup of coffee.
You can also download a portable version. CDexWe’ve written about CDex earlier and it’s managed to make this list too. Says a lot about the tool that I personally swear by. Download and install it if you need a simple no nonsense tool.
To convert CD tracks to MP3 files, insert the CD, select the tracks that you want converted and hit the F9 button. It really is as easy as it sounds. You can also download a portable version. Exact Audio CopyExact Audio Copy or EAC claims to read audio CDs “almost perfectly” and it even tries and correct errors that it finds. The downside is that it doesn’t ship with a built-in MP3 encoder. But, EAC works with the excellent open source MP3 encoder, LAME. LAME is one of the best MP3 encoders around and a number of commercial programs also use it and you’ll have to download the LAME library on your computer for the encoding functions of EAC to work. When you run EAC for the first time, it takes you through a wizard which, among other things, asks for the location of the lame.exe file that you downloaded.
That is just about the only configuration you’ll need to perform with EAC. Insert an audio CD, click on the MP3 icon in the sidebar and sit back and relax.
What tools do you swear by for ripping CD’s? One of the above or something totally different? Let us know 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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Doesn't it sound like something that has gone over to the other side? But fear not, 
Hands down, Listomator is the only application I’ve seen so far that does what it does. None of the word processors that I’ve used in the the past can come close to it. But that isn’t a fair comparison since they’re not even in the same class of application. If you’re wondering what I’m going on about, allow me to explain.
Money is something that we all have to think about on a regular basis. Without cash in our pockets or a credit card in our wallets, we’re effectively useless in this world. How would we buy food, pay bills and clothe ourselves? How would we do anything?
The reason MoneyManager2 is so effective at what it does is because it addresses the number one problem with over-spenders; their mental calculator. You know the one. It’s nearing the month’s end and you’re rounding up what you’ve spent and trying to remember how much you have in your account. Suddenly you start to think very optimistically and a decimal point gets moved to the left or you ‘forget’ to carry a few ‘1’s.
Click Settings from the menu. From here, you can set up several different aspects of the app which you'll need to make it work properly. Firstly, enter in your payment methods. The two standard ones are 'Credit Card' and 'Cash'. You can enter in your own such as 'Cheque' and 'PayPal'.
At the end of the month, you can view your spending in two ways.
People often say to me that they don't like surfing the Internet as they feel every website they go to could hunt them down and knock on their door. Let me tell you this. It is not true.
A free downloadable application that suspiciously looks like an iPhone lying on its flank…that's 
Earlier this week, I heard Conrad Alpha speak at the TEDxBrussels convention. The man, a big force in the popular mathematics company, argued that computational aid at school should not be considered cheating.
, will plot the function on a few different scales, show alternate forms, the roots, series expansion at x=0, at x=∞, the indefinite integral, series representations, and so on. Want to know how to derive that function? Hit the button for a step-by-step explanation.
I love my audio CD collection. I really do. But carrying a hundred CDs with me on a vacation just so that I can listen to that one song when I have to, isn’t exactly my idea of fun.
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