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- Cool Websites and Tools [December 2]
- 6 Cool Tips To Get More Out Of Posterous
- FotoTagger – Easily Tag Photos With This Free Annotation Tool (Win XP)
- The Basics of Aperture and Shutter Speeds for Beginning Photographers
- Daft Logic – A Quirky But Cool Website You Should Check Out
- November Round-Up – MakeUseOf Authors
- How to Turn Twitter Into Your One-Stop Lifestream
- Destroy All Zombies 3 – The Encore. An Awesome Flash Game
| Cool Websites and Tools [December 2] Posted: 02 Dec 2009 05:01 PM PST
(1) FreeMyPDF – Next time you need to unlock restricted PDF file that prevents you from copying, editing or printing the contents then FreeMyPDF can help. It is a simple online utility where you can upload a PDF file and quickly remove its restrictions. Read more: FreeMyPDF - Unlock Restricted PDF Files
(2) NatGeo Wallpapers – If the various wallpaper sites on the net can't satiate your desire for that perfect wallpaper then you should take a look at National Geographic's (or Nat Geo's) photography section. There is a section dedicated to wallpapers that boasts of a collection of some amazing photographs that could be downloaded to your computer and set as the background. Read more: NatGeo Wallpapers – Download Awesome Wallpapers (3) PassiveAggressiveNotes – This site portrays pictures of interesting notes submitted by the readers. Most of the notes are hilarious, while some are quite interesting. The humor comes from the sarcasm in the notes where people are politely asked to apply common sense. Read more: PassiveAggressiveNotes – Collection of Hilarious & Interesting Notes (4) ORB – Project managers trying to grab a meeting room at the last minute isn't an unusual scene in a big firm. With many employees working on various projects, the limited availability of meeting rooms in the company poses a problem. ORB is an online meeting room manager that offers a simple booking and management solution for meeting rooms so that managers can make the best use of available rooms. Read more: ORB – Online Meeting Room Manager (5) PChatRoulette – Web application where you can text, voice and video chat with strangers. You can click the "Find Stranger" button to find a random stranger to start chatting. Read more: PChatRoulette – Video & Voice Chat With Strangers Online
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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| 6 Cool Tips To Get More Out Of Posterous Posted: 02 Dec 2009 02:01 PM PST
Beyond this simplicity however, there are some cool things you can do to unleash the power of the platform. In this article, let us look at some Posterous tips for power users. Posterous Tip #1: Use Posterous on a SubdomainThe Posterous Help describes how you can set it up on your custom domain. But what if you use Wordpress or Blogger to power the main blog of your site? In this case, it makes sense to setup Posterous on a subdomain of your site.
If your site is www.yourname.com, you can setup posterous.yourname.com as your Posterous site. Follow these steps to do so:
Posterous Tip #2: Selective AutopostBeyond posting your email and other media to your Posterous blog, you can set it up to automatically post to other services as well.
To enable Autopost, go to Manage > Autopost and add the services you wish. Now, when you email post@posterous.com, your post is automatically sent to all the services you have configured under Autopost settings. There are times when you don't want to autopost everywhere. There is no need to change your settings just for such instances. You can selectively autopost, by tweaking the email address. As an example, suppose you have configured Facebook, Flickr and Twitter under your Autopost settings. Let's say you use Flickr for all your cool outdoor photographs and prefer Facebook for photographs of people at conferences you attend. You also want to tweet when you post any photos anywhere. When emailing your photos, send your outdoor nature photography to flickr+twitter@posterous.com, and send conference photos to facebook+twitter@posterous.com. Posterous Tip #3: Advanced Facebook AutopostBy default, Posterous does not post your photos and videos to your Facebook photo albums and videos. For more fine-grained control over how Posterous auto-posts to Facebook, on the Autopost settings page, go to Edit under Actions for the Facebook service.
First, choose whether you want Posterous to actually update your Facebook status message, or simply update your activity stream. Then, you can choose to enable autoposting of photos and videos if you wish. The Minimum gallery size determines the number of photos that creates a separate Facebook album. Posterous Tip #4: Advanced Bookmarklet SettingsUsing the bookmarklet is almost a must to make the best use of Posterous. The bookmarklet makes it very simple to instantly post text, documents, pictures, music or video from any web page to your Posterous.
From the Advanced Options link at the bottom of the bookmarklet, you can also include tags and choose whether to autopost that item to your other services. Posterous Tip #5: Use Google Analytics to Track Traffic StatsBring the awesome power of Google Analytics to your Posterous blog to see detailed traffic stats. Here's how:
Now you can see page views, average time spent on site, referring sites, and a plethora of other traffic stats.
Posterous Tip #6: Use Feedburner For Your Posterous RSS FeedYou can replace the default RSS Feed provided by Posterous with a Feedburner one. With Feedburner, you can keep track of the number of your RSS subscribers, create browser-friendly feeds, add social bookmarking links, and lots more. To use Feedburner with Posterous, follow these steps:
You now get all the benefits of using Feedburner for your Posterous RSS Feed. These are some of the ways to get more out of Posterous. Have other Posterous tips to share? 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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| FotoTagger – Easily Tag Photos With This Free Annotation Tool (Win XP) Posted: 02 Dec 2009 12:01 PM PST
That's strange for a tool which is all about images and JPEGs. But it is a very functional piece of software for someone who not only likes to click photos but also takes the pains to add information about them. The software also happens to be a free download and that just bumps up its attractiveness a notch. We are familiar with the system of tagging and annotating images online. It's there in social apps like Facebook and Orkut. It's also a common feature in Flickr photo storage sites of its ilk. FotoTagger is a desktop tool filling in for that particular job. FotoTagger is a free utility that lets you tag photos with small descriptive notes on any part of an image. And no, it does not 'spoil' the image because the notes can be easily removed and also hidden with a click of a button. The photos also can be shared across the web along with the comments or annotations. A Picture Says A Thousand Words But…Just sometimes an image is not enough. We need to tag photos to put some words into it :
We can tag photos in a tool like Picasa, we can geotag them or add name tags to identify faces, but with FotoTagger we can pinpoint any element on the photo and place a comment on it. FotoTagger also does a few things more with our photos.
FotoTagger In Action
Let's start by looking at the ways we can better tag photos using FotoTagger. Photos (JPEGs) can be given a caption that's like a label for the whole photo or a tag which can be pointed towards any element in the photo (also called a callout). An image can be given only one caption but it can have multiple tags. Fonts and colors can be customized for tags and captions. They can be shown as rectangles or as balloons. Tags and captions do not significantly add to the size of the image as they are stored within the image file in text format. They also can be revealed and hidden with a single click within FotoTagger (thus, displaying the image with and without tags). Viewing Annotated ImagesWe can directly open the image in the FotoTagger window. The better way though is FotoTagger's Organize Mode. The Organize Mode is like an image file organizer with similar functions like album preview. It is also the interface which lets us view all the properties of your image files. In a large album, a special symbol (FT) also lets us know at a glance which files are tagged.
The technically inclined can use the image information tabs in the bottom panel to view specific data like EXIF, IPTC, image properties, histogram and of course the tags for the image. The Comment tab is for entering a more descriptive note on the particular image or the whole album. Sending Annotated Photos To The WebSingle images or a bunch with all its annotations can be exported (and imported back) to and from Flickr. While exporting, you can also perform a resize operation to fit it into your Flickr set. Before uploading to Flickr, you have to follow a few steps to authorize FotoTagger to access your Flickr account. FotoTagger handles the change in meta-data formats between it and Flickr.
A simple wizard also lets us publish annotated pictures to our blogs (Blogger and LiveJournal). If the image size is too large for blogs, an alert pops up requesting permission to resize the image.
Exporting to HTML as whole folders or as individual files is also a two step process. What we get are HTML pages that include the annotated image with tags which can be hidden with a click of a button. These are viewable in any browser and do not require FotoTagger for displaying the tags. Creating animated slideshows and presentations is also easy and descriptive with the annotations help of FotoTagger. The fourth way is to send annotated images by email. Send it with tags merged into the image automatically through FotoTagger which launches your default email application.
A Side BenefitIt's not only the second person who gets the benefit of the annotated images. Annotation using tags and captions is also an ironclad way to organize your zillion photos. FotoTagger and its search tool can then go to work searching the right image for you.
FotoTagger is a plain functional tool to tag photos. I wish it could be slicker and throw in a few more options that would allow me to customize the 'look' of tags and captions. In the Web 2.0 world, the output does seem a bit antiquated. But cosmetics aside, FotoTagger does the basic job of captioning and tagging quite well. Also, the plug-in which allows us to capture an image straight from either IE or Firefox into FotoTagger is not updated for the latest version of the Firefox browser. But despite these niggles, if I need to make my photos say a few words, FotoTagger is an option worth a glimpse. FotoTagger ver. 2.13 is compatible with Windows XP (not tried out in 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 Basics of Aperture and Shutter Speeds for Beginning Photographers Posted: 02 Dec 2009 10:01 AM PST
When you shoot in automatic mode, you're telling the camera that you want it to figure out everything out for you. And in most cases, if you're shooting in automatic mode, the camera locks down most controls and features and makes all the exposure decisions for you. But with digital photography, there's absolutely no reason to shoot automatic mode. You can shoot and delete as many images as you like and it won't cost you a penny more. So grab your camera and let's learn some of the basics of aperture and shutter speeds. What Is Aperture and Shutter Speed?First off, what is shutter speed? It's an exposure setting for how long your camera's shutter will remain open when you click the shutter button. It's almost like blinking your eyes really fast. You can leave them wide open for like an entire minute, or you can open and close them in a second or less.
Shutter speed works in conjunction with the aperture and ISO settings to determine the appropriate exposure based on the lighting conditions images are captured in. When using shutter priority, it means that you're going to manually set the shutter speed, and the camera will automatically set the appropriate aperture needed for a good exposure. The above easy enough for most shooters, but there are times when you want to have more control of the shutter speed for a few reasons. The reasons might include: 1. You're shooting in a low light situation and you need to leave the shutter open long enough to allow in more light. This is especially the case when doing night photography. 2. You're taking action shots and you want to freeze the action or show motion in your shot. 3. You're using flash in your shot and you want to get more detail in the ambient light of the shot. Quick Lessons About Shutter SpeedThe following basic exercises were written to help beginning photographers understand the basics of shutter speed. Exercise 1: Understanding shutter speedSet your camera to Program mode, not Automatic mode. Set your ISO to 400. Make sure the flash is turned off. Now go outside, during the day, and take a shot of anything, such as your front door. Next, take another shot with the same settings as above (including turning the flash off), but this time take the shot in a room with less light. It can be the inside of your front door. View both photos on your camera's LCD screen or on your computer and make note of the different shutters speeds in the two different lighting conditions. In my example, the camera set the shutter speed at 1/250th of a second for the outdoor shot. Detecting less light in the indoor shot, the camera chose a slower shutter speed of 1/15th of a second.
This little exercise should give you an understanding of how taking photos is primarily about the amount of light coming into the camera. Sometimes when you need more light to get a good image, it calls for a longer shutter speed. Likewise, if your image is overexposed, you may need to reduce the shutter speed, to say 1/15th of a second. Another lesson to learn from this exercise is that when you're taking photos beyond Automatic mode you want to keep an eye on the shutter speed. If the shutter speed (rather automatically or manually set) is set at 1/60th of a second or slower, your shots might not come out too sharp. It is possible to hand-hold a camera at a shutter speed as low as 1/15th of a second, but you typically run the risk of blurring some detail in the shot. Three FixesHigher ISO If your shutter speed is too low for shooting without a flash, you can try a couple of things. You can raise the ISO, from say 100 to 400 or above. A higher ISO increases your camera's sensor to light. It's like letting more light into the camera. Some professional photographers use high ISOs for shooting in low light conditions, such as weddings held in a church, where flash might not be appropriate. If you're shooting a concern and you need more light to come into you camera, you might try setting a high ISO. The problem with a high ISO, however, is that it might cause your images to be grainy, creating what is called noise in the image. You can often fix the problem with noise reduction software. Wider Aperture You can also try opening the aperture from say f/5.6 to f/1.4, if your camera's lens can open that wide. The aperture works sorta like the shutter speed. When you open it up, you let in more light. When you close it down, less light is let in. Use a Tripod Lastly, you can and should use a tripod when you need to use a slow shutter speed. By using a tripod, you're not only able to shoot in low light situations, but you can also use a low ISO, thus bringing more clarity to your images. You might also try using your camera's self-timer to set off the shutter and take the photo. When shooting in a low shutter speed, sometimes even the trigger of your finger can cause camera shake, and thus a little blur in the image. (Note: the image below of the camera dial was taken at a shutter speed of 1/8th of a second, hand held. I should have used a tripod, because the image is not as sharp as it could be. I did however use the camera's self-timer to help stead the shot some.) Exercise 2: Capturing ActionGrab your camera and go out and take action shots. It could be of your children playing outdoors, a sports game, a fountain of water, or moving cars. Just make sure that the subject(s) is moving. Before you start taking shots, set your camera to Shutter Priority. There should be a dial on your camera where you set it Tv, which means shutter priority.
When you use shutter priority, the camera expects you to set the shutter speed, and it will automatically set the aperture to correspond to that shutter speed you set. If there's a problem between the two settings, you will get a warning signal that one setting needs to be increased or decreased to get an appropriate exposure. Shoot the moving subject using different shutter speeds; from say a fast speeds of 1/250th of a second or higher, to a much slower speeds of 1/60th to 1/15th of a second. Don't think about composition in these shots. Just focus on using shutter priority and manually setting the shutter speeds yourself. When you arrive back home, import your images into your image software, and compare the results.
You should notice that images shot at a higher shutter speed tend to freeze the subject, while images shot a slower speed blur the action. When you learn how to manually control the shutter speeds of your camera, you can get more creative with action photography, as well learn how to get useful images without the need of a flash. If you try out these exercises, let me know how they work for you. 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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| Daft Logic – A Quirky But Cool Website You Should Check Out Posted: 02 Dec 2009 08:01 AM PST
Recently, during one of these trips, we found ourselves riding for miles down the beach. We suddenly realized we eventually would have to turn around and pedal back. On the way back, we had a breakdown, and ended up having to walk part of the way back until we found a store where we could pick up the tools to fix the bike. When we got home I decided to go online to see if I could figure out exactly how far we actually traveled. That’s when I came across the very cool website Daft Logic. Daft Logic bills itself as
Map ProjectsThe Google Maps Distance Calculator is the reason I stumbled upon the website, and I have bookmarked this page for future use. This is found on their Projects page. If you are a biker, hiker, runner, jogger, or walker, this simple tool can help you plan a route or simply see how far you’ve gone with a few clicks. Mapping my family’s adventurous marathon, I realized we had biked over 11 miles! Pretty good for casual riders.
I like the segment-by-segment function, in that you can click around turns and angles and get a more accurate distance calculation, or you can simply click a beginning and ending point and get an “as the crow flies” distance. The map is simple to use and offers a km, mile, feet, meter or nautical mile distance selection. Out of curiosity, I mapped out our neighborhood to see how many miles riding each street adds up to and compared this to the estimate I made with my vehicle’s odometer. The result was very accurate. My car showed 2.3 miles and the distance calculator showed 2.341 miles.
There are several other Google Map mashups listed on their Project page, including a Google Maps Guestbook where visitors to a site can click their location and add comments. There is also a Send A Position Map where you click a location and Daft Logic provides a url that you can email to a friend that will link back to the map with the position displayed.
There is also an advanced version of the distance calculator that allows you to save a route on a map. They may not be reinventing the wheel, but having all of these map features on one site is certainly cool. The site authors have provided some code and downloads for you to use some of these tools on your own site. Other ProjectsThere are some useful PHP projects to be found here as well. One is a tool that converts an email to a jpg file and there is one that converts text to a png file. These are handy if you want to display an email address, but don’t want the email to be picked up by spammers. Also under the PHP category are a "What is My IP?", and a "What is My Browser?" tool. Included on the Projects page are several Macromedia Flash projects, including a few neat little games like Towers of Hanoi and Tic Tac Toe.
SandboxOn the Sandbox page are all the projects where ideas are being developed and demonstrated. Users can play around with the projects, provide feedback, and the developers consider whether to continue with the development of the tool.
Many of these are built around Google Maps. One tool will find the nearest Flickr photo from a clicked point on a map, and another tool will reverse look up the nearest address to a point clicked on the map.
InformationFinally, the Information section includes some articles the site authors have penned regarding programming tricks and tips and various KMZ files for finding neat stuff on Google Earth.
Daft Logic seems to be a website done by a bunch of folks sitting around playing with simple programming and ideas, with an extreme interest in maps, time, Google Maps and Google Earth. Yes, some of it is a bit daft but it’s still cool, quirky, geeky and fun! Now, since I rode the tires off my bike yesterday, I’ll be playing around on Daft Logic when I need a break! 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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| November Round-Up – MakeUseOf Authors Posted: 02 Dec 2009 07:01 AM PST
I know there’s another 4 weeks to go (so this may be a bit premature) but 2009 has been the best year ever for MakeUseOf. We have hired some really amazing writers (including promoting some to be staff writers and editors), our subscriber count has gone through the roof (and beyond) and the range and quality of our article titles is just amazing. There’s always something for everyone and we all here enjoy writing them for you. In 2010, we will be bringing you some exciting new projects, such as more PDF manuals (check out the two we did in November – How to Build a Gaming PC by Simon and The Incredible Guide to NEW Ubuntu (Karmic Koala) by Olly). In 2010, we will also be rolling out two major new features of the site – no clues yet as to what they will be, but when they come out, they’re sure to be instant popular hits. But if you can’t wait that long to see those changes, hang tight because we have something else about to arrive which you will hopefully like. We are once again slightly redesigning the MakeUseOf site (just a few nips and tucks here and there) and this should go live within the next week or so. Our new design will integrate social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter. While our boffins in the lab are busy getting these changes ready, why not take a glance over November’s stories? Maybe there’s something there you missed?
Wordpress Exploit Scanner Helps Administrators Scan Their Database For Malicious Files Saikat – The Things I Do Songr – A Desktop MP3 Search Engine That Also Downloads Songs for You Ryan – BetterContent How Earn Money By Selling Online PC Support using LiveZilla Dean – Tapping Thought Top 3 Tips To Motivate Yourself While Learning A Second Language Simon – Wombat Labs Gamer Trick: The Automatic Mouse Clicker For Games Jackson How To Use A Facebook Badge As Your Email Signature [Mac] Jeffry – Super Subconscious Use Face Recognition to Organize Photos With iPhoto [Mac] Varun – Tech Crazy How To Draw A Pixie Dust Effect In Photoshop Guy – Canada Prepared 3 Simplest DIY Computer Repairs Anyone Can Do Mahendra – Skeptic Geek Design Your Own Online Portal Website for Free with Zooloo Tina 3 Best Free Alternatives To Microsoft Outlook Tim L – timmyjohnboy Manage Multiple Users on One Twitter Account with TweetFunnel Bakari – Mac Photography Tips Browse Nikon Images on Your iPhone with Nikon's Learn & Explore Susan – tuxmachines.org GoblinX – An Alternative Linux OS With 4 Different Flavors John Top 3 Fake News Prank Story Generators Paul B The 4 Fabulous Gmail Labs Extensions You Should Try Out Sharninder – Geeky Ninja Lose It! – A Calorie Intake Calculator for the iPhone Jack – Jack Cola Find What Happens To Your Email and Social Networking Accounts When You Die? Paul C – You're Stupid, I'm Not How To Buy Used Stuff For Cheap On Facebook Grant – GrantBlog Best Sites To Download Good High-Res Wallpapers (Part Two) Dave – SystemBash Stay Connected To IRC Chat 24/7 Using Quassel Justin – Justin Pot’s Blog 4 Unique and Cool Ways To Use Dropbox Nathan – NathanChase Reinvigorate: Real-Time Analytics That Pick Up Where Google Leaves Off Jorge – GeekLad How To Run Google Chrome OS From A USB Drive [Windows] Tobias – personal tobias How To Tag Your Friends In Photos On Flickr Michael The 2 Great Websites for Atari 2600 Enthusiasts April – APRILOQUIES Two Simple Yet Useful Firefox Add-Ons You Should Have Eyal – ProductiveWise Google Social Search Makes Your Search Results Personal Bohed – TrueKolor.net How To Create a Simple Blog Logo In Photoshop Image Credit : paperladyinvites 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 Turn Twitter Into Your One-Stop Lifestream Posted: 02 Dec 2009 06:01 AM PST
There are a few options that allow you to aggregate all of that content into a lifestream, such as FriendFeed, or for the more adventurous, there’s the self-hosted Sweetcron. But a lifestream isn’t any fun if no one is listening. Most of us have a few people who are interested in what we have to say in one place in particular – on Twitter. So why make the extra effort of interacting with people on two separate websites, or attracting visitors to your self-hosted lifestream, when you can easily use a Twitter lifestream to share all your online content? Set up all of your accounts to feed directly into your Twitter lifestream, and make sure to label each of these tweets with a relevant hashtag. If you’re posting a photo, append the tweet with #photo. If you’re posting a song, append the tweet with #music, and so forth. Using hashtags gives Twitter that much-needed organization, turning it into a searchable lifestream. Unfortunately, Twitter's search tool is only useful for recent tweets, since anything more than 10 days old is not included in the results. Third-party app, Snap Bird makes it easy to search for tweets from any user beyond the 10-day search limit. Just fill in your username, make sure it's set to search your own tweets, and then fill in a hashtag in the search field. Don't worry if at first there are no search results – Snap Bird searches in increments, so be sure to keep clicking "Search back further" to get all possible results.
Another advantage to using a Twitter lifestream is the extent of control you have over the content and where it comes from. With social aggregators, you are limited to the services that they choose, but by using Twitter, there is no limit to the number of services that you can add to your stream. To enhance the browsing experience, use web-based Twitter client Brizzly, since it displays videos and pictures embedded content, much in the same way that FriendFeed does.
To get you started, we’ve put together a list of websites that make it easy to share content directly on Twitter. VideosYouTube is a good place to start when sharing video content. Direct integration with Twitter allows you to automatically tweet your videos as they’re uploaded. To include a hashtag in an uploaded video, it has to appear in your video title. To get it set up, click on 'Sharing' in your account settings, and from there you can connect YouTube to Twitter and choose which of your actions will be shared with your followers. 12Seconds not only lets you broadcast your content directly to Twitter, you can actually sign in using your Twitter account, which means you don't have to set up a connection between the two services. Under settings, you can determine what actions you want to broadcast from 12Seconds to your followers. As the name implies, you can upload 12 second videos to the website. When uploading, include the hashtag in the title, and it will be included in your tweet.
There are other Twitter specific video websites that are worth taking a look at such as TwitC, where you can upload videos, pictures, audio files, text files, and lots more, with well over 100 files types supported, and Twiddeo, where you can upload videos up to 100mb in size, record directly from your webcam, or email video files from your mobile phone. PhotosOne of the most popular methods of sharing photos on Twitter is TwitPic. The service has been integrated into several clients, making it as easy as ever to upload a picture, share the link on Twitter, and append your tweet with the hashtag, #photo.
If you’re an avid Flickr user, you probably already know that you can authorize your Flickr account to post to Twitter. If you’re a stickler for organization, be sure to add the hashtag #photo to your title. Other interesting services for photo-sharing on Twitter include TweetPhoto and yfrog, both of which allow you to upload pictures directly on their website, or through several desktop and mobile Twitter clients. BookmarksBookmarking heavyweights Diigo and Delicious have integrated Twitter into the user experience. When adding a bookmark to Diigo you have the option of sending the link to Twitter, the caveat being that you have to use their toolbar. But they do at least let you edit the text of the tweet, making it easy to include your #bookmark hashtag.
Delicious gives you the choice of either automatically sending all bookmarks to your tweet stream, or choosing which bookmarks to share. In either case, it gives you the opportunity to decide what text will go in the tweet. MusicBlip.fm offers one way to share music on Twitter, by scouring the net for songs hosted online, searching sites like imeem and YouTube, and allowing you to automatically "blip" all songs to your Twitter lifestream, as well as allowing you to edit the text of the tweet. If you don’t want to flood your Twistners with music, you might opt for Twisten.fm instead when you have a song or two that you want to share. Twisten.fm relies on Grooveshark's library of music to share songs with your listeners.
If you would prefer to upload an mp3 file yourself (or possibly even share your own original music), the previously mentioned site TwitC, is the best option for you. Shared ContentIf you spend a lot of time reading articles on Google Reader, you'll want to share some of those posts with your followers. With Google Reader, there are several ways to do this, the easiest way of which is to use Google Reader’s integration in the settings. Go to your Google Reader settings, click on the “Send To” tab, and tick “Twitter” at the end of the list.
Going back to your Reader, you will find this has added a “Send To” link at the bottom of each post. Make sure you are logged into the Twitter website when you click on it, because Google Reader redirects you to Twitter, filling in the title of the post and a bit.ly shortened link. While this gets the job done, Firefox add-on, Feedly allows for a much more pleasant user experience, allowing you to edit the tweet directly from within Feedly. These are just a few examples of the kinds of content you can share on Twitter. There are countless websites with seamless integration, such url shortener Bit.ly, and for those lacking integration, an RSS feed can sometimes suffice, when used with third party service, TwitterFeed, which also provides an easy way to feed your own personal blog posts to Twitter. The great thing about Twitter is that it gives you the freedom to use it any way you want – so why not use it to its full potential? What sites would you want to include in your Twitter lifestream? 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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| Destroy All Zombies 3 – The Encore. An Awesome Flash Game Posted: 02 Dec 2009 04:01 AM PST
You can go to this URL to play the zombie game online. Once the loading finishes you can click the Skip this ad button in the lower right hand corner and you are on your way to becoming a zombie slayer. But you should go through the tutorial. What do you mean you just want to play? Well we will cover the basics for you so you can jump right in. After hitting the tutorial button it will show you how to play.
Next up they explain how you proceed and how you determine how much damage you can inflict by looking at the weapon tiers. As you go on you will get stronger to kill more zombies.
Weapon pickups add them to your inventory so you can hit the C key to switch or change to that new weapon. You can also pick up more ammo or health to help your stats.
Of course what would a game be without bosses?! You need to slay the bosses to continue on. There are four bosses spread out over the 20 levels of fun or the 20 levels of Undead slaughter as the author puts it!
When you are ready to hit start you will be shown only Round 1-1. As you beat more boards you will be able to jump right to that round!
You start out as an ambitious young go getter killing rats until you get your skill up. A few rounds of rat killing will lead to those Zombies coming to get you – maybe they miss their rat friend?! Who knows!
Ahh the Zombies have arrived, now we can really show what kind of skills we have. Blast away and step backwards to avoid them grabbing you. Keep shooting and you will see their health drop above the characters head.
More and more zombies will come at you and more powerful enemies will show up level by level. And keep your eye out for those bosses as well.
You can see the mayhem below as I am wasting those zombie scumbags! Get out your frustration and anger on Zombies, not on fellow human beings on the train commute home! Post your screenshots or highest levels achieved! Come on make me jealous young gamer!
Do you have another favorite game for when you want to play zombie games online, ? We would love for you to share it with us in the comments! 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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Since we 
Sometimes we go with a software because we find a sudden use for it. Sometimes it's just for fun. The software I am going to harp on about in this post is not a slick looking one.
When you have an advanced compact or 35mm digital camera, the only way you can take full advantage of its advance features is to practice taking shots beyond the camera's automatic mode.
Occasionally I need a break from sitting at the desk in front of the computer. One of the ways I stay in touch with the real world is to get out there in it. My family and I enjoy taking bike rides on a regular basis. We load up the bikes and head off in search of parks, beaches, trails, or scenic areas. We unload and then enjoy a spontaneous, exploratory bike ride.
Once again, another month is over and we now find ourselves on the run-up to the Christmas and New Year holidays, taking us into 2010. Man, how the year has flown by. It seemed like only yesterday that we celebrated gaining 30,000 subscribers and now we are looking at the count approaching 130,000! Did I drink something, pass out and miss a few months?!
A lot of your online time is probably spent divided between publishing and sharing content on a variety of websites, from 
You have just happened to come upon a post that will keep you busy for days. Do you enjoy killing zombies from your computer? Right from your browser you say? Well Destroy All Zombies is a free entertaining flash based that I have decided to ruin your productivity today with 
Enjoy!
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