Latest Tips from MakeUseOf.com |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [December 5th]
- How To Add 20 Best Features Of Other Browsers to Firefox
- 3 Best Free Sites For Watching TV On The Internet
- 3 Free Contact Form Generators To Get Feedback From Your Visitors
- Essential Video Tutorials For Shooting & Editing Video
- 10 Sites To Download Free & Legal Online Christmas Music
| Cool Websites and Tools [December 5th] Posted: 05 Dec 2009 05:01 PM PST
(1) Snipplr – If you have random bits of code on your computer and are looking for a way to store and organize them at once place , Snipplr is a prolific solution for you. It's a free code repository that allows you to store all your code snippets and share them with others. Read more:Snipplr: Free Code Repository Online
(2) StreetEasy – This site lets you search apartment sales and rentals in New York City and surrounding areas including Hamptons and North Jersey. Like many other apartment search engines it lets you search and filter results by price, apartment type, # of bedrooms, region and view results on a map. Read more: StreetEasy: Find New York Apartments for Sale & Rental (3) Open Port Check Tool – If you want to check whether a firewall or ISP is blocking certain ports you need to get things done on your computer, then here is a simple solution for you. CanYouSeeMe is a website which provides you with a free utility to remotely test for open ports on your system. Read more: Open Port Check Tool: Test For Open Ports Behind Firewalls (4) DetectMobileBrowser – Downloadable script for web developers that detects visitors' mobile browsers and auto redirect to mobile site. Actually, you can pretty much redirect your visitors to any webpage depending on whether they are using a mobile browser or not. Read more: DetectMobileBrowser: Detects & Auto Redirects To Mobile Site (5) Free-Horror-Movies – Are you a fan of watching horror movies? If you are, then you should check out Free-Horror-Movies. The site list more than 450 movies including the latest releases for 2009 such as Zombieland, Jennifer's Body, and Paranormal Activity. Read more: Free-Horror-Movies: Watch Full Length Horror Movies 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
| ||
| How To Add 20 Best Features Of Other Browsers to Firefox Posted: 05 Dec 2009 02:01 PM PST
Well as it stands today, with so many Firefox addons, almost anything is possible in Firefox. Here are some add-ons that add common features of various browsers that are not present in Firefox by default: Google ChromeGoogle Chrome is the one browser that really comes close to being the default browser on my computer. Extensions are possible but the API is limited. Once the extensions API opens up you can expect to see a slew of extensions for the Chrome browser as well. Here are some Firefox addons that replicate the features found in Chrome:
Firefox’s Newer VersionsQuite a lot is known about how upcoming Firefox releases will look like and what they will all feature. Here are some Firefox addons that let you enjoy those features in Firefox 3.5:
Opera
Internet Explorer
SafariI must confess that I am not a big time Safari user so I am looking for your help on this. I had it on my computer for maybe an hour or so before I got sick of it. So based on that little meeting, here are a few suggestions:
You can of course mix and match all these. In fact many of them could have easily featured under more than one browser category. App Tabs and Fission could have been mentioned under upcoming Firefox features while tabs open relative could have been featured under Opera as well. The Firefox addons mostly play well with each other, themes can cause the occasional problems, in which case you can always switch back to the default theme, or start Firefox in safe mode. Got some more suggestions? I am sure you do. There is always a little more when talking about Firefox addons. Share your recommendations 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
| ||
| 3 Best Free Sites For Watching TV On The Internet Posted: 05 Dec 2009 12:00 PM PST
Since the baby came around, that time is either for sleeping or trying to get the baby to sleep. So I take what I can get and maybe hit up my Sling player from my Windows Mobile device. But more likely than not, I am at a computer without access to anything other than a web browser. Now I bring you my 3 favorite web sites for watching full television episodes online. Sadly as of now these links will only work via a computer from the United States or by using a US Proxy or VPN service. You will find a link to one such service further down. First up is my long time favorite Hulu. Hulu came to my attention when I found full versions of South Park episodes online here years ago. Now you can access their full television shows using this link. (NOTE HULU IS US ONLY SORRY INTERNATIONAL USERS!) But you can check out this post on Hotspot Shield which will enable Hulu for people outside the United States. This will show you shows that were put out there today. But you can use the menu along the top to select All Time, Today, This Week. I grabbed the latest and greatest episode of The Simpsons (my all time favorite show FYI)
Find your favorite show and enjoy! They seem to have the best selection here including very new episodes – go Hulu! But they are only open to United States users for now.
Next up is YouTube’s shows which you can find here. ( I believe this is also US Only!) YouTube has some eclectic shows to say the least. They have a lot of National Geographic shows and classic TV shows like Doctor Who. They do have a great search engine and everything is categorized. A short while back, Mark O'Neill wrote about watching full length old school Star Trek episodes here.
I came upon the Doctor Who page by selecting it on the above menu. From here you will want to have Full Episodes selected and then you can go through the seasons and click on the episode you want to watch! Sweet.
The episode will play in the normal YouTube interface. How awesome is that?
As an added bonus here is a Doctor Who video courtesy of YouTube And last but certainly not least is NBC's online library located here. NBC realizes it has to compete with these other sites and not to mention torrent tracking engines pushing out the latest and greatest episodes like it was crack….wonderfully free crack… err umm….wonderfully free TV shows! So NBC lets us watch selected shows online in their entirety. (Again this is US Only!) You can browse through all the videos by aired date or by show. I suggest selecting the show you want first from the left hand side menu. I chose The Office.
Now on the Office screen there are options up at the top. Choose Full Episodes and you will only see what you are looking for. Don't get me wrong, you might want to watch out-takes or what not.
Select your video and you are on your way to spitting milk through your nose.
How do you watch TV online for free? We would love to hear about it 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
| ||
| 3 Free Contact Form Generators To Get Feedback From Your Visitors Posted: 05 Dec 2009 10:00 AM PST
Instead of spending hours trying to troubleshoot the bugs in your web page code, you could be spending that time producing quality content that draws in more visitors. It’s for this reason that I opt for pre-made widgets and I use script generators whenever possible. At the moment I’m searching for a high quality free contact form that I can use on my writing website to offer my SEO services to visitors. I thought this is a good time to bring along MUO readers on my exploration for the very best free email form generators available, before I make a decision and choose one for my website. Test #1 – TeleProTelePro is a UK-based website services company, and on their email form generator page, they provide a very easy and free method to create form-to-email scripts that well let your website visitors contact you through a useful and aesthetically pleasing free contact form.
The submission is one-page on the website with three easy steps. First you provide the “to” and “from” emails, then you create the fields that make up the form, and finally you select the scripting langauge that you would like the form to be generated in. In this case you can choose from ASP, PHP, or Perl (Windows or Linux). Once you submit, you receive the code that you can copy and paste into a PHP, ASP or Perl file right on your website.
In this case there’s a HTML code that you insert into your page, and then there’s a second section for the PHP file that it calls – contact.php. Once you copy the contact.php file into the same directory as your index.php file, and embed the HTML into your blog, you’re done! This is what the finished form looks like. The script automatically calls “ok.htm” on success or “error.htm” on failure. By replacing these pages in contact.php, you can make the script call whichever pages you like. I also found that it’s not easy to resize the fields (such as a long comment field) – you’d have to edit the HTML itself to customize that. Overall ranking for this generator – 3 out of 5 stars. Test #2 – Email Me FormI have to say, when I first came across EmailMeForm.com after seeing it mentioned at MakeUseOf, I was impressed by the design of the website alone. Most other form generator sites don’t give the appearance of a high-end professional website. This is the only one I’ve found that does. This one is a hosted form where the processing takes place on a different server, although you can select to embed the form on your own site so visitors don’t have to leave your web page. Most other similar services offer only a trial period for hosted form services, but EmailMeForm offers a truly free account with a few limitations – you can only have 5 forms and 50 fields max, and a few insignificant features are missing. For your purpose of adding a single form (or 5) to your site – this account will do it all. Once you sign up, you can log into your account to start creating your forms. In the control panel, click on “Create a New Form.”
The wizard steps you through the simple process of creating your customized form. There’s a dropdown list to select from seven useful field types (including a dropdown list – awesome!) – and you can require and/or validate specific fields. The form is very easy to customize during each step of the wizard, including introduction and conclusion paragraphs, background and font color and more. The thing I like the most about this web form is that it includes a spam-busting Captcha code. Once you’re through the wizard, just paste the code in your website or on your blog (HTML tab) and you’re good to go! This is how the form appears on my blog:
I love the appearance, and the fact that the embedded Captcha will stop those annoying spam submissions. I rate EmailMeForm a 5 out of 5 stars. Test #3 – Free Contact FormThe website FreeContactForm.com is a misnomer. While it does offer a free “lite” form you can use for very simple forms, it is primarily set up to sell the professional version. However, for my case, where I just want a very simple contact form, the lite version will do. On the free page, just click on “Download Contact Form Lite,” which will download a zip file containing all of the following files.
All you have to do to configure the form script to work on your site is open “lite_settings.php” and substitute “youremailaddress@yourdomain.com” with your correct email address. Then edit the email subject (the email you’ll receive from the form) and what thank you page you’d like to send your visitor to after they submit the form. Save the file, and then FTP all of the files to your website. You can either use contactform.html as your form page, or you can just copy the HTML into your “Contact Me” blog page, which is what I did here.
This form is also very simple and very easy to install. On the positive side, everything is hosted on your own server, and it’s very slimmed down and simple. On the negative side, in order to customize you need to understand at least the basics about PHP – and if you do, you could practically just write this free contact form yourself from scratch anyway. But for beginners who want to learn – it’s a good tool. I give this free tool 4 out of 5 stars. Final DecisionAfter testing each of these three free contact form generation tools on my blogs, I’ve decided to go with EmailMeForm simply because I like the professional feel of the site, the fact that I have a cool control panel where I can go to create new forms or customize old ones, and I really don’t need more than 5 forms anyway. Did I make the right choice? Do you know of any other great, free form generation tools out there? Share your insight in the comments section 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
| ||
| Essential Video Tutorials For Shooting & Editing Video Posted: 05 Dec 2009 08:01 AM PST
I’ve gone through many of the YouTube tutorials on how to make videos and picked out some of the most useful ones. Some of the best are from Videomaker magazine, a longtime resource for videographers, both professional and hobbyists.
1. These two videos, Basic Hand-Held Shooting Tips, and Pans and Tilts 101 cover techniques for hand-holding, zooming, panning, tilting with a hand-held camcorder.
3. The basics of video shooting is learning various types of shots for interesting productions. When you start learning shot types you’ll begin to recognize them in all the best Hollywood movies you see. Graspr, the Instructional Video Network, has some very good Video 101 tutorials in this area. I suggest watching Close-up and Wide Shots, Cutaway Shots and Camera Angle. In fact, the entire series should be viewed.
4. The best video productions are almost always effectively edited. Editing video is as much a skill as an art. Movie Maker and Adobe Premiere Elements are the introductory video editors for PC users. Tutorials for using these programs include Movie Maker Video Editing Tutorial and PalmBreezeCAFE's three-part introduction to Adobe Premiere Elements.
For iMovie '09 users, the Apple site itself contains a very polished set of videos for organizing and editing your captured clips. Most YouTube videos on iMovie '09 primarily present an overview of the program, but a few skilled users have put together introductory tutorials: iMovie 09 Beyond the Basics and iMovie 09 – Advanced Features. I personally think iMovie '09 is more difficult to use than the previous versions of iMovie. So if I still have iMovie '06' HD installed on your Mac I would learn and continue to use it for longer video projects. A 20-part series on YouTube is a good introduction for iMovie HD. 5. If you’re thinking about going into the videography business, you’ll want to check out another Videomaker tutorial, How to Start a Wedding Video Business. This video covers a little about equipment, developing a contract, and how to cover a wedding. It really just scratches the service, but it’s a start. Wedding Videographer Style and The Best Videographer—IOV Award Winners are also a couple of five-minute introductions that will wet your appetite. There are certainly more advanced and well done videos than the ones listed above. But I would recommend learning and practicing the basics of camcorder shooting and editing before you spend any money on expensive books and tutorials. If you find this article useful, please let me know by leaving a few 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
| ||
| 10 Sites To Download Free & Legal Online Christmas Music Posted: 05 Dec 2009 06:01 AM PST
Yup, it’s about time to get into the right mood for the Holidays. So drop the shopping bags, sit back, relax, and listen to some good seasonal music. Maybe this will also calm you down on the hectic commute. If you don’t have anything available, here are 10 pages that provide free and legal online Christmas music downloads. 1. Feels Like Christmas
The first page provides free online Christmas music downloads, primarily from independent artists. For 2009, five new musicians have been listed, including The Snoflowerz and Silvia Fleming. Songs are filed into the categories “Contemporary Vocal” and “Traditional Vocal“, with a total of 10 and 11 songs, respectively. To download an mp3, go to the respective category, right-click on the Download button and select “Save Link As…” from the pie menu.
2. New Christmas Music
At New Christmas Music you will find new (contemporary) Christmas songs, traditional Christmas carols, Christmas plays and Christmas CDs. Songs are available in up to three different formats: mp3, wma, and midi. To download, proceed as described previously. 3. Christmas MPfree
This page contains mp3’s, midis and scores. You can browse songs by the categories traditional vocal or instrumental, contemporary vocal or instrumental, and midi. Recently added files are featured on the start page. You can listen to the songs through Winamp by clicking the respective button. To download, proceed as described before. 4. A Garritan Community Christmas
At the point of writing this article, volume 6 for 2009 was not yet released. However, volumes 1 through 5 from previous years are available for download. Each album contains up to 21 songs. A free cover and CD label design are provided for printing. Songs of the current volume can be previewed through the web music player. 5. 10 + 100 Creative Commons Christmas Songs
He’s been updating the list regularly since then and it meanwhile contains over 250 songs. The list links both to the artist website and to the download page. Follow the song title link to obtain the mp3. Some links point directly to the file, others to a compilation, and some links may even be outdated. 6. Christmas Gifts
Christmas Gifts features 11 songs courtesy of Kevin McLeod. They are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0. You can download the files by using the right-click / save as method, described above. The site also provides a free Christmas Carols E-Book in PDF format, which contains the lyrics for dozens of songs. There is a link for sheet music and a midi file included with each song in the top right of the respective page. 7. A-M Classical
Right-click and select “Save Link As…” to download. 8. mfiles
The music is available in midi and mp3, and you can print the sheet music. As with most sites in this list, download is available through right-click and “Save Link As…”. 9. Christmas Corner
The site provides Christmas Carols in midi format and the matching lyrics to print and/or download. To download the midis, right-click on the “Listen” links and select “Save Link As…” from the pie menu. 10. Free-Loops.com
The final page in this list features free Christmas sounds, among midis and regular songs. Sounds include bells, falling snow, a drum loop, and Santa complaining about the chimney. To download, follow the respective audio file to its separate page and click the download button (green arrow onto hard drive). That’s it! If you would like to listen to Christmas Music Online, check out my recent post. Does Christmas music relax you? If so, what’s your favourites? Image credits: erwinbacik 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
|
I love to watch TV, I always have and always will. But as I get older, time becomes a bigger problem. In the early part of 2000 I snatched up a TiVo to help me watch all my prime time shows when I got around to it. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 12pm – 2am.
Before I get into how to find and use free email form generators, I’d like to explain why I decided not to create my own. For years I took the time to build my own websites from the ground up, but as the Web 2.0 virtual world introduced content management systems, widgets, script generators and more – the need to program every element of your own website or blog is no longer required.
Over the last several years I have shot about three dozen weddings using a Canon GL2 and various versions of Apple’s iMovie. When I first started out, I paid for a couple of video tutorials to help learn the craft, but nowadays you can learn all the basics by watching (and practicing!) free online video tutorials.
One of the first things you need to learn about shooting video is how to hold a camcorder. After viewing these videos, you’ll see that it’s not as obvious as you may think.
If you didn’t notice yet, it’s December and Christmas is just around the corner.
Each year, the Garritan Community compiles a Christmas album.
In 2005 Uwe Hermann first posted a list of 10 + 100 Creative Commons Christmas Songs.
A-M Classical shares a small selection of songs that were released under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
mfiles provides free mp3 downloads of Christmas Carols. Currently, there are 19 songs to choose from.
| You are subscribed to email updates from MakeUseOf.com To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment