Latest Tips from MakeUseOf.com

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• Cool Websites and Tools [December 8th]
• Use Your Android Phone To Find & Reserve Hotels With “Hotels Near Me”
• Manage Your Social Networks In One Place With Pond (100 Invites!)
• Technology Explained: What is the Difference Between MP3 & MP4?
• 3 Brilliant Freeware Platformer Games You Should Try Out
• Quick Actions You Can Do With Quick Search Box (Part 2) [Mac]
• Deal Of The Day: HDMI (2 meters) 6-foot Cables For ONLY $0.20
• 5 Free MP3 Full Albums You Can Download Legally Now
• Browsershots – Preview A Web Page In Different Browsers & Multiple OS’s

Cool Websites and Tools [December 8th] Posted: 08 Dec 2009 05:01 PM PST Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. All listed websites are FREE (or come with a decent free account option). No trials or buy-to-use craplets. For more cool websites and web app reviews subscribe to MakeUseOf Directory.   (1) Dohop – Interesting comparison site which lets travelers compare flights, hotels and car rental services in an easy to understand interface. It then searches over 600 airlines and travel sites like ebookers to get you the flight details and prices. Read more:Dohop: Online Flights, Hotels & Car Rentals Comparison (2) Favorite-TV Shows – Video website that streams episodes of various American TV shows online. This website has a wide selection of videos with the latest episodes from current-running TV series such as Heroes, Glee, Fringe, True Blood, and Family Guy. Read more: Favorite-TV Shows: View TV Shows Online (3) Apollo – Easy-to-use document proofing service that lets you easily get and give a feedback for a particular document, image or design over the internet. Read more: Apollo: Easy Image & Document Proofing Tool Online (4) Guestlist – Web application which allows you to create and manage online event registrations with ease. It enables you to create fabulous event registrations pages in no time. Read more: Guestlist: Makes Online Event Registrations Easier (5) Was It Up? – Online app that allows you to monitor your website uptime and be notified by email when it goes down. Also monitor for specific keywords on the homepage and find out if your domain has been hacked. Read more: Was It Up?: Monitor Your Website Uptime 24/7 Submit Your Web App These are just half of the websites that we discovered in the last couple of days. If you want us to send you daily round-ups of all cool websites we come across, leave your email here. Or follow us via RSS feed. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Related posts makeuseof extra #27 (99) Finally Stick To Your Resolutions With StickK (72) Cool Websites and Tools [September 9] (33) Cool Websites and Tools [September 7] (28) Cool Websites and Tools [September 6] (42)

Use Your Android Phone To Find & Reserve Hotels With “Hotels Near Me” Posted: 08 Dec 2009 03:01 PM PST Imagine the following scenario – you’re travelling around the world and you arrive at a deserted railway station in the dead of night.  There’s nobody around to ask for help and it’s about to rain.   You urgently need a place to stay for the night but the tourist information office has closed until the next day.   Your only connection to the outside world is your Android mobile phone. Rather than use it to call a taxi to take you back home again, how about installing a free Android app called “Hotels Near Me” which, as the name suggests, locates your position via GPS and then works out where all the hotels are around you.   You can then even book a hotel room through the app itself after viewing photos of the place. The free app, which can be found and installed via the Android Market, claims to list over 57,000 hotels from all over the world, and in 21 different languages too. In my testing of the app, I found it to be very accurate, responsive and gave me some very good choices.   My only complaint is that you can’t sort the results by factors such as price or smallest / biggest.   You are just handed a list of hotels and you have to browse through them all manually. So, let’s switch on the app and see what it can do : As you will see from the screenshot, you need to first switch on your GPS so the app can find out where you are. When it has found your location, you can either choose hotels near you or you can choose “elsewhere“.  Choosing “elsewhere” will bring up a small text box where you can type a location.   This feature is good for pre-planning the next stage of your trip if you don’t have accommodation booked.   So let’s say that the next day, you are planning to go to California, to San Jose.   Let’s choose “elsewhere” and type in your intended location : After about a few seconds delay, it brings up possibilities : As you can see,you can view a score out of 10 as well as the address.   But if you click the “read more” link, then a whole plethora of information opens up – photos of the hotel and/or rooms, booking instructions, phone and fax numbers, hotel policies, check in times, room features and you can check room availability right there and then. This app is a must-have for frequent travellers but as I said, it would be greatly improved if you could sort the hotels by price.  Having the Sheraton as your second choice is OK if you are travelling on a platinum credit card but not if you’re back-packing it. What mobile apps do you use to arrange and book your hotel accommodation?   Let us know 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 6 Amazing Web Communities for Exchanging Favors (8) 5 Review Sites To Help You Find The Perfect Hotel (19) The 5 Games You Should Be Installing On Your Android Mobile Phone (11) Technology Explained: How Do Satellites Track Mobile Phones? (31) Share Your Trips With EveryTrail (9)

Manage Your Social Networks In One Place With Pond (100 Invites!) Posted: 08 Dec 2009 02:01 PM PST If you have accounts on various social networks, and want to be able to manage social networks from one place, Pond may be what you’re looking for. Pond is the latest in social media aggregators, and serves two main purposes. It allows you to cross-publish content to your social networks, while also following content published by your contacts from those same social networks. It currently supports Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Facebook, with plans to add more services to its list. Add a social network by clicking on the tab labelled ‘Me‘ and click on ‘Add stuff.’ From there you can link each of your social networks, as well as add links to sites you follow, provided they have an RSS feed. Once each network has been added, don’t expect to start enjoying Pond’s benefits immediately. The site is a bit of a hit and miss when importing older posts, and so it only starts getting interesting once a few friends have updated their accounts. Facebook Through Pond, you can update your Facebook status, and you can also upload photos to your account. Sending photos from Facebook to Pond, at the moment, is a tedious task of uploading one picture at a time. Your friends’ status updates are included in your timeline, as well as their posted links, photos and videos, and you can comment on (or as Pond puts it ‘reply to‘) these updates. You can watch videos directly from within Pond, although, at first glance, there is no clear distinction between videos, photos and status updates. Only when you click on ‘open‘ in the bottom-left hand corner of the update, will you be able to see that there is a video or photo posted there. As is to be expected, there are certain aspects of Facebook that you will not see when browsing through Pond, such as other people’s comments on your friends’ updates, or comments written on your wall. You can also remove updates, mark them as read (which greys them out) or add them to your favourites. Adding a Facebook status update to your Pond favourites has no effect on Facebook itself, and does not reflect their ‘like’ feature. Twitter Pond is an almost completely functional Twitter client. You can read and post updates, shorten URL’s, post replies, retweet (or ‘republish’) and read replies and direct messages. You can’t, however, add a tweet to your Twitter favourites (not to be confused with your Pond favourites), you can’t follow Twitter conversations, and unlike many other Twitter clients, you can’t add images to your tweets. Flickr Flickr integration is pretty basic. You can publish photos directly to your Flickr account and add a description. Your Flickr contacts will also be automatically added to your friends list on Pond, and their uploaded photos will be visible in your timeline. YouTube Through Pond, you can upload videos directly to YouTube, and add a description. Videos from your subscriptions will show up in your timeline, but your favourites won’t. Bringing It All Together If you’re wondering why you should use Pond to manage your social networks – there’s one main incentive. It gives you a unified (if not somewhat limited) experience of all four websites it supports. You can cross-publish status updates to Facebook and Twitter and cross-publish photos to Facebook and Flickr, although support for uploading multiple photos is a must if this feature is to be taken seriously. You should also be able to cross publish videos to YouTube and Flickr, but that option doesn’t seem to be have appeared just yet. Pond also supports multiple accounts from each service, and makes it very easy to choose which accounts to update simultaneously, with the various services listed underneath the update box. What makes Pond really cool is the fact that you can merge your friends’ updates from their various services into one page. So if you have a friend who has a Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube account, you can merge all four into one page and follow all of their content right there in Pond,  in the same way you can see all of your own updates on one page: Merging contacts is simple. Click on the ‘Friends and Sources‘ tab and find the friend whose accounts you would like to merge. Pond currently lacks a much needed search function but you can filter the list by first initials. You will find a separate listing for each of your friends’ accounts on the various social networks. Click on one icon, and under the contact’s name choose ‘Add to merge box.’ Repeat the process until you have added all their accounts to the merge box – and don’t worry about getting confused – when an account has been added, it’s greyed out. Once you have all the accounts in there, click on ‘Merge‘ and Pond will do the rest. On your friend’s page, each post will now be clearly labeled, making it clear which site each update came from. You can also add your friends’ blogs to their Pond page. Click on their icon, and under their name, choose ‘Add source.’ All you need is the link to the blog, and Pond will find the RSS feed for you. Mobile & Desktop Access There are several ways you can access Pond when you’re on the go – the simplest of which is using their mobile web version at m.pond.pt. You can publish and read updates, add them to your favourites, access your friend’s individual pages, and reply to their tweets or Facebook status updates. You can also filter content by each social network. Accessing the mobile version on an iPhone is, as is to be expected, pretty slick. Mobile Apps specific to different kinds of phones are also in various stages of development, adding further capabilities to how you can use the site from your phone, including publishing photos. There are mobile apps currently available for Android and Nokia S60 phones with an iPhone app in the works. A desktop version of Pond is also in the works for Mac, Linux and Windows users. The desktop experience will reflect the web experience, but will have the added bonus of a simple drag and drop interface, when publishing photos and videos through Pond. Pond is currently in closed beta, but they’ve been kind enough to give MakeUseOf invites which will go to the first 100 people to ask for them!   If you would like to apply for an invite, just send a nice email to nancy+pondinvites@makeuseof.com .   We’ll update the page here when the 100 invites are gone. If you are one of the lucky ones to snag an invite, please come back after trying Pond out and let us know in the comments what you think! 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 Track Facebook, Twitter, Flickr & Youtube Updates on iPhone (4) Threadsy – Integrates Your Email and Social Networks (+Invites) (28) 3 Easy Steps to Lifestream with StoryTlr (7) Shozu – The Mobile Social Networking Hub (13) Have All Your Social Updates Collected & Sent With NutshellMail (2)

Technology Explained: What is the Difference Between MP3 & MP4? Posted: 08 Dec 2009 01:01 PM PST In our ever-modernizing age, things are constantly changing and being updated.  What the standard was yesterday may not necessarily still be the standard today.  All of these quick changes creates a market with tons and tons of options when it comes to every aspect of our lives. Music is no exception.  For years, MP3’s were the standard for music files.  Then that all changed as more extensions were developed and released.  Suddenly MP3’s weren't the only things available.  One of the extensions that came around was MP4. MP3 and MP4 sure sound similar, one might just assume MP4 is the next step for MP3, but that is not the case.  In fact, they are rather different, with distinct histories and uses. Let's examine the difference between mp3 and mp4 by looking at what each file extension is individually. MP3 MP3 is short for MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3.  It is used for audio and uses a compression algorithm that introduces loss, meaning it is a “lossy” compression format.  It is one of the most commonly used audio formats available and has been the standard for quite some time. Uncompressed audio files are rather large, just look at any WAV file.  This is because sound is very complex and the translation of it into a digital format that a computer can understand takes a lot of data. MP3 works to make file sizes smaller by using what is called psychoacoustic models.  They get rid of data that most people would not hear because it is too low or high.  By doing this, files sizes can be greatly reduced.  A 128 kbit/s MP3 file is about 1/11th the size of the corresponding file on an uncompressed CD. MP4 MP4 is short for MPEG-4 Part 14.  MP4 is based on MPEG-4 Part 12 which was in turn based on Apple's MOV file type.  MP4 is a container format, meaning it is used to store audio and/or video data, rather than to code the information.  MP4 video and audio can also be streamed over the internet.  This is also true of most other modern container formats. Because MP4 is a container format, it does not have a standard method of coding the audio or video information.  Instead, codecs dictate how the audio or video will be coded and possibly compressed.  For audio, Advanced Audio Coding, or AAC, is the most popular codec for compressing audio for transfer on the internet. So What's the Difference Then? From these two descriptions, we can note a few major differences.  First, MP3 is an audio compression format used to compress and store audio on a computer.  MP4 is a media container format used to store media of many possible types on a computer. Therefore, an MP3 file is limited with regard to the method of compression and can only store audio.  MP4 on the other hand, can store video as well as audio.  It can even store subtitles for a video file.  Also, since MP4 is a container, it can store audio and video that have been compressed in different fashions.  In fact, an MP4 file could be audio that has been compressed as an MP3. These differences make it so that a program that plays an MP3 cannot necessarily play an MP4 and vice versa.  The same goes for portable music players, though there are plenty of software options and portable players out there that can play both, for example Winamp. Both formats have their uses and things that they are better at than the other.  Do you have any opinions on what each format does better?  Let us know in the comments below. 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 Convert Audio Cassettes & LPs to MP3 in 5 Easy Steps (15) 5 Free Tools To Quickly Convert A CD To An MP3 Collection (16) Normalize MP3 Volume Levels with MP3Gain (11) Media Cope – An All In One Media Player, Cutter & Converter (14) Max – The Multitalented Audio File Converter for Mac (5)

3 Brilliant Freeware Platformer Games You Should Try Out Posted: 08 Dec 2009 12:01 PM PST Platformers, and in particular 2-dimensional ones, allow the budget-less indie developer to sprout their creativity without taking another mortgage. Perhaps that’s why so many innovative leaps are first made in these kind of games. As freeware gamers, the internet allows us to experience them first-hand. Sure, we’re not talking about Portal and Braid, but simple downloadable and flash games have not yet lost the ability to amaze. This article will review three of those freeware platformer games, entirely dissimilar, save in two aspects: platforming and brilliance. Continuity This first title is an online flash game. You can play it on your Mac/Windows/Linux web browser. If you want to enjoy it from your desktop, read Aibek’s article on how to download and play flash games offline. Continuity is that amazing combination of platform and puzzle. Although the level design is often simple, beating it is a whole different story. Consisting of four, six, or more parts, you need to rearrange your level several times before you’re able to reach the exit. The game gradually grows harder with more elaborate (and confusingly similar) level designs, and an increasing number of dead ends. Pressing space respectively zooms in or out on the little guy, the latter option allowing you to view the big picture and start puzzling. Before you even think of running to the tiny fire exit, you need to gather one or more keys around the level. Continuity delivers casual fun, but don’t expect it to be easy. Hint: if you’re really stuck on one of the puzzles – not uncommon in these games – you can skip the level in the options menu (Esc). madnessMADNESSmadness This is not your regular platformer, and you might get seriously hurt here. Turn back now, while you still can. We won’t judge you. On the contrary, it would probably be the wiser decision. Still here? Good. This is madness. You’ll love it. Forget what you thought you knew about physics. In here, the levels are round (in a 360° kind of way). There’s only one minor complication, the level gradually disappears. That red beam you see in the screenshot goes round and round, redrawing the ground beneath your feet. If you want to survive, you have to be fast and time it right. And then there are still those spikes. They’re kind of sharp. Madness, if you ask me. madnessMADNESSmadness is available as a Windows download. Saut Saut is an incredibly simple game. You’ve got only one control to worry about: jump. The level flies beneath you when you’re in the air, and you can only choose between big leaps and small hops. Just your luck that you’re on a floating island, who knows how far above the ground. There are two things that come to mind when you’re playing Saut. First of all, for monotonous space-bashing, the game is incredibly fun and addictive. Second, it’s incredibly difficult – you’ll waste quite a lot of lives before you get the controls down. Like madnessMADNESSmadness, Sault is available as a Windows download. Perhaps someday we’ll see a Mac/Linux port, but until then let’s be grateful that the game’s so light and emulator-friendly. Do you like a little challenge in a game, or would you rather have us reviewing more casual games? 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 3 Funny Flash Games That Make Fun Of The Gaming Industry (11) I’m In Like With You – Online Multiplayer Gaming Site (9) How To Download and Play Flash Games Offline (92) Destroy Zombies 3 – Awesome Online Zombie Shooting Game (4) Top 10 Conspiracy Web Sites (44)

Quick Actions You Can Do With Quick Search Box (Part 2) [Mac] Posted: 08 Dec 2009 08:01 AM PST Nobody’s perfect. We try our best and still there are imperfections in everything that we do. Human learn from their mistakes, but the opportunity to apply what we have learned is not always present. So what would you do if there was a second chance in life? Would you start over from scratch and try to re-do everything better? That might be the case of Nicholas Jitkoff. Jitkoff, the person who was once the developer of Quicksilver, was given a chance by Google to start over with Quick Search Box. He used everything that he’d learned from Quicksilver to build and refine QSB. That’s why QSB has an eerie similarity to Quicksilver, and yet they are also different in some ways. QSB may lack the powers of Quicksilver (for now), but it’s cleaner and (for me personally) easier to learn and use. Other QSB’s Quick Actions Continuing on from the first part of the article where we discussed four basic quick actions that you can do using QSB,  here are some more: Quick Basic Calculator: Doing quick calculations using QSB is very easy. Summon QSB and write down your query. For example, multiplying 3 and 2 is as simple as writing down 3*2. You don’t even have to hit enter to get the result. QSB can also do a more complicated calculation like (3+2)*12-40. The standard mathematics rules are applied here. It may not as flashy as a Calculator app, but QSB uses less steps to get to the same result. Quick check of the weather: Will today be a sunny day? Or will the snowstorm come? You can quickly have your weather prediction by typing “weather city” or “weather zipcode” (sans quote and replace “city” and “zipcode” with your respective location). Please note that zipcode seems to be only working for US areas. Quick iTunes control: You are taking a phone call but iTunes’ currently playing song is very disturbing. You can use QSB to control iTunes. Just type the command followed by “iTunes”. For example, you can type “Next iTunes Track” and QSB will complete the phrase even before you hit the “u” button. Press “Enter” to execute the command. Other basic iTunes commands are also available such as: Previous, Pause, Play. You can also Increase/Decrease iTunes volume and rating. If you do it frequently enough, QSB will help you finish the command at the first or second letter. Quick and emergency clipboard manager: There are many good clipboard managers out there, but for those who are still not using one, QSB can serve you as a decent alternative.Type “clipboard” and press tab/right arrow. You’ll see a list of recent clipboard item. Choose an item that you need and press another tab/right arrow. Choose copy to clipboard. You can then paste the chosen item anywhere using the usual Command + V. This method is less practical than using clipboard manager, but better than the one item limitation of the default clipboard. Quick currency exchange rate: We live in the era when geographical boundaries are not as big problems as it used to be. A person can live in one country and work for a company located in some other part of the world. This, and many other reasons, would make quick currency exchange rates a nice and useful feature of QSB.Use Command + 7 (Google Finance) and type both currency codes. You’ll get an instant result and if the result is not complete, just hover your mouse over the result. Create a quick email: QSB is integrated well with Address Book. This allow us to create a quick email. Just type the person’s name and press tab/right arrow, and you’ll have the option to create an email to this person. And if you’ve put your Google account in QSB, you’ll have another option to create the email using your GMail. Quick Dictionary definition: Type Dictionary, press tab/right arrow, and write the word that you want to define. You don’t even need to open the Dictionary. The Future Of Q I’m sure there are many more variations of using QSB that I’m not aware of. If you readers know any others, please share using the comments below! Meanwhile, a reader pointed out that Quicksilver runs flawlessly on his computers. He also suggested that I do a clean install of Quicksilver. Unfortunately, I’m not that lucky. I did manage to re-install Quicksilver. It runs normally until I try to install plugins. Everybody knows that one of the strong points of Quicksilver is in the availability of plugins. QSB is also catching up in this plugin department. Even though QSB has far less plugins that Quicksilver, more and more people are creating QSB plugins for their favorite applications. So for now, the Q in my Mac would be QSB. If I ever find a solution to the Quicksilver problem, I will probably install them both. 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 What’s new in Gmail: Imports, Images, Previews, Translations and more (12) iContact – Bring your Gmail Contacts to the Desktop (15) How To: Stay Connected With Gmail (14) How To Easily Set Up Google Apps on Your Website (24) Get Any Youtube Video to Your iPhone/iPod Touch in 2 Clicks [Mac] (6)

Deal Of The Day: HDMI (2 meters) 6-foot Cables For ONLY $0.20 Posted: 08 Dec 2009 07:01 AM PST We are now approaching the hottest time of the year for online shopping. Lots of crazy deals popping up on sites like Amazon on a daily basis. Starting from today and till the end of the month we are going to search through Amazon and share the best deals we discover. Stay tuned! Today’s deal: HDMI (2 meter) cables for as little as 20 cents. If you’re not sure what these are and why you would WANT to buy them, read on. You can use HDMI cables to connect your HDTV, computer/monitor, Playstation 3, DVD player etc. You’ll get the best picture quality possible with HDMI. It’s considerably better than what you will get with other cables. These cables carry both audio and video signals, so you have fewer cables to get tangled up! Details: Cable has 2 male HDMI Type A (19-pin) connectors; 2 meters in length High quality, with gold plated contacts, cable meets HDMI 1.3 specification Get the best picture quality with HDMI; supports full resolution 1080p with Blu-ray Can be used with DVI-I (24+5) or DVI-D (24+1) adapters Used for Audio/Video (HDMI carries both in one cable!) in TV setups, and video in computer setups The product page shows 75 customer reviews, the average rating is 4.5/5 stars. Pretty good! Get HDMI (2 meter) cables. Related posts Your Turn to Join MakeUseOf on Twitter! (10) Your Turn To Join MakeUseOf On Twitter! (3) Welcome To The Improved Make Use Of Comments Area (24) Welcome Three New Writers to the MUO Team (12) Welcome our new Guest Writers (16)

5 Free MP3 Full Albums You Can Download Legally Now Posted: 08 Dec 2009 08:03 AM PST In October 2007 the UK alternative rock band Radiohead shocked the music industry by providing a free mp3 full album download of their new album In Rainbows. Fans were asked to donate whatever they felt the album was worth. The standard CD release didn’t follow until weeks later. No other commercially successful band had ever done this before. Nevertheless, In Rainbows entered the UK Album Chart and the U.S. Billboard 200 at number one. It became one of the best albums of 2007 and won two Grammy Awards in 2008. Despite this roaring success, only a few major bands followed track. Offering free single mp3s, however, has become an important marketing tool for both new and established artists. For example the Dave Matthews Band has released free tracks to catch attention and promote upcoming record releases. Here are five mp3 albums from acclaimed artists and other great bands that you can legally download for free. Nine Inch Nails – The Slip The Slip was released in 2008 and continues to be available as a free download. It contains 10 tracks, available in high-quality mp3, flac, m4a or wave format. All download links are emailed upon request. The album is licensed under a Creative Commons “attribution non-commercial share alike” license. Other artists are welcome to remix the album and share their work. Coldplay – Left Right Left Right Left As a thank you to their fans, Coldplay started handing out a free live EP during their concerts earlier this year. Left Right Left Right Left contains nine tracks and has also been available for download through their website. After submitting details, the zip file can be downloaded directly. It contains the mp3 files and front cover album art. iLL-Literacy – iB4the1.1 In November this year the US funk band iLL-Literacy released the first chapter of their new album called iB4th1.1. The five tracks can be downloaded for free through their website. They plan to “always provide a free option for people to obtain our music, forever.” iLL-Literacy’s open-source music scheme is described in detail on their DIGIT.ILL Network page. To download right-click each song and select “Save Link As…” from the menu. The Crimea – Secrets of the Witching Hour The Crimea are a British indie band that has toured with several big artists, including the Stereophonics, Travis, and Kings of Leon. Their last album, Secrets of the Witching Hour, has been available for free download since 2007. It recently reached 100,000 downloads. The zip file contains 11 tracks and a PDF with the entire album art. Across Tundras – Herds of the Fathomless Valleys The US rock/metal band Across Tundras released their free record Herds of the Fathomless Valleys in August this year. The zipped mp3 album is available through Mediafire. It contains six demos, three live tracks, a Pink Floyd cover, and cover album art. Smashing Pumpkins In September, Smashing Pumpkin’s Billy Corgan announced that the new 44 tracks counting album Teargarden by Kaleidyscope was going to be released one song at a time starting Halloween 2009. Corgan wrote: Each song will be made available absolutely for free, to anyone anywhere. There will be no strings attached. Free will mean free, which means you won’t have to sign up for anything, give an email address, or jump through a hoop. You will be able to go and take the song or songs as you wish, as many times as you wish. He has yet to keep his word as not a single song has been released to date. We will keep you posted! Do you know of any other online places where you can download free and legal music?   Maybe you’re an up-and-coming band who would like to give out free samples of your work? Let us know in the comments. Image credits: duchessa 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 Final Fantasy IV : Free ReMix Music Album (3) 5 Free Tools To Quickly Convert A CD To An MP3 Collection (16) Top 4 Sites To Download Free, Legal Concert Recordings (6) Top 3 Sites For Streaming Your Music Anywhere (16) The Top 5 Sites to Find Song Lyrics Online (28)

Browsershots – Preview A Web Page In Different Browsers & Multiple OS’s Posted: 08 Dec 2009 04:01 AM PST Do you have to work on websites that will be viewed on MANY different systems and MANY different browsers? Well then how do you preview a web page on all of these systems? Do you have a quadruple booting system? Access to lots and lots of computers with all the different versions of browsers installed like Internet Explorer 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8? How about Firefox .9, 1, 2, 3, 3.5 and what about Windows, Linux, Mac OS or BSD? You know there has to be an easier method to preview a web page right?  So here we are again to provide it for you! I found Browsershots from the Make Use Of Directory located here. The direct link to the application is here. When you get to the site you will see a screen that looks similar to this: On closer inspection you can see your options. The operating system is at the top and the individual browsers are below it. From the most popular to the most obscure you can find everything here.  There are also options for Mac OS and Open BSD that  are cut off in this screen shot. Go ahead and type in a URL in the box that says Enter URL Here. That is the domain you want to see screenshots of. Check the check boxes for each browser you want a screenshot returned. And then there are more options below the grid. The other options include Screen Size. By changing this from Don't Care to a resolution like 1024 pixels wide that will emulate being the resolution of the user’s screen. I normally leave this on Don’t Care unless wrapping is an issue. Next up is Color Depth which ranges from 8 bits to 32 bits. Again I normally leave this on Don’t Care. JavaScript on the other hand I enable. This way I can see if all my Java based widgets are working and displaying properly cross platform and cross browser. This is a HUGE help for me in Wordpress development. Java I enable and Flash I enable. Select your appropriate options and submit your browsers shot request by hitting submit next to the URL field. That will bring you to a screenshot request page. This is where you can wait until your pages are displayed. They can take anywhere from instantly to 3 minutes depending on how busy the server is. Simply refresh the page and as the shots come in they will be displayed. After refreshing a few times and waiting, you will be able to see thumbnails of each screenshot. After about an hour of inactivity they start to expire and disappear. If you continue refreshing and looking at them they will stay longer. You can see below one of my images expired. Clicking on a thumbnail will bring you to the image full size. This is where you can analyze the page for errors. You can download the zip file containing all your shots by hitting the download x screenshots button on the thumbnail screen. Use this to help you master your cross platform web mastering skills! Do you have another favorite site that helps you preview a web page you’re designing? Share them with 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 How To Set Your Browser Homepage in 5 Browsers (19) How To Add 20 Best Features Of Other Browsers to Firefox (55) 10 Essential Software Apps For Web Development on a Mac (41) Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3) Top 10 Professional Sample Code Websites For Programmers (29)

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