MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [December 20th]” plus 7 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [December 20th]
- Geeky Fun: Latest Hilarious Picks
- How To Watch & Upload Free 3D Videos To YouTube
- The Top 3 Sites To Find Free MP3 Music Downloads For European Artists
- Compare, Review and Merge Multiple Documents Online with CompareMyDocs
- Chat Anytime, Anywhere, From Any Platform or Device With Nimbuzz
- Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy – Download It For Free!
- 5 Frugal Blogs With The Best Strategies to Save Money
| Cool Websites and Tools [December 20th] Posted: 20 Dec 2009 07:31 PM PST
(1) Kosher Maps – Finding a kosher restaurant in the city that fits your taste can be very difficult. Fortunately, Kosher Restaurant Maps is a website that shows you where all the kosher establishments are in any metropolitan area in the United States. Read more: Kosher Maps: Find A Kosher Restaurant In Your Area
(2) TartanMaker – is a simple tartan pattern maker that allows you to create and customize instant tartan patterns for your website design. For the unaware, a tartan is a pattern made up of crisscrossed bands in multiple colors usually found woven in clothes. These color patterns are perfect for website template backgrounds. Read more: TartanMaker: Online Tartan Pattern Maker (3) TweetCall – is a Twitter-based application that lets you update twitter via phone voice calls. Dubbed by its makers as “Twitter by Voice”, you only need to dial a toll-free number (1-877-TWEET-CALL) and leave a voice message. Your message will then be transcribed by the app and posted to your Twitter stream immediately. Read more: TweetCall: Post Updates On Twitter by Voice Calls (4) HTML-Ipsum – If you are a designer and your life revolves around HTML and CSS, then you would know the importance of various time-saving tools that make your life easier. HTML Ipsum is one such tool. It has got a collection of HTML codes along with dummy Latin text in it (or what we call "Lorem Ipsum" text). Just click on the title of any of the code boxes and the corresponding code gets copied to the clipboard. Read more: HTML-Ipsum: Collection Of HTML Tags With Lorem Ipsum Text (5) eBooksRead – With fancy eBook readers like Kindle and Nook, the popularity for eBooks is constantly increasing. However, there are very few resources on the web where you can find eBooks easily. eBooksRead is an online library where you can read and download over 240,000 ebooks for free. Read more: eBooksRead: Read Over 200,000 Free eBooks
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
| ||
| Geeky Fun: Latest Hilarious Picks Posted: 20 Dec 2009 06:00 PM PST
Check out the top picks from MakeUseOf Geeky Fun during the last week.
If you would like to keep up with all latest Geeky Fun additions, please subscribe to the Geeky Fun feed here. You can also subscribe and get the latest additions via email.
Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
Related posts
| ||
| How To Watch & Upload Free 3D Videos To YouTube Posted: 20 Dec 2009 05:30 PM PST
What is largely overlooked is 3D entertainment online. Why shouldn’t we be able to enjoy the thrills of free 3D video entertainment from the comfort of our homes? Hell, it’s almost 2010! For those of you who don’t know exactly how 3D works, I’ll explain it briefly so you’ll understand what I’m talking about in the later parts of this article. The world’s largest provider of user-generated content, YouTube currently operates a great service for 3D videographers and their viewers. You can see a screenshot of a 3D video as it would look without viewing glasses; after the jump.
Below the video screen, there is a drop down menu which lets you choose from several viewing options. Firstly, we have those specialized for whatever type of viewing glasses you have. So if you have Red and Cyan glasses, choose that option. You can also choose whether or not you want to view the video in full colour with 3D or black and white with 3D. The other option allows you to make use of the less popular uses for 3D video such as parallel viewing (I.e. watching both videos at once) and a mirror-split version of the former. Similarly, you can also view either of the film streams at once; left or right. If you don’t have viewing glasses, you can select the ‘cross-eyed’ option which will display the left and right video streams alongside one another. Simply cross your eyes (if you can) and thus the two videos will overlap. Not the most comfortable viewing method but it’ll get the job done. Not recommended for full length films however! Obviously, the best way to view 3D videos is to have your own viewing glasses. You can pick them up at basically any cinema or buy them online. A five pack of cheap, paper viewing glasses will set you back around $3 including P&P from eBay. Alternatively, you can make your own. Various guides suggest different methods. The most basic is to simply recycle an old pair of sunglasses (or make your own cardboard frames) and colour clear plastic in with felt-tip markers. You can read more about doing that here.
If you publish videos on YouTube and would like to include a 3D video in your library, simply add the following tag to it: ‘yt3d:enable=true’. This will enable the drop-down menu we discussed above and index the better video for search results. To look for a free 3D video on YouTube, simply put ‘3D’ before your search term. As of the time of writing, YouTube currently doesn't have a dedicated category for 3D videos. Well, have you got your 3D specs ready? Just be prepared to jump away from your laptop every time something flies at 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
| ||
| The Top 3 Sites To Find Free MP3 Music Downloads For European Artists Posted: 20 Dec 2009 03:30 PM PST
Wouldn’t you love to know what else Europe has in store? You can discover great music from European artists all over. Knowing they are European and trying to find free MP3 downloads specifically from a certain continent, however, can be quite difficult. I went the extra kilometer for you and dug out some sites that offer mostly European music or categorized free MP3 downloads by country. 3. TONSPIONThis German site reviews artists and regularly provides fans with free tracks. Tonspion translates to sound spy.
The artists featured here are not exclusively European. There have been and will be free downloads from all over the world, including US artists like Madonna, Eminem, and Kings of Leon. However, the list of the site’s most popular artists includes predominantly European musicians, for example Coldplay, Radiohead, Dúné, The Kooks, and Mando Diao. The site is German, but fortunately for you, German language is full of anglicisms. Just follow the “Free MP3:” or “Review und Download” links for each post in the MP3 category. On the following page “Free MP3 Download” is an unmistakable hint that an MP3 is hidden behind the respective link. When browsing by artist, you’ll notice the option “Exklusive MP3″. Some mp3 downloads are exclusively offered through TONSPION and you will not find them anywhere else. Those are the gems! 2. New MelodiesNew Melodies is a community that wishes to eradicate music piracy by providing legal and free MP3 downloads.
The site can be browsed by product, genre, region, time, rating, and music style. The regions of course include Europe. The site’s search engine also lets you browse songs by country and combine that criterion with various genres. Unfortunately, the nationality is only noted on the artist’s full profile, not on the mini preview for each song. To download songs from New Melodies you must first sign up. Also, since the site supports UNICEF, the download only starts after a short for a nonprofit organization. In this very special case, it’s worth the hassle for the good cause. At least the zip download comes with album art. 1. JamendoHere we have a social music site that provides a large download catalog of Creative Commons licensed music.
Within the 10,000 songs containing archive, you will discover music from around the world. European artists and bands include Silence from Belgium, Bass from France, and sion from the UK. To browse artists by country, go through the categories > Music > Creative Commons. You’ll see a list of all free albums and various CC attributions and a little flag displayed in the bottom left with each artist. When you hover the mouse cursor over the flag, it will show you which country these colors belongs to. Next, click any European flag and finally you’ll see an option to browse artists by country in the top left, below “Browsing … albums”. Which European artists do you love most? Image credits: Gastonmag Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
Related posts
| ||
| Compare, Review and Merge Multiple Documents Online with CompareMyDocs Posted: 20 Dec 2009 01:30 PM PST
CompareMyDocs comes to our rescue in such situations. You can check out their demo video in our coverage of CompareMyDocs in the MakeUseOf Directory. It might sound unbelievable, but you don't need to sign up or even register to use this incredible web app that lets you compare documents online – just use it for free! In this article, let us consider a life-like scenario and see how it works in detail. A Collaboration ExampleOur loyal readers have been helping us test the new MakeUseOf theme. Suppose we had an internal status report being passed around on the various tasks involved. Such a status report is a good example of real-life document collaboration. In this case, we would have Mark, our Managing Editor, send out a blank template and ask everyone to update the document with details of the status of their tasks. Earlier, there were two possible scenarios: Scenario #1: Mark sends the document to one team member, gets an updated version back, then sends it to the next team member to get her update, and so on. Needless to say, Aibek, our Editor-In-Chief, would be fuming by the time Mark had consolidated the distributed MakeUseOf team's inputs. Scenario #2: Marks sends out the document to all of us, and we all update it as soon as it's convenient for us and send it back. Mark then opens two documents at a time in MS Word, consolidates the changes, then opens the third one. As you can imagine, with a team of over 30, Mark would spend hours in preparing a consolidated status update. I am sure you must have encountered both these situations very often. Enter CompareMyDocs. In Scenario #2, Mark has multiple versions of the same document. Let's say he has received 3 updated versions, aside from his original:
Uploading DocumentsMark goes to CompareMyDocs and uploads the documents. You can upload any .doc, .docx, or .rtf documents up to 7 at a time.
After clicking Compare, CompareMyDocs scans all document versions for changes. After a few seconds depending upon the size of the document and number of changes, the changes by each team member are shown in a different color like this:
Reviewing ChangesShown on the right are all the differences in each version by different authors. Roll-over of the mouse lets you Accept, Scrap, Hide, or Reject each change. Scrapping a change turns it into a Comment or Note.
So if Mark accepts this change as shown above, the document is updated after merging that change:
Merging and SavingOnce Mark has finished reviewing all the changes by accepting, or rejecting them, he clicks Save on the toolbar to download the final consolidated version.
Additional Goodies
Whether the collaboration is between students for a thesis, teachers for a curriculum, team members for a status report, or anything else you can imagine, CompareMyDocs can become an indispensable tool anywhere people collaborate on documents. You can also check out our other articles on collaboration or the free collaboration tools listed in our directory. Will CompareMyDocs optimize your collaboration workflow? Do you think this is a unique service? Let us hear from you in the comments! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
Related posts
| ||
| Chat Anytime, Anywhere, From Any Platform or Device With Nimbuzz Posted: 20 Dec 2009 11:30 AM PST
But life doesn’t have to be that hard. There are many multiple-platform chat application designed to help these people. Among those names, I personally think chatting with Nimbuzz is the best. Overdelivers but OverlookedIt’s amazing how a good application could be so overlooked. I’ve chatted using Nimbuzz for years and there are so many things that you can do with it. Strangely, many of my friends have never even heard the name. If you are in the same boat with my friends, you could get familiar with Nimbuzz by checking out our older articles about it. Nimbuzz is a free service that allows its users to access several instant messaging platforms simultaneously, make free calls to some internet voice services (Skype, GTalk, MSN), make conference calls, send messages, and much more. Nimbuzz is available as web based chat service, and as downloadable clients for mobile, Windows and Mac. Simply put, you just need to register with Nimbuzz, set all of your IM accounts once, and access all of them anytime, anywhere and from any platform or device using only your Nimbuzz account. The Many Personalities of NimbuzzNimbuzz has just released the Mac version of its client as an addition to its several existing ‘personalities’. Here is the complete list of ways you can access Nimbuzz.
This version of the client will work in Windows XP, Vista and 7.
Chat and beyondUpon installing, you’ll see your contacts in the main window. Those who are offline will be greyed out.
You can start chatting with any one of your online friends by hovering your mouse over the name and click “Chat” from the pop-up window.
You also can send files and contacts to your friends by clicking the “Send” button at the top right corner of the chat window.
To enrich your chatting experience, you could add smileys to your message. They are available on the right side of the message input field.
One feature that I found very useful is the ability to “Buzz” your offline friends.
If they registered their account with their mobile number, they will receive a “call” from Nimbuzz.
Nimbuzz has always been my chosen chat client on my mobile devices. Even though I’m not a chatty person, I prefer chatting via Nimbuzz instead of sending SMS because it’s cheaper. And now I love it more because of the availability of the Mac client. Do you use Nimbuzz? Do you know other alternatives? Share using the comments 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
| ||
| Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy – Download It For Free! Posted: 20 Dec 2009 09:30 AM PST
Even though MakeUseOf is famous for running with ‘what’s cool’ instead of ‘what’s new’, I guess we’re really late breaking this news, because Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy went adware mid-2008. Nevertheless, the coming holidays seemed a good enough reason to throw it (back) in the ring. You can get the Psi Ops download for free if you live in the U.S or Europe. Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy (US, EU)Psi-Ops is a secret American government project, an organization intended to keep world peace with an exciting cocktail of arms and psychic powers. ‘The Order’ is an international terrorism group that has other plans ‘in mind’. With a brain wipe and change of appearance, Nick Scryer is set out to infiltrate the group. After being freed from imprisonment by the mysterious Sara, Nick slowly regains his psychic powers. Not a day too late, because the whole world is going haywire and someone needed to pwn those antagonists. Psi-Ops, although not winning Oscars for the story-line, is an incredible game. Despite earning several great reviews, with scores hoovering around 80 to 90 per cent, the game has gone largely unnoticed. Some of the bigger guys didn’t deem it worth a review, and the gaming public has scarcely heard the name. All in all, the game has hardly lived up to its potential. Those who have played it have nothing but praise and are still hoping on a sequel. Four years after the initial release, Psi-Ops was released again as an ad-supported title for the United States and Europe. GameplayPsi-Ops is a third-person shooter with a psychic powers. You can carry up to two guns, and the game offers a wealthy arsenal of weapons. However, the physical weapons become close to obsolete as the game progresses. To complete the later levels in the game, you will heavily need to rely on your psychic abilities. This could hardly be brought up as a bother, though. As the story unfolds, you’ll learn telekinesis (moving objects with your mind), mind control, pyrokinesis (hint: it’s got to do with fire) and several other shows of awesomeness. These psychic powers are very well integrated in the gameplay. The controls are intuitive enough, and the levels are designed to offer several ways of physics manipulation and achieving your objectives.
As you slowly regain your psychic abilities, you’ll be facing a number of rogue Psi operatives – each mastering a specific psychic domain. These ‘bosses’ are lined up one after another, and although the progression tends to get pretty linear, the game stays fun and interesting. Although this might in fact be a point of cheer for the more hardcore gamer, the game gets much more difficult near the end. Combined with the check-point saves, this is a recipe that’ll have you playing some levels ‘just a few more tries times’. Concluding, Psi-Ops is a very enjoyable game, even 5 years after its release. Its well implemented psychic storyline and physics make it one of the better ‘freebies’ that the gaming world has to offer. If not because it’s new, you should be playing it because you failed to recognize a great title in 2004. Live in the U.S. or Europe? Download it here, for free! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
Related posts
| ||
| 5 Frugal Blogs With The Best Strategies to Save Money Posted: 20 Dec 2009 08:30 AM PST
Here on MakeUseOf, we like to write about ways to save money. In fact, most of the tools and programs we write about are free! I know we have covered sites such as TipJar and SaveEveryWay and that Guy has already shared his list of 3 Great Sites To Help You Achieve A Lower Cost Of Living. Let this be an addition to a wonderful category of helpful sites making saving a buck that much easier! Please notice that I tried HARD to exclude sites who’s sole purpose is to share deals and coupons. These are about how to learn how to be frugal! Without further delay, here are five frugal blogs you should add to your feed reader! Frugal Village
Frugal Village is one of the only blogs on this list with a very professional design (IMHO). Not only is it aesthetically appealing, but present posts are easy to find. There’s a forum to learn from and share with others so there’s community here! A few posts caught my eye. In the article titled “Products Tightwads Don’t Buy“, you are given a list of products that you won’t ever find someone who is truly frugal buying and simple alternatives. Catchy title and great content! Also check out “Give Low-Cost Gifts” (includes a cool idea: a home-made marshmallow gun!) and “Going From Two Incomes to One.” My Year Without Spending
This is a blog by an adventurous soul who joined “The Compact“, a Yahoo group whose goals, for one calendar year, are to go beyond recycling, reduce clutter and waste in their homes, and to simplify their lives. I like the blog, and added it to this list, because of the many personal tips it shares that end up saving money. I really enjoyed reading about her gift wrapping ideas and the article about toilet paper! The Buck List
Mr. Buck here says that he has been making and saving money for quite some time and that he’d like to share the ideas he’s “discovered and/or tried.” I like this blog because it doesn’t just stop at saving but also shares tips on making money. His wit is unmistakable in articles such as the ones where he takes “wimpy” tips and “beefs” them up a bit! I also like the articles that take a problem and list several solutions that should have been obvious but brings them back to the light in a concise manner (How To Find Free Firewood). The Frugal Life News
The Frugal Life News happens to be a neat community that helps you “Live well with what you have.” Contentment, is that still “in”? This site is run by a husband and wife and is appearently a companion site to a forum and a newsletter. One post that really caught my eye was the one about several ways to use those deactivated credit cards that come in the mail! I still remember the days when AOL would send endless disks in the mail and we’d find all kinds of cool things to do with them! Um… I digress. Also check out the article about Citizen Shipper, an unorthodox system that offers strategies to save money on shipping. Pat Veretto’s Frugal Living Blog
I like the motto of this blog: “Living frugally is a daily hands-on affair.” Pat Veretto is the author and she obviously also writes for AssociatedContent.com because a list of her frugal-type articles lines the sidebar. Nothing wrong with that! Anyway, her article about neat tricks to help with heating costs is the one article that drew me in and is probably why her blog ended up on my list! Also check out her article on the origins of “cheapskate” and tightwad.” There you have your five frugal blogs you should be following if you want to learn how to save money! Hey, do you know of more that you think should be on this list? What about other forums or communities that also share money-saving tips? Share away! Image credits: MorgueFile.com 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
|
That extra dimension tends to work wonders for films and TV. I recently went to see UP!, and while the 3D animation wasn’t exactly groundbreaking it definitely added an extra layer of entertainment.
Europe is home to some of the greatest musicians of all times. The old continent has been the leading edge in the music industry ever since the classics: Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, just to name a few. Of course we must not forget more recent classics, including ABBA, A-ha, the Rolling Stones, the Scorpions, and the Beatles. Today it’s Coldplay, The Chemical Brothers, Massive Attack, Radiohead, and many more. Yes, these are all majorly successful European bands.
In today's collaborative professional environment, teams often need to work on documents at the same time. The Track Changes feature of MS Office works only if each reviewer updates a document and sends it to the next reviewer, but this rarely happens in real life. Instead, we end up with multiple versions of the same document with changes made by different people, and it is a painstaking task to open and scrutinize each one in turn to merge and create the final version.
Some people are natural born chatters. They have friends from each and every existing chat service and have to stay connected with their chatting friends all the time. They don’t mind the trouble of having to open several chatting clients and manage them across several platforms.
Apart from Chuck Norris, there’s nothing better than an ex-retail game gone free. Ad-supported games are nothing new, but we can’t support it enough.
One of the last posts I wrote was about 
| 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