MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [January 4th]” plus 8 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [January 4th]
- Join MakeUseOf On Twitter!
- 3 Coolest Ways A Geek Can Get Girls To Notice Him On Facebook
- How To Set Up Email On A Basic Cell Phone
- 6 Photography & Photoshop Tips For The Perfect Family Portrait
- How to Temporarily Change the Default Program for Opening a File Using Coffee
- The Complete Guidebook To Web Searching [PDF]
- Perform A Variety Of Batch-Processing Operations On Your Photos With Phatch
- Twizzle – The Latest and One of the Best in iPhone Twitter Apps
| Cool Websites and Tools [January 4th] Posted: 04 Jan 2010 07:31 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.
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
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| Posted: 04 Jan 2010 05:30 PM PST
You’ll be notified everytime there is a new post on the MakeUseOf Blog, a web app review on the MakeUseOf Directory or something new on Geeky Fun. Plus, we would love it if you would re-tweet the posts and discuss them, so more people get to know about us and join our community. Thank you! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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| 3 Coolest Ways A Geek Can Get Girls To Notice Him On Facebook Posted: 04 Jan 2010 03:31 PM PST
In previous articles I’ve touched on relationships before. For example, I wrote about some uniquely geeky ways to ask someone to marry you on the Internet using Google Maps. The problem again is that you need to meet someone first before you can ask them to marry you. I also covered Randomate, a speed dating service that you can use with your webcam, but maybe you’re not the kind of guy that does the whole speed dating thing. Well, thanks to Facebook, it no longer matters that you’re in front of the computer most of the day, because you now have an entire world of wonderful, single women at your fingertips. The only remaining problem is, how does a geek get Facebook girls to notice him?
How A Geek Can Get Facebook Girls To Notice HimThere’s one thing that I’ve got to make clear – I’m basing this article on the assumption that you’re looking for a future wife, not a one-night stand. This is important because as girls mature, the things that they consider important typically change. By the time they are in their twenties (or in college), they’ve been through the same sickening cycle so many times with the sort of guys they dated in high school, that by their 20’s they realize the sort of guy they really want to marry. Not all women, mind you – others come to terms with this very early in their teens. So what sort of guy is it that women who are ready to settle down really want? Well, having three sisters who have each gone through this cycle, I’ve observed that he’s the sort of guy that:
Now, I realize that I’m completely categorizing women in this introduction and many women reading this may take issue with such sweeping generalizations. For that, I apologize, but the goal here is to help geeky guys come to terms with what most women want. Now, at this point in your Facebook experience, you’ve probably amassed a fair number of women from your past already – from high school, college, past jobs, associations and other friends.
This isn’t like in the 90’s when hardly anyone was using the Internet, and finding an attractive women online was nearly impossible. Today, you’ll find countless women on Facebook who are beautiful, nice, family-oriented and looking for a guy just like you (they perhaps just don’t realize it yet). Many of these women are divorced or single, and actively looking for a good man, even though it may not be apparent on their Facebook profile. So how do you draw their eyes toward you without coming across as arrogant or intrusive? Tip #1 – Convey Your Healthy Love Of WomenThe secret to attracting the attention of these potential dates is by conveying, through your actions and profile updates, exactly what kind of man you are. The idea is to focus on those characteristics of men that they are looking for (see the list above). For example, if you want them to see how much you love the female gender simply because women are beautiful both inside and out – portray how deeply you feel about your niece or your sisters. Make it obvious that you both love, and are loved, by many other women in your life.
This works mostly because women at this stage in their lives are used to guys boasting about their accomplishments and their skills, but by using your status updates to communicate with affection and kindness to the women already in your life, they’ll spot your status recognize that you’re a pretty sweet guy. Before long, they’ll wonder if there’s a way they can get any of that sweetness too (especially if there isn’t any in their life at the moment.) Tip #2 – Show That You’re Adventurous & FunWhile they may be looking for a little stability and a family, there’s always a small voice inside women (and men) that cries out for adventure, mystery and spontaneity. Sometimes they want to be swept up off their feet and whisked away to a secret, secluded hideaway for a romantic weekend. These are the things they dream about, and these are the things that you should portray about yourself. How? Well now that’s where technology comes into play. Sign up with one of the popular photo sharing sites and start posting photos of your trips, no matter how mundane you may think they are.
Sharing your photo adventures (even if it’s just a short hiking trip), proves that you get up and get out and explore the world. It shows that you’ve got what it takes to put a bit of spark and excitement in her life. Want to do one even better? Run a blog to chronicle your adventures and post the updates to your Facebook account!
It’s one thing to see how exciting your life is through your Facebook profile updates, but when you have a blog, it’s even greater proof that you take your excitement and fun very seriously. Tip #3 – Show How Much You Love KidsI grew up with three sisters, and I’ve known many of their friends of all ages, and if there’s anything that they all share in common it’s that just about all women rank a respect and love of children as one of the top-ranking criteria for the man they decide to marry. Now, the odds are pretty good that you have someone in your life with children – maybe a brother or sister with kids. Take every opportunity to spend time with them, and take lots of snapshots. Obviously these won’t be fabricated photos (because you really do love kids don’t you?) – but they will be proof positive of how much you do love spending time with, and playing with, kids. Show how much of a kid at heart you really are.
It’s like a force of nature – a law of physics – if you’re near either little kids or puppies, before you know it there will be a crowd of women around you. It’s the God’s honest truth. I don’t make the rules, I’m just helping you understand them so that you can turn your Facebook account into a magnet to attract the kind of women that you want. I am not suggesting that you present yourself as something that you’re not – but if you have all of these great characteristics, you should be portraying them on your Facebook profile! Trust me, if you follow these three basic techniques for updating your Facebook account, before you know it you’ll have single women asking you for your phone number. If you don’t believe me, try it, and then come back here to share your success stories in the comments section below! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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| How To Set Up Email On A Basic Cell Phone Posted: 04 Jan 2010 01:30 PM PST
I guess back in its heyday, receiving an email was like receiving your school report card when you were a kid: utter excitement at having receiving something in the post then utter disappointment upon its opening. Now, we receive dozens of emails per day with some being more crucial than others. As I mentioned before in other articles I don’t own a hi-tech smart phone. Rather, I bring along a low-budget cell phone. Yet checking my email is one of its primary uses. Without email on my cell phone, I would be unable to tweet photos, send notes to Evernote and reply to urgent emails while on the move. So here’s how to set up email on your cell phone to check your messages comfortably. Using the WebI won’t go into this too much as it’s the most primitive way of using email on a cell phone and should only be used by those who rarely check their emails. Basically, using your mobile’s web browser to navigate to your email provider’s website (such as GMail, Yahoo or Hotmail) and log-in using your credentials. This can normally be done by placing an ‘m.’ before the usual URL such as m.yahoo.com. Most of the basic options are available such as compose, send, receive and delete. Setting up Your email Program
Then, using ‘Options’ create a new account. Enter you name and other information asked. When it comes to entering in the incoming and outgoing severs (ensuring you have POP3 selected) you’ll have to find the server addresses for your email provider. This can be done by Googling the following: ‘Service Name email server addresses’. Here are a few popular ones:
This is basically the same procedure as setting up an email account to run on your PC with Outlook or another email program. Then enter in your username and password as you would when logging in on your computer. Once the email account is created you should be able to send/receive emails. If you still cannot, ensure you have your GPRS set up properly (contact your network for settings although it’s normally set up when you buy the phone) or double-check the settings you entered. Lastly, make sure that POP3 is enabled in your email’s settings by using the web interface.
Setting Up Auto-PollingAuto-Polling, in terms of email, is the automatic checking and retrieving of emails at regular time intervals set by the user. For example, I currently have my phone set up to check emails every thirty minutes. Normally a setting for this can be found under the account options in the email program on your phone. Look out for ‘Retrieve Interval’, ‘Polling Settings’ and other such phrases. When you have set it up on your phone it should be able to retrieve emails automatically. One problem I had with this in the past was with my email account and not the phone. By default, it was set to not allow automatic retrieval for security reasons. If your phone can’t retrieve the emails, look at your email account’s settings to see if this option is turned off. Obviously, using a basic cell phone for this task does have its drawbacks. GPRS charges can be expensive depending on what country you live in so watch out. Contact your network provider to see if there is a package with cheaper or free data allowances. That said, most phones will only download the email's contact info (i.e. who it was from) and the subject leaving you to decide whether to download the full email, thus saving you money on data charges. Having something as basic as email set up on your phone will vastly increase its usefulness and your productivity. Given the fact that most online services such as Twitpic, Evernote, Blogger and Wordpress allow you to use their services via email, you’d be mad not to! For more of my articles on basic cell phone apps, tips and tricks, visit my author’s page. Image credit: Bah Humbug / CC BY-ND 2.0 Related posts
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| 6 Photography & Photoshop Tips For The Perfect Family Portrait Posted: 04 Jan 2010 11:30 AM PST
First, let’s talk a little about the set up. If you’re looking to make a formal portrait, try to do so when when you and your family are all dressed for a formal occasion. This way, family members don't whine about having to dress up just to take pictures. Everyone should not wear the exact same color of clothing, but colors should be complementary. In my experience, plaids and really dark colors don't always work well. And sometimes, as you notice in the photo below, details can be lost in bright red clothing when a flash is your main light source. 1. LightingIf you can make the family portrait outdoors (early morning or late afternoon) you can get away with not using an external flash, or perhaps use it for fill light outdoors. If you're shooting indoors, using an external flash on your camera is highly recommended. Shooting the flash through an umbrella will help with softening the light on the subjects. But don't let the lack of this equipment keep you from trying indoor portrait shoots. If you can arrange to make photos with your family positioned near a well-lit window (shooting at say 400-800 ISO) that might also get you effective shots. 2. Preparing for the ShootYour family is probably no different than most people when it comes to taking photos; they're generally not patient. They want to look great in the photo, but they may not have patience while you fumble around with the camera. So set up your equipment and do a few test shots before you assemble everyone. By all means, shoot your portraits with your camera on a tripod. If you plan on being in the photo, you will need to use the self-timer on your camera or a remote device that triggers your camera's shutter. The challenge with flash photography is that photos can come out too bright or too dark. Reviewing images on the back of your camera's LCD screen will not always give you an accurate picture of how well exposed your photo is. Images typically always look okay on the LCD screen. So my suggestion is use your camera's histogram and take several shots at different exposure and light settings. Fixing Photos in PhotoshopThough I took several family photos during the session, the one we liked most, as you can see, was over exposed. The off-camera flash was too strong. In other shots the exposure settings were better, but the content of the photo was not to our liking. This is the nature and challenge of photography. So here are a few suggestions for fixing the problem. I used a relatively wide angle lens and an off-camera flash positioned behind a white umbrella to soften the lighting. I would have preferred a dark background instead of the white wall with its numerous smudges, but that's the limitations I had to work within. As we can see, the photo is over exposed, particularly on our faces. The distance between the camera and subjects made it difficult to crop the photo in-camera. Thus I intentionally shot wide so I could have room for cropping later.
I actually shot the photo in RAW mode, but I'm going to assume that many readers of this article shoot in traditional JPEG mode. 3. Crop the PhotoOpening a duplicate of the original photo in Photoshop, I first cropped for an 8 x 10 size. This of course also cropped out unwanted background areas. Making a specific size crop also makes it better for printing.
4. Fix the ExposureThere are many ways to address exposure problems in Photoshop. In this approach, I used the Levels Adjustment layer (Image>Adjustments>Layers.) There's a lot that can be done with this tool, but in general, the sliders control the shadow, midtones, and highlights of an image. You move these sliders to get the desired exposure. You want to be careful not to lose detail in the shadow or highlight areas of the image. Every image is different, so just move the sliders back and forth until you get your desired results.
5. Detailing Shadow and HighlightAnother useful tool in Photoshop for dealing with over exposed (or underexposed) images is the Shadow and Highlight tool. A similar tool exist and works better in RAW image editors like Adobe Camera RAW or Adobe Lightroom. But it can often work with JPEG images in Photoshop. Shadow and Highlight is found in the menu bar, Image>Adjustments>Shadow Highlight. Be sure to duplicate the Layers Adjustment layer because Shadow and Highlight is destructive. If you have never used the tool, when it opens the default settings of 50% will be set for lightening the shadows. But don't worry, you're in control. Simply move the Shadow and Highlights sliders to make the adjustments you need. Each photo is different, but you can start by taking the sliders all the way to the left and then slowly pulling them to the right. As you can see, this tool helped bring back detail in the over exposed highlight areas. I made sure to maintain the detail of the shadow areas, especially with my daughter's hair. This and the Levels Adjustment tool also helps increase contrast in the image.
6. RetouchingThis image didn't need sharpening. The major retouching I did involved smoothing out and softening our skin tones. Here's one popular approach:
For a quick portrait session, I'm pretty pleased with the adjustments made to the photo. As with any photo shoot, I strongly suggest that you take as many shots possible so that you can have more photos to work with.
Are you the family photographer in your household? How often do get portraits made, and what challenges if any do you face? Share your own opinion in the comments section below! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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| How to Temporarily Change the Default Program for Opening a File Using Coffee Posted: 04 Jan 2010 10:30 AM PST
Coffee (v0.1 R3) is a file association software. That's a kind of software you might not use generally but once you start using it, you see the whole point of it. It is also a portable application meant to be carried around in your USB drive. It is a part of the Lupo PenSuite of portable apps. Great! I don't need to install it and muck up my registry. It can be just as easily used outside the suite as an independent application. Plus, like all portable apps, it works just as well with all the installed programs we have on our computers.
The five things that Coffee does for me
If any of the five quick tasks appeal to you then you will find a use for this little portable software. Coffee (v0.1 R3) is a free 413KB software package and is compatible with Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and Seven. As a footnote, let me just try to clear up the probable reason why the free portable software is named after our midnight brew. Coffee according to its developers owes its origins to a similar app called CAFÉ (again renamed as eXpresso). Apparently, Lupo PenSuite have improved upon the original code. So far that explains all the coffee related naming and the icon of the coffee bean on the system tray! So, is the brew strong enough for your use? Let us know. Image credit: visualpanic / CC BY 2.0 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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| The Complete Guidebook To Web Searching [PDF] Posted: 04 Jan 2010 09:31 AM PST
These people don’t know how to formulate their queries, instead just ‘asking’ questions to the mighty Google. These people have no idea how many different content-specific search engines there are, and what you can do with the right bookmarks at your disposal. For these people – and frankly, for everyone who wants to be more productive and get to know some incredible new search engines – MakeUseOf presents The Guidebook to Internet Searching. Written by Dean Sherwin, MakeUseOf writer and proud owner of Art of Stinginess, this guide will tell you anything you possibly need – or want to know about search engines.
Learn how to formulate your searches, limit results by incorporating special search commands, and get to know numerous special search engines. This will be your go-to guide for everything related to searching. Don’t just stand there waiting, it’s free! You can find The Guidebook to Internet Searching in PDF, but also read it online on Scribd.com. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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| Perform A Variety Of Batch-Processing Operations On Your Photos With Phatch Posted: 04 Jan 2010 08:30 AM PST
There are, of course, other uses for batch processing photos limited only by the type of application you are using. We have shown you some batch processors before. However, those were focused on fairly trivial tasks that you could automate. If you want to achieve something more challenging you would have to resort to Photoshop Actions or GIMP scripts. Or, as we shall do now, you can look into the cross platform application – Phatch. Phatch is an awesome tool that lets you do a number of operations to a batch of your photos in a snap. As the Phatch website details, Phatch is actually “photo + batch”!
DEB packages and a PPA are available for Ubuntu users, installation on Windows and Mac is bit more involved and requires you to download and install Python and wxPython separately before you can use Phatch. Nevertheless, follow the instructions on the Phatch download page and installation is fairly trivial. Once you have Phatch on your computer, fire it up and let’s see what this baby can do. You will be greeted by a Phatch window prompting you to add actions. Click the ‘+’ sign and it opens up a window wherein you can choose various actions that Phatch photo batch processor can perform on your photos.
There are a number of actions you can choose from. The actions are categorized according to the function they perform. For example, you can find actions to downsize or crop an image under “Size” and actions to remove or manipulate exif data under the “Metadata” category. Click on the action you want to perform and hit Add. You can now specify various parameters as required by the actions. You can enable/disable added actions, remove actions from your list or change the order of the actions to achieve what you want. You would need to add a “Save action” at the end of the list. If you don’t, Phatch will prompt and add one for you. Let’s now put Phatch to test and try to accomplish something fairly challenging. Let’s say you have got a batch of images out of your camera and they seem too flat. You would like to adjust contrast, add a border, crop them to a specific size, remove metadata and add watermark so that they all look the consistent when you upload them to say – your Facebook album. Here is one possible way Phatch can accomplish this:
Now go to the Tools menu and choose Execute. You can choose the files/folders containing the images you would like to apply the action list to. Choose the filetypes you want to process and uncheck the ones you want to ignore. Customize a bunch of other settings according to your needs and hit Batch. Phatch will faithfully do whatever you taught it above and you can then view the results in Save action’s configured folder. Phatch is really an extraordinary tool if you need a tool for batch processing photos. It offers a lot of functionality and actions that can utilize in your batch processing. Do you know of any similar application? Let us know in comments! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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| Twizzle – The Latest and One of the Best in iPhone Twitter Apps Posted: 04 Jan 2010 07:30 AM PST
The iPhone app has a slick, minimalist interface which is easy to use, and features a couple of options found only in paid Twitter apps. Launching Twizzle takes you to a page where you can add your Twitter accounts. Other than Tweetdeck, this is the only free iPhone app that supports multiple accounts, and it does it much better. Once you've entered your credentials, you can instantly access your Twitter timeline, mentions, direct messages, and favourites. You can also easily access your own or other users' profiles.
When left open, Twizzle automatically updates your timeline. If you're impatient, there's a refresh button cunningly hidden out of sight, just above your timeline –- drag your screen down, and the button will appear. Tweeting from Twizzle is no different from other iPhone apps. You can include a photo from your photo library, or take a new photo with your camera and upload it to Twitpic, yFrog or Posterous. Choose which service you’d prefer to use in the app’s settings. For some odd reason, photographs uploaded to Twitpic all appear as landscape photos, regardless of how they've been taken. Accessing a photo, or any other website for that matter, opens it up in Twizzle's integrated browser.
If your tweet exceeds 140 characters, and you click ‘Send’ anyway, Twizzle will prompt you to post it with Twitlonger, a service which adds a link to the end of your tweet, which users can click to read the rest of the text. Despite the inclusion of Twitlonger, it doesn’t include a basic link-shortening service, although we’ve been told this feature is on the developer’s to-do list. From a user's profile page, by clicking the button in the top right hand corner, you can follow or unfollow them, send them a public reply or a direct message. Twizzle's organization of DMs is very handy, sorting them by username rather than in chronological order. DMs are nested, and are reminiscent of the iPhone's SMS feature. To reply to a DM, open it up, and click on the pencil button at the top right hand corner of the screen. One way Twizzle excels is its ability to handle threaded conversations. Open a tweet and click on the button marked ‘in reply to’ and it lists the entire conversation in chronological order, with the most recent tweet first. Twizzle’s threaded conversations are similar to those found in the paid app, Tweetie.
Twizzle's search bar is conveniently placed at the top of your home page, for easy access. Clicking in the search bar will also give you reveal a link to Twitter's latest trending topics and your saved searches. To open them, click the bookmark button on the top right hand corner of the screen. While there's no way to save a search on Twizzle, it syncs with Twitter's web-based saved searches. Hashtags used in tweets can be clicked in Twizzle, automatically opening a search page for that term.
Other features found in Twizzle are the ability to add or remove tweets from your favourites, landscape tweeting (a feature seen only paid apps such as Echofon Pro and Tweetie), as well as three different themes.
Try out Twizzle and let us know what you think of it in the comments. What are your favourite Twitter clients on the iPhone? Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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Here at MakeUseOf, we touch on all of the ways that you can make use of your computer to accomplish all of the major goals in your life. One of the most important goals in the lives of many guys is finding someone that he cares about deeply, and who feels the same way about him. The problem with being a geek is that you’re most likely stuck for many hours of the day behind your computer screen. That doesn’t exactly leave a lot of time to meet girls, let alone impress them.
Despite 
The best way to use email on your cell phone is to use the phone’s function to do so. Normally, this can be found under the messaging icon where you send SMS messages from. Just look around until you find email. It’s exact location will differ slightly depending on your phone.
If your family is anything like mine, making a family portrait is almost as hard as winning the lottery. We manage to get a portrait done once a year, and it’s usually a few days before or after the Christmas holiday. Here are a few of my portrait photography tips from my recent session.
Coffee is just a name but what's in a name? Sometimes nothing…just as Shakespeare meant to say. But the whole point is in the function that this free software performs. Coffee has nothing to do with the brew; it is a small utility that enables us to change the default program used to launch a file type. But here you might pause and say that this function can be performed adequately by the Open With dialog box of Windows. Rightly so, but Coffee does better as we will observe as we take the little program through its paces.
Everybody knows their way around a search engine, right? So you’d think, but the fact is that an incredible amount of people have a very scarce knowledge of internet searching.
Batch processing photos is a very common need if you have digital camera or a mobile phone with a decent camera. I recently realized how cumbersome it can get when you have to make the same edits to hundreds of photos, just because the camera settings were not right to suit the conditions.
There's no shortage of free iPhone Twitter apps out there, but newcomer 
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