MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [January 11th]” plus 8 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [January 11th]
- Thank You to MakeUseOf Friends!
- What Do You Get If You Combine Dropbox and Mozy? Wuala!
- How To Survive in the Wilderness Using Your Mobile Phone
- Your Quick Guide to Services Menu on Snow Leopard
- Are You A List Maniac? Check Out These Ten Sites That Are About Top 10 Lists
- Top 5 Online Resources for the Citizen Journalist
- How To Create An RSS Feed For Your Site From Scratch
- 3 Best Websites to Find the Meaning of a Song
| Cool Websites and Tools [January 11th] Posted: 11 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
| |||||||||||||||||||||
| Thank You to MakeUseOf Friends! Posted: 11 Jan 2010 05:30 PM PST It's time to say thanks to MakeUseOf’s friends who, once in a while, tip us great story ideas, help out on different projects and in some cases offer their services at discounted prices. Thank you guys!
TrueKolor – Cheap Custom Logo and Banner Design
ShrinkTheWeb – Website Screenshot Thumbnail Service
Geeks Are Sexy – Tech, Science, News and Social Issues for Geeks
Pair – Reliable Web Hosting
Thank you guys! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
Related posts
| |||||||||||||||||||||
| What Do You Get If You Combine Dropbox and Mozy? Wuala! Posted: 11 Jan 2010 03:30 PM PST
Developed by Dominik Grolimund and Luzius Meisser, the technology behind Wuala is truly amazing. By using a ‘grid’ algorithm, Wuala can take advantage of unused disk space across its network of users in addition to data-centre storage. This keeps Wuala’s costs down, because there is no need to buy space in data-centres and it also makes their service incredibly attractive to newcomers who need online file storage. Instead of paying a fixed rate for a certain amount of space, users can choose to allocate a part of their free hard drive space to share with the Wuala community. If you share 50GB and leave your computer online, you get 50GB of online file storage in return. There is however no obligation to participate in sharing – you get 1 GB free forever from the Wuala team and up to 6GB for inviting your friends. There are also payed plans for more demanding users.
Wuala encrypts all your files before sending them to the ‘grid’, and also ensures that it is distributed among many machines. Unlike other services, the password to your data never leaves your computer and the redundancy in the algorithm allows for machines to be taken offline while still maintaining data integrity. Wuala runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and even in your browser thanks to the portability of the Java programming framework. Unlike most other Java applications, you can expect to run Wuala without crashes or poor performance.
Another benefit of the Wuala P2P ‘grid‘ is the virtually unlimited bandwidth for both upload and download – basically the same benefits bit-torrent downloads have over traditional CDNs, with up to 100 peers in parallel for each file. I’ve noticed a sizeable increase in speed over Microsoft’s Live Mesh, Dropbox and Mozy. I’ve had sustained upload speed of over 900Kb/s, the highest I’ve personally seen in an online file storage service.
With Wuala you can keep private files only you can access, share folders with friends or publish them to the world, much like Dropbox. Thanks to the user friendly interface, using the app is a breeze. Adding files is as simple as drag and drop, backup as simple as selecting a folder and the desired sync frequency.
You can also create groups for sharing files with your family, co-workers, projects and keep track of them thanks to the integrated file revisioning. For those of you who prefer to use the local language Wuala is available in English, German, French, Brazilian, Russian, Swedish, Chinese, and Polish. Caleido – the company behind Wuala – has been bought by LaCie, the renowned hard drive manufacturer, in March of 2009. In addition to that, more than 100 million files are reported to be stored on the Wuala grid. There’s no need to worry that the service might go down in the foreseeable future so why not go to wuala.com and sign up for a free account. If you’re not convinced, why not go check out the demo account? Visit Wuala, click on the red START button, and login with the username John and password asdasd. Let us know your impressions in the comments. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
Related posts
| |||||||||||||||||||||
| How To Survive in the Wilderness Using Your Mobile Phone Posted: 11 Jan 2010 01:30 PM PST
Someone else will come along, you’ll be spotted or you’ll be able to get yourself out of the situation. However, if it hasn't been resolved after two or three hours the situation needs to be taken to a new level of seriousness. When Survival experts discuss how to survive in the wilderness, they all agree that keeping calm and thinking straight saves more lives than satellite phones, flares, life rafts and ration packs put together. The one great thing about getting lost or stranded (as compared to twenty years ago that is) is that we all have a little survival tool nestled in our front pockets – a mobile phone. This can be used in so many different ways to save your life, it’s unreal. Calling for helpThe most obvious. In fact, if you haven’t done it in the first two hours of being lost (normally out of pride) then do it. If you are struggling to get a signal dial ‘112′ – the international number that will connect you to your emergency services. You don’t need to have a signal on your network. All mobile phone masts will allow a phone to connect to their network regardless if it's registered with another network once the call is to the emergency services. The myth of not having any signal at all is an internet hoax. You do, just not on your own network’s. Furthermore, the phone’s keypad doesn’t have to be unlocked to facilitate those not familiar with mobile phones and doesn’t even need a sim card. PingingMobile phones send out a ‘ping’ every few minutes to connect to a mast. This will normally enable authorities to pin-point your location within a few miles. Maybe even half a kilometre if you’re lucky. This is the same triangulation method used by insurgents and kidnappers to locate targets. To conserve battery, turn it on once every half hour or so and allow it to connect to the network. When it has done so that means a ‘ping’ has been sent out. Text MessagingBy trying to send a text (even if it fails) you could save your own life. Type out an SOS message giving details of your last known whereabouts, your physical condition and direction you’re travelling and send it to everyone in your contact list. If your phone picks up a signal, even for a few seconds without you realising, it will try to send the message out to as many people as possible. If you have any other software, apps or an alternative contact method on your specific phone (GPS would be one which springs to mind) use it! But let’s say you're nowhere near a mast. Caught in the middle of nowhere. Cut off. Surely your mobile is just another inanimate object weighing you down. Think again. LightMost phones now have camera flash which can be turned on torch mode which provides you with a great torch for navigating at night. The really bright light is also very powerful. So powerful that it will enable you to signal ships, aircraft and people from miles away. Sony Erricson’s and other brands also have a pre-programmed SOS signal which can be transmitted using the light. If your phone doesn’t have a flash, you can still use it like the above but the power of the light will be much less. One tip is to have the screen illuminated white by opening the SMS screen. If you don’t know the universal Morse code distress signal, it’s a good time to learn it. As a Portable Survival Guide.Right now, as you sit comfortably knowing there’s a million mile gap between you and danger, might be a good time to prepare for the day when that gap is considerably smaller. Taking pictures of diagrams of huts, fire-starting techniques, food gathering and hunting instructions, etc. and storing it on your phone will serve you well in the wilderness. Making small text files or to-do lists is also a good idea for saving basic survival information. Instead of spending six hours trying to create a fire and fail you could have one blazing very quickly indeed by following simple, accurate instructions. This cuts out 'trial and error' which could potentially kill you should you have to much of the latter. Refer to this post for a list of websites to help you prepare. As a Storage Box.
Putting this in a small zip-lock plastic bag may also be advisable in case you drop your phone in water. Fit as much as possible. Other items you may consider are fishing line, a fishing hook, sowing needle and a picture of family, friends, girlfriend, boyfriend etc… to keep morale up. As a Signal MirrorMany phones come with metal casings. You could remove the back cover and make it shiny by scraping it with a rock or blade. This can then be used as a mirror-like surface to attract attention to yourself should you spot a plane or people. As a Tool ItselfFinally, if all else fails, you could use the phone itself as a tool. If it’s made of metal, sharpening the back cover into a blade is a good idea. You could also smash the screen and use it to tip an arrow. The battery can also be used to start a fire if you happen to have steel wool by touching it off the terminals. It’s all about using your imagination. Do you have any other tips to add? How would you survive in the wilderness by using your phone as a survival tool? Image Attribution: Eirikso, scottfeldstein Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
Related posts
| |||||||||||||||||||||
| Your Quick Guide to Services Menu on Snow Leopard Posted: 11 Jan 2010 11:30 AM PST
First, Macautomaton.com, not hosted by Apple, includes specific information about Services and Snow Leopard’s other automation features. As the site says, the advantages with using Snow Leopard Services is that it’s built into the operating system, and you don’t have know a single bit of computer code to use it. You just need to understand what it’s for and how you can build on it.
First off, if you don’t know, you can find the Services menu by going to Apple>Preferences in the menu bar, and then clicking on Keyboard. Clicking Keyboard Shortcuts will reveal Services, among other similar features. In the Services window, you will see a list of categories of service items that are configurable. In the Snow Leopard update, you can turn these items on and off, based on your needs. Many third-party applications build service features into their application that show up in Services. For example, an application I use called SOHO Notes includes many service items that are useful, but I don’t personally need them. A few application’s service items, such as for SOHO Notes, are labeled in the Services Menu, but unfortunately most items are not. In fact, it's hard to tell which items belongs to which application. But don't let this put you off. As you begin using services, you can figure out which items to enable and disable for your needs.
How Snow Leopard’s Services Menu WorksText and InternetLet's go through how the Services menu works. First off, let's start with where you are now, with text selections. Select the word "Services Menu" above in the header of this paragraph. Now control or right-click on it with your mouse. Voila, you just pulled up Services and other contextual menu items. Now, if you're new to the Mac and you really haven't added much to your computer, you might not see much when you right-click on the selected words. Also, if you’re using another web browser besides Safari, your Service items and contextual menu items might be far different.
By default, however, your contextual menu should consist of at least a few items for looking up the selected word in Apple's Dictionary, copying it, or having the computer say the word using the Speech feature. If you don't see much, go back to the Services Menu in Preferences and click on some items listed under the categories, Internet, Searching, and Text. Enabling those items will put them in your Services menu when you right or control-click on selected words. Further down in the contextual menu, you should also see Services, which contains items or actions available to you.
While the word is still selected, point your mouse up the name of the web browser you're using, select it in the menu bar and scroll down to Services. From there you will also see other items or actions that might be, well, of service to you. In my example below, many of the listed items are ones that I created (which I will show you how to do in part 2 of this article). You can also head over to Macautomaton.com and download pre-built service items. For example, there's a download package of Safari Services that includes an item for adding selected text in Safari browser to a log file in your Documents folder. Another Service item opens a “new browser window displaying an RSS feed of YouTube videos whose tags match the text selected in Safari.” It doesn't work super great, but it's useful to have.
Images, Files and FoldersNow, let's switch over to files and folders and see what Services has to offer. This time, right-click on a image or document file in your Finder and see what contextual and Service items are available to you. By default, items should include Show Info, which provides you information about that file; the ability to duplicate the file, make an alias of it, or review in it in Apple's Quicklook. If no items exist in the Service menu below the contextual menu items, part 2 of this article will show you how to easily create Services actions that will enable you to, among other things, re-size an image file or quickly attach a file to an email message.
While you have that file selected in your Finder, click on the Action button in the toolbar and you will see many of the same, if not additional, items available to you. Likewise, click on Finder>Services in the menu bar and again you may find Services depending what items are enabled. Macautomaton.com also has a whole slew of items (for Mail, iPhoto, Images, Audio, UNIX, and Navigation services) ready for you to download and immediately use.
Creating Keyword Shortcuts for Services ItemsThe last important feature of Services Menu is that you can now add keyword shortcuts to any service menu, which means that you don't have to right-click or use the menu bar to pull up an item. Go back to Services in Preferences, double-click on an item and add a keyword shortcut. Be careful that you're not using the same keyword that is being used for another service item. MakeUseOf published an article about How To Master The Power of Mac Shortcut Keys, which I invite you to read. Though the article covers Shortcuts for Leopard—not Snow Leopard—it still applies to what will be covered here about Services and other applications. So are you using Snow Leopard Services in your computer workflow? Are there any third party applications that provide useful service items? Let us know about them. And be sure to check back for part 2 of this article, where you will learn how to create your own Services items. 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
| |||||||||||||||||||||
| Are You A List Maniac? Check Out These Ten Sites That Are About Top 10 Lists Posted: 11 Jan 2010 10:30 AM PST
Lists are, by definition, an ordered arrangement of items. There is symmetry in lists which lets us make sense of the chaos of information around us. That's why it gets championed for everything from personal productivity to web optimization. 1. The Top Tens
This site is a collection of visitor-created Top Ten lists which are arranged in categories. Readers can also edit the lists by adding to them. Individual items can also be voted up or down and the voting pattern determines what goes up or down in the lists. Readers create their Top 10 lists by entering the items in text boxes. Optional descriptions and URLs can be added which give further information to readers. Also, Lists in progress can be made and submitted. These are working lists which need a few more suggested entries to reach the figure of ten. Some lists can of course, have more than ten items in them. I just read – Worst Things About The Top Tens. 2. List of Bests
List of Bests is about lineups of products, places, goals and people along with personal lists of all types. The site also has Definitive Lists (which are facts) and Award Lists (from reputed sources). Each list is linked to further information and it may take you a while before you can finish a list. The site makes it easy to track your progress and you can compare that with other users. I just read – BBC’s “The Big Read – Books 1-100″. 3. Listropolis
A site that aggregates lists from around the web. The site is well laid out around a lot of categories. Life Hacks finds a place here with another category called Everything Else. And I found a few references to our very own MakeUseOf.com. I just read – 11 Ways to Calm Down an Angry Woman. 4. OMG Lists
One look at the lists they have and you will see that it's a fresh take on a lot of things. Call it a site of irreverence or well-spun humor. This site is worth a bookmark if you like to lighten up. I just read – Nine Cartoons with Seriously Sad Deaths. 5. Top Tenz
A whole lot of quality Top Ten lists get very neatly categorized and displayed in this site. You can browse for a specific list or click for a random list. The Quizzes page is also worth a look see. I just read - Top 10 Best Ghost Photographs. 6. ListVerse
This site is a bit oddball because it lists posts which cover things that are oddball. It also seems to be a popular place for list hunters if you count the claims of 1.5 million readers. According to the nature of the lists, the focus is on content that's a bit way out. If you like things like that then you have 22 categories to choose from. I just read – Top 10 Mysteries of Outer Space. 7. TopTenTopTen
This site is about Top 10 lists and again about the top rankers among them. Every list gets a ranking of its own and that's how a Top 10 list can come in the Top ten of the site. The lists get rankings based on views, votes and comments. Contributors can create lists and invite others to add, delete or move the listings. Thus, these lists take a community approach to list making. The lists are more or less plain vanilla lists with not too much of detail. I just read – Top 10 Strategy games of all time. 8. iTop3
This site leaves the Top 10 listings to the crowd. For every category, a user can give three choices and the reason for those choices. The choices add up with every user contributing three each and then depending on the votes for each choice, a clear Top 10 popular list emerges. Think of this as a democracy of lists. The top 3 categories according to the site are Music, Websites and Television. The collection is not huge and in the end the lists are a collected Top 10 grouping of links but the concept of crowd sourcing the links makes it interesting. I just read – Top 10 Movie Festivals. 9. Digalist
Read it as “Dig a List”. This website is only about personal lists. So if you have any sort of list lying around, put it up on Digalist. Though make sure that it's worth a read. Content rich lists with pictures may be one way. Similar lists can be put into topics, lists can be co-built with other contributors and all lists can be voted up or down. This site is not restricted to Top 10 types of lists but all sorts of tips and suggestions listed in list form. I just read - The Most Amazing Light Graffiti Artists and Photographers. 10. Weblist
This site is a new one going by its alpha tag. Using this site you can create a collection of URLs on a specific topic and the site threads everything under one common URL. So, in the end you have user generated content in the form of lists. These can be shared or set as a customizable homepage. The list items are arranged in thumbnail previews. The site is new so it may not be populated with a whole lot of lists in all categories just yet. I just read – 5 All Time Best Pranks. We don't need to see these websites to see the popularity of lists. Take a look at any blog's most popular posts and you will find at least half of them of the list variety. Look at Digg…it's a massive list after all. What about our own MakeUseOf.com? You bet we have a lists page and its here – MakeUseOf Lists: The only 'Web Tools' Bookmark You'll Ever Need. Do you enjoy lists? Image credit: sam_churchill / CC BY 2.0 Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
Related posts
| |||||||||||||||||||||
| Top 5 Online Resources for the Citizen Journalist Posted: 11 Jan 2010 09:30 AM PST
Over the next few years, those early experiences as well as the investigations that followed led me to accumulate a personal library of valued online resources for journalists. These are resources that are now extremely valuable to me. They represent the core of my online research, and they are the places I immediately turn to first when it’s time to conduct another deep investigation for another news article. Top 5 Resources for Citizen JournalistsOne of the most significant effects of the Internet evolution into the world of “Web 2.0″ was the maturing of the journalist blogger. Early on, bloggers were scorned by mainstream journalists. However, as the years passed and citizen journalists started releasing significant news stories on blogs even earlier than the mainstream media, even major corporate news entities started accepting the reality and the legitimacy of citizen journalism. At the same time, the old-school media folks were terribly concerned about maintaining the integrity and sanctity of journalism. It appeared that they were terrified that if just any citizen could take up investigative journalism, that journalistic ethics would go out the window. In fact, this did happen in a fair number of cases, but I would say that there were enough impressive journalistic works produced by the top bloggers, that in time the entire arena of citizen journalism was eventually acknowledged and respected. One of the products of that early concern for journalistic integrity is also my first favorite resource for journalistic writing – Journalism.org.
This project was founded as a collaborative mission between Columbia University and the Committee of Concerned Journalists (CCJ) in 2003. In 2006, the Pew Research Center took control of the project and now provides valuable information about journalism and data about the press. Today, the site is a tremendous resource for anyone who intends to get involved in journalism, not so much as a resource to conduct the research itself, but as a place to go when you’re unsure exactly what to do with the information you’ve uncovered. This website lays out the core principles of journalism in a way that’s accessible and understandable to the entire public. My favorite page is the Principles of Journalism list of legal and ethical guidelines. Number 1 is the most important – “Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth.” Research ToolsThe next few resources are those that I turn to when I need to find some good, hard data. These are the places that you’ll want to go to initially to launch your investigation. The first resource is a website that’s actually somewhat poorly designed. I mean, the background is something out of the 1990’s, and the entire layout is terribly outdated, but the information contained on this website more than makes up for its aesthetics.
A Journalist’s Guide to the Internet is an online resource created and published by Christopher Callahan, who (at least as of 2003) was the dean of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University (now that’s a mouthful). This website might feature cheesy icons, but if you need a launch point where you can access U.S. Federal Government agencies and resources, public records and FOIA information, business and non-profit stats and data, law and justice system information and much, much more – then this is the place for you.
The next resource, my friends, is RefDesk. It is the single, most amazing online collection of facts, resources and figures stuffed into one website that I’ve ever had the pleasure of using. Like the previous website, it is clearly not created with pretty formatting or bells and whistles in mind. It is outlined in such a way that as much useful information can be organized and stuffed into one place. I could spend an entire article reviewing this resource, but I’ll try to do it in just a few photos. In the pic above, you can see the left pane with the top Internet search engines that you can use to launch an Internet search.
As you travel down the page, you’ll see featured new stories in the center pane, and then important resources like the ability to click on and view all major news sources in the right pane, or conduct a business or people search in the left pane.
Just beyond halfway down the page you’ll find the “Fact” section where you can conduct searches in various reference sources, or in the left pane you can look up statistics and figures, or in the right pane you can locate a list of “how-to” sites. This one page is like having the entire Internet at your fingertips – it’s amazing! Research Social MediaThe last two resources for citizen journalists that I’d like to cover are not specific sites but actually categories of sites that we’ve covered here at MakeUseOf very often. An important part of being a good journalist is knowing what’s relevant and important to the general public. Not only are social networks excellent for gauging public sentiment or buzz, but if you need information about someone, they obviously make a fantastic research tool for that as well. Charnita wrote about 3 excellent social search engines that you can use to find people. Abhijeet hit on Snitch.Name, another very cool resource to do the same sort of digging. Of course, recently Mahendra covered how to search people using alternative search engines, so I’d say MUO has this area pretty well covered. Another useful area is determining what’s hot at the moment – the current Internet buzz. Leon covered 5 great buzz and viral video websites, and John covered how to capture breaking news on Twitter. However, one of the coolest resources for news enthusiasts to capture the latest news while gauging public reaction to it is Newscri.be.
Newscri.be lets you not only choose the category and major news source to receive your latest headlines, but you can also choose which headlines you feel should be at the top of your list, remove those you don’t want, and comment on those that remain (and read the comments of other users). It’s like a huge community of news fans redefining “top news,” rather than the corporate run news media doing so. Local Information and Public RecordsProbably the most valuable references for a journalist are public records. Many historical records for your local community, you can discover on archive if you hook up a membership with your local University library. For example, the University of Berkeley allows the public (as most library’s do) to come in and conduct research in person, even though the online resource is not available to the general public.
University libraries are always a treasure trove of local, state and federal government information as well as a plethora of scholarly journals. Every good citizen journalist owns a trusty library card. And when you need to conduct a criminal records search or background check on someone, make sure to review Mahendra’s article on how to conduct a free criminal background check online, or Israel’s post on how to conduct a background check with your iPhone. When you’re finished your research and you have a premium example of journalism that you’d like to submit for publication, check out the resources that mainstream news organizations now offer to citizen journalists, such as MSN’s story submission area or CNN’s iReport. Of course, if you’d like to remain avant garde, then you can always join forces with other citizen journalists over at IAmNews. Whichever path you choose, if you stay true to the principles of journalism, you’ll do just fine. Do you have any experience with citizen journalism? Do you have any additional resources that other researchers might find useful? Please share them in the comments section below. Related posts
| |||||||||||||||||||||
| How To Create An RSS Feed For Your Site From Scratch Posted: 11 Jan 2010 08:30 AM PST
An RSS feed for your site is essentially an XML file. You must adhere to a specific format for the XML file (as we shall see) for it to be identified as an RSS feed. Let’s first have a look at how to create an RSS feed for your site from scratch.
All you have to do is to specify your information for all the necessary tags. You can use any text editor. Notepad would work fine but have a look at Notepad++. Let’s see what each of them mean. To create an RSS feed, you start off the RSS file as follows: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <rss version="2.0"> <channel> The first two lines specify the XML and RSS version as you can see. The third line opens a “channel” tag. This is what would contain all the information for your channel or website. Add these three lines as they are. <title>MakeUseOf RSS Feed</title> <link>http://www.makeuseof.com/</link> <description>Cool Websites, Software and Internet Tips</description> Those few lines specify information about your RSS feed and your website. The title tag houses any title that you would like to give to your RSS feed, link tag points to your website, description tag contains a brief introduction about the RSS feed or the website. Whatever is inside your file now, lets call it the HEADER Next up we have the actual content of the RSS feed that will be displayed as distinct entries when viewed using a feed reader. Each entry is contained within a pair of <item></item> and must have the following content at least: <item> <title>Entry Title</title> <link>Link to the entry</link> <guid>http://example.com/item/123</guid> <pubDate>Sat, 9 Jan 2010 16:23:41 GMT</pubDate> <description>[CDATA[ This is the description. ]]</description> </item> Again the title tag would refer to the heading or your content, link is the complete web address at which the entry can be reached on your website, guid is a unique identifier for the entry. Since all of your entries would be located at a different URL, you can use the link as the guid (if of course no two entries would point to the same URL in your setup). pubDate houses the date on which the entry was published. The data has a specific format, refer above, the time must be in GMT, you can also refer to RFC 822 section 5 for more details on other date-time specification format. Finally the description tag houses the actual content or description of the entry. Remember the above would be repeated for every entry on your website. For example if you have a blog with 5 articles, a complete RSS feed should have 5 item tags to house 5 entries. Close off the open channel and rss tags and save the file. Upload it to the appropriate location on your web server (the site root would work fine) and you have an RSS file at your disposal.
Now if you sit down and think about it, you would at once realize that the file you just created is static, meaning that the entries that you wrote inside the item tags would remain the same and wouldn’t change to reflect the most recent content of your website. So before we wrap things up, we have a couple of issues that need to be addressed. Make the feed dynamicNow this would require a fair bit of programming. If you are not confident with your programming skills, I suggest you’d be better off using a CMS like Joomla, Drupal or still better – Wordpress (if that suits you). CMS’s have a number of plug-ins for RSS feeds and most of them would offer RSS functionality out of the box. However, since you are reading this, I assume you are brewing your own solution and so let’s get coding. You can use the same programming language that you have used to program your site. All we are going to do is to fetch the entries from the database and insert them into appropriate tags. I can only briefly outline the steps because the actual code would vary according to the programming language you are using
Make the feed discoverableAnother thing you need to keep in mind is that feed readers should be able to identify the generated feed as an RSS feed. There are plenty of ways to do this:
Ideally, Firefox should recognize the RSS feed when the feed’s URL is entered into the address field as opposed to showing the contents of the script.
This means that Firefox detects that the file is an RSS XML file. You can then head over to services like Feedburner with your feed URL to get all kinds of analytics and other options to play along with. Did this tutorial help you create your own RSS feed? Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
Related posts
| |||||||||||||||||||||
| 3 Best Websites to Find the Meaning of a Song Posted: 11 Jan 2010 07:30 AM PST
Sure, it may cross your mind while listening to the music over and over again, but what exactly was the artist going for? More importantly, how do you interpret the lyrics and what does it all mean to you? With the Web, it’s easy to find out what some of your favorite songs mean. There are a couple of great websites out there where users can offer their own interpretations of any song’s lyrics. Here’s the 3 best websites to find the meaning of a song. SongMeanings
SongMeanings is not just another site crammed full of only a song’s lyrics (check out The Top 5 Sites to Find Song Lyrics Online for those). The website allows its users to interact with each other and discuss their favorite songs. With a growing database covering virtually every artist and thousands upon thousands of songs, its community has chalked up over a million comments about what the lyrics of the music they love mean to them.
Just search for an artist of your choice and comb through the listings of songs. Each song page features the full lyrics and hopefully some users have contributed their views about what the song means in the comments. Feel free to join in and share your opinions as well. SongfactsSongfacts is a simply laid out website that takes a different approach to it all. Compiled by radio professionals, music enthusiasts, and just plain-old visitors to the site, it’s a database full of song information.
You’ll find everything from fun facts to interesting background stories about your favorite songs, so it’s not necessarily just the song’s meaning, but it may very well help you discover more about it. Every song page includes the basic information, such as album title, release year, chart positions, the full lyrics, and even the ability to listen to the song via a widget from Grooveshark.
The “Songfacts” are submitted by users and reviewed by the site before being added to the list. There’s also a comments sections for visitors to chime in about the song. Lyric InterpretationsLyric Interpretations is another site also worth mentioning. Don’t let its simple design fool you. It’s the content that matters here, and the website is another great place to go to if you’re in search of song meanings.
The site gets straight to the point. Users submit their own interpretations of any song of their choice and they’re published for visitors to read and review. How do you find the meaning of your favorite songs? Have any of these websites helped you at all? Let us know in the comments. Image Credit: thornj 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
| |||||||||||||||||||||
At some stage in everyone’s life, a situation will turn dire. A nice hill walk is ruined by high winds and rain. A snapped ankle leaves you stranded in a forest. A broken down car means you can’t make it through an isolated area and it’s getting dark. Thankfully, most of these cases will be short-lived as they tend to sort themselves out.
Most phones will have enough room between the battery and the back cover to allow for the storage of some basic items. I suggest stowing a razor blade which could be used for fashioning tools, preparing food and other such activities. Also, a sheet with condensed survival instructions is a good idea (bits of this can also be used when starting a fire). Print on both sides, use small text and fill as much of the sheet as possible.
In the release of Apple’s latest operating system, Snow Leopard, Apple made some significant changes to its Services Menu feature, so that it’s a little easier to manage and more practical to use. The upgrades are far from perfect, but if you want to be a Mac power user, you should know about how to use the Snow Leopard Services Menu.
This post is a list about lists. Nope, I don't suffer from crazy bouts of 'list-o-mania'. But a huge part of the blogosphere does. We see lists everywhere…usually with a streamer that shouts 'Top 10'. Why are Top Ten lists so popular? Is it because the title somehow hints that this is the best there are or is there something in the nature of list itself? Perhaps, a bit of both.
There’s nothing that I enjoy more than conducting a full scale, no-holds-barred investigation into the background of an intriguing news story. One of the largest that I ever personally conducted was one in 2005 where I worked with a team of 4 or 5 fellow citizen journalists investigating a major scam artist. The research required email tracking and analysis, deep data mining, as well as in-depth interviews. It was one of the most exciting and exhilarating experiences in my life, and led to a continued passion with investigative journalism.
Everyone has their favorite songs, the music that you could actually listen to endlessly and never ever get tired of. I know, it’s easy sometimes to just let that tune’s catchy beat or rhythm take you away, but when was the last time you just stopped to simply examine the meaning of a song’s lyrics?
| 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