MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [January 26th]” plus 7 more

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• Cool Websites and Tools [January 26th]
• Top 5 Black & White Image Search Engines
• Fulfill Your Screen Capturing Needs With Bug Shooting
• Glydo – A Firefox Addon That Helps You Discover Web Content with Zero Effort
• Enna – A New and Exciting Linux Media Center
• How To Run Multiple Dropbox Accounts Simultaneously [Mac]
• Four Really Good Free Desktop News Ticker Apps
• The Top 5 Free Microsoft Products & Why They Are The Best

Cool Websites and Tools [January 26th] Posted: 26 Jan 2010 08:54 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. Submit Your Web App   WalletGarden – WalletGarden is a simple tool that lets you store information about different kinds of cards in your wallet to a free and secure online account and comes in handy when you lose your wallet. It does not let you store the actual credit card numbers but other related information like the type of card, contact number of customer support, name on card, etc. Read more: WalletGarden: Comes in Handy When You Lose Your Wallet.   Dejaclick – We tend to perform a lot of repetitive tasks using our computers and for that reason most professional desktop software such as Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop have long supported macros – a activity recording of the series of steps required to perform a given task that can be saved and called (played) later at will. Dejaclick brings the same functionality to webpages. It acts as web recording utility for Firefox. Read more: Dejaclick: A Web Activity Recording & Bookmarking Tool (Firefox).     FlickrColorSelectr -FlickrColorSelectr allows you to select any color from the color wizard and as soon as you have selected a color, the tool will display Flickr images that contain that color. All the images displayed are licensed under Creative Commons and clicking on any thumbnail will take you to the Flickr page of that image. Read more: FlickrColorSelectr: Search Flickr by Color.     GeoTalk – There are a number of tools that let you create shareable customized maps but very few of them allow users to carry out discussions around them. GeoTalk is a neat tool that lets you create map forums within a few seconds. Powered by Google Maps, it lets you create a customized map by focusing on any region of the world. You can even narrow it down to a single street if you want. Read more: GeoTalk: Create Map Forums & Share.     Exercise-Tracker – Exercise buffs who like to stay on top of things will surely love Exercise-Tracker. It is a web application that allows you to track your exercise routines online by calculating the calories that you burned depending on the type, duration and intensity of the exercise and matching it with your weight. It also lets you record symptoms that you experienced and related medications or treatments that you undergo. Read more: Exercise-Tracker: Monitor Exercise Routines Online.   Submit Your Web App These are just half of the websites that we discovered in the last couple of days. If you want us to send you daily round-ups of all cool websites we come across, leave your email here. Or follow us via RSS feed. Related posts (153)makeuseof extra #27 (104)Finally Stick To Your Resolutions With StickK (47)Cool Websites and Tools [September 9] (60)Cool Websites and Tools [September 7] (68)Cool Websites and Tools [September 6]

Top 5 Black & White Image Search Engines Posted: 26 Jan 2010 03:30 PM PST There’s something magical in the absence of color and there is something unbelievably inspiring in black and white photography. This is the oldest type of photography and still the most inspiring one. I believe the reason is that when your eye is not focusing on color, you are able to see other things like the lights and darks of a picture, the feeling expressed, the mood created, etc. If you share my passion for black and white photography, you will find this toolset especially useful and bookmark-worthy: the top 5 image search engines to find black and white photos. 1. Multicolr Multicolr is a Flickr-based image search engine that allows you to search by color (I’ve already mentioned it previously). To see only black and white photography, all you need is to pick colors from the last row: 2. Yahoo Image Search Only few people know that Yahoo can be the best Flickr image search engine you’ve ever tried; mainly, because it has some useful search option that Flickr doesn’t. One of them is actually Black&Whit photos. Both options are accessed via Advanced search; there you can set the image color (black and white) and image source (check Flickr to only include photos from Flickr). Right there, you can also set the license filter to only search for images available for distribution: 3. Corbisimages Corbisimages is my preferred stock images search engine that both contains a high-quality selection of creative photography and offers a robust search feature with lots of features. I first learned about it from this image search engines overview by Edward Khoo and it has been my personal favorite since then. Besides setting it to search through black and white images only, you can filter: By Type (photography or illustration); By distribution rights (royalty-free or “rights managed”); By editorial type (current news, documentary, fine art; entertainment):; By orientation (horizontal, vertical, panorama); By date when the photo was created; By photographer. 4. Bing Image Search As an avid Googler, I feel bad listing both Yahoo and Bing and not mentioning Google; but here’s the truth: I love Google general search, I hate Google images search. It is both limited and irrelevant. I prefer Bing Image Search engine. It has plenty of great search options (including a black and white filter): Search by size (small, medium, large, wallpaper); Search by layout (squire, tall, wide); Search by style (photography or illustration); Check special people search filters: just faces or including head and shoulders. Besides, it offers a similar search option if you hover your mouse cursor over an image. 5. Picsearch Picsearch is a good alternative image search engine to have by hand (the tool was already mentioned in our alternative image search overview). It doesn’t have any extraordinary search options to mention. The only reason I use it from time to time is that it provides totally different search results – something I’d never be able to find using ordinary tools like Google or Yahoo. Picsearch uses its own search index and operates its own “unique search technology”: Picsearch uses its own technology to crawl the web and has created a searchable index of images…. Picsearch image search technology has three main features that make it unique. It has a relevancy unrivalled on the web due to its patent-pending indexing algorithms. Also, Picsearch has a family friendliness that allows children to surf in safety as all offensive material is filtered out by our advanced filtering systems. The site is also very user friendly as it’s designed to be simple, fast and accurate. Besides searching for black and white photography, the tool offers a few other nifty features like: Filtering by size; Filtering by type (landscape versus portrait for example); Showing search suggestions. What are you favourite image search engines? Tell us about them in the comments. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Related posts (13)10 Sites to Compare Google vs Bing Results Side By Side (25)UnGoogled: A Week of Discovering Alternatives For Google’s Services (42)Top 5 Free Websites for Quality Copyright Free Photographs (27)The Best 3 Tools to Search for Images Online by Color (45)5 Good Image Search Engines Apart From Google Image Search

Fulfill Your Screen Capturing Needs With Bug Shooting Posted: 26 Jan 2010 01:30 PM PST My needs for screen capturing software are fairly basic.  In reality, there are many uses for taking screen shots.  For instance, if you’re having trouble and you need to easily send a copy of some error message to someone trying to help, a quick and easy screen shot of the isuue can be a life saver.  If you are trying to write a tutorial or manual for a software application, whether it’s for your mother or a potential client, screen shots are almost always needed. Me?  As a writer, I am often writing about some new web tool or piece of free software and screen shots can really draw readers in and get an understanding about how a program looks and works.  Well, until recently I have been using Lightscreen Portable as my screen capturing software of choice.  Don’t get me wrong, we’re not parting ways permanently.  Lightscreen Portable is portable by the way and that will come in handy!  However, for my day to day screen shot taking I am moving over to Bug Shooting. In this article, I would like to list my basic needs for a screen capturing software tool and list how Bug Shooting seems like the tool to meet those needs.  So, here are my basic needs for a screen capturing tool: 1.  The ability to easily grab a portion of the screen Most screen capturing tools offer this but some make it easier than others.  For instance, simple features such as dual monitor support, crosshairs. And the display of the shot size. Which can make life a lot easier when trying to grab a portion of the screen.  All of which, by the way, Bug Shooting offers! 2.  Easy editing and annotating One thing I think the version of Lightscreen I was using was lacking was in the area of editing and annotating.  If a program somehow makes it easier to open the file automatically after a shot is grabbed in some sort of program for editing, it will save time and frustration. Bug Shooting has it’s own window that pops up allowing for some basic editing, including an easy-to-use arrow tool.  This alone has saved me a lot of time in just the past few days! 3.  Easy file naming While a program such as Lightscreen makes automatically file naming easy, Bug Shooting makes naming files separate names on each screen grab a bit easier. The program automatically opens, as I already mentioned, and then just saving it opens the window allowing for file naming.  In this category, it really depends on your needs but for my every day needs, Bug Shooting takes the cake for me. 4.  Manageable file size One of the first things I noticed about Bug Shooting was the size of the image files it produces. They are quite manageable compared to those of Lightscreen (for larger captures I often found myself optimizing the image files just to get the size down)!  For instance, a popular size for a screen grab for me is 200×580, for whatever reason.  In Lightscreen, the file size is significantly larger than what Bug Shooter produces.  There may be settings I can tweak in Lightscreen but I like how Bug Shooting just works for me! Weakness!  There are WEAKNESSES! Only a few things annoy me about Bug Shooting but they are not enough to drag me away from using it.  First of all, besides the easy annotating and arrow tools, the editor, in my honest opinion, is a bit annoying to use.  Also because of the compressed file size, the images are a bit pixelated.  Lastly, unless I’m missing something (which happens sometimes, believe it or not) there is no resizing tool.  In order to resize a captured image, I ended up opening it in another program (Fireworks is what I use instead of the famous Photoshop but to each his own). I know how the saying goes: “different strokes for different folks” and it sure rings true for screen capturing software!  What are YOUR basic screen capturing needs and what software program bests meets them for you? Bug Shooting works on Windows XP and Vista (32-bit) and requires Microsoft .NET Framework 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 (2)How To Change The Default Screenshot Image Format & Other Properties [Mac] (13)The Challenging World Of Image Editing (29)IrfanView Blows Windows Viewer Out of the Water (23)How To Make Amazing Panoramas in Windows For Free (5)How To Make A Cool Collage Using Photoshop

Glydo – A Firefox Addon That Helps You Discover Web Content with Zero Effort Posted: 26 Jan 2010 11:30 AM PST Many little browser apps have surfaced even as our world has been flooded by news and information. These browser tools can be called browsing assistants or search assistants. Their one point agenda – help us find more web content. Glydo also does just that. This Firefox addon automatically detects what we are browsing and then it brings us related web content. Glydo sources these contents from the web, RSS Feeds, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr, Amazon and a host of other sites and displays it like a headline ticker in the status bar. Add-ons like SimilarWeb and Xmarks are helpful for discovering similar websites. Browsing tools like Headup and Glue have a narrower focus. Combined or alone these browser tools not only make our browsing richer but also faster as they take the onus of giving us new and relevant web content within a click. Glydo does the same job in a slightly different avatar. Glydo Defined Glydo, in their own words is as an associative content discovery service. It discovers web content relevant to what you are interested in right now and delivers that in the form of recommendations. To achieve all this, Glydo uses semantic and contextual discovery technology to analyze the webpage currently being read. Based on that, Glydo sources relevant information from the other sources. Installing Glydo as a Firefox Plugin Glydo gets installed on the status bar of Firefox. The new content is displayed in an unobtrusive way and you can go forward or back through the headlines using the arrow buttons. Glydo gives you a few more buttons to push give you pop-ups with the related content listings. And what would any tool be without the omnipresent Share button. There is no dearth of ways to share a liked page. The only other button is for the settings which let you customize three options. Gliding with Glydo Let's take Glydo around the block a few times and discover for ourselves what else is there to read and share. Glydo gives the best results in web pages with a single post or article. Quite obviously, the pages where you have many abstracts of articles which leave more to read will give you widely differing results. That may not be all relevant, so take Glydo to the page with the entire post and the quality of results changes. Here I am on a webpage page with a product review of an Android phone. Glydo gathers the related items quickly and displays it as a linked headline. I can scroll through them using the arrow buttons. I can also push the individual pop-up buttons and browse to the related stories I want to read. The pop-up displays the headline, the news source, the time or date of the story and the share icon. Auto-notifications keep up abreast of the stories. The related web content was 'related' and not off the mark. In some of my test runs, the tweets appear to be dated so offhand I think that they are ordered according to significance rather than real time. Does Glydo make for zero-effort browsing? Yes, it does because I don't have to go hunting for related content. The only grouse I have with the add-on is that it limits the stories to a maximum of four (as far as I could see). A limited number of new sources is okay for casual browsing but when it comes to more in depth browsing (for research), a few more links would definitely add up. Perhaps, the later versions can incorporate a feature that would let us set the number we want for each web content type. More real time results from Twitter would be another point on the wish list. Glydo does not take up much of browser estate. Confined to the status bar, it brings up the new web sources quite swiftly. Relevancy might differ from page to page, but on the whole the semantic technology holds up. Which addon have you picked for discovering new webpages? Will you give Glydo an inch of space? Let us know. Glydo ver. 0.9.20 can also be installed from Mozilla's Addon Gallery. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Related posts (6)Conveniently Twitter While Browsing In Firefox With Echofon’s Brilliant Plugin (48)How To Reduce Memory Usage in Firefox with MemoryFox (10)WebReview – Browse Smarter With This Firefox Add-on (11)View Your Firefox & Twitter Histories on A Timeline With Voyage (16)Two Simple Yet Useful Firefox Add-Ons You Should Have

Enna – A New and Exciting Linux Media Center Posted: 26 Jan 2010 10:30 AM PST These days, buying a decent plasma is often a lot more expensive than building your own media center. If you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, a media center is basically a PC that’s focused solely on media playback. Check out our PDF guide on how to set up your own media center, written by Stefan Neagu. For the past year or so, I’ve been using Windows 7 on my media center. It’s quick, smooth, and the new Windows Media Center makes it an incredible improvement over Vista. It also supports most PCI TV tuners. Lately, I came to realize the stupidity of all it. Television shows haven’t been accounting to much lately, and the Windows 7 price tag isn’t worth it if you’re only using it for music and movies. Enna Although Boxee seemed the more obvious choice, it loses the high ground if you lack a decent internet connection. Just when I was about to give up hope, I heard about Enna – an incredible open source Linux media center, developed by the GeeXboX team, and ready for its first public release. Enna can be installed on top of your Linux distro (e.g. Ubuntu) as a standalone app. But if you don’t want to make “the switch”, you can just use the GeeXboX live CD. You can boot Enna straight from the disk, without installing any alternative operating systems. If you want, you can even keep your default Windows installation running underneath. Movies and Music Keep in mind that the Enna Linux media center is a very standard app. It packs the very basic features in a most enticing and graphical user interface. If you’re looking for a surplus of widgets and online connectivity, you’re probably looking for Boxee. That said, if you’re a standard media freak, Enna should sate your initial hunger, especially for a first public release. Enna is great for browsing media files on your hard disk – both video and audio. You can also use Enna to pop an old-fashioned DVD. Sadly, this first release does not yet support audio CDs. This feature is promised to be included in one of the other upcoming releases, together with podcast support and VDB TV tuner functionality. Photographs and Books Apart from video and music, you can also use the Enna Linux media center software for photo slideshows. Next time your mother-in-law celebrates another wrinkle, surprise her and the rest of the family with a stunning slideshow. I’m not much of a picture-person myself, but I love to use slideshows to decorate a room, and create a pleasant ambience. This last feature came as a surprise to me. In the bookstore, you can grab your favorite books and comics from the web, and read them from the couch. Enna currently supports GoComics and OneManga for content synchronisation. Obviously, you want be able to read Shakespeare on your media center, but you can flick through a few (web)comics when you’re bored. As the names suggest, you can access both western comic panels and Japanese manga. Download Enna Media Center here. What do you think of Enna? Or do you prefer another media center? Tell us which and why in the comments section below! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Related posts (66)Top 5 Free Media Players For Windows (14)Sync All of Your Media Files in One Place with doubleTwist (4)How To Sync iTunes Library With Your Music Folders (91)Boxee – Cool Media Center for Mac and Ubuntu (0)Allconsuming – Catalog Your Book, Movies, Music Collection & Much More

How To Run Multiple Dropbox Accounts Simultaneously [Mac] Posted: 26 Jan 2010 09:30 AM PST One of the most useful computer applications that I’ve come across so far is Dropbox. There are already countless articles about this automatic folder backup and synchronization tool here in MakeUseOf, including many usage spin-offs like: synchronizing research data and triggering automatic downloads. But if you are an avid Dropbox user, there might be times when you wish you could run multiple Dropbox accounts simultaneously. Maybe because you need to seperate personal account and work account, or maybe you just want to get some extra storage – for free. Whatever the reason is, there are ways to run multiple Dropbox accounts at once. Here are the steps to do it on a Mac. Before you start, you need to create an additional account with Dropbox. Command Line Galore Tweaking Dropbox to enable multiple instances requires meddling with Terminal and a whole bunch of command lines. I’m not a fan of command line myself, but I can tell you that the following process is not as “scary” as it sounds. There are two steps that need to be taken. The first step is setting up the account. Open Terminal Type (or just copy and paste) this command: bash Hit enter and insert the next command line: HOME=$HOME/.dropbox-alt /Applications/Dropbox.app/Contents/MacOS/Dropbox & Here’s how it looks like. A new Dropbox icon will appear in the menubar. A Dropbox account setup window will also pop up. Follow the setup steps. At the last setup step, tick the option to choose your own location of Dropbox folder. Hit the “Change” button to determine the location. After the setup process complete, you can close the terminal. Theoretically, the extra Dropbox instances will also be closed, but in my experiment it remained in the menubar. That’s the end of step 1. We’ll go to the second step: creating the startup item for the extra Dropbox instance. Open the Terminal (again) Paste in this command line: mkdir -p ~/wherever you like/DropboxAltStarter.app/Contents/MacOS/ In place of “wherever you like” really does mean anywhere on your hard drive that you like, such as ~/Documents/. In this step, you are creating an application called “DropboxAltStarter“. But it’s not completed yet. Then open TextEdit and paste: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>CFBundlePackageType</key> <string>APPL</string> <key>CFBundleExecutable</key> <string>DropboxAltStarter</string> <key>LSUIElement</key> <string>1</string> </dict> </plist> Save the file as: “Info.plist” anywhere. (Please note that the <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC “-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN” and “http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd”> above should be written within one line of code – separated by a space, but we need to break it down into two because it couldn’t fit into the WP theme. So don’t forget to enter it in one line). Right click on the “DropboxAltStarter” that you’ve created before and choose “Show Package Contents” Drag and drop the “Info.plist” file into the folder “Contents” (the same level as “MacOS” folder). Create a new text file and paste: #!/bin/bash HOME=/Users/$USER/.dropbox-alt /Applications/Dropbox.app/Contents/MacOS/Dropbox (Again, the HOME=/Users/$USER/.dropbox-alt and /Applications/Dropbox.app/Contents/MacOS/Dropbox should be written in one line of code separated by a space. You know what to do.) Then save the file as “DropboxAltStarter” (sans quote). Don’t forget to uncheck the “If no extension is provided, use “.txt”” box to prevent TextEdit from saving the file as text file. Repeat steps 4 and 5 above to put the “DropboxAltStarter” file into the “MacOS” folder. Open Terminal and type this command: chmod 755 Before you hit enter, drag and drop the “DropboxAltStarter” file to the Terminal to finish the command. Then hit enter. Now you have a working app. You can move it to the “Applications” folder if you like, double click it to open the second dropbox account. You can also add the newly created app to your start up list by going to “System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items” menu. After the long journey Whew! That was quite a long ride, wasn’t it? The work is done, but there’s still one thing to add: To know which Dropbox account is which, you can assign different logo to one of them. Go to Dropbox’ “Preferences > General” and choose the B&W logo for one of the accounts. If you are a Windows user, you can use Dropbox addon called Dropboxen to achieve the same result. So, what would you do with two Dropbox instances? Do you know the way to run multiple Dropbox accounts? Share your thoughts and opinion using the comment below. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Related posts (166)Top Free File Hosts To Store Your Files Online (8)Split Big Files into Smaller Ones with GSplit (7)Meiga – One of The Best Linux File Sharing Programs (9)How To Transfer Files Easily Between Linux Machines (24)How To Easily Share Files Between Mac & Windows Computers

Four Really Good Free Desktop News Ticker Apps Posted: 26 Jan 2010 08:30 AM PST Today, news are reported from all over the globe and there is no shortage of diversity. Entire TV channels have been dedicated to reporting the latest developments. You could probably watch, read, and listen to news all day every day without ever getting the same story twice. Of course that’s not an option, so you filter. How do you keep up with the latest news? And how do you weed out what you don’t care for? Do you scan the newspaper, visit different websites, or do you watch TV news? Isn’t that difficult and time consuming? A more convenient way is to bring all sources you care for together in one place. That could be a website or a RSS reader. In this article, I introduce four excellent and free desktop news ticker applications that will stream custom news right to your desktop. BBC Destkop News Ticker Application If you just want quality news from a reliable source and cannot be bothered to set up your own feeds, you’ll be very pleased with the BBC’s Desktop Ticker. It’s easy to set up and you can choose news topics from a long list of news and sport feeds. Upon its first launch, it will guide you through every step of setting it up properly. The ticker has two options. You can either view the latest news headlines in a ticker at the bottom or top of your desktop. Or you can receive hourly updates. The hourly update contains a list of headlines in the menu on the left and a summary of the selected headline in the window to the right. You can snooze the hourly updates for up to two hours. From the system tray icon, you can open the Content Options window. This is where you make your selection of categories and customize the ticker. For example, you can change the scrolling speed under Ticker Settings in the bottom right. Overall, this is a simple and convenient free desktop news ticker that is quick and easy to set up. The big drawback of this client is that you cannot add custom feeds. CNN Desktop News Like BBC’s tool, CNN Desktop News launches with a step-by-step guide to discover all options and features. While the design is refreshingly different, both clients offer almost identical features. Alerts can be received via a separate alert window (displayed below) or a desktop ticker or both. Through the system tray icon you can access further ticker options. For example, news can scroll horizontally or vertically. The crucial difference compared to the BBC Desktop Ticker is the option to add custom RSS feeds and personalize CNN’s Desktop News. Taken together, CNN’s Desktop News client offers many useful options and features, while still being extremely easy to set up. Snackr For those of you who use Adobe Air, Snackr might be an interesting app. After completing the installation process you can import an OPML feed list, add feeds manually, or kick it off with a sample feed set. Once you’re done setting up, Snackr will horizontally scroll your feeds’ headlines at the bottom of your desktop. When you click on a headline, the scrolling stops and a window with a summary pops up. You can click on “View Post” to read the entire story online. Menu options from left to right: add a feed, access the Options window, collapse the feed, quit Snackr. Snackr was previously reviewed by T.J. in his article Snackr – Fancy Feed Reader. NewsBliss RSS News Ticker Are you a social media addict? NewsBliss streams YouTube videos, Twitter updates, podcasts, and of course news to your desktop. You can manually add feeds, import from OPML, select feeds from NewsBliss and CNET preset feeds, set up tags and users for scanning YouTube and Flickr, and enter keywords for Google News & Video and eBay. Click on a headline to view a story summary and click on the summary’s headline to read the entire article in your browser. You can also set up RSS feeds, including news in the Google Desktop (Aibek: Google Desktop – Loaded Search Tool for Your PC and More) Sidebar or in KlipFolio (Tina: Klip The We to Your Desktop with Klip Folio). How do you preferably consume news? Image credits: jayofboy 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 (14)Ways to Stay on Top of The News (41)The New RSS Feed Reader Wars! (13)Snackr – Fancy Feed Reader (Adobe Air App) (5)Read Latest Articles from Favorite Sites in A Magazine (4)MobileRSS: An iPhone Google Reader App with Social Media Integration

The Top 5 Free Microsoft Products & Why They Are The Best Posted: 26 Jan 2010 07:30 AM PST Microsoft's Internet Explorer may be the worst browser on the planet, and any Mac lover or Linux geek can easily expound on the flaws in the Windows operating system. However, it would be foolhardy to abandon our objectivity and criticize all Microsoft products. Not only does Microsoft make some great products, but several of them are available for you to use completely free. Here are my picks for the Top 5 free Microsoft software products and why they are the best. #1: Windows Live Writer Any blogger not using Windows Live Writer (WLW) is wasting time and being unproductive. Looking for a better alternative? There is none. WLW makes blogging a breeze on popular platforms like Wordpress, Blogger, Windows Live, LiveJournal and Typepad. True WYSIWYG editing shows you previews of how your post will look. Easily upload/embed photos/videos with borders, effects, alignment, and resizing. WLW also has an extensible framework of plugins, that let you customize and extend its functionality. Check out our previous coverage of WLW to get more out of this must-have tool for bloggers. #2: Photosynth Microsoft Photosynth is a jaw-dropping technology that automatically stitches together your photos to create an immersive 3D view. You can explore hundreds of thousands of synths on the site, or upload your own photos to create your own synth. You can then embed your synth on your website to share with everyone. This can even be used for multiple people uploading pictures of an event. For example, here is the photosynth of Obama's presidential inauguration made with hundreds of photographs contributed by multiple people. Below is a snapshot of a popular synth of the Statue of Liberty. From NASA to National Geographic, you can explore fascinating 3D views of places all over the world. Photosynth uses the Seadragon technology that we've covered previously on MakeUseOf. Photosynth is also integrated with Bing Maps. Over 14,000 geo-tagged photosynths comprising 1.4 million photos uploaded by users like you and me can be explored via the Photosynth Bing Maps application – easily one of the best free Microsoft software products. #3: World Wide Telescope Microsoft WorldWide Telescope (WWT) brings terabytes of imagery from the best ground telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope to your desktop. It seamlessly combines the data from these multiple sources into a rich immersive world that you can explore from your home. Use the native Windows client for all features, or the web client for a smaller subset. Guided tours from experts are a great way to introduce the stars and galaxies to youngsters. Exploration is possible not only in the visible light spectrum, but also in non-visible wavelengths such as x-ray and infrared. The user interface and imagery use Photosynth technology and is said to be significantly better than Google Sky. #4: Windows Live Skydrive Windows Live Skydrive offers 25 GB of free space to anyone with a free Live ID for uploading, storing, and sharing files and photos. Most online storage services do not provide anything above 2 GB for free, and Skydrive's 25 GB remains unparalleled. You can choose to keep files private, share them with contacts, or make them public. People are uploading 4 million photos to Skydrive every day. With Office 2010, you'll be able to directly save a document on your PC to Skydrive. Check out MakeUseOf's coverage of Windows Live to get the most out of Skydrive. #5: Bing Bing is one of the best free Microsoft software products. While I still use Google almost exclusively myself, I have no hesitation in nominating Bing in this list of the best free Microsoft products. Why? For starters, Bing is better than Google for certain kinds of queries. Natural language searches seem to be better in Bing. The categories and suggestions offered by Bing on the left are unique and not matched by Google. Check out these 10 Sites to Compare Google vs Bing Results Side by Side and judge for yourself. But the real reason I love Bing is because it provides competition to Google. The past decade has seen Google become a monopoly in the search business. With Bing's increasing popularity, Google is forced to innovate. Compare the rate of feature enhancements announced by Google before and after the arrival of Bing and you will agree that Bing makes Google better. That is certainly good for all of us and the web in general. Which are your favorite free Microsoft products? Share with us in the comments! Don’t like Microsoft? You’d be interested to read Justin’s article on The Top 5 Free WORST Microsoft Products & Why They Suck and chime in! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! 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