MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [January 27th]” plus 7 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [January 27th]
- 4 Free Clients To Conveniently Blog On Tumblr
- 5 Free Online Services to Send an Email to a Fax Machine
- Bring The Best Of The Web To You With Redux
- Turning Any Web App Into a Site Specific Browser App with Fluid [Mac]
- TalentTrove – If You Have a Talent, Get Spotted Here
- Top 5 Sources For Free or Cheap Online Legal Help
- VR Google – The Panoramio Virtual Reality Tool That’ll Blow Your Socks Off
| Cool Websites and Tools [January 27th] Posted: 27 Jan 2010 07:30 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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| 4 Free Clients To Conveniently Blog On Tumblr Posted: 27 Jan 2010 05:30 PM PST
And of course, since its inception, third party apps have cropped up, complementing their straightforward approach to blogging. Here are 4 must-have free cross platform desktop and browser apps to blog on Tumblr. Desktop AppsTumbleweedWhen you open up the Adobe Air app, Tumbleweed, the first thing you see are your latest posts. Tumbleweed allows you to post to all 7 categories available on Tumblr, text posts, photos, quotes, links, chat, audio and video posts. When it comes to videos, you can’t upload files directly from your computer to Tumblr, but rather have the ability to embed a video that is already available online. Tumbleweed supports multiple tumblelogs, and you can add tags and custom urls to your posts when you blog on Tumblr. Drawbacks: Posts are not automatically sent to your Twitter feed.
AlertThingyAlertThingy is another Adobe Air client you can use to update your Tumblelog. You can add entries to any of the 7 categories, drag and drop photos, and audio and video files. To post a video, copy and paste the embed code into the body of a new text entry, and it will convert it into a video. Drawbacks: AlertThingy does not support multiple Tumblelogs, posts are not sent to your Twitter feed, embedded videos are classified as text posts, and some of you might not like the fact that each post is appended with the text ‘via AlertThingy.’
Browser AppsChrome Tumblr DashboardIf you’re a Google Chrome fan, you’ll be happy to know the Chrome Dashboard extension allows you to share content easily from within Chrome, and to also check out the latest posts from tumblelogs you follow. If you’re watching a video online and want to share it the next time you blog on Tumblr, simply click on the ‘Share on Tumblr’ link, and it will automatically embed the video for you and fill out the caption with the video title, and with YouTube videos, it also adds a link to the YouTube member’s profile page. Links and article titles are also automatically filled in for you. If there are several photos on a page, the extension will provide you with a list of thumbnails and choosing one fills in the link to the image from the website.
The Chrome extension gives you access to advanced Tumblr features including publishing options, tags and custom urls, and supports multiple tumblelogs. Drawbacks: The window can be a little bit slow to load, and copy and paste doesn’t work.
Tumblr PostThe Tumblr Firefox addon Tumblr Post gives you quick access to blog on Tumblr by letting you write a text entry, upload photos or audio files from your computer, as well as posting the link to the current page you are on, by right-clicking the Tumblr icon in the Firefox status bar on the bottom of the page.
If you come across a picture you’d like to share on your Tumblelog, right click the image and choose ‘Post photo to my tumblelog.’ To post a video, copy and paste the embed code into the body of a new text entry, and it will convert it into a video.
You can also add tags to your entries, add captions and set click-through links for images. Tumblr Post supports multiple tumblelogs. Drawbacks: Uploading MP3 files from your computer doesn’t seem to work at all, and all videos posted using Tumblr Post will be classified as text posts. Cross-posting servicesThere are a few other services which enable cross-posting to several blogging sites, many of which include support for Tumblr, such as Posty, HelloTxt, Postling, Shareaholic, and Ping.fm, which also allows you to add a bot to your Google Talk contacts list, which will allow you to update your Tumblelog using IM. What apps do you prefer to use to post to your Tumblelog? Let us know in the comments. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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| 5 Free Online Services to Send an Email to a Fax Machine Posted: 27 Jan 2010 03:30 PM PST
And so began my quest into the world of free online faxing. The only requirement that I set when I started this search was that the resource must be free, it must allow, at a minimum, a full textual document to be sent over the Internet. The ability to send formatted documents would be a plus, but since most of the time I just need to send over information, the ability to send an text email to a fax machine is really all I usually need. Online Services – Free Faxing With AdsSo, you’re in a crunch and you really need to fire off a quick text document to a fax number. In this article, I’m going to cover 5 free services that let you send an email to a fax machine, but the three most common are in this first batch. The following three services are about as simple as they can get. Without any registration of any kind, you can simply visit the website, upload the file that you want to fax, type in the fax number and fire it off. The service simply faxes your document to the recipient you entered. Sound to good to be true? Well, it’s not. It is paid for by ad revenue on both the website and by placing ads on the cover page of your fax as well.
Using GotFreeFax is about as easy as it gets. Just enter your information as the sender, enter your recipient’s information and Fax number, and then either upload a PDF or DOC file, or paste your email (which can even include formatting) into the rich text box. There’s even the option to maintain an Ad-Free cover page. GotFreeFax is one of the few free services that allows this option.
FaxZero is almost identical to GotFreeFax in terms of how it works. You enter the sender and receiver information and then upload a DOC or PDF file, or insert the text message you want to fax into the text box. The free version of this online app does insert an ad onto the cover page, and you’re limited to two free faxes a day with a max of three pages per faxed document. For a $1.99 fee, you can send up to 15 pages per document without any ad on the cover sheet. Unfortunately, this service as well as GotFreeFax only works to send faxes in the U.S. and Canada.
PopFax, just like the previous two sites, asks for receiver and sender information, and then lets you upload a file or insert your text message. Just like the others, the services is quick, easy, and best of all free. Can I Send an Email to a Fax Machine?Now, when it comes to the question of literally sending an email to a fax machine, the next services easily takes the cake. By configuring the recipient email address in a specific way, you can deliver an email directly to any fax machine of your choice for absolutely free.
The service is called TPC Fax and it’s absolutely brilliant. Simply by formatting the section of the email address after the “.” with specific formatting, you can format the cover sheet. Since “_” is converted to a space and “/” is converted to a new text line, you could easily format three or four lines that describe the contact information of your recipient. The section after the “@” is where you insert the FAX number. The service is very simple and only for faxing the text within your email – but there’s no faster and easier free way to send an email to a fax machine than this very cool service. Using Drop.io to Receive FaxesI know I said I would provide 5 services that let you send an email to a fax machine, but this last resource is actually one that will allow you to receive Faxes in return. Often, the recipient of your fax may want to fax information back, and while there are some online fax services that will send for free, just about all of them charge some kind of fee to establish a Fax number where you can retrieve faxes online. All, that is, except for Drop.io, which David covered earlier. If you don’t have a Drop.io account, sign up for one now – it’s free and you get 100MB of storage.
To get your Drop.io fax number, from your main Drop.io page, just click on “Add.”
On the “Add” page, click “More” and then select the “this coversheet” link in order to see what your fax number is (it’s printed right on the coversheet. All you have to do is email the coversheet to the person who wants to send you a fax, and they can send the fax to your Drop.io box so long as they make sure to use the coversheet first, and according to Drop.io it’s also best to set the fax machine to the highest resolution settings. As far as I know, this Drop.io service is one of the few (if not only) truly free services where you can receive a Fax at no cost. Do you know of any other free and useful online tools that you can use to send or receive a fax? Share your own resources 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
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| Bring The Best Of The Web To You With Redux Posted: 27 Jan 2010 01:30 PM PST
While there's something to be said about seeking out the best of the web that appeals to you, more often than not we now turn to our friends – be they close friends we know in real life, or like-minded individuals worldwide that share our tastes. You might receive a retweeted link to a video via Twitter, a shared post on someone's Facebook wall, an IM message with a link to a funny news story, or perhaps an email forward from your grandmother. These pieces of shared content are vetted by your friends and family, and that's ultimately why they have a higher chance of meaning something to you when they've deemed it to be something you might find interesting.
The simplest way to describe what Redux is doing is to think of it as a mix of social news websites like Digg and Reddit, with a mix of Twitter content visualization services like Brizzly and the upcoming Twazzup beta. Redux hooks into your social networks, like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace, and pulls out the content shared within them – in real-time. You'll see at a glance the best of the web – the links, videos, images, and stories from the people on these services that you're friends with – in a single stream of content. You can also filter the content to just provide videos, links, or images alone, or narrow down to just one of your social networks.
The way in which it's similar to social news is by way of Redux's use of "props" and commenting to bump content to the top of your stream. As Redux's users interact with the content, it deems it to be "fresher" and thus more interesting, popular, and deserving of your attention. There's also a notion of "Channels" which allows you to focus in on particular topics that have user-moderated content streams which stick to the types of media that piques your interest the most.
One of the most creative ways Redux repackages this new funneled content is by use of a "TV mode" which shows a fullscreen display of your content stream with all of its associated comments and props from your friends and the rest of the Redux community. As you watch, you can easily provide your own comments, props, or share the content quickly to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, or copy/paste a link to send along to other friends outside of Redux.
The proliferation of real-time media consumption is prodding developers to come up with elegant solutions to bring relevant content to consumers in a way that's seamless and engaging. Redux is a great step towards achieving this goal, and provides one of the better ways to bring the best of the web to you, rather than the other way around. Looking for other services that help you to find what's hot on the web? Check out these other related articles on MakeUseOf:
What do you use to find the best of the web? Do you rely on RSS, aggregators like FriendFeed or Cliqset, or new services like Lunch or Simler? Let us know with your comments below and tell us how you find the best content! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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| Turning Any Web App Into a Site Specific Browser App with Fluid [Mac] Posted: 27 Jan 2010 11:30 AM PST
While this is a good idea, the trend brings up some inconveniences. One of them is the unavoidable clutter of the browser tabs. It seems that the concept of opening only one tab at a time is alien to modern day people. If you are similar to most people, you’ll have many open many tabs simultaneously. Terror of the tabsAll of these open tabs, which consist of the regulars (the ones that we always open) and the passersby (the occasional browse), will eventually choke your browser and drain your system resources.
But the worst part is the time when you have to re-open your browser – along with all the tabs. Even if you are lucky enough to have the last opened tabs remembered by the browser, the process will still take time and bandwidth. What if you’ve quit your browser, but you need to check your inbox in GMail? Do you need to open all the tabs for the sake of only one? It would be nice if the important links – the one that we often visit – could be opened independently in a site specific browser. Beside reducing the clutters, this method will also lighten up the burden for your system. To be able to do that on Mac, you need the help from Fluid. The turn and the tuneFluid is an application that will help you build Site Specific Browsers (SSBs). Translation: you can create a dedicated browser for each of your favorite web address. Every browser instances is an independent application by itself. Jackson discussed Fluid back in 2008, please refer to the article for more information and the background story. But there have been many improvements since then. So, let’s have another look, shall we? To create a new SSB, tell Fluid the site address. Don’t forget to give name to it. By default, Fluid will put the end result in the Applications folder and use the web’s favicon as the app’s icon (even though the icon fetching action is not always successful). Click create to start the building process.
Several seconds later, your dinner is served.
Launching the new app will open the main page (or the address that you provide).
The interface is deliberately set to be clean and simple. But should you need the standard browser interface, you could do so via “View” menu.
You can adjust many behaviors of created SSB from the Preferences menu. There are many categories there, but we’ll just look into some of the most important. First, the General Preferences. This is the place to assign shortcut keys and change the application icon.
You can also adjust the general look to your liking from the Appearance Preference.
The Userstyles Preferences pane is the “dreams come true” tab for most of creative people out there. You can assign CSS codes to alter the appearance of SSB’s sites and pages. After clicking the “Plus” (+) button, write down the specific address in the “URL Pattern” box and check the box. While selecting one of the URL Pattern, you add lines of the CSS codes inside the box below.
There is a short video explaining this feature in the developer’s blog. And for those who aren’t into CSS, there are a lot of ready-made userstyles for Fluid. Each of them was usually written for a specific site/web service. All you need to do is search for them. Userstyles.org is a good place to start. To get ideas on how far you can go with the customization, you could visit this site.
As the name suggests, SSB will only allow you to go around a specific site. But the strict rule could easily be bent by going to the Advanced Preferences. You could add more URL patterns – the open areas that could be visited – or you could just bypass the rule by choosing “Allow browsing to any URL” radio button.
(Almost) unlimited possibilitiesFluid and its ability to be customized really open up the door for possibilites. You could go from just creating simple SSBs of your favorite sites to building your own desktop clients made up of web services. Few of the popular web services among Fluid users are: Digg, Twitter, GMail, Remember the Milk, Google Docs and Facebook. While my personal favorite usage is to build specific blogging clients of the sites where I contribute. The availability of bookmarks bar also allows you to add bookmarklets to enhance the ablility of the SSBs. As a standalone applications, you could also add your SSBs to the startup list (System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items) so they will always be available every time you restart your system. Have you ever tried Fluid? Do you have other ideas of using Fluid? Do you know cool customizations for Fluid’s SSBs? Share using the comment 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
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| TalentTrove – If You Have a Talent, Get Spotted Here Posted: 27 Jan 2010 10:30 AM PST
That wisdom tells us to take our talents out into the world, for only when you show your talent can someone spot them. And don't we all know that working with our talents makes work… play. So, where would you head if you knew you had a talent and wanted to shout it out across the rooftops? Probably, a performer would make a demo CD and circulate it around. YouTube could be the online town square which also gives better chances of going viral. The web is the ultimate platform that many latent talents have found the place to be. It's usually free, it's accessible and it's global. One such free web application with the said qualities is TalentTrove. TalentTrove is a place where you can show your talent by creating, uploading and broadcasting the stuff you are made of. But this is more than just a video site because TalentTrove comes with features that not only let you highlight your talents but also manage them as well. This site is free for both the professional and the amateur.
From first impressions, the site may seem India-centric. But that's just because a few of the head honchos have Indian roots. The site is very international in scope and reach. Have a Talent? Find a Space for It
TalentTrove positions itself as an umbrella website for the varied talents that can be found among us. From the commonality of acting to the rarity of nerdcore (that's something of general interest to nerds), you get it all. Each category has its own page or sub-site with the content arranged by file types and locations. Enter Through the BackstageA registration and log-in takes me to the BackStage. This is like a profile page or a dashboard for your TalentTrove activities. You can start by creating your circle of friends. Follow it up by uploading your files or edit any existing files you have. Files can be video, audio, image or text files.
You can start a few more 'promotion' activities like start a blog, jump into the forums, catch up with the contests that are always going on and maybe submit content if you are in the submission period. Face the World with MyStageMyStage is your public profile. This is where the web audience gets to see your talents on display and leave there bouquets or brickbats by ways of comments.
The Places of Interest at TalentTroveTalentTrove is not just about uploading content and sitting back for the fruits to fall. The design of this web service is towards active participation. The few other features make it standout from any other community powered talent discovery website. A dekko at the navigation bar reveals all the places you can jump to. TalentTrove brings you a host of contests to participate in. Each contest consists of a multi-stage process in which users submit media and vote on others’ entries in a series of face-offs.
CollabLab is a trademarked feature. It is a live collaboration tool which calls upon the TalentTrove community to help each other out. For instance, a model might need a photographer for the portfolio. Announce it here and someone will step forward.
Forums are not different from the usual message boards…a place to swap queries and suggestions. You can also lend a hand to someone who is in search of a collaborator.
TalentTrove Radio and TV host a lot of streaming radio and video shows. Radio and TV have their separate spaces and channels. It's like your own entertainment channel with some professional and amateur talents on display.
Judging TalentTroveThe first thing that catches the eye is the neatness of design and the slick navigation. The site is easy to understand and navigate. There is a comprehensive FAQ section. The site gives a lot of things to do to the guy who has some skills to show off. The contests are for sure an incentive. If you want a place to show your talent, TalentTrove is a nice place to be. Showcase your stuff…who knows you could be the next Will Smith. Of course, I cannot really comment if the site will lead you up the red carpet but do let us know your thoughts on TalentTrove. Have they got it right? Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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| Top 5 Sources For Free or Cheap Online Legal Help Posted: 27 Jan 2010 08:30 AM PST
I recently wrote an article covering the '8 Best Websites for Law Students'. If you don't practice law, chances are you don't know what to do when these issues arise. Can these concerns only be solved by a lawyer? And, doesn't that cost money? In this article, we're going to discuss the top five resources for you to find free/cheap online legal help. These sites offer so much information that by the time we're done you might actually consider going to law school. Sound exciting? You might want to cancel that legal consultation you've scheduled with your lawyer. LawInfo
LawInfo has an enormous amount of free resources at your disposal. They offer access to over 100,000 forms for almost any legal issue and an FAQ section where you can find answers to over 24,000 legal questions. They have statutes, articles, how-to's, legal guides, videos, and a library of resources to help you learn the law or find the right attorney. Their videos are really well shot and are short and to the point. I'd go on, but that'd just be bragging. FreeAdvice
FreeAdvice offers "outstanding advice" at a "reasonable price". This free service has a large collection of law/legal information for you to take in and allows you to ask your questions to lawyers. What sets this service apart from the rest is their forum. There they have thousands of posts and threads for you to read and you can submit your questions/thoughts directly to the community. LawFiles.net
LawFiles.net is a place where you can submit your questions to attorneys in seconds. It has a very simple design and offers a lot of useful information. This service is free and confidential, keeping your legal matters private. You can also read recent answers, legal articles, and news. LawGuru
LawGuru has a team of attorney contributors just waiting to answer your legal questions. They have a very simple system that lets you ask legal questions, search past questions/answers, and find local attorneys. When submitting a question, you have the option of submitting your query as 'free' or 'paid'. Paid questions allow you to hand select the attorneys you would like your question sent to and comes with 100% confidentiality, meaning your question won't be published on the LawGuru public answers system. Free questions are placed on a five day hold before being submitted to attorneys. When your question receives an answer, you are notified by email and the Q&A is posted to LawGuru Answers. The Law
The Law is home to an accumulation of legal discussions, forms, guides, and FAQs. You can submit your cases for a free online legal help there, as well as locate an attorney by keyword, location, or practice area. The website is well organized and easy to read. By now you should have all of the legal information you could possibly read. I hope you found these sources useful in your search for good legal advice. Know of another great site to get free/cheap legal help? If so, leave your tips, ideas, concerns, etc. in the comment section below! Image Credit: mbacina 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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| VR Google – The Panoramio Virtual Reality Tool That’ll Blow Your Socks Off Posted: 27 Jan 2010 07:30 AM PST
You can look at some popular favorite places or show off your own. Like I said, Panoramio is property of Google and is awesome. I do not know how I had never heard of it before today! Let's take a look at how it works. Let us head on over to their website and sign up as you cannot use your Google ID.
Fill out the requested information and continue. When you have completed, you will see a screen that looks similar to this.
You can click on Upload your photos to start or you can check out the places or tags buttons at the top of the page. Once you click on “Upload your photos”, you will see this screen allowing you to upload images:
Browse to your images and click Upload when you are done. You will see this screen asking you to tag and locate you picture on a map.
Fill in the data and click the Map this photo button at the top. Next, you will need to provide a location. Type in as much information into the box and click Search.
That will show the picture on a map like so. Confirm your location and hit Save position.
Blamo, it will appear on a map or Google Earth. Now to be a little more interesting – let's travel the world and see images uploaded by other users. I clicked on Places at the top of the screen and that brought me to a random location like so:
Wow that's a lot of images! Click on one of them to see this:
You can click on the See all photos from this place button at the bottom to see this:
That sure is a lot of images! You can browse around and open each to take a closer look. You could use this a tool to see if you want to vacation somewhere or maybe even move to that new location! Next up you can view images on the map via user posted Tags. You will see the Tags button at the top of the interface. That will bring you to this screen:
Click on a popular tag (displayed as a tag cloud bold and big means popular!) or search for your own by typing it into the search box and hitting Find tag. I choose Sunset from the popular tags list and brought up this amazing search:
Beautiful! Simply beautiful. Panoramio has a lot of possibilities! Do you use this or another mapping application that allows you to show your images on a map? We would love to hear from you in the comments! Do you love it or what? Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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Blogging on 
I’m not really the type of person that sends faxes all that often. There may be an occasion or two when I have to forward information to my insurance company or the Human Resources department at work, but those times are very few and far between. However, since I don’t fax very often, whenever I do have a need to send a fax I used to scramble to find an available fax machine. After I started writing for MakeUseOf, I decided to reassess this occasional need and come up with a solution that would make use of available free online technologies and resources. I started looking for an answer to the question, “Can I send an email to a fax machine?”
When you spend a considerable time using the internet, you might find that it's increasingly more difficult to find what interests you the most while searching on your own. You can certainly seek out content through search engines, forums, and the like, but most of us now look to social networks to provide our daily fix with streams of news, images, videos, and other entertainment content.
You don’t need to be an expert in the technology industry to be able to see where the trend is heading: the cloud. More and more web-based applications are available, substituting their desktop-based counterpart.
Benjamin Franklin told us – "Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?"
Have a question about your legal rights? You're not alone. Every once in a while something comes up that requires the attention of your attorney. These occurrences can be caused by problems related to housing, work, family, bankruptcy, disability, or immigration—to name a few.
Panoramio is a site that allows you to share your digital pictures of certain places anywhere in the world. The main difference between this and something like 
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