MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [March 3rd]” plus 11 more

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• Cool Websites and Tools [March 3rd]
• Join MakeUseOf On Twitter!
• Travel Through Space for Free, Guided by World-Famous Astronomers
• Use Your Mac’s Preview Application To Edit Photos
• How To Use Google Voice To Blog Over The Phone
• Two Free Multiplatform Tools To Create iBooks
• PosteRazor – Another Simple Tool To Make Your Own Posters
• MakeUseOf Must-Have Mac Apps Giveaway Day #2 – AppZapper
• February Roundup – MakeUseOf Authors
• Mac Giveaway Intego VirusBarrier X6 Winners!
• Netbook Reader: Turn Your Computer Into A Library
• How To Create Cool Bubble Letters For Your Site Logo

Cool Websites and Tools [March 3rd] Posted: 03 Mar 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. Submit Your Web App   Navilator – James Cameron's Avatar is probably one of the biggest movies of the decade. The indigenous people portrayed in the movie speak a totally different language called Navi. Unlike languages in some other sci-fi movies, Navi is an actual language created by a linguist at University of Southern California. Now you can learn it too with the help of Navilator. Read more: Navilator: Avatar Na'vi Language Translator.   Flame – Not everyone was born with a talent for painting and the arts. While others struggle to learn the basics, some people are much better as if it is a common thing to do. Fortunately, Flame from Escape Motion is a simple web app that lets you create gorgeous flame paintings within seconds. Read more: Flame: Draw Cool Flame Paintings Online.     Twiangulate – is a great tool to analyze the followers of any Twitter user. For example, just enter the Twitter handle of any user and choose the Biggest Follower tab. Twiangulate will then tell you who are the most influential people following that particular user. Read more: Twiangulate: Find Common/Biggest Followers For Any Twitter User.     Blogtrottr – Some people use RSS feeds; some people use email updates. If you prefer email updates to RSS readers, but noticed that RSS lets you subscribe to a more specific section on the site, then Blogtrottr was designed for you. This service lets you subscribe to any RSS feed via email. Read more: Blogtrottr: Subscribe to RSS Feed Via Email.     Urtak – If you are fond of making poll questions and gathering survey answers from people, then Urtak might just be perfect for you. It is a free collaborative poll tool which allows you to create your own embeddable polls. Read more: Urtak: Create Embeddable Polls For Free.   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. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Related posts (171)makeuseof extra #27 (107)Finally Stick To Your Resolutions With StickK (51)Cool Websites and Tools [September 9] (62)Cool Websites and Tools [September 7] (72)Cool Websites and Tools [September 6]

Join MakeUseOf On Twitter! Posted: 03 Mar 2010 06:30 PM PST If you have discovered MakeUseOf just recently and are one of our 170,000+ subscribers, please consider following us on Twitter as well. You’ll be notified everytime there is a new post on the MakeUseOf Blog, a web app review on the MakeUseOf Directory or something new on Geeky Fun. Plus, we would love it if you would re-tweet the posts and discuss them, so more people get to know about us and join our community. Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter Now Thank you! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Related posts (17)Who’s Following You on Twitter and are You Following Them? (12)View Your Firefox & Twitter Histories on A Timeline With Voyage (5)Use Twitter From Gmail With TwitterGadget (16)Update all your Social Status Messages with Ping.fm (19)Two Undercover Twitter Clients That Don’t Let Others Know You Are Tweeting

Travel Through Space for Free, Guided by World-Famous Astronomers Posted: 03 Mar 2010 05:31 PM PST Once in a while we are faced with a particular use of technology that changes how we interact with the world around us, but it’s not often that we find technology to help imagine what it’s like to travel through space and understand the universe beyond our world. Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope does just that. WorldWide Telescope is actually a project that has a lot of sentimental value to a lot of people at Microsoft. The project was being developed by Jim Gray, researcher and manager of Microsoft Research’s Science Group, when he got lost sailing from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, to the Farallon Islands and was never found again. WorldWide Telescope was donated, in his honor, free of charge to the scientific community and to anyone who enjoys exploring space. I have to admit it, I was very skeptical at first. I am an astronomy buff who has been burned many times before by software that promised to help me understand a particular star cluster or navigate the gorgeous clouds in the Orion Nebula. Time and time again I have been disappointed, so expectations were very low. My first surprise was with the source of materials. WorldWide Telescope has managed to gather images from most major sources and formats in the world and has literally created a giant 3 dimensional map of the visible universe in amazing satellite images, as well as gamma rays, microwave background, x-ray images and much, much more. You can view any section you pick as a panorama that can be rotated, focus only on planets or moons, or watch our own planet at night from a bird’s eye view. The second, even more exciting surprise is that for the first time, I didn’t have to try to make sense of the information alone. Almost every topic and interest has tours through space which are guided by world famous astronomers. You can learn about “Space Dust and US” from Alyssa Goodman or “Search for Extra Solar Planets” with David Charbonneau, both from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Or how about a “Walkthrough of the Landings of the Apollo Missions” or a trip to the “Center of the Milky Way” with Doug Roberts from the Adler Planetarium Astronomy Museum? And if you are so inclined, you can create your own tour to share with friends. It’s as easy as creating a PowerPoint Document. And the fun doesn’t end there. Resources about any part of space are available with one click, so you can read about what you are looking at as you explore it, search for particular terms and find guided explanations of most things you could have questions about. WorldWide Telescope also allows you to configure your experience to view space exactly as what you want to study it if you are an astronomer, but also allows people who just like looking at stars, to have fun traveling around aimlessly. You can join communities and get access to their own tours and documents or even connect your own telescope to WorldWide Telescope. Now, WorldWide Telescope is obviously not the only program that can be used to view space. Google Sky has attempted to give us a view of the universe that emulates its Google Earth, but it pales in comparison. Many other open source and paid programs have attempted (and failed) to do what WorldWide Telescope does so well. So take a break from the problems of this world and lose yourself around Cassiopeia explosions, exploring the rings of Saturn or traveling through the clouds of a stellar nursery to watch some stars being born. It can help make your problems seem a little bit smaller in comparison. Have a favorite spot in outer space? Share it with us. I’d love to go visit it. 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 (9)5 Best Websites For Space and Astronomy Fans (10)Learn Interesting Geographical Facts About Mars On Google (4)2 Cool Windows Mobile Apps For Astronomy Enthusiasts (2)10 Cool Online Apps and Interactive Features Offered by NASA (8)Use Memoriser to Memorize Information Fast During Work Day

Use Your Mac’s Preview Application To Edit Photos Posted: 03 Mar 2010 03:31 PM PST Every Mac comes installed with Apple's simple and useful application, Preview. Typically this application is used as the default program for viewing PDF's, but this application can also be used to preview and edit photos. That's right, some of the same basic editing and adjustment tools that you find in iPhoto or Photoshop are present in Preview. So if you have iPhoto installed, why would you want to bother with Preview? Well sometimes, if you need to do some quick editing of a photo before you email it or print it out and don't feel like opening iPhoto or another larger program, Preview comes in handy. Preview has editing tools for rotating and resizing images, as well as making basic exposure and color adjustments and conversions. Opening Photos In Preview When you click on an image file, it will open in Preview, unless the image is a RAW photo file. You can also simply drag one or more image files to the Preview icon in the Dock and they will launch in the application. I didn't realize this before writing this article, you can also import images directly from your camera or scanner using Preview. When you save selected photos to a designated folder, they will open in Preview, providing a lightweight space for managing your images. And for you shutterbugs out there, don't think you can't get basic EXIF or IPTC information about your images opened in Preview. That info is under Tools>Show Inspector. The Inspector also includes a way to add keywords that will get embedded in selected image files. Editing Photos In Preview In the Preview menu bar, most all the image editing tools are found under the Tools menu, which includes tools for rotating and flipping images, and even adding shapes and texts on top of an image. The Adjust Size tool allows you to change the image dimensions and resolution. It even includes some default web pixel sizes, but unfortunately there's no way to save your own custom settings. As you will see, this resize tool also resamples your image and scales it proportionally, just as you do in iPhoto and Photoshop. This is very convenient if you need to quickly resize photos for web posting. At the bottom of the tool dialogue box, notice that you also get information about the resulting size of an image when its dimensions are changed. Exposure & Color Adjustments The heart of Preview's adjustment tool is found by clicking the Adjust Color item in the Tool menu. Don't be fooled by the name for this item. It does more than adjust colors of a photo. It more importantly allows you to adjust the exposure of images, so if they are too light or dark you can make corrections with this tool. If your image is too light or dark, or if it's lacking detail in the shadows and highlights, try using the Exposure slider to make those exposure adjustments. Most digital images can typically can increased contrast and to help bring in more detail in the photo, so give the Contrast slider a try and see how it affects your photo. Converting To Black & White Or Sepia If you need a quick way to convert a color photo to black-and-white or sepia, simply move the Saturation slider all the way to the left to remove the color in the photo. This tool is not as advanced as in Photoshop, but for a down and dirty conversion to monochrome, this technique may well come in handy. Likewise, you can convert an image to sepia by using the Sepia slider. The Temperature slider can add a little warmth to your image or cool it down, while the Tint overlay tool provides a color overlay to an image. And finally, the last step you'll want to make in your adjustment is sharpening. In my experience, the Sharpness slider works just as good in Preview as it does in iPhoto. So once you do all the exposure and color adjustments to an image, you can sharpen it up. Oh, and one more thing. If you need to add some font style text, or draw an arrow, oval, or rectangle in an image, Preview has you covered there too. Click on Annotate in the Tools menu for what you need. These annotations are layered on top of the image, of course, and they can be selected and edited out if need be. Now these tools are pretty basic. Preview adjustments don't include advance tools in iPhoto like noise reduction, shadow and highlight adjustments, nor the ability to copy and paste adjustments from one photo to the next, but overall the tools are useful and pretty easy to use. Adjustments Are Destructive Finally, I would add that Preview is not of course an image management application like iPhoto. The adjustments you make to images in Preview can be destructive. In iPhoto, all your original images are retained no matter how many adjustments you make to images inside the application. However, with Preview, you will need to make a duplicate copy of the original image before you edit photos, or do a Save As in order to retain the original after the adjustments are made. Preview is no replacement for iPhoto or other more advanced image adjustment programs, but because it's a default application in all recent Mac operating systems, it makes for a lightweight and easy to use image editing program, and it doesn't cost you a dime extra to use. Let us know if you have used Preview to make image adjustments. Did you find it useful, why or why not? Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Related posts (29)[Google Picasa 101] – Getting Started (13)The Challenging World Of Image Editing (3)SnagIt Beta – Possibly The Most Advanced Screen Capture Tool [Mac] (9)PHOTOSHOP DISASTERS: 2 Blogs with Bad Photoshop Images (25)How To Make Amazing Panoramas in Windows For Free

How To Use Google Voice To Blog Over The Phone Posted: 03 Mar 2010 01:31 PM PST Okay – picture this. You’re driving down the Interstate on a very long and tiring car ride. Your mind wanders in and out of one topic after another. Then, suddenly, you’re struck with inspiration for a brilliant blog entry. You pull out your trusty mobile phone, turn it on, and dial the phone number for your blog. Once the computerized voice says, “Please enter your message,” you start reeling off your blog entry. Your voice passes through your mobile phone and enters the automated system that transcribes it into text, and automatically transmits your entry onto your blog. After about a minute of dictating your blog entry into the phone, you are satisfied, and you hang up. Immediately, the entire world can read the blog entry that you’ve just created, and the insight and wisdom published therein. Welcome to the futuristic world of voice blogging. Does this sound like science fiction? Well it’s not. After tinkering around for a few hours last night, I developed a series of Google Voice Settings, a Wordpress Plugin and other techniques to build an automated Voice-to-Blog system using only your mobile phone, or any other phone you wish in order to try out voice blogging for yourself. Configure Your Google Voice Account for Voice Blogging The basic operation of Google Voice is this: you are provided with a unique phone number, which you can use to accumulate voicemails, forward calls to other phones, or a variety of other unique uses. What some bloggers are doing is calling in their blog entry, which gets transcribed and stored on their Google Voice voicemail system. Later, when they have access to a computer, they go in and manually obtain the “Embed” code so they can embed the voicemail text into their blog. This system is inconvenient and cumbersome. Let’s look at how you can automate this process instead – so that the blog entries that you call in get automatically routed and published to your blog. First, from your Google Voice account, go to Settings and then click on “Voicemail & SMS“. Here, make sure you’ve selected the checkbox next to “Email the message to:” and then insert a unique email address that you’ve set up for the sole purpose of this Phone-to-Blog system you’re setting up. Avoid free email accounts that don’t have POP3 access. For this system to work, the address you choose needs to have POP3 enabled. Now that you’ve configured Google Voice to forward all new voicemails to your unique email address, it’s time to figure out how to get that email address to post the text to your blog. Setting Up The Postie Wordpress Plugin There are lots of options to do this depending on what type of blog you use. For Wordpress, I use the Postie plugin for this purpose. There are other methods to allow an email address to post to your blog, such as the one I previously described for Blogger. Download and install whatever plugin or tool you use for your blog. In the case of Postie, once it’s installed, you just click on Settings and Postie. In the settings section for Postie, you can configure the email address that you forward your Google Voicemails to. You insert the POP3 settings just as you would when you set up any email client. Next, click on the “Users” tab, and for “Authorized Addresses:” make sure to add an entry for “voice-noreply@google.com” – this is the address that all incoming voicemails arrive from. By adding it to this list, you’re authorizing the incoming emails from Google Voice to automatically post to your blog. On the “Message” tab, you want to configure the system so that it strips out all of the junk from before and after the transcribed message in the Google Voice email. Incoming emails have the word “Transcript:” at the beginning of the transcription, and “Play message:” at the end. So you can use these constant words as place markers for the beginning and the end of the blog post. Posting To Your Blog From Any Phone Now that you have Google Voice set up to transcribe your call and forward it to your email, and you’ve got Postie set up to monitor your email and post any new incoming Google Voice emails to your blog – you’re ready to start posting blog entries with just your voice!  You’re ready for voice blogging! Now the ultimate test – how well does Google Voice transcription work, and is it good enough to transcribe blog entries? In the following test, I simply picked up my home phone and dialed my Google Voice phone number. After getting to voicemail, I left my “blog entry” in the form of a voice message. My message was as follows: This is a test of using google voice to post at my blog. Hopefully google voice can transcribe my voice accurately. Let’s see how well google voice can do. Thank you. Now, under the Postie mailserver settings, I’ve set Postie to check my email account hourly. However, there’s a “Run Postie” button that you can use to manually force the plugin to check for new emails. Almost immediately, I saw the following post appear on my blog. Speaking slowly and clearly into the phone seems to help, but for some reason Google’s transcription script has a difficult time recognizing the word Google! One other problem I recognized with this approach is that the subject of the email from Google Voice, which includes your full telephone number, gets posted as the blog title. As far as I can tell, there’s no way to force Google Voice to send the email without a subject (so the blog entry would default to the one you set up in the Postie settings) – so the only alternative is to call your Google Voice number using the U.S. *69 approach (anonymous calling) or whatever feature blocks your phone number where you live. In time, hopefully Google Voice will improve its transcription feature so that there are fewer errors, and even more importantly – hopefully there are more customization options throughout Google Voice, so that things like notification emails can be tailored to suit your needs and make it much easier to perform voice blogging through Google Voice. Do you like this approach to using Google Voice to blog straight from your phone? Do you know of any other alternatives? Share your feedback in the comments section below. Related posts (9)Top 5 Free Ways To Get a Guestbook For Your Website (24)How To Easily Create & Manage an FAQ Page For Your Wordpress Blog (27)CommentLuv – Reward Commenters On Your Blog With Blog Links (8)Choose Between Nofollow & Dofollow With Lucia’s Linky Love (10)4 Ways To Make Use Of The Wordpress RSS Feed Footer Plugin

Two Free Multiplatform Tools To Create iBooks Posted: 03 Mar 2010 11:31 AM PST I hope time will prove me wrong, but I think that future mankind – at least in my part of the world – might become physically shorter than their predecessors. I came to this conclusion after carefully observing my first daughter every day. She’s barely seven and still in her first year of elementary school, but her school bag – which she has to carry on her back everyday – is bigger and heavier than my working backpack. That’s why I always try to help my dearest daughter carry her bag whenever I can. Burden From Bulks Of Books I think everybody knows what’s inside: books, tons of them. Competition among schools to stay in business makes them add more and more lessons to the curriculum just to look good (and get bigger income by selling more books). Those businessmen who call themselves educators should’ve known better than thinking that more subjects to learn is equal to better education. The real equation should be: more subjects means more burden to students, both physically and mentally. And bigger burden also equal to lesser ability to concentrate on the studying. Changing the school curriculum is not an easy job and require years of persistence. It’s an almost impossible job for an ordinary person like us. But lessening the weight of the books is very doable. Electronic books are no alien to people with a computer. Imagine students (and teachers) with no physical books. They carry all their books in digital format inside one single electronic device. It will surely lighten up the weight – literally. And as a bonus, their books can contain much more than just mere text and pictures. The Possible Chosen Device & Format The thing is, reading books in electronic format is not as comfortable as reading the printed pages. Yet. There are already gadgets built to replace printed books. Laptops are also common alternatives to e-book readers. But the one that I think would change the rules of the game is Apple’s soon-to-be-released iPad. While this “oversized iPod Touch” is not up to par to common notebooks (because it’s not intended to be a notebook replacement), it is a very capable e-book reader. Apple even goes as far as collaborating with major book and newspaper publishers and creating their own e-book store. They have also given the name “iBook” to this digital format electronic book. Even though iPad is said to be capable of opening several standard ebook formats from simple text to Adobe’s PDF, Apple adopted the free and open source ePub as the format of their iBooks. Looking at what Apple has done to iPods, digital music and movie distribution, even the worst result would still be a huge success. We might see students with light and stylish iPads in their schoolbag, with all of their textbooks inside it in the iBook/ePub format. Creating Your Own iBooks Being an open source format, ePub books are already widely available on the net. But you can also create your own electronic books in ePub format. Here are two free multiplatform tools to create iBooks – a.k.a: ePub books. eCub: A lightweight ePub publisher to create iBooks available for Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris platform. Some of the features are: creates unencrypted ePub files from text or XHTML files; allows editing of the text or XHTML files with a simple internal editor or designated external editors; helps to create a simple cover design image; optionally creates title, content and cover pages; can be run from the command line as part of a build script; can convert the book content to audio files (WAV or MP3). Sigil: Describes itself as a WYSIWYG ebook editor. Available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Some of the features are: WYSIWYG editing; Multiple Views: Book View, Code View and Split View; Metadata editor with full support for all possible metadata entries (more than 200) with full descriptions for each; Table Of Contents editor; Multi-level TOC support; Currently imports TXT, HTML and ePub files; more will be added with time; Currently exports ePub and SGF (Sigil native format); more will be added with time. If you like eBooks, you might want to check out our other ebook articles: The Best 6 Sites to Get Free Ebooks, How To Convert Scanned Pages Into eReader eBook Format, Calibre – Mighty eBook Management Software (Multi-OS) and How To Download Books From Google Books, Do you prefer to read books in digital format or traditional paper-printed format? Do you know other alternatives to free multiplatform ePub publishers for creating iBooks? Share using the comment below. Image credit: bébétoujours, brewbooks, and Apple Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Related posts (29)Who Needs The Amazon Kindle When You Have A Netbook? (175)The Best 6 Sites to Get Free Ebooks (14)Mobipocket – An Awesome ebook Reader Which is Free (6)Make Your Own eBooks with eBook Hood (10)How To Make Your Own Books From Wikipedia

PosteRazor – Another Simple Tool To Make Your Own Posters Posted: 03 Mar 2010 10:31 AM PST Posters…there's a subculture that has grown around them and has almost made them an art form. We had it hanging on our walls in our wonder years. Most of us have stared at them and dreamt up fantasies of strumming guitars or driving in Formula One. We got to see them around the boardroom with motivational motifs. And occasionally, we get to watch a few get burnt in mob frenzies. Why is a poster so appealing? Maybe it's because a poster is more than a photo.  It is something that captures life in greater width and height. That's why posters also easily become keepsakes. Growing up, I had to buy my posters and the larger the size, the higher went the costs. I also managed to create a few self made ones, but they were more of collages, a glued up motley of my favorite images. We didn't have the tools for the job that could help us make our own posters. But thanks to software, now stitching together a poster is only about getting the image right. The ink and paper costs are there but the software does the poster personalization. PosteRazor is a free software that easily helps you make your own posters at home. All that you need is an idea, the PosteRazor freeware and a standard color printer. PosteRazor is open source and a really small download at 484KB. Poster lovers can check out a very early MakeUseOf HowTo: Free & Huge Custom Poster For Your Wall article that shows how to print out sections of a large image on standard size paper, and assemble it all as a huge poster. PosteRazor also takes a Raster image as an input file and cuts it into pieces that can be printed out using a standard sized printer. The cut pieces can then be assembled into a complete poster by gluing the edges together. What's simple about PosteRazor is the wizard that has just five steps from the starting image to the finished poster. Browse to your image and load it into PosteRazor. The original dimensions of the image file are indicated in this window. Defining the paper size that your printer can handle is the critical part. The decision to fit the paper to the image or the image to the paper has to be made here. A few standard paper sizes are available from the dropdown. Alternatively, you can opt to go for a custom size. Overlapping margin areas are needed for gluing the pieces together. Overlapping positions are for side by side borders of the divisions that will tile together in the final poster. Defining the final poster size is choosing between a fixed size, panning it out over multiple sheets, or increasing the original size by a percentage. In the final step, the poster is saved as a multi-page PDF file. A PDF file is a universal document format and can be opened by a reader in all OS. Image color types also can be maintained across computers. All that's left now is the labor of printing the sheets out and assembling them together with glue on the overlapping margins. As a simple tool to make your own scaled posters, PosteRazor has a few plusses going for it like its easy portability, very simple interface, and compatibility with Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. It also covers a large number of image formats like – BMP, DDS, Dr. Halo, GIF, ICO, IFF, JBIG, JPEG/JIF, KOALA, LBM, Kodak PhotoCD, PCX, PBM, PGM, PNG, PPM, Photoshop PSD, Sun RAS, TARGA, TIFF, WBMP, XBM, and XPM. Creating posters is something you may not do every day. But if you find an image that you would love to turn into a poster, it helps to know about tools like PosteRazor that are just a download away. Would you like to create a poster (or do you stop at the ink costs)? Which is your favored poster app for the task? em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers! Related posts (9)Update To Google Picasa 3.6 With Photo Geotagging (43)Top 5 Free Websites for Quality Copyright Free Photographs (3)Top 5 Black & White Image Search Engines (13)The Challenging World Of Image Editing (28)The Best 3 Tools to Search for Images Online by Color

MakeUseOf Must-Have Mac Apps Giveaway Day #2 – AppZapper Posted: 03 Mar 2010 10:00 AM PST You must be thinking, “If AppCleaner was already featured as one of the 15 must-have apps, then why on earth is MakeUseOf suggesting AppZapper?” You ask a valid question. AppZapper is so much more than just an uninstaller. Don’t let the simple outlook fool you. Under that basic drag-and-drop interface hides an amazingly capable app manager. We’re talking mega features. In short, we’re just in love with it. That’s why we managed to get our hands on 20 licenses worth $260 give away! This is the basic interface. You’ll probably use this for your ordinary drag-and-drop uninstallation procedures. See the little toggle on the top right hand corner? Click it and enjoy the fuzzy feelings. This is AppZapper’s pride and joy — the Hit List. This is a list of all your installed applications, widgets, plugins and preference panes. Click on any app and their related files will be revealed in the lower section. You can also choose to filter apps by size or when they were last used. If you’ve wondered how to uninstall preference panes, well, this is one of the ways — it’s simpler anyway. Again, click on any one of them and their related files will stand out like a police line-up. If the Hit List is AppZapper’s pride and joy, this must be their crown jewel –My Apps. Just drag any purchased app into this list and they will automatically be protected by from accidental zapping (uninstallation). Click on a card and it will flip around to reveal license information and the works. How are those fuzzy feelings working for ya? Are you convinced AppZapper is just mega? As a keen-eyed reader pointed out, this version of AppZapper requires Snow Leopard. You may still use the license for version 1.8. AppZapper is upgradable to 2.0.1 if you decide to install Snow Leopard in the future. How do I win a copy? All you need to do is; Join our Facebook page by clicking on the Become a fan button below. If you can’t see the fanbox above, click on this link. To seal the deal, click on the Facebook Share button below the article to spread the news to your friends. Then in comments section, post a link to your Facebook profile (be sure to enter your real email address so that we can contact you if you win!). Existing fans only need to share the article and post a link to their Facebook profile in the comments. This giveaway ends tomorrow, just before the next one starts. Between now and then, you can share this post or comment as many times as you want! The more you interact, the higher your chances of winning. Let the giveaway begin! Have fun! Want to know what else we’re giving away? Check out this post 15 Must-Have Free Apps For Your Mac & Giveaway. MakeUseOf would like to thank Austin, Brian and the rest of the AppZapper team for their generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Related posts (150)We Have 3 Copies Of McAfee Total Protection 2010 [MakeUseOf Giveaway] (183)Top 8 Programs That Can Make Your Computer Run Faster (1)The Winners of our Windows® 7 Plain & Simple Giveaway (35)The Best iPhone Tower Defense Games 2009 + Giveaway (36)The Best Free Alternatives To Top Commercial iPhone Photography Apps

February Roundup – MakeUseOf Authors Posted: 03 Mar 2010 09:31 AM PST As always, MakeUseOf was buzzing during the month of February with the launch of MakeUseOf Answers, the publication of two manuals, two free product giveaways, and the re-starting of our Polls.  Add to that the publication of over 200 articles and we’ve got ourselves a busy site! We could really use your help on MakeUseOf Answers though.  Answers is where you can ask your tech questions for free, and maybe someone else can help you out with an answer.   Why not subscribe to the Answers RSS feed or check out the Unanswered Questions to see if you can help anywhere?  Online fame awaits those with the most correct answers! And now, without further ado, are the posts published in February (with the exception of Cool Tools and Geeky Fun).  Why not see if you missed something? Saikat How to Bookmark Movies To Resume Where You Left Off Pencil Project – Turn Firefox into A Diagramming and Prototyping Tool How To Compress Videos To Send Them By Email Check Your URL's With The Free Document Hyperlink Checker ReadPal Reader – A Tool That Helps You Focus While Reading [Windows] 3 Free Color Picking Tools To Choose Colors From Your Desktop 7 Cool Google Chrome Extensions For The Guy Who Likes His Photos OrangeNote – A Smart Note Taker & Clipboard Manager Search For Images by Camera Type On Flickr & Picasa How To Add Private Messages To Group Emails & On Twitter TinyPad – Replace Notepad With Automatic Syncing & Sharing Built In Ribbon Hero – Boost Your Microsoft Office Skills With This Fun Add-on How To Do Simple Calculations In Microsoft Word 2003 & 2007 BetterMe – Self Improvement With the Help of Anonymous Feedback gleeBox– Browse The Web Faster & Save Lots of Mouse Clicks Nuance – Free PDF Reader To View Convert Your PDF Docs How To Build a Mind Map In Microsoft Word Headmagnet – Free Online Flash Cards That Stop Memory Decay Fotobabble – Be Picture Perfect By Adding Voice to Your Photos Karl How To Make A Printer Wireless How To Set Up USB Wireless Headphones The Top 5 Free Online Resources For Collectors Windows 7 Reviews: The Only Ones You Need To Read How To Check The Top 10 Search Keywords On Google 2 Sites For Teachers To Download Teaching Resources Make Learning To Type Online More Fun By Defeating Ninjas! 3 Websites To Help You Research or Buy A Car Create Your Own Free High School Reunion Websites 2 Cool Free Car Driving Simulation Programs The Coolest Windows Media Visuals For Your Music Experience Learn How to File Bankruptcy In The United States Online Three Windows 7 Upgrade Issues & How To Avoid Them Cool Windows 7 Wallpapers That You Have To Check Out How To Upgrade To Windows Mobile 6 Without Destroying Your Phone What Is The Difference Between 32-bit & 64-bit Windows? 4 Common Windows 7 Problems And Fixes How To Trigger Wake On LAN Using The MAC Address Top 5 Windows 7 Themes You Might Want To Try Raft Wars – A Fun Pirate Turn-Based Shooter Time-Waster Tina How to Change the Color of the Windows XP Start Button 6 Free White Noise Sites To Relax Or Set Yourself To Sleep How To Monitor What Is Being Said About You Online Upgrade To Windows 7: Requirements & Installation Tips Plurk Vs Twitter – 5 Features That Will Make You Want To Switch 5 Extensions For Tabbed Email Browsing In Thunderbird 3 Do You Know What The Internet Knows About You? 5 Websites To Play Music Matching Your Mood How To Create A Good Password That You Will Not Forget Play and Re-Discover Music You Like with Mufin Player 7 Simple Steps To An Awesome Minimalist Desktop 2 Great Thunderbird 3 Notes Addons To Increase Your Productivity Ryan Autobahn Accelerator – Faster Streaming Video and Downloads for Free? Top 5 World News Websites Guaranteed Free From Censorship 4 Sites That Will Send New Proxy Server Lists To Your Email Get Organized On Your Android Phone With Astrid How Does Ask Peter Work? The Code Behind The Prank 5 Mobile Social Networks That Know When Your Friend Is Near Find Top Internet Searches In Your Niche with Google Insights Traffic Travis – A Free SEO Management Tool To Check Your SEO Rank How To Set Up & Use Spam Assassin For Windows 5 Bizarre Underground Websites That'll Make You Go Hmmm Test Landscaping Ideas For Your House With Showoff The Visualizer 5 Cool Things You Can Do With Google Voice Jeffry How To Add A Cool 3D Tag Cloud To Your Wordpress Blog Add More Power To Your Bookmarklets With Quix BumpTop – Gives Your Mac Desktop A Real 3D Look How To Safely Experiment With Customizing Wordpress Themes How To Download Files From RapidShare The Easier Way Readefine – Newspaper-ize Web Content With Newspaper Formatting How To Add Quizzes To Wordpress Blog Reconnect With Your Family Members Using FamilyLink & Facebook Add Quizzes To Your Facebook Profile Page & Other Places How To Quickly Improve The Quality of MP3s With GarageBand [Mac] Design Your Own Wordpress Theme Easily With Constructor Notational Velocity – Creating Notes At The Speed Of Light [Mac] Varun Pauker – An Easy-To-Use Freeware Java Flash Card Program How To Create An Awesome Soft Focus Effect In Photoshop Keep Your System Secure, Updated & Backed Up Easily With ProShield [Linux] 5 Apps To Optimize Images For Use On The Web DHCP Explained: Installing & Configuring A Free DHCP Server [Linux] What Is A Meta Search Engine & How It Works? [Technology Explained] LookInMyPC – Free System Profiler & Computer Diagnostic Software Combine Multiple ISO Files To Burn A Single Bootable ISO Image How To Access Your Facebook Profile on My Yahoo What is Digital Photography? [Technology Explained] Hiren's Boot CD – The All-In-One Boot CD For Every Need All You Need To Know About Repositories and Package Management In Ubuntu Simon 3 Free Cocktail Recipes Sites To Help You Make The Perfect Drink How to Learn How to Draw Online With DrawSpace 3 Cool Tetris Spin-Off Online Games 3 Sites To Watch PC Game Demos How To Create Custom Search Engines In Google Chrome The 3 Best Subtitle Sites For Your Movies & TV Series 4 Reasons Why Google Translate Beats The Other Services How To Move Your Contacts From Windows Mobile To Android 5 Awesome Tips To Improve Your Google Buzz Experience Sublight – Finally A Hassle-Free Subtitle Retrieval and Playback Solution Prezi – Turning Dull Slideshows into Revolutionary Dynamic Presentations Tim Twitter Clients – Web Apps or Desktops Apps? Which is Better? A Thorough Look At CamStudio As An Effective Screencasting Tool Create a Custom Logon Screen for Windows with LogonStudio 3 Firefox Plugins To Test Your Website In Different Resolutions 4 Reasons Facebook's New Navigation Design Is An Improvement 3 Programs That Help You Snap Windows Like a Win 7 User Track Your Life With 1DayLater Access All Your Online Photos In One Place With Showzey How To View Live Weather Radar On Google Earth How To Create Your Own Lifestream On A Wordpress Blog In 3 Easy Steps 4 Ways To Explore The Voice Mail Features In Google Voice Bakari How To Get Started With Macro Photography 3 Easy-To-Create Simple Automator Workflows For Everyday Use How To Properly Use The Image Playback Feature On Your Digital Camera Compare & Contrast The iPhone Versus The iPod Touch The Best Free iPhone Flickr App: Darkslide vs. Flickr Photoshop Tips For Black & White Photography Dragon: Two Free Voice Recognition Software For The iPhone Get Your IRS Tax Questions Answered at H&R Block For Free iFlipr: A Free Tool to Make Flash Cards Online The Basics of How to Properly Resize Images in Photoshop Dean 3 Popular Teenager Websites That Are In Fact Useful Two Sites To Earn Easy Money With Your Creative Designs How to Create Your Own Software License Agreement Four Best Inspiring Blogs Every Life Hacker Should Subscribe To How Often Is Google Earth Updated? How Does Google Maps Work? [Technology Explained] The Best Sites To Find Cheap Mac Computers For Sale Justin How To Use The Playstation EyeToy On Windows, Ubuntu And Mac Deluge – An Awesome But Unappreciated Cross-Platform BitTorrent Client Connect To Your Home PCs From Anywhere With DynDNS ViGlance & 3 Other Tweaks To Make XP Or Vista Look Like Windows 7 5 Awesome Greasemonkey Scripts That Work In Chrome Jolicloud: The Operating System Download for Netbook You've Been Looking For Why I Decided To Make Google My Home Page and Never Looked Back Times Reader – The Perfect NYT News Desktop Reader Steven 6 Sites To Watch Super Bowl TV Commercials Online 5 Websites To Learn GIMP Online Blu-Ray Technology History and The DVD [Technology Explained] Mafia Wars On Facebook – Tips & Cheats 4 Effective Tips To Ask a Girl Out On Facebook Technology Explained: How Does Facebook Work? The Nuts and Bolts Abhigyan 6 Tips To Optimize Your PC For Playing Movies Top 5 Free Ways To Get a Guestbook For Your Website 5 Tips To Create The Perfect How-To Guide On Your Site Xoom – An Alternative Method To Withdraw Funds From PayPal To A Local Bank Ann 3 Great Examples of Using Gmail Filters for Productivity 2 Alternative Ways To Click Through Links In Firefox 7 Ways To Become More Productive With Firefox Tabs Jessica Build An Impressive Free Resume Online In 15 Minutes With JobSpice How To Email Photos To Your Free 25GB Windows Live SkyDrive 8 Online Guides To The Best And Worst Movies Of All Time Nancy Top 7 Apple iPhone Complaints & Simple Solutions Top 10 Free Ways To Discover New Music Online The Best 4 Free Blackberry Apps To Stay Plugged Into Your Social Networks Jim 6 Online Time Clock Websites How To Collaborate With Track Changes In Microsoft Word A Quick Guide To Get Started With Microsoft Access 2007 Taty 12 Video Sites That Are Better Than YouTube 10 Specialized Social Networks For You To Join Mahendra Speeding Up Windows 7: Everything You Need to Know 3 Little Known Ways To Use Twitter Without Information Overload Evan How To Prevent & Remove Facebook Malware or Virus 3 Useful Firefox Add-ons To Help Save You Money Jonathan 5 Free Game Development Software Tools To Make Your Own Games The 6 Best Tools To Schedule Twitter Updates John 5 Sites To Quickly Order Food Online 6 Best Sites To Download Free Photoshop Brushes Jackson How To Download Google Books As A PDF File [Mac] Never Forget To Pay Another Bill Again With Bills ~ On Your Table + Giveaway Angelina 5 MORE Free Microsoft Products & Why They Are The Best Mike How To Play Old Arcade Games On Your PC Elmer The 5 Best Free iPhone Apps I Can't Live Without Paul 5 Best Websites For Free Windows Mobile Software Beth Make Classes Fun By Teaching History CSI Style em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers! Related posts (3)September Roundup : Make Use Of Authors (9)September Roundup – MakeUseOf Authors (1)October Roundup : Make Use Of Authors (1)November Round-Up – MakeUseOf Authors (0)March Roundup : Make Use Of Authors

Mac Giveaway Intego VirusBarrier X6 Winners! Posted: 03 Mar 2010 09:00 AM PST Wow, how did you enjoy the first day of this 11-day giveaway? Was it a good idea? Remember guys, there’s no limit to the number of times you can participate. You can win more than just one app in the next 10 days! Congratulations to the lucky 10 winners from Day #1. Each of you won a copy of Intego VirusBarrier X6: Drew McClellan Joe Chiarelli Amy Lew Bruno Casarini Grillo Daniel Fox Tracy Bohan Reuben Urias Dawid Loboda Aditya Sharma Taryn Ng License information will be sent via email. Thank you for participating. The next giveaway begins in an hour. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Related posts (150)We Have 3 Copies Of McAfee Total Protection 2010 [MakeUseOf Giveaway] (1)The Winners of our Windows® 7 Plain & Simple Giveaway (35)The Best iPhone Tower Defense Games 2009 + Giveaway (36)The Best Free Alternatives To Top Commercial iPhone Photography Apps (8)Sync Yourself with Syncplicity… With a Gift For MakeUseOf Readers!

Netbook Reader: Turn Your Computer Into A Library Posted: 03 Mar 2010 08:31 AM PST We live in a wondrous age. Access to information most people could only have dreamed of just a short time ago is today at our fingertips, and many people don’t even know about it. For example: do you know about Project Gutenberg? Named after one of the inventors of the moveable type printing press, this amazing site features over 30,000 public domain books. In fact, most of the books you could have found in a university library 100 years ago can now be downloaded here, free of charge. From Plato to Mark Twain to Sir Issac Newton to Sun Tzu to Shakespeare, Project Gutenberg is an amazing resource featuring knowledge, beauty and wisdom handed down through the ages. Pretty much any text you can think of older than 100 years can be downloaded here. Even more amazing is a simple Adobe Air application for Linux, Mac and Windows which can give you almost instant access to any of these works. The somewhat confusingly named NetBook Reader is perhaps better called Netbook Library, because that’s what it is: an instant library for your netbook or any other computer. The Netbook Reader software allows you to quickly search all of Project Gutenberg and then read any text you find almost instantly. Best of all, it will cache content you download for offline reading later. The program was briefly mentioned in Steven Finch’s article 8 Adobe Air Apps that Don’t Suck, but here we’ll take a deeper look at what it has to offer. Instant Searching Got an author or book on your mind? Just search for it. The Netbook Reader software will quickly look through its index of the entire Gutenburg library and show you the relevant titles. There are two kinds of books listed here: old-fashioned text and audio books. Be sure to glance at the program’s third column to ensure you’re getting the format you want. Not sure what to search for? Click the “New Books” button to see the latest arrivals in the Gutenburg library. Once you do find a book you like, you can read or listen to it instantly from within the reader itself. Reading There’s not much to complain about with the NetBook Reader software. The text is crisp and easy to read, and in some instances even includes illustrations from the original publication, as seen above. As a reader, Netbook Reader is not without its faults, however. I typically turn my netbook sideways while reading to achieve the form factor of a book; Netbook Reader does not allow for this. Additionally, while Netbook Reader does automatically remember where I left off last in textbooks, it does not do this for audio books. This means you have to listen to the entire text in one sitting or not at all – hardly useful. Perhaps the program should allow users to simply download the audio and play it back in the player of their choice. Overall, however, the program is really good. It even stores books you’ve already downloaded, allowing you to read books while away from your internet connection. Cache Start Netbook Reader connected to the internet and you’ll immediately be shown the entirety of the Gutenberg library. Start Netbook Reader while offline however, and you’ll only be shown books already downloaded to your computer. Everytime you open a book – audio or text – it is automatically stored in your cache for offline reading. Convenient, right? If you’re concerned about your hard drive filling up, don’t worry: you can empty the cache at any time. Just click the “Preferences” tab, and then the “Empty Cache” button. Download Getting Netbook Reader is a snap. Just head over to this page and click the “Download from Publisher” button. If you don’t have Adobe Air, don’t worry: clicking the link will automatically install Air on Linux, Mac and Windows. Conclusion Netbook Reader is a simple application that gives you access to a repository jam-packed with knowledge.  Before you purchase an e-book of a pre-20th-century text you should check if you can get it here for free. If you’re not too keen on using Netbook Reader, don’t let that keep you from Project Gutenberg. Simply head over to the site itself and download the texts on your own. What do you think? Is Netbook Reader a good way to browse Project Gutenberg for free e-books? Do you have another source for free e-books from ages past? Do you consider electronic books inferior to their dead tree counterparts in the physical realm? As always, comment away! em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers! Related posts (13)Calibre – Mighty eBook Management Software (Multi-OS) (29)Who Needs The Amazon Kindle When You Have A Netbook? (15)Track Your Reading and Catalogue Books with BookTomb [Win] (4)Offer Your Readers A RSS To PDF Option With Feedbooks (14)Mobipocket – An Awesome ebook Reader Which is Free

How To Create Cool Bubble Letters For Your Site Logo Posted: 03 Mar 2010 07:31 AM PST So you have just started your own website or blog and you are looking to make a logo or a header for yourself.  Do you want to use cool bubble letters or another text style? You can either go to Photoshop, its open source equivalent, Gimp or an online generator to spit out your letters easily. Then once you have the logo, you can use it in your header simply by dragging and dropping it into your header. I went looking for logo creators that had a “Bubble Gum” selection and found a few sites. The one that I liked the best is called Text2Logo. They have a lot of other fonts as well and it is super simple to use. That makes it great for noobs and experts alike. Let's take a look at the site: You simply specify your website's name or what you want to write out in cool bubble letters in the top field. Then you choose a font size and if you decide you don't want bubble letters and want another font you can drop down the last field to select your font. Let's see what MakeUseOf.com looks like as bubble letters. I typed it in the field at the top and then clicked Fancify your text below it. The resolution and quality you get for free looks like the image above. They try to get a dollar out of you for a higher quality or non-watermarked image but you can always crop the image in Photoshop or Gimp. Let me show you a few more styles before we move on to how to do this in Photoshop with fonts. This one is Zebra stripes : and this one is Tempered Steel Pretty cool and very easy! So now to really customize your bubbled out logo you should go looking for free Bubble fonts. I found this one: This one is downloaded from Bubbleletters and the download, if you cannot find it, is here. After downloading the true type font, copy it to your fonts folder and open up your graphics application. Below you will see me using Photoshop CS 2. I selected the font Bubble1, typed some of my favorite URL’s, added a drop shadow and then got the following: You can then drag your text onto your banner or other object and have cool bubble letters for your logo. You can experiment with different font sizes and even different bubble fonts if you look around. You can add bevels and other effects as well. You can check out my previous MakeUseOf Photoshop eBook as well for some more insights into creating great Photoshop images for beginners. We would love to see what you are able to create and how creative you are. You can also send us links to bubble fonts or other logo creators online – maybe one that doesn't watermark your images! We would love to hear from you and the comments is the place for that! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Related posts (25)How To Create a Simple Blog Logo In Photoshop (4)4 Free Thumbnail Generators To Create Quality Photo Thumbnails For Your Website (42)10 Essential Software Apps For Web Development on a Mac (5)Two Sites To Instantly Convert Your Images To Text (51)The Top 5 Free Microsoft Products & Why They Are The Best

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