MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [March 5th]” plus 11 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [March 5th]
- The 5 Toughest Tech Questions [MakeUseOf Answers]
- How To Make Your Regular Mobile Phone Smarter With SMS/MMS (Part 2)
- Create Easy Income By Offering Affordable Web Site Hosting Services
- TypeWith.me – A Quick & Dirty Document Collaboration Tool
- Viewing Recent Searches On Google & Why Would You Care?
- How To Report Email Fraud & Spam To The Proper Authorities
- MakeUseOf Must-Have Mac Apps Giveaway Day #4 – CleanMyMac
- Panraven – Online Media Rich Storytelling In 5 Easy Steps
- Mac Giveaway 1Password Winners!
- Layar – A Versatile Augmented Reality For Android & iPhone
- SIM Day & Night – A Free Online Role Playing Game With A Dayjob & A Nightlife
| Cool Websites and Tools [March 5th] Posted: 05 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.
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. em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers! Related posts
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| The 5 Toughest Tech Questions [MakeUseOf Answers] Posted: 05 Mar 2010 06:31 PM PST
Every now and then we are presented with a question that is so specific that we cannot help, for example because we don’t have access to the respective software or hardware. With so many people coming together on MakeUseOf, however, chances are that some of you had to solve the exact same issue previously and are now able to help. Are you the one?
You can see more questions that we couldn't answer on the Unanswered Questions page. Please help us out! Now, if you have a question yourself, go ahead and ask it on MakeUseOf Answers. No sign up or registration required. Please keep in mind that sometimes questions are difficult to answer because essential details are lacking. Thus, when you submit a question, please make it a point to provide us with a good description of your problem. This should also include the basics, such as your operating system, hardware information, and eventually further details. For those of you who would like to follow MakeUseOf Answers via RSS, here is the Feedburner feed. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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| How To Make Your Regular Mobile Phone Smarter With SMS/MMS (Part 2) Posted: 05 Mar 2010 05:31 PM PST
This second part of this series on SMS tips and tricks will focus on productivity services that you can reach by SMS. They can simplify your usual web activities on-the-go. You must be aware that having an unlimited messaging plan will benefit you greatly if you follow our advice here because you’ll start texting a lot. If you don’t have such a messaging plan, be ready to pay your mobile company’s extra fees.
Be Productive
Select Plaintext Unicode in Installment Text, otherwise, you’ll see ugly HTML codes in your phone message later. Now use Gmail filters to forward DailyLit installments to your phone’s email. You could also email any plain text documents to your phone for view-only so you can read them while you’re waiting in-line somewhere. Play
MiscellaneousWhile you’re making use of your regular phone, why not also take advantage of these bonus non-SMS tools that you can use on your regular phone? For a free call to anywhere in the world, call 1-800-FREE411 and say “Free Call” when prompted. You’ll have to wait through two short ads and you can talk for a maximum of 5 minutes, but there are no limits on how many times you can call. This service and Google’s GOOG411 number both offer free directory services. Also, if your phone supports taking pictures and videos, that probably means you can play media on it. You may think it’s troublesome to mess with transferring files, but here’s something that will facilitate your media transferring: Use a file converter that understands your phone.
Daniusoft’s Online Converter is a free tool that elegantly describes the right video and audio file formats that your phone can take in. The user-friendly approach makes it easy for newer users to convert files to transfer to their phones, but it also features settings for more advanced users to tweak, such as frame rate, encoder, bit rate for videos and audio files, which can be as large as 100MB in size.
We weaved our way through plenty services today that we hope will generate more appreciation of the existent features in your regular mobile. Want to recommed services that I missed? If not, which ones do you find yourself using the most? You may really enlighten fellow readers who aren’t familiar with these services. Photo credit: Sarah Jones, j0438320, j0442135, j0436075, j0439835w Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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| Create Easy Income By Offering Affordable Web Site Hosting Services Posted: 05 Mar 2010 03:31 PM PST
One particularly ingenious idea I had was to sign up for as many of the services as I could find (I think I found about twenty at the time), install all of them, and just let them run in the foreground on my computer throughout the day. Gradually, my earnings climbed. I think I approached $15 in about four months (yes, that’s all).
In the spirit of promoting legitimate and authentic online money-making ideas for MUO readers, I would like to offer a business idea that anyone with a little bit of web design and web hosting skill can build which will run itself and provide a nice, steady stream of income every month. Create An Easy Passive Income Stream Selling Affordable Web Site Hosting ServicesDon’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that you host hundreds of high volume websites from a PC in your basement, but honestly if you have 10 to 15 friends or local businesses that sign up for web hosting through you – at $5 to $10 a month, you’ve got a nice little business that brings in $100 or more every single month. Is it difficult? It isn’t really difficult any more. Jeffry provided a great tutorial on setting up a local web server so that you could host your own WordPress blog. Taking it a step further and hosting other domains for friends and businesses isn’t that much of a leap. However, for those of you who have a fear of hosting other sites on your own PC, there’s a very simple solution. Invest in unlimited web hosting that offers unlimited addon domains. For example, GoDaddy offers Unlimited plans at the market average – pretty much any web hosting service offers these rates, on average.
If you consider that an unlimited web hosting account today costs from $10 to $12 a month, that’s only less than $150 a year, and you have yourself the foundation of a brand new online business that will bring in easy, passive monthly income at well over the $10 a month for the web hosting. Whichever web hosting plan you go with, just make sure that unlimited add-on domains is part of the package. Also make sure that the web host doesn’t prohibit “reselling” web space in this way. Most small businesses or individuals who want their own websites don’t expect huge traffic or have massive demand for website features. They simply want a web presence that their local customers or friends can visit and that they can update with the latest news, products or services. You could easily offer to host the website of such a local business at a fraction of the cost that they’d have to pay for a full hosting account. All you have to do is create an add-on domain, link their registered domain to it, and upload (or create) their webpage. When you have a friend or business that wants to host a particular domain with you, first go into their domain registration account and change the DNS settings to point to your hosting account. For example, I use Webmasters.com for hosting, so first log into your hosting account and check the DNS settings.
In my case, the settings are right on the left sidebar – NS26 and NS27 under the webmasters.com domain. Your particular settings will be similar depending on your web host. Next, log into your client’s domain registration account, and assign their DNS settings to the same as your hosting account.
Now that you’ve pointed their domain in the right direction, you have to configure your hosting account to direct all of the incoming traffic for their domain to the correct web hosting directly. Every web host may have a slightly different procedure for creating an add-on domain within your hosting account. Make sure you add the add-on as a “hosted” – this tells the web host you want to host the website under your current account.
Once you’ve done this, usually within hours you’ll discover the new domain folder located inside the “addons” folder within your hosting account.
As you can see, I have dozens of domains that are all hosted under the umbrella of my one hosting account. Each of these represents a website that you could host for a friend or a local business at a nominal monthly fee (easily configurable as a recurring payment through Paypal!). If the friend or business owner wants you to create a simple website for them, and you really don’t want to dedicate a lot of time to it or you aren’t a web design expert – you can create some pretty impressive websites using free web design software tools like KompoZer or CoffeeCup. Better yet, if you want to provide your client with a simple method of adding their own content to their site, consider installing Drupal, Joomla, or Wordpress. In the end, once you have your add-on domains configured and serving up content, you really won’t have to do anything else other than collecting your checks every month. Do you have your own approach to earning residual income on the net? Share your own tips in the comments section below. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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| TypeWith.me – A Quick & Dirty Document Collaboration Tool Posted: 05 Mar 2010 01:31 PM PST
Recently EtherPad announced that they have been acquired by Google in order to help develop Google Wave. One step they’ve taken is to open source the code so others can run their own Etherpad servers allowing the functionality to live on (instructions). Well, Chris Pirillo, along with partner Jake Warner, have taken the challenge and have “frozen in time” the functionality of EtherPad and have created the site TypeWith.me which turns out to be a quick and dirty document collaboration tool. Free, easy, point and click functionality. In fact, they don’t even require any registration. Let’s take a look at what TypeWith.me can do with online document collaboration. The front page makes beginning the process super simple and gives us one humongous button entitled “Click to Create a New Document.” To begin, click the button (obvious, right?)
You have now begun your online document collaboration process. The very next screen is the beginning of the document you will be working on. Notice that although your document is technically “public”, no one will see it unless you share the personal URL for it.
TypeWith.me makes sharing this URL very easy. You can have up to 15 other collaborators at any point but more can join as people leave.
Each collaborator chooses a color to indicate changes they have made. In the right sidebar you will see those who are currently collaborating and a chat window.
Beneath the sidebar there are buttons allowing you to hide/show the sidebar and toggle the use of the whole window. In order to get more use out of TypeWith.me, check out the tool bar along the top of the screen. The options menu allows you to enable/disable authorship colors and the line numbers and to change the font type.
There are several file formats you can import and export.
One of the cool features of TypeWith.me is that you can save the document at any time and you can revert to any point you have saved in the past.
Another cool feature is the Time Slider which lets you go back and watch a recording of the document being worked on. The stars indicate points that have been saved.
That’s it! So basically it turns out to be a no-nonsense online document collaboration tool; no frills. What makes it this way?
Like I mentioned before, the previous owners of EtherPad are now working on Google Wave and have released the code so sites like TypeWith.me can use it. Right now Google Wave is in private beta and is arguably complicated. There are other services that offer online document collaboration but TypeWith.me is a quick and easy one. Check it out. What online document collaboration tools do you like to use? 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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| Viewing Recent Searches On Google & Why Would You Care? Posted: 05 Mar 2010 11:31 AM PST
If you don’t know how Google does this, simply link over to http://www.google.com/history and sign into your account, if need be. On your Google search page, you will see a calendar that links to all your daily activities across the web, including recent searches on Google. It breaks down your search history into nine categories, including images, products, and blogs you've visited or searched for.
Advantages Of This ServiceThe advantages of this search history is pretty obvious. It can save you time in keeping track of your recent searches on Google. Searches are not as specific as keeping personalized bookmarks in your web browser, but say you spent a day or two researching a particular consumer product, or a topic for a school assignment. If you need to retrieve those queries and activity, you could simply click the dates in the calendar relevant to your search, or you could “google” the topic or keywords and have Google provide results based on your search history.
Also, you've no doubt noticed that when you begin typing in the Google search box in the Firefox or Safari web browser, for example, you typically get a list of suggested keywords that you might be looking for even before you finish typing. Those suggestions are based on your prior searches and visitations across the web, which in essence speeds up your search. The search history also provides an organized list of sites and pages you visit the most. It keeps track of your web experiences only when you're logged into your account. This is called “signed-in personalization”. However, if you share your computer with others and you don't sign out from your Google account, the results reflect searches by other users.
Disadvantages Of This ServiceOne of the biggest disadvantages to this is that if your Google account is ever accessed by others, they can view your recent searches on Google. If you log into your Google account on another computer and don't log out, any searches done by other users can be saved to your account. For example, when I view my Google search history, it includes topics like "horse riding," the "California State lottery," and "buddytv." These topics reflect the web activity of other members in my household, not me. But what might this service mean for users accessing their Google account on their job or public computer? If users don't log out of their account, their search history is available to anyone who accesses it. Removing Searches from your historyIf there are some surreptitious search results that you would liked removed from your web history , it's pretty easy to do so. Simply log into your web history account and click the "Remove items" link. You can delete selected links or your entire web history. However, remember, if you delete your entire history, Google will have to rebuild your signed-in personalization history, so all your new searches may take a little longer to conduct on your computer.
If you're conducting some searches that you don't want recorded, simply click the Pause link to turn off the service for your account. It remains paused until you re-enable it. You can also go into the settings of your Google account and totally disable the service all together. When you link into your Google account, click on My Account, and where it says "My products," click Edit. From there you can remove the service.
Personally I don't view my Google search history that much, but after doing some research for this article, I can see some advantages to accessing it from time to time, especially when I haven't bookmarked relevant searches I might want to review. But for users who conduct surreptitious searches on a regular basis, it might be a good idea to disable the service all together and use other free services like Delicious to maintain and manage your private bookmarks. So do you access your Google web history regularly? Do you find the service useful, or do you think it invades your privacy? Let us know. In an upcoming article, I will explain how to clear previous Google searches in popular web browsers. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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| How To Report Email Fraud & Spam To The Proper Authorities Posted: 05 Mar 2010 10:31 AM PST
Unfortunately, even though the Internet is worldwide there is no real organisation which will deal with small, individual cases at an international level. That is left to national and local levels. In this article I will show you some of the most popular agencies to contact depending on your location and other avenues to explore when you report email fraud.
United States Of America & CanadaGiven its population, hi-tech lifestyle and global position, the US and its citizens are often the prime targets for scammers and fraudsters, often based far away in countries such as Nigeria, which has become popular for its email scams as discussed in my previous post. The FBI and FTC are two agencies you should forward any suspicious emails onto which you think may be frauds or just threats to security in general. Uce@ftc.gov is the email address. The FBI also runs a collaboration with the National White Collar Crime Centre and the Bureau of Justice Assistance to form IC3 (Internet Crime Complaint Centre). You can report Internet and email fraud there. In Canada, concerned users can contact the Better Business Bureau (for corporate claims) and their local police for other scams. EuropeEurope is quite similar as a target for scammers as again, it's wealthy, powerful and home to dozens of different police districts and nations which makes stopping scams even harder. Each nation has different agencies which you can contact. Some of the most popular are listed below.
For all other countries without specific fraud investigative units (or those I couldn't find due to the language barrier) you should log on to your nation's police force website for more information. Asia-PacificThere are also plenty of Chinese email scams circulating such as fake online stores which send out catalogue emails as well as some 419 scams. Here are a list of some of the bigger countries in the region as well as information about where to forward or report email fraud. China – Anti-Spam Organisation or CCert Hong Kong – OFTA South Korea – Spam Cop and Korean Response Centre Malaysia - Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission New Zealand – NZ Serious Fraud Commission and Commerce Commission Australia – Australia Scamwatch and ACMA SPAM Reporting Service Alternative Reporting MethodsThere are two other ways in which you can report spam and fraudulent Most large businesses will have special divisions set up to deal with these kinds of claims and will have information available on their website. A good example is PayPal who frequently have fraudsters impersonating them in emails and as such have set up an anti-fraud department. Also, some scammers will target banks or government institutions. I remember one case recently in my country when a fraudulent email circulated impersonating the national tax revenue office trying to scam people. These kinds of emails should be reported at once as they can often rob businesses of sensitive information or even rob their money. Another way of reporting email fraud is to inform the scammers ISP or email provider what their services are being used for. Seeing as many email providers (especially Hotmail and Gmail) have been targeted by hackers and scammers themselves, they don't take lightly to people or 'bots' using hoax accounts set up on their servers to circulate fraud emails. You will be able to find exact contact details for their provider on their website (here’s Gmail’s). Until we have cleansed the world of scammers, we must rely on PC security programs and our own wits to stop ourselves being scammed. For more information on how these reported emails are dealt with on an international level, I recommend checking out this section on Interpol's website. How have you been able to deal with email spam? Do you just ignore it or do you report it? What experiences have you had when you reported it? Let us know in the comments. Image Credit: RosenGrant, Brent_Nashville Related posts
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| MakeUseOf Must-Have Mac Apps Giveaway Day #4 – CleanMyMac Posted: 05 Mar 2010 10:00 AM PST
In a matter of minutes, the app scans your files and folders for unnecessary items that are taking up valuable space on your machine – from caches and logs to extensions and universal binaries; saving you an average of 2-3GB on your first run. Think it’s time to do some spring cleaning done on your Mac? Lucky you — we have 20 lifetime CleanMyMac licenses worth $600 to give away!
Nothing has been left overlooked. You can even delete unnecessary language files that come bundled with your favourite apps. Simply choose in the preferences which language files you want to keep, and the rest will be deleted.
CleanMyMac has a few extra tricks up its sleeve. You can uninstall programs through the app, using their drag and drop interface, to ensure that all files related to the app are removed. CleanMyMac can be set as your default ‘uninstaller’ where dragging an app to the trash will launch the program.
CleanMyMac is also a file shredder, offering a secure erase option when deleting top secret files you don’t want anyone to recover.
It also runs unobtrusively in the background, automatically deleting certain files as they accumulate without the need to run a scan, such as Mac OS Service Junk files.
If you’re not familiar with the inner workings of your Mac, don’t worry. CleanMyMac explains the purpose of each type of file that is automatically being saved on your computer. Using the program will improve your Mac's performance, and makes it easy to get rid of unwanted files, without deleting essential system files by mistake. Go ahead and try it out while you wait. The trial version will allow you to clean 200MB of unnecessary files. 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 section below. 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 Sofia and the MacPaw 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!
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| Panraven – Online Media Rich Storytelling In 5 Easy Steps Posted: 05 Mar 2010 09:31 AM PST
Given a piece of time and a piece of paper, we can stitch together a clear enough story in words. But give us a scrapbook and we can add much more to it. Pictures make storytelling a whole lot easier (and also more interesting). Now, let's take this entire argument and give it the platform of the World Wide Web. Given a choice between starting a text-only blog or a multimedia showcase, which one would be the easier pick? I think you would head towards multimedia.
Panraven is like a free online scrapbook that helps us tell our stories in pictures, videos, sound and of course, words. But you will also discover that Panraven is more than a digital scrapbook that helps with photo-stories. With Panraven, The Story Begins With Rich Media
After you log in, this is the first screen you will see in your account. Bunch all of your media into Panraven with any of the options that's provided for it. There's Panraven's own app and one made for Picasa. Or you can upload it from your HDD or directly from Flickr.
I chose Flickr and so my Flickr photostream opens up in Panraven's media window for some organization and final editing. Before that the media has to be imported into Panraven. Panraven gives 1GB of storage space for your media needs.
With the editor, a range of touch-ups and special effects can be applied.
The media window is also the window to shared albums and public photos. Panraven encourages sharing with a dedicated Friends tab.
This is a powerful feature because you can collectively share in experiences like a trip taken or the recent birthday party. The circle of friends can pool in their content to create a really rich photo story, like a large and collaborative free online scrapbook. Time For Story Telling
With the photos gathered up, it's time to start weaving it all into a story. You might reach a roadblock after a 'Once upon a time in a distant land…', but Panraven ensures you reach a happy ending with its step by step approach. Here's how the big picture looks like…
Choosing a story type is about choosing the right look for your kind of story. Consider what your story is going to be all about and click on one of the many options that are provided. If undecided, you can opt for a Freeform style. Each story type also has many Styles that give you the final styling for your photo story. You can check them out in their thumbnail previews. From this starting point, it's now about choosing the content from your media sets that you want to put in the story. A quick feature is Autofill…use it to specify the number of images you want in each page.
The Story Editor is the first canvas for applying some creativity. Panraven provides all the tools arranged around your 'storyboard'.
You can continue with some more personal touches like an audio background in the next stage (Online Options). An audio narration could be more helpful in taking the viewers through the photo story. Story telling is about sharing it with an audience. The audience can be the readers of your blog, your social community, your circle of friends, and the Panraven community. The final stage addresses all this with the many social sharing options.
My first attempt at a Panraven photo story was an attempt at learning the ropes. The flair of creativity will take some more doing. But if you really want to check out the potential of Panraven as an artist's canvas for appealing photo stories check out the cool public stories (like this one here). Some of them are literally like coffee table books. Does The Panraven Story Have A Happy Ending?There are many ways to share your life stories online with a photo album or free online scrapbook. Panraven is just one of the more eye catching ways. It makes the creative process a breeze with easy to configure templates and helpful instructions every step of the way. The auto-fill feature that can fill up the pages with photos automatically is just the thing for newbies. You just have to pick the right media file and the sequence you want to show it in. Even before signing up, you can view the public stories and get the picture. Panraven also offers the photo stories as printed books at a cost. As a free web application, would you let Panraven tell your story to everyone? Let us know… em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers! Related posts
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| Mac Giveaway 1Password Winners! Posted: 05 Mar 2010 09:00 AM PST
Go ahead and feel at ease now that your passwords are safe. License information will be sent to you via email. Thanks for participating. The next giveaway begins in an hour — be sure to try again if you haven’t won anything yet! Are you enjoying yourself yet? MakeUseOf would like to thank Agile Web Solutions for their generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? Get in touch with us via email. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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| Layar – A Versatile Augmented Reality For Android & iPhone Posted: 05 Mar 2010 08:31 AM PST
Augmented reality is basically just a virtual overlay on the ‘real world’. Remember the robot-vision from Terminator? That’s what Layar does. Only slightly more current, and on your Android and iPhone mobile phones. Why? Because, let’s face it, after a decade of GUI innovation we’re still not thinking outside of the box (pun intended). It’s time for a revolution.
There’s Something About Layar…Layar actually works very simply. It takes a streaming image input from your mobile phone’s camera, and adds one, or even a number of layers onto it, also dubbed filters. With these filters, you can look around for the nearest pub with Belgian beer, find interesting art expositions in Chicago, or even look at houses that are for sale. Some features are limited to a specific locale, but with almost 400 layers, there’s bound to be something you can put to use.
For less confusion, you can toggle off the grid overlay, or even switch to a list or map view of the nearest results. There’s a screenshot of the latter further down the article.
If you fire up Layar for the first time, you’ll be greeted with the Featured layers tab. Use these to go on a trial run of the interface. Also check out the Local, Popular, and Search tabs. See anything you like? You can ‘favorite’ a layer by pressing the lower left star button for future reference. Layar Local SearchOne of the first, and often most useful filters is Layar’s own local search. You can already find it in the Featured tab by default. The layer does a Google Maps search, and surrounds you with the results on a grid.
All you need is a keyword, and a distance. Obviously, in rural areas, you’ll have to set a larger perimeter than if you were downtown in a major city. ‘Pizza’ serves me just fine, but you can try ’supermarket’, ’shoe store’, ‘theatre’, and just about anything else that comes to mind.
The results of your search will be dotted out on your radar, and you can focus on each mark individually by making a pirouette. Layar and Google will show you the establishment name, and distance in meters. If you want more information on a specific result, focus on it and press the big OK button on your cellphone, or just tap the name on the screen. You’ll get the address, phone number and can even plot your route.
Your sense of direction drowned out by the results? Hit the Map button to get a cleaner overview. The rest of the interface will remain unchanged. Tap Reality to switch back. The Twitter ‘Matrix’ & Other LayersWhat else can you do with Layar? One of the other popular layers is Tweeps, which gives you Twitter augmentation on your cellphone. Look at some of the latest Tweets close to you. Very strange, but a great tool for party crashers and stalkers.
As said before, there are now almost 400 different filters available for Layar, and more coming up. The API isn’t hard to find, so you can even make your own. To find interesting new layers, regularly check the Popular and Featured tabs, or take a hit at Search. Try using general tags to turn up most results (e.g. art beats exposition).
Closing off, a question to take home. Where would you like to see graphical user interfaces heading in the (near) future? Buttons and sliders or augmented reality? Or can they co-exist? Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below! em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers! Related posts
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| SIM Day & Night – A Free Online Role Playing Game With A Dayjob & A Nightlife Posted: 05 Mar 2010 07:31 AM PST
I try to cover a game once or twice a month. The last one was Raft Wars which you can read about here. Today I came across a silly game that reminded me of them with a new school twist. I found the free online role playing game by chance on a site called Flash-Game. When you arrive at the game you will see this screen. You can get to know the characters, enter cheat mode or select Scenes. But that's not fun is it? Let's start the game by pressing Start in the bottom left hand corner.
You will get a brief synopsis of what is going down and the basics to what you will be trying to do. It's like real life but a simulation with choices. You want to be rich, popular and smart…go luck!
When you are first thrown into the free online role playing game you will see the screen below. You can click on any of the buildings to attempt to go into them. You start off with one hundred dollars and can grab another ten by reading your mail at home. From trial and error you will learn that the school is off limits to you until you find a school pass. The club and the night store (24h) are closed.
You continue entering buildings until you arrive at the coffee shop. The barman tells you that a man at the corner table wants to speak with you. You click on the silhouette of the dude to chat with him. This initiates the conversation and we go to a cut screen with a dude's picture and what he wants from your life.
Ah apparently Frank wants you to give some flowers (available at the store for 25 bucks!! Expensive!) to a girl near the school. Remember that she is NEAR the school and not in it. That killed a few minutes for me and will be the last hint you get from me!
Following Frank's advice I went to the store and bought some flowers. Pretty plain for twenty five bucks if you ask me though!
I took them over to the girl in front of the school, clicked on her and gave her the flowers. Then, as expected she gives you the pass you need to get into the school. Travel to the school by clicking on it and now you will be allowed in.
Ah here we are at school where we can study and work out. These will bring our levels up which are all sitting at a big fat zero as of now.
I think that is all the introduction you need to become helplessly addicted to this free online role playing game until you are the cool cat at the club and have a great paying job. Good luck with that – in the game and your real life! We would love to hear if you have other games for us that are free and online! Link us to them in the comments kiddies! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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During the 1990’s, one very popular way to earn easy, passive income online was pay-to-view advertisement feeds. These were applications that you installed on your PC, and for the length of time you had the window open, you would get paid at a certain rate. While the rate was ridiculously low, over time it would slowly accumulate.
Have you heard of 
Without doubt, Google is the premier search engine for the Internet world. So much so that its name is both a noun and verb. We not only link to Google, but we also “google” stuff. Many of us “google” something several times a day because of its speed and accuracy of search results. But as a Google user, you may not know that this mighty search engine actually keeps track of your search history – of what, when, and where you looked for stuff on the Internet.
A few months ago, I did an article about 
emails in order to help win the battle against these scammers. Seeing as many scams try to affiliate themselves with, or impersonate a company, it's wise to forward any such emails to the company in question.
Day #3 is finally over! Congratulations to the lucky 5 winners! Each of you won a copy of 
According to Wikipedia, our office knowledge sensei, an 
I grew up on games like 
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