MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [March 14th]” plus 5 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [March 14th]
- What Is The Best Laptop Brand? [MakeUseOf Poll]
- 10 Search Engines to Explore the Deep End of the Invisible Web
- 5 New Tools For Educators To Love In Second Life 2.0 Beta
- How To Install Skins for Various Instant Messaging Programs
- Keep Track of Website Changes with Page Monitor for Chrome
| Cool Websites and Tools [March 14th] Posted: 14 Mar 2010 08:31 PM PDT
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!
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| What Is The Best Laptop Brand? [MakeUseOf Poll] Posted: 14 Mar 2010 07:00 PM PDT
Last week’s poll How Long Do You Spend On The Internet In A Day? showed us how much time our readers spend online in a given day. The most chosen response was More than 6 hours weighing in at 159 votes followed very closely by 4 to 6 hours at 150 votes and then More than 12 hours and All fricking day were neck and neck at 65 and 64 votes respectively. That sure is a lot of browsing and a lot of MakeUseOf page views! Some of you expressed in the comments that you work online and this is just a byproduct of that. What was everyone spending their time on 15 years ago? Reading newspapers and magazines?
And now on to this week’s poll! In your opinion, which is the best brand of laptop out there? I tried to include every brand but as always, some fall through the cracks. If your favourite brand was not listed, choose ‘Other’ and state the brand in the comments. I will add your suggestions. Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.So go ahead, battle it out and let us know who will walk away with the “Best laptop brand” trophy! em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers! Related posts
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| 10 Search Engines to Explore the Deep End of the Invisible Web Posted: 14 Mar 2010 05:27 PM PDT
The Invisible Web refers to the part of the WWW that's not indexed by the search engines. Most of us think that that search powerhouses like Google and Bing are like the Great Oracle…they see everything. Unfortunately, they can't because they aren't divine at all; they are just web spiders who index pages by following one hyperlink after the other. But there are some places where a spider cannot enter. Take library databases which need a password for access. Or even pages that belong to private networks of organizations. Dynamically generated web pages in response to a query are often left un-indexed by search engine spiders.
To get a more precise idea of the nature of this 'Dark Continent' involving the invisible and web search engines, read what Wikipedia has to say about the Deep Web. The figures are attention grabbers – the size of the open web is 167 terabytes. The Invisible Web is estimated at 91,000 terabytes. Check this out – the Library of Congress, in 1997, was figured to have close to 3,000 terabytes! How do we get to this mother load of information? That's what this post is all about. Let's get to know a few resources which will be our deep diving vessel for the Invisible Web. Some of these are invisible web search engines with specifically indexed information. Infomine
Infomine has been built by a pool of libraries in the United States. Some of them are University of California, Wake Forest University, California State University, and the University of Detroit. Infomine 'mines' information from databases, electronic journals, electronic books, bulletin boards, mailing lists, online library card catalogs, articles, directories of researchers, and many other resources. You can search by subject category and further tweak your search using the search options. Infomine is not only a standalone search engine for the Deep Web but also a staging point for a lot of other reference information. Check out its Other Search Tools and General Reference links at the bottom. The WWW Virtual Library
This is considered to be the oldest catalog on the web and was started by started by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the web. So, isn't it strange that it finds a place in the list of Invisible Web resources? Maybe, but the WWW Virtual Library lists quite a lot of relevant resources on quite a lot of subjects. You can go vertically into the categories or use the search bar. The screenshot shows the alphabetical arrangement of subjects covered at the site. Intute
Intute is UK centric, but it has some of the most esteemed universities of the region providing the resources for study and research. You can browse by subject or do a keyword search for academic topics like agriculture to veterinary medicine. The online service has subject specialists who review and index other websites that cater to the topics for study and research. Intute also provides free of cost over 60 free online tutorials to learn effective internet research skills. Tutorials are step by step guides and are arranged around specific subjects. Complete Planet
Complete Planet calls itself the 'front door to the Deep Web'. This free and well designed directory resource makes it easy to access the mass of dynamic databases that are cloaked from a general purpose search. The databases indexed by Complete Planet number around 70,000 and range from Agriculture to Weather. Also thrown in are databases like Food & Drink and Military. For a really effective Deep Web search, try out the Advanced Search options where among other things, you can set a date range. Infoplease
Infoplease is an information portal with a host of features. Using the site, you can tap into a good number of encyclopedias, almanacs, an atlas, and biographies. Infoplease also has a few nice offshoots like Factmonster.com for kids and Biosearch, a search engine just for biographies. DeepPeep
DeepPeep aims to enter the Invisible Web through forms that query databases and web services for information. Typed queries open up dynamic but short lived results which cannot be indexed by normal search engines. By indexing databases, DeepPeep hopes to track 45,000 forms across 7 domains. The domains covered by DeepPeep (Beta) are Auto, Airfare, Biology, Book, Hotel, Job, and Rental. Being a beta service, there are occasional glitches as some results don't load in the browser. IncyWincy
IncyWincy is an Invisible Web search engine and it behaves as a meta-search engine by tapping into other search engines and filtering the results. It searches the web, directory, forms, and images. With a free registration, you can track search results with alerts. DeepWebTech
DeepWebTech gives you five search engines (and browser plugins) for specific topics. The search engines cover science, medicine, and business. Using these topic specific search engines, you can query the underlying databases in the Deep Web. Scirus
Scirus has a pure scientific focus. It is a far reaching research engine that can scour journals, scientists’ homepages, courseware, pre-print server material, patents and institutional intranets. TechXtra
TechXtra concentrates on engineering, mathematics and computing. It gives you industry news, job announcements, technical reports, technical data, full text eprints, teaching and learning resources along with articles and relevant website information. Just like general web search, searching the Invisible Web is also about looking for the needle in the haystack. Only here, the haystack is much bigger. The Invisible Web is definitely not for the casual searcher. It is a deep but not dark because if you know what you are searching for, enlightenment is a few keywords away. Do you venture into the Invisible Web? Which is your preferred search tool? Image credit: MarcelGermain Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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| 5 New Tools For Educators To Love In Second Life 2.0 Beta Posted: 14 Mar 2010 03:30 PM PDT
Over 5000 educators use Second Life to teach including Harvard Law professors Charlie and Becca Nesson. The new viewer promises to draw more teachers to the fold as virtual life is a lot easier for newbies and inworld tools are a whole lot more collaborative. What new tools for educators are breathing life into Second Life?
HTML on a PrimIn Second Life, sharing websites has been slightly cumbersome. In the old-old days, the only way to do it was to open a browser outside the SL platform. While not terribly taxing, it was a pain for students to toggle back and forth. Those days are long gone, and improvements and upgrades allowed you to set a parcel to a specific web page for viewing, but NOW you can actually WRITE ON the prim, click it, use YouTube, search for images, Google, check email, or even edit a collaborative wiki.
The only thing I couldn’t do when I tested it was use Google Docs. Hopefully, they can work that out during the Beta phase. This is an uber cool feature for teachers because it allows them to use a wiki as a live chalkboard. While students will have to refresh their views to see updates, they won’t have to leave Second Life to do it. Sweeeet. Easy Peasy MenuIn the old viewer, the infamous pie wheel appeared when you right-clicked on yourself. Now, life is not so complicated. There is a menu bar on the right side that hosts all of the options you will need as a new or advanced user.
This is truly helpful to teachers because most of the initial class time spent in world was devoted to trying to show students how to find things like their inventory (hair is really important in creating your second self!). Everything a new resident needs is on this new side menu. People LocatorOne of the fair criticisms of Second Life is that there is never anybody in it. That isn’t actually true, since 65,000 users are always logged in and millions of people have accounts. The problem is, like in real life, people are scattered and pockets of people are hard to find. It isn’t any different than real life; if you were to go to a bank at 3AM, you would hope to find it empty.
Since Second Life is a 24 hour operation with people from every corner of the earth, there is a great chance you are logged in at a time when other folks are sleeping. The new people locator helps you find the hot spot pockets of people. If you want to send your students to do a survey or to observe avatar behavior, they can simply click on the people finder and teleport to the nearest cluster of people. Clothing BinOne very cool addition is the “My Outfits” tab on the menu. This helps you to organize all of your outfits and role playing costumes into one place. My avatar, Desideria, has a zillion different outfits, and it helps to have a place to store the best of the best.
If you are a second life educator teaching a course on avatars, gender, or social issues, it is helpful to have “stock” costumes on hand. In teaching literature, wearing costumes for role playing activities can bring boring texts alive. Students will now being able to quickly access that Wife of Bath frock and won’t have to hunt around a crowded inventory to get to it in time for class. Easy TalkThe new viewer includes a much easier way to use the voice system. Now there is one simple button to push, and you are able to chat away with your students. The old menu wasn’t hard, but it was a bit cumbersome and not at all intuitive. This one-button approach will help students get connected instantly. Educators in Second LifeEducators will love the new Second Life viewer because it is easier to use and more functional. Less time will be spent showing students how to wear shoes, and more time can be spent working in groups on collaborative content. Lots of seasoned SL bloggers have been discussing the new viewer, and experienced users have mixed emotions about the new look and feel of it. How do you feel about the new viewer? Do you think it will be easier for educators to use, or should Linden Lab tweak it a bit before it goes out of Beta? Image credit: Daniel Voyager Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers! Related posts
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| How To Install Skins for Various Instant Messaging Programs Posted: 14 Mar 2010 12:30 PM PDT
Since then, the internet has grown. But one thing hasn’t changed: people still love to chat. Which client do you use? If you would like to change its look, read on. In this article, I explain how to install free skins for various instant messenger programs.
Yahoo MessengerYou can change your Yahoo Messenger skin under > Messenger > Preferences > Appearance tab. This is where you can also manage font and color for message windows and a few other optical characteristics.
More Yahoo Messenger skins can be found on several sites, however, be sure to download and install skins compatible with your version of Yahoo Messenger! To install, unpack the skin folder to > C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\skins. SkypeSkype doesn’t support skins. However, you can play with the colors or use a wallpaper. Go to > File > Personalise > Change Wallpaper… Go ahead and > use wallpaper, > pick a preset color, or > drag the slider to a color you like. You can also > Browse… for your own custom background images.
To undo changes click the > Clear background button in the bottom left. For more information about Skype, have a look at the following MakeUseOf articles:
Google TalkGoogle Talk supports chat themes, but not skins. All you can do is change the chat theme. Go to > Settings > Appearance tab and play around with the available themes.
Here are some sites that provide themes for Google Talk:
To install a new theme, unzip the download, be sure you have it in a folder with the theme’s name, then drag and drop that folder into > C:/Documents and Settings/(Windows account name)/Local Settings/Application Data/Google/Google Talk/Themes/user/chat/ The > /chat folder probably doesn’t exist, unless you previously installed themes. So if it’s not there yet, create it. Love Google Talk? Check out these MakeUseOf articles:
DigsbyYou can change Digsby’s look under > Tools > Preferences… > Skins tab. There are skins for the application and themes for the conversations. For each skin or theme there may be several color variants available.
You can get more Digsby skins,conversation themes, emoticons, and sound sets from Digsbies.org. They also provide clear instructions on how to install new themes here. We have more information about Digsby available:
Windows Live Messenger(formerly MSN) Windows Live Messenger has difference scenes that you can change under > Tools > Change your scene… In the respective window you can also select a color scheme and > Browse… for other scenes.
You can customize your Windows Live Messenger with personal scenes. You can pick any of your .bmp, .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, or .png images and use them as background images. Furthermore, you can change your display image under > Tools > Change display picture… and edit the layout under > Tools > Options… > Layout tab. Want to know more about Windows Live Messenger? Read these posts on MakeUseOf:
Pidgin
New themes are installed by dragging them onto the respective theme list. There are four different theme sections: Buddy List, Status Icon, Sound, and Smiley.
You can skin Pidgin with GTK themes and Smiley themes. If this sounds confusing, please refer to this explanation on the Pidgin wiki. You can find skins for Pidgin here:
Want to find out more about Pidgin? We have it covered in these articles:
If you can’t get enough of your instant messenger, you should also have a look at the following articles:
So which client are you using and what’s your favorite theme or skin? Image credit: guitargoa 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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| Keep Track of Website Changes with Page Monitor for Chrome Posted: 14 Mar 2010 10:30 AM PDT
Weeks, or even months later, you stumble about that same page again. The old Kindle is no longer available, and subscriptions have closed again. Oh, right. You forgot. Whether your habit of procrastinating, bad memory, or family-man attitude is to blame, the results are the same. The window of opportunity has closed. There’s no reason to rely solely on your own time and memory. Technology gives you the means to tame this online flux. You used to need a scripted macro for stuff like this. Right now, keeping track of website changes is as simple as a Google Chrome extension. Remember, “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”.
Page MonitorPage Monitor is the Chrome equivalent of Firefox’s Update Scanner Add-On. You can use it to track website changes. The learning curve for setting up a standard monitor is next to nothing, but the opportunities are endless.
You can use it to keep track of prices on Amazon or eBay, monitor Wikipedia page contributions, or watch private torrent trackers and Beta programs for that fleeting door of opportunity. If you’re up to the advanced tweaking, you can even track certain elements within a page, like the first result in a Bing or Google search. Configuring The Page Monitor WatchdogNavigate to the page you’re interested in and hit the top-right icon, next to your address bar. Start tracking website for changes with Monitor This Page. You can disable these monitored pages in the Options, or when a notification pops up, as well as specify the refresh timeframe.
Once something changes on the webpage, the icon will light up green. Page Monitor tries to ignore some ever-changing and superfluous page elements, like advertisements.
The previously empty menu will now show a list of websites that require your attention – visit, mark as read, or call up a detailed overview of the changes. Advanced Monitoring OptionsAt the bottom of the page, you can specify how long goes between every check-ups. By default, it’s set to 180 minutes, or 3 hours. There’s no real need to change this. Remember that more refreshes will require a bigger part of your computer memory. Checking for updates every minute can be tempting, but will noticeably impact your browsing. By expanding the advanced options, you can override the timeframe for each individual entry. The other advanced monitoring options are a bit more complicated, and not all of them accessible for your average internet user, even with an explanation.
You can choose to monitor only a specific part of the page by using Regex (Regular Expressions) and Selector expressions. Both allow you to script certain elements to Page Monitor’s attention. Regex allow you to pick out different elements and words, depending on the context. For example, you can look for a price that’s preceded by a specific set of words, or when it ends a sentence. Suffice it to say that Regex, although not ridiculously complicated, can not be taught in a single paragraph. If you want to take a closer look, you can read up via Wikipedia, where there’s a concise introduction and guide to Regex. In the screenshot above, <b class=”priceLarge”>(.*?)<.b> has isolated the ‘price’ expression on Amazon and will track every future change. One can also use the Regex input to search for a simple string of text and/or numbers. For example, in the screenshot above, I’m subsequently tracking two Amazon objects by respectively a ‘real’ Regex expression, and the absolute price. The latter, although easy to use, is limited by the two bolean values: true or false. It can only track the transition from presence to absence, and reversed. In the above example, it will note the price change from 55.49 to 50.49 (true to false) and back to 55.49 (false to true), but not from 50.49 to 60.49 (false to false), and any other creative transitions that don’t feature the original Regex value. As such, you’ll constantly need to revise said value. In other situations, e.g. the Torrent Tracker, using improvised Regex is a lot simpler. You’ll only ever need to keep track of one sentence: Signups are closed. Know any tips or alternatives to track website changes? Let us know your thoughts on Page Monitor in the comments section below! Related posts
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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 
No, it's not Spiderman's latest web slinging tool but something that's more real world. Like the World Wide Web.
The internet was built for communication. It all started with eMails. Back in the day, when the internet was brand new to the general public, Yahoo understood one thing very well: people love to chat and exchange information. Yahoo webmail, chatrooms, and the Instant Messaging client were hot.
Themes can be selected under > Tools > Preferences > Themes tab.
The price of a Kindle might dive in these next few days. Heck, for all you know, Torrentleech might open subscriptions again. There’s a lot of stuff that you should keep an eye on. It certainly pays off.
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