MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [March 27th]” plus 5 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [March 27th]
- Top 10 Blackberry Storm Applications You Can’t Live Without
- 5 Cool Ways To Tag Your Friends In Facebook
- The Top 5 Free Apple Products & Why They Are The Best [Mac]
- How To Create Quick Silhouettes In Photoshop
- Elite Keylogger Giveaway Winners
| Cool Websites and Tools [March 27th] Posted: 27 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. Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Top 10 Blackberry Storm Applications You Can’t Live Without Posted: 27 Mar 2010 06:31 PM PDT
Once you start using these there is no going back; hence the title. We will be covering applications that help you find local restaurants, update Twitter, find out your local weather, find where you are and how to get to where you are going and much more. Stick around and read through the post. I am sure you will find something that you will love!
1. The first application we will be taking a look at is called UrbanSpoon. The developers of UrbanSpoon describe it as a restaurant slot machine. What makes this application awesome is the fact that it uses your location data to populate the slot machine with local cuisine and restaurants. Just give it a shake and it will decide for you! No more fighting and bickering with your loved ones over where to go! Just let your Blackberry decide.
You can find UrbanSpoon here, you can download the JAD file directly to your Blackberry or you can visit their site and have the application emailed directly to you. 2. Next up is Google Maps for mobile. You can use all the features Google Maps has to offer right on your Blackberry. You can take advantage of your Blackberry’s GPS and get turn by turn directions as well as seeing images of where you are going. Google Maps has set the bar pretty high for free GPS enabled applications. Take advantage of it and do not pay for another application!
Download Google Maps from here 3. Now for those of you that go outside on a regular basis we have Berryweather to tell you what it is going to be like out there. Get useful weather updates auto-magically on your Blackberry each and every day. You will see the forecast for the upcoming week as well as the current temperature and outlook. It will also tell you what it feels like with the wind chill. This will let you prepare for the day or week at a glance.
Download Berryweather from here. 4. Then we have JiveSlide for the photo lovers out there. If you love to share your images with friends and family and you store your pictures on Flickr or Yahoo then this is the application for you. JiveSlide is a photo viewing, slide show application. It lets you pull items saved to Flickr or Yahoo!. It makes viewing pictures very easy. Point it to where you want it to go and it will start streaming your pictures to your BlackBerry. The best part of JiveSlide is how quickly your images come in. Check out a live demo of it on the web here.
5. Piconews is a news aggregator that makes feed reading easy and fun. It is no secret that I love reading news feeds on my handheld. It doesn't matter if you are a RSS junkie or you don't know what RSS means, PicoNews will help bring the news directly to you. This reader helps you locate feeds by keywords or category. Once you have the feeds you want, your Blackberry will download all the articles in it. This enables you to use it when you do not have a signal to read your news. This is awesome for the train.
6. Then we have a little application some of you might have heard of called FourSquare. Now I need to add a disclaimer that I do not use FourSquare and I think location services can be troublesome to say the least. But some of my followers have told me that they absolutely LOVE FourSquare. The premise behind the application is that you can check into a certain location and compete to be king of that spot. You can earn badges and participate in the hype. The app can also show you who is near you and your friends locations.
You can download FourSquare here. 7. If you use FourSquare you are probably all over Twitter and every Twitter user needs a Twitter client – right? Well we have an application called UberTwitter. It offers what you would expect from a Twitter client such as being able to tweet, see your friends tweets, send direct messages and more. You have to love being able to tweet on the go, after all that is what Twitter was meant for right? Download, install and start tweeting away to your hearts content! Twitter user’s name removed at my wife’s request.
Download UberTwitter to your Blackberry. 8. What do you use for instant messaging on your Blackberry? I have been stuck on AOL Instant Messenger for some time now. A lot of my old friends and contacts refuse to give it up so I normally have an AIM client with me on the go. Now you can have one on your Blackberry as well. It is as easy as downloading the client, setting up your username and password and you are good to go.
Download the Blackberry AOL IM client here. 9. Do you use Google Voice? If you do and you have a BlackBerry, you can now make phone calls using your Google Voice number, read your transcribed email, send free text messages as well as complete Google Address Book integration.
Download the Google Voice Application from here. 10. SMRTGuard helps protect your investment in your BlackBerry. They offer paid services as well as their SMRTGuard. SMRTGuard can track your Blackberry remotely as well as remotely wipe all data on your device via their website. They also talk about being able to track your loved ones (with their permission of course). Once you get this installed you will wonder how you lived without it!
Do you have any other favorite applications for your BlackBerry? We would love to see them in the comments! Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 5 Cool Ways To Tag Your Friends In Facebook Posted: 27 Mar 2010 03:31 PM PDT
Today, at least on Facebook (become a fan of MakeUseOf), people don’t seem to mind being tagged so much. With Facebook there are some cool ways to tag your friends. Let’s go through some of them.
1. You Can Tag Your Friends In Photographs That Contain Their FacesThis is the most obvious use of tagging, I think. The idea is that if you, or one of your friends, upload a photo (also learn how to automatically insert photo captions when you upload to Facebook), you can tag people you recognize in it. As long as the person you recognize is on your friends list, you can tag them in photos. It’s easy and fun. Just navigate to the photo and click the tag link at the bottom right of the photo.
You’ll be given a cross-hair for a cursor. Use that cursor and click the face of the person you are tagging. At that time a list of your friends will show up. Just scroll to find the right friend or start typing the name to narrow the list.
When you are done tagging people, click the “done tagging” button to save everything you’ve done.
See? Easy-peasey. And to add to it all, the person you tag will get notified. 2. You Can Tag Your Friends In Those Silly Tagging MemesA lot of people really get into these things. They enjoy looking through the pictures and drawings containing characters that describe different attributes people may have. For instance, in the meme in the screenshot below, my wife and I were tagged as “The Inseparable” which I accept with pride. Tagging in this instance works the same way, just in a picture that doesn’t contain an actual photo of the person being tagged. It’s kind of cool being tagged on Facebook in this manner.
3. You Can Tag People In Photos Where They Do Not Appear – Just To Notify Them There’s A Photo You Want Them To SeeThe idea here is that when you see a photo you want one of your friends to check out, you can tag them in it. For instance, I often see photos with someone’s children in them so they get tagged. The child may not have a Facebook account but the uploader still wants the parent to see the picture. Like I said, when you are tagged in a photo, you are notified. To be honest, although I understand why people do this, it still annoys me. If I see that someone is tagged in a photo, and I check it out, I’d like to find that person in it. That’s just my personal opinion. It’s still a cool way to tag someone on Facebook.
4. You Can Tag Someone In A NoteNote tagging is very similar to photo tagging and almost as cool. The idea is the same. You tag someone in a note for the same two reasons: they are mentioned in the note (probably the actual proper use) or you want someone to be notified so they can read it. I have been personally tagged in several of my friends’ notes but mostly so I get notified.
5. You Can Tag Someone You Are Mentioning In A Status UpdateAnother cool tagging option you have is the “@” tag in status updates. I haven’t seen this too much yet which tells me that not too many people realize it’s even possible. Any Twitter user realizes that when they mention another user, they just type “@” and the username so they are notified that they were tagged. Facebook finally jumped on that bandwagon and now Facebook folks can do it too. When writing a status update, type the “@” symbol and begin typing a friend’s name. A list should show up allowing you to choose them from it. When you do this, the name turns into a link and they are notified that you mentioned their name. This is cool because now people can know when they are being talked about so they can join the conversation. Notice that you can also tag groups and pages in this manner.
Facebook, as one of the most popular social networking sites, has done a good job in the area of tagging. I think tagging in general is cool because it brings people together in unique ways. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that you can also remove tags referring to yourself if you don’t like the idea of being mentioned some place. These are 5 cool ways to tag friends on Facebook. If I have missed any, please share in the comments. What is your opinion of tagging? Do you think it is cool tagging and being tagged? Do share. We NEED Your Comments! Please do share your thoughts in article comments! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| The Top 5 Free Apple Products & Why They Are The Best [Mac] Posted: 27 Mar 2010 12:31 PM PDT
Truth be told, I love my Mac, and all the free applications that go with it (well OK, I am not all that crazy about the new iMovie, but I sure did love the old one!). It was really hard to pick just five applications, and it was harder yet to figure out which ones were truly “free” and which come part of a pre-paid bundle and which ones have associated costs. Here’s what I finally ended up with.
iPhotoSome folks don’t like iPhoto and think it is really annoying, and I used to be one of them. But, over time, I really have fallen in love with it. As I learned how to use it, it really became one of the most useful tools on my machine. Organizing photos is super simple, and creating simple and creative projects is snappy!
I like that iPhoto organizes by date because I often make projects that span a length of time. For example, for holidays, I used the iPhoto calendar creator to make calendars to give out to family and friends. Because the dates were included, I was able to pick a shot from each month FOR each month on the calendar.
I also love that you can train iPhoto to recognize faces. When my Mom passed away in June, I was able to go in and find all the pictures of her using the Face recognition program. Since I was pressed for time and very sad, to boot, it made the task a lot easier and manageable.
One of the best features, of course, is the ability to load straight to Facebook and other social networking sites. Since I communicate with my family and friends mostly through Facebook, the uploader saves tons of time and money.
I really could go on and on about how much I have come to love iPhoto. I truly don’t know what I would do without it! Here are some iPhoto articles that we have previously published on MUO: Manage Your iPhoto With These Plugins – Jackson iTunesiTunes is one of Apple’s finest inventions. The music database is excellent, and the app store is just dreamy beyond words. But what makes it the best is that it is the first of its kind; it offers an amazing and seamless store integration and synchs smoothly with the iProducts.
As an iPhone junkie, I totally get lost in the App store, but, regardless of what my husband thinks, I DO actually download music and podcasts, too. The iTunes University listing is incredible, and I get daily and weekly doses of some of the best lectures in the world.
There are other podcasts that I follow as well, and iTunes makes it so easy to subscribe to them and listen on my own time. While iTunes apparently does not work as well on a PC, it really is a powerhouse of information that works seamlessly on a Mac.
The entire iRevolution started with iTunes, and, truly, it is a spectacular application. We have published lots of iTunes articles, including a manual, but here are a selection to choose from: How To Synch The iTunes Library With Your Music Folders – Tobias QuicktimeQuickTime is a great product. It is smoothly integrated into the Mac platform, and provides tools to create, edit, and display movies and audio clips. There is a simple trim tool for folks without a lot of editing experience. It also allows the compression of video for use on an iPod, iPhone, and (soon!) iPad.
In addition to simple videos, you can create easy audio files and screencasts (movies of what is happening on your screen). Everything can be loaded up to iTunes or YouTube. Use Quicktime X In Mac Snow Leopard For Easy Screencasting – Jackson SafariSafari is another great Apple invention. For me, it renders webpages faster and more efficiently than Mozilla or Internet Explorer. I use it and Chrome for different things, but it is definitely one of Apple’s best programs!
The Top Sites button is also incredibly handy for those of us who use the same sites often. And, again, Apple’s Safari created a paradigm shift on how we do things in the computing world.
Safari is just simple to use and offers all the features you want if you aren’t into all the add ons that Firefox showcases. 10 Best Safari Browser Plugins – Jeffry Time MachineTime Machine is “sort of” free if you have the right hardware to go with it (a back up drive), but the program comes with the Mac. So much time and tears are saved when you need Time Machine to do its thing to save the day!
There are a lot of great Mac products out there, and it is completely impossible to pick the definitive five best. So what are your top Mac products? What would you add or delete from my list? Image Credit: arquera Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| How To Create Quick Silhouettes In Photoshop Posted: 27 Mar 2010 10:31 AM PDT
A silhouette may be cast in dark colors; it may be just an outline sans any other feature; but silhouettes still manage to communicate mood and mystery. On a very basic day to day level, silhouettes find a lot of uses in presentations and displays. As silhouette cliparts go, we have quite a few in the MS Office Clipart gallery itself. Gathering silhouettes with a Google search is not a problem.
But what if you needed a particular type of silhouette and a search turned up dry? You need to call up your neighborhood designer or fall back on your own design skills. Your Photoshop skills may be rusty, but thankfully creating a basic silhouette doesn't call for a Picasso. It's just a few easy steps. The 10 Steps To A SilhouetteFirst, we head to a site like Flickr to pick the image we can use for our silhouette. The ideal image would be of your object framed against a uniform background. Sifting through the thousands, I picked this image:
This is just a basic tutorial for drawing silhouette shapes. The web is chock full of interesting variations, like combining silhouettes or filling them up with psychedelic patterns. As a teaser, check out – Creating a Rocking Silhouette in Photoshop . It's a great silhouette tutorial on one of the Photoshop sites we had featured in 10 Websites To Make You A Photoshop Ninja. But even a ninja needs basic training. That's where our free eBook – An Idiot's Guide To Photoshop could be a great stepping stone. Don't forget to visit our previous posts on everything that's Photoshop. Do you have your own method of creating silhouettes? Let us know in the comments. Image Credit: World Economic Forum Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Elite Keylogger Giveaway Winners Posted: 27 Mar 2010 10:00 AM PDT
For now, let’s stick to the present, shall we? Here are the 10 uber lucky winners! License information will be sent to your email addresses. Thank you for participating. Be sure to check back for our next giveaway on Monday. MakeUseOf would like to thank Amy from WideStep for her generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email. Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
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 
I recently wrote a post called 
So what does it mean to be tagged? I remember being young and playing tag or hide and seek and no one wanted to be tagged. Being tagged meant you were “it” remember?
I have a confession to make. I thought it would be totally simple to select the best 5 free Apple products – and then I realized I was in way over my head!
A silhouette is a drawing of the outline of an object, filled in with some solid color. From silhouette portraits to the famous iPod silhouette ad, they are as common as graffiti on walls. Or even as traffic signposts or as symbols of his and hers on lavatory doors.
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