MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [March 28th]” plus 6 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [March 28th]
- Latest Hilarious Picks [MakeUseOf Geeky Fun]
- How Many Operating Systems Do You Run? [Poll]
- How To Customize Your Computer With Cool Icons In Windows XP
- How To Easily Track Your Personal Finances With Gmail and Google Docs
- Top 3 Sites For Free Printable Wedding Announcements
- How To Play AVI Files with Subtitles On The PlayStation 3
| Cool Websites and Tools [March 28th] Posted: 28 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. Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf fan page on Facebook. Over 15,000 fans already!
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| Latest Hilarious Picks [MakeUseOf Geeky Fun] Posted: 28 Mar 2010 07:30 PM PDT
Check out the top picks from MakeUseOf Geeky Fun during the last week.
If you would like to keep up with all latest Geeky Fun additions, please subscribe to the Geeky Fun feed here. You can also subscribe and get the latest additions via email.
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| How Many Operating Systems Do You Run? [Poll] Posted: 28 Mar 2010 07:00 PM PDT
 In last week’s poll, we asked you if Twitter changed your life or just gave you more work. We only had 160 responses. The majority of you who answered did not use Twitter or didn’t even know what it was. However, out of the 57 of you that did use Twitter, only 16 people thought it gave them more work! 36 of you said that Twitter did improve your lives. 25 people voted that Twitter did add to their work load but they loved it! I fall into that category. You can see all of the responses and our next poll after the jump.
This week’s poll is about operating systems. How many do you use? I know a lot of people who are booting two, three, four and even five operating systems on their computers. After all, there is a different tool for every job. Why not a different operating system for any task? Do you agree? A Mac for photo editing, a PC for running Active Directory and a Linux machine for its open source repository goodness. We will be including virtual machines in this vote as well as physically-booted operating systems. Your vote will reflect how many operating systems you can boot from your computer, not from a live CD or DVD. And we would love to hear from what operating systems they are. Voice out in the comments! Personally, I have 3 bootable operating systems (XP, Vista and Seven) in addition to my 6 virtual machines including Windows 98, ME, NT 4, Ubuntu, Mac OS X 10.6 and puppy Linux. So how about you? Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| How To Customize Your Computer With Cool Icons In Windows XP Posted: 28 Mar 2010 06:30 PM PDT
Why be the same as everyone else when it’s not difficult to be unique? You can easily personalize your computer and set it apart from the masses. Folders that you open frequently deserve a dedicated icon. The same goes for programs you use a lot. There are many fresh icons out there that look a lot cooler than the default ones you see everywhere. It’s just a matter of finding and using them. I’ll help you with both.
How To Change An Icon?First, you will want to know how to change icons. It works differently for different types of icons. Below are the instructions for the most common ones. Change Folder IconRight-click folder, select > Properties, switch to > Customize tab. Under Folder icons click > Change Icon… and > Browse… for the desired icon. Hit > OK on all windows to save your changes.
Change Program IconYou will change the icon of the shortcut you’re using to open the program. Right-click shortcut, select > Properties, switch to > Shortcut tab. At the bottom click the > Change Icon… button. You’ll be able to choose from a few standard icons or > Browse… for a custom icon on your computer. Click > OK on all windows to save your changes. The icon in the Start menu won’t change until you reboot the computer.
Change Drive IconRight-click drive icon, select > Change Icon from the menu, > Browse… for a suitable icon, and click > OK to save changes. Change My Computer / My Documents / Networkplaces / Recycle Bin IconsFor some system icons, changing the icon works a little different. Right-click on desktop, go go > Properties, open > Desktop tab, and click the > Customize Desktop… button in the bottom left. Select the icon you would like to change, click > Change Icon, > Browse… for the new icon and click > OK on all windows to save changes.
Where To Find Cool Icons?Now that you know how to change various icons, let’s look at some resources for stylish digital accessories. Icones.proIcones.pro is an icon search engine if you will. When you enter a keyword, for example a program’s name or an icon color or style; the search bar will suggest words. When you hit Enter, you can browse all available icons. Also note the most viewed, most downloaded, most rated and most searched categories to discover icons.
To download an icon, click it, and download the ICO file.
IconsPediaAt IconsPedia, you can download entire icon packs. This saves you a lot of searching for single icons of the same style.
The left-hand menu contains several categories, which in turn contain icon packs. You can also search this site by keywords and find icons and related packs. Overall, you will find that IconsPedia has one of the largest and most diverse collections available. Find IconsFind Icons is another search engine style icons page, which serves both single icons and packs.
What sets this one apart from the others is the side menu next to the results, which lets you refine your search. You can search within the results, define the size range with a handy slider, filter by color, select styles, and sort icons by different criteria.
Icon packs do not come up in the results. However, when you click an icon, you will see a link to its icon pack. To browse all icon packs click the > Browse button in the top menu. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to download the entire pack. Furthermore, Find Icons provides a file converter. You can upload your .jpg or .png image files and convert them to .ico files. Do you already have great icons, but they don’t work because it’s the wrong file type? Maybe iConvert can help. Karl explains how to use it in his article iConvert converts Windows Icons to Mac and Vice Versa Online. If you would like to change your icons more comfortably, try one of the 3 Free Icon Changer Programs to Customize Your Folders that Saikat described. Image credits: agthabrown Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| How To Easily Track Your Personal Finances With Gmail and Google Docs Posted: 28 Mar 2010 03:30 PM PDT
Now, Google Docs support something called creating forms. It lets you create interactive forms, using which you can get a hold of other people’s opinions. While all that is great, we’ll talk about a completely different, awesome use case for Google Docs today. Within a few, not so laborious minutes, we are going to set up an easy system to keep track of your finances. So here’s how you can go about keeping a track of your expenses, using Google Docs, and Gmail.
That’s all there is to it! From now on, whenever you have a new transaction that you need to track, all you need to do is fire up your Gmail Inbox, and click on the Quick Link to the form in your sidebar. Once your form opens up, fill it in and click Submit to make an entry into the spreadsheet associated with your form. At the end of the month, all you need to do is open up the spreadsheet in Google Docs to get a consolidated view of all your important transactions. If you want, you can play around with the theme of the form when you are designing it. However you shouldn’t bother too much about that aspect, since the form would be mainly used by yourself. There’s no doubt that Google Docs is an awesome tool to be productive. All you need to do is think of creative and inspiring ways to use it. If you’ve got an interesting use for Google Docs, lets hear it in the comments. Image Credit : stock:xchng. We NEED Your Comments! Please do share your thoughts in article comments! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Top 3 Sites For Free Printable Wedding Announcements Posted: 28 Mar 2010 12:30 PM PDT
I still love paper (Crane’s Paper is my absolute favorite). But, the simple truth is that most of us can’t afford to buy fancy paper and pay someone to design our good news, too! In this wedding season, let’s take a look at three awesome sites to get your creative juices flowing so you can print up some elegant wedding announcements all on your very own.
Design BettyDesignBetty is one of my all-time favorite websites. Not only can you design and print free wedding announcements, they also have an assortment of other free printables.
Design Betty ranks at the top of my list because there is no sign up (although you will need to provide an email address to download, as they will send you a back up copy of your design)! You simply choose the template, edit the font, color, and/or image and presto! You are all done!
Simply download the invitation or announcement as a PDF and print it out on nice stock paper. You can also email the invitations to guests if you want to save paper.
What makes DesignBetty the cream of the crop is the elegance of the designs. No chintzy graphics. No blah fonts. I printed the announcement below on card stock, and it held the same quality as the invitations I had forked out precious gold for when I got married.
There are just tons of layouts and designs to choose from on their site, and being able to customize the invites and make matching thank you cards is awesome!
There are designs for every taste!
And, the best part is that these classic designs are FREE (and come with thank you cards!).
Although you do not have to register with Design Betty, they do ask for your email address so they can send you a copy of your design. This is really useful because where else could you go back and get your design?
SouthworthSouthworth is another excellent place to design and print wedding announcements. Even though they (really) want you to print the announcements on their paper (which looks very nice, by the way). Their site is easy and simple to navigate.
Southworth four nice graphics, modifiable in Microsoft Word.
Hoover Web DesignIf you need a one stop resource for every and any kind of template, Hoover Web Design is the absolute best place to park your pixels! Even though they are a business, they offer so many free goodies that it makes you want to do business with them!
Like Design Betty, they have 5 pages of nice images that aren’t chintzy or lame. They also have a really good resource area for help with wording and suggestions about where to get the best prices on fancy papers.
The invitations print out in Word and you alter the text. There are two graphics to pick from on their site, but they give you links to other places to get graphics. Like Printables, another text-heavy site with all sorts of helpful tips and advice, you will be inspired by the many resources! The Final VowCreating the first impression of your wedding day can be a lot of fun with these resources. What other resources have you used? We NEED Your Comments! Please do share your thoughts in article comments! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| How To Play AVI Files with Subtitles On The PlayStation 3 Posted: 28 Mar 2010 10:30 AM PDT
Installing a subtitle ‘interpreter’, like we’re able to on a regular computer, holds no avail either. Drop an AVI and SRT subtitle file together on your console, and it’ll merrily ignore the latter. People have succeeded in streaming movies with subtitles to their PlayStation 3 using ‘DLNA’, but even that isn’t foolproof and admittedly, requires far too much work and preparation. For a long time, hardcoding seemed the only viable option, albeit incredibly time-consuming. Little do most people know there’s a far easier solution.
Step One :: Find SRT SubtitlesThere are a number of different subtitle formats, most of them simple text documents with embedded time-codes. The most popular one of them is SRT. Before we can cook up a subtitled DivX file, we’ll need said subtitles. Although this tutorial also works with an idx/SUB pair, we won’t overcomplicate things and advise you to use an SRT file when available.
Luckily, it’s not too hard to find subtitles for a popular video – even in foreign languages. Take a look at one of our previous articles for more information, The 3 Best Subtitle Sources For Your Movies & TV Series. Step Two :: Install Wine (Linux and Mac OS X)(If you’re using a Windows computer, skip this step) We assured the support of Linux and Mac OS X at the start of this article. Although the core application, AVIAddXSubs, is essentially a Windows application, it works very well with ‘Wine’. Wine is a free computer program for Linux and Intel Macs that emulates a local Windows environment, and can run a large number of Windows applications – all without needing to install another operating system. Read more about the application in Varun Kashyap’s article, Run Windows Applications on Linux (or Mac) with WINE.
Linux users can use the ‘official’ Wine environment, Mac OS X (Intel) users are advised to download and install the WineBottler package. Once installed, you can use it to open EXE and other Windows-native files. If you have trouble with ‘corrupt’ subtitles, later in the tutorial, you might want to reinstall the application and also install the font packs that come with it. Step Three :: Install AVIAddXSubsWith only 856KB, AVIAddXSubs is hardly a big application to download, but it’s a key component of this tutorial. Install it now. The application is native to Windows, but should just as well with Wine if you’re using Linux or Mac OS X (see step 2). Step Four :: Mix Video and Subtitles to DivxBecause DivX files use the same video compression techniques as AVI files, mixing in the subtitles happens in a flash. Most work, like installing those applications, needs to be done only once. From now on, the process will hardly take over a minute of your time.
Open AVIAddXSubs and select both video and subtitles. Select or type the path to your AVI and SRT files. The video and subtitle paths need to be separated by a straight slash ( | ) – you might need to do this manually. For example, refer to the screenshot above. If you want, you can select up to eight different subtitle streams this way. Hitting Start will commence file processing, which shouldn’t take long. The resulting DivX file has embedded subtitle streams and can be played on your PlayStation 3. To enable subtitles, simply press triangle Do you have any other subtitle- or PlayStation-related tips up your sleeve? Tell us what’s on your mind in the comments section below! We NEED Your Comments! Please do share your thoughts in article comments! 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 
Day in, day out; you browse folders, open programs and files. Each and every time you, see the same boring icons that everyone sees on their computers.
Everybody knows that 
Before I became the Dominatrix of Grammar, I was a simple school girl fascinated with the look, feel, and smell of all things paper.
If you ever tried, you’ll know it’s not too easy to watch a subtitled movie on your PlayStation 3. For starters, the PlayStation fails to recognize most video files with embedded subtitle streams.
during playback and toggle subtitle options like you would if you were watching a regular DVD.| You are subscribed to email updates from MakeUseOf.com To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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