MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [March 30th]” plus 8 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [March 30th]
- Browse Top News Stories On Your iPhone/iTouch With Digg
- Kompozer – Free Web Design Software To Whip Together Webpages
- 3 Awesome Virtual Tours To Show You The World’s Sights
- SenderOK – Email Productivity With An Outlook & Webmail Add-in
- ComicRack – An Incredible Free eComic Reader [Windows]
- How To Modify Your Wordpress Theme Via The Browser Using Stiqr
- 3 Innovative Ways To Learn Or Improve A Foreign Language
- Listen To Streaming Music On Your Windows Mobile With Slacker
| Cool Websites and Tools [March 30th] Posted: 30 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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| Browse Top News Stories On Your iPhone/iTouch With Digg Posted: 30 Mar 2010 06:31 PM PDT
For those of you who don't know, Digg is a community driven news website that allows its users to pick the top stories on the web by voting them up (digging them) or down (burying them). I'm sure you've probably seen those shiny yellow Digg buttons all over the web (feel free to click ours below!)
In this article I am going to go over some of the free app's features in depth and show you what the app looks like with screenshots. Get ready to Digg! Browsing Top StoriesJust like Digg's website, the application allows for multiple ways to find the stories you're interested in. The main page on the Digg iPhone app shows you a list of the top stories on all of Digg. You can view how many diggs the story has right from this list.
If you click the little blue arrow next to a story you can also view how many comments the story has, favorite the story, or digg or bury it from there. At the bottom of the screen you can switch from Top stories to Recent and Upcoming. You can also access your saved stories. Searching TopicsAt the top of the screen you can select a specific topic by clicking the Topics button, or you can search for your own. Topics to choose from include Technology, World & Business, Science, Gaming, Lifestyle, Entertainment, Sports, and Offbeat. If you're familiar with the site you will recognize these. You can click on a topic to be taken to a list of subtopics. This should help narrow down the scope of what you're looking for.
When you go to the search screen, a QWERTY keyboard pops up so you can type in your search criteria. Your results are displayed based on the keywords you've typed in and you can sort them by Best, Recent, and Diggs. Preview & Browse Pages
So what do you do when you've finally found your content? You can click on a story and the app takes you to the story's preview page where you can see a summary of the article, who submitted it, when it was submitted, and what website it is linking to. You can view comments and related stories on this page, which I will discuss further below.
Clicking on the actual headline itself opens up your browser and takes you to the article. It keeps a bar on the top and bottom so you can return to the app seamlessly or digg, bury, or save the story. Commenting & SharingAllowing users to comment on stories is one of the more popular features that Digg offers its users. On the preview screen, you can view either the top comments with the most diggs or all comments that have been left, as well as digg the comments you like or leave one yourself for others to see.
Clicking the arrow on the bottom right of the screen brings up a list of options that allow you to share the story via Twitter, Facebook, and Email. You can also Copy to Clipboard. ConclusionPersonally, I am a huge fan of Digg. When this app came out I started using it right away. If you are a regular user of the website or like to get your news online, I'd recommend you download this app for your iPhone/iTouch. We're doing more and more on the go these days, and that includes getting our news as it happens. You can find a demo of the app on YouTube here : What do you think of this Digg iPhone app? Do you use Digg often? Leave your thoughts, comments, and ideas below! Do you like MakeUseOf articles! Please do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Kompozer – Free Web Design Software To Whip Together Webpages Posted: 30 Mar 2010 04:31 PM PDT
Sometimes it’s easier to make use of free web design software that can do all of that coding for you. In particular, I’d like to cover the free web authoring application called KompoZer. I like Kompozer because it’s a very small, lightweight application. While many people like the popular app Dreamweaver, it’s not free. And CoffeeCup is popular software too, but it’s a bit of a larger application than KompoZer. In the case of KompoZer, you could copy the files onto your memory stick and take it anywhere you want to go. Want to quickly whip up an HTML page, just launch the KomoZer executable and you’re good to go!
Free Web Design Software With Everything You NeedThe first thing you’ll notice about KompoZer is that the user interface is very straightforward and easy to use. Everything is laid out on the main page, and what isn’t on the main page is well organized within the sub-menus for each object – like tables, forms and links. The entry screen is laid out into a site explorer pane and a composer pane, so your entire web design project stays well organized and within reach on one screen.
Of course, KompoZer wouldn’t be useful if it wasn’t up to Web 2.0 standards, but with the CSS Stylesheets wizard, you can create the style rules for your headers, paragraphs, text and other elements of your page without any knowledge of CSS scripting (although a bit of knowledge would help). Just select the element type you want to configure and create the rules on the various tabs – text, background, borders, etc.
For example, here I’m configuring all of my H3 headers to use the Arial font and medium font size. As you can see, the style configurations that you can make are detailed, and you don’t need to know a single lick of CSS code.
If you’re writing a webpage that’s set up like a typical blog entry, where you have a header image with text wrapped around it on the right, then you’ll need an easy way to import that image into a local directory that your webpage can refer to, as well as a simple way to format and insert the image with that formatting. Kompozer makes this process about as easy as it could possibly be with a single image configuration section.
When you browse to and select an image on your computer that you want to use in your webpage, it places a picture of that image in a local “Pictures” directory within the local folder that you’re working in (if you select to make the URL relative to page location). The screen has a field for alternative text, and even any popup “tooltip” that you’d like to include.
My favorite part of the image insertion process in Kompozer is the fact that I don’t have top open up the picture in an image editor in order to resize the way I would like. Kompozer has a built in area (much like Wordpress) where you can simply set the width and height – and bast of all a “Constrain” option so that your image doesn’t get warped.
The table wizard is insanely simple. While most web designers today focus on using CSS to format pages, tables still occasionally have a place when you want to quickly create in-page formatting. Once you’ve chosen the table type you want, configuring the table is a breeze on the table properties screen.
As a guy who has programmed some pretty complicated tables, I’m impressed by the ease with which you can just toss together a table with this software. Configure borders, alignment and other formatting choices in the tool and voila – your table is done! No complicated HTML code, and no trying to keep track of table, row and cell tags!
Forms are pretty simple to insert as well – but you’ll need to have an “action URL” that you can submit the form information to for processing. A form configuration wizard lets you choose from standard form elements – text fields, buttons, etc – in order to piece together your form on the page. Once I finished creating my simple test page, the moment of truth for me was checking the code in the background. Doing so is as easy as selecting the “source” tab at the bottom of the screen. One of the reasons I’ve always avoided using free (or paid) web design software is that I would always have to deal with a terrible mess of code on the back end whenever I wanted to “tweak” anything. If you’ve ever seen the junk that Microsoft Word creates when you “save as HTML” then you know what I mean. However, clicking on “source” revealed the following code.
The first thing I noticed is how wonderfully clean and well formatted the code is. Only the basic scripting is included that will accomplish the configuration choices you selected for each object. As you can see, there’s no confusing HTML with the img code or with the table – it’s what you’d expect if someone had gone in and typed it up themselves. The formatting is also laid out in a way that’s easy to read and simple to follow.
Want to quickly see what your new web page looks like? Just click the “Preview” button at the bottom of the page and you get a preview of what it will look like in the web browser. Here is my page with an image, simple headers and an invisible table that I used to format and align text, seemingly in the middle of empty space. The preview looked exactly as I laid out on the page in the design view, no alteration of spacing or weird indents – the sort of things I became accustomed to, and frustrated with, in the old versions of FrontPage (a nightmare web editor!) All in all, I think I’ve fallen in love with Kompozer. There are times when I put together very fast and simple web pages for new domains that I start up, and this tool allows the speed and flexibility to create some well designed websites utilizing CSS in a fraction of the time it would take to put together the code by hand. Do you use any free web design software? Have you ever tried Kompozer? Share your insight in the comments section below. Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 3 Awesome Virtual Tours To Show You The World’s Sights Posted: 30 Mar 2010 02:31 PM PDT
I really love traveling, but don’t have nearly enough time or money to visit all of the world’s greatest places. Virtual world tours are an awesome way to explore the greatest nooks and crannies of the earth. Virtual tours are also an excellent way to teach children about the world or to help folks who can’t travel to see the sites. The best collection of tours is located here.
Goin’ To The Chapel….Cathedrals 3D TourThis tour takes you all over the world to see the greatest cathedrals. The modeling is excellent, but you must be patient and allow the models to render. Cathedrals 3D works within Google Earth, but everything is there for you to use with ease.
Each virtual world tour takes you to a different cathedral and offers a 3D realistic model of the structure. Because it is an overlay, you can see what is around it in real time. The key is to make sure you click on the box next to “3D Buildings” in the layer toolbar of Google Earth.
Once you have the tour loaded properly, it works like a charm. It pauses between stops automatically, and you can click on balloons to get more information about each located.
The detail of the 3D models are awesome! You can click on the model and turn it around and explore it from different angles.
Because it is within Google Earth/Google Maps, you get a lot of information about the location, and that is really helpful if you are interested in the culture or history of a location.
Out Of This WorldArounder MoonThis is an awesome tour. While it is not as complete as applications like Celestia, it offers very close imaging of the Earth’s moon. NASA has provided panoramic tours of different locations, and, although the images are black and white, they are still incredible.
The detail of the moon rock is truly incredible. When presented to my star gazing son, he wanted to know if the moon was black and white and without color or if the film was black and white. While I don’t know the answer, I thought the question was pretty profound for an 8 year old. This sort of imagery and virtual tourism helped him frame an intelligent question. Awesome.
This is a close up shot from Apollo 17. Again, the detail is fantastic. If you spin around, you can see this shot…
A Whale Of A TourWhale and Dolphin Conservation Society Virtual Whale.This seems like a silly sort of tour, but my kids love it. Essentially, you are touring the whale’s exterior. You simple move that little red box to zoom in.
The details are amazing. You – literally – see every nook of this whale. You get close enough to see the mouth and scars. There is something incredible about looking directly into its eye.
The point of the tour is clear. This may, indeed, be one of the last whales we will be able to see if commercial whale fishing isn’t stopped. Which virtual world tours do you enjoy viewing? Let us know all about them in the comments. Image Credit: Caveman We NEED Your Comments! Please do share your thoughts in article comments! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| SenderOK – Email Productivity With An Outlook & Webmail Add-in Posted: 30 Mar 2010 12:31 PM PDT
With a slew of free tools and add-ons, the email is heading that way. Maybe it won't flash a charming smile just yet, but there are some email assistants that can help us live a more charmed life and enjoy greater personal productivity. One such free email software is SenderOK.
Email productivity (or any other) is about prioritizing. SenderOK is that, but on auto-pilot. How? Let's see… Taking A First Look At Our Email AssistantSenderOK is a 9.52MB download and it is an add-in for Outlook (2003, 2007) and the browser (IE6+, FF2+). It is supported on Windows XP, Vista, and 7. After installation, a SenderOK user account has to be created. The SenderOK account is your calling card into the network of trusted senders. On installation, the SenderOK Account Manager takes you through screens of a few configurations. One of the most important ones is where you give SenderOK the specific email accounts to handle:
The last step in the installation step-by-step is where SenderOK indexes all the emails. The nice touch is, SenderOK gives a tour of the features while the indexing is on. Taking a Second, Deeper Look At Our Email Assistant
Is SenderOK A Good Email Assistant?SenderOK does a good job of sorting through the mail and arranging them according to priority. Though the brain behind the sorting is not mentioned, SenderOK also takes into account global classification of the emails. If users classify a particular sender as high priority, then it apparently helps to fine tune the email classification. What's helpful definitely is the grouping of the emails from a single sender in the info panel. Along with the photo, it speeds up email productivity. The cons? I am not sure if webmail accounts also display virtual folders with sorted mails as in Outlook's Inbox. I couldn't get it to work and in all probability, there is this single distinction between webmail and Outlook. Though, webmail accounts display the priority for individual emails and any change in one gets reflected in all emails from that sender. SenderOK can only get better at its job as we use it more. Just like a real assistant. Will this software have your stamp of okay? Use it with Outlook and webmail and let us know. We NEED Your Comments! Please do share your thoughts in article comments! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| ComicRack – An Incredible Free eComic Reader [Windows] Posted: 30 Mar 2010 11:31 AM PDT
International manga fans have long been known for downloading their stories online, but now regular comics are appearing online as well. With copyright expiring, some of the great classics can now be downloaded for free, legally. Most of these comics and manga can be read on your computer with your native image viewer, but to really enjoy them, you’ll want to use special comic book reader software. You can find decent comic book readers for most devices, but none of them will fare as well as ComicRack does on Windows.
ComicRackComicRack describes itself as ‘the best eComic reader and manager for Windows computers’. Having tried it, I don’t dare to refute that claim. ComicRack doesn’t just look good, it is an all-purpose solution; the Swiss army knife of comic book apps. It’ll function as a comic reader, a library management application, and a conversion tool.
eComic ReaderThe ComicRack reader supports the usual zip, rar, tar, 7z, pdf files, but also cbz, cbr, cbt, or cb7. These last four are essentially renamed archives of the first type, and are typical for eComics. There are various reading modes. The one you see below, two page display, gives a real comic book view to it. For smaller displays, you can also view a single page at a time, or only part of a page with auto-scroll. I can picture a few Blake and Mortimer comics where that might be necessary.
Network Sharing must be one of the more exciting aspects of ComicRack. You can share your entire eComic library over your network, optionally passworded, and access it from another laptop or tablet wherever in reach. Other nifty features of this comic book reader includes a magnifying glass, auto-rotation for some tablet PCs, and even a special manga reading mode. Library & ConversionComicRack is more than only a fine eComic reader, it allows you to organize and manage your soon all-encompassing library. Albeit digital, most collectors want to do more than just keep their comics within reach.
The library view – which can be opened simultaneously or in a different tab than the reader – offers you a shelf view of eComic thumbnails. You can find your way by launching a Quick Search, or creating a list or smartlist. The latter one allows you to sort on eComic information, like ‘author’, ’series’, ‘read’, and so on, essentially creating a more dynamic sort of sorting than general lists and folders. ComicRack also allows you to convert between every supported format. Do you have a PDF that you want to turn into a cbz or cb7 eComic archive? Just give the command! The application also supports batch converting, allowing you to take a whole folder worth of comics at once. Back in the library view, you can even modify the color scheme for a single eComic. Do you know any other great eComic reading or management solutions? Perhaps for Linux or Mac OS X? Let us know in the comments section below. Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf fan page on Facebook. Over 15,000 fans already!
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| How To Modify Your Wordpress Theme Via The Browser Using Stiqr Posted: 30 Mar 2010 10:31 AM PDT
But that’s not the case anymore. I recently stumbled across a Wordpress theme editor plugin called Stiqr – still in beta as every other Web 2.0 service is – which can help ordinary web users to become a “skillful” web designer. If you can drag and drop objects, you can modify the look of your web. Self-hosted Wordpress is officially included in the list of supported type of websites.
And everything is done without the need for a standalone web builder application, or the coding knowledge. All you need is a browser.
Setting Up The StageIf you’ve always wanted to design your own website but the all the technical terminologies scared you, now is the perfect time for you to start. Visit Stiqr and click on the “Get Started Now“.
But don’t expect to see the ordinary sign-up process because it’s not that obvious. Before going through the “Enter Your Name” and “Enter Your Email” routines, you have to insert one line of code in your website. But you don’t have to tremble with fear, because all the steps are painless in Wordpress. Stiqr will provide you with the code, save it to be used later.
Armed with the code, login to your Wordpress.
Then navigate to the right sidebar, and click “Editor” under the “Appearance” menu.
Within the Wordpress theme editor plugin, find the “Footer (footer.php)” and click on the link to edit.
You will see the editable lines of codes for “footer.php“. Navigate to the lower part of the codes and find the closing line for the body – “</body>” – and insert the code that you got from Stiqr above it. Then click the “Update File” button.
After the “File edited successfully” notification appear, go to the main page of your Wordpress by clicking “Visit Site” button next to the title of your blog.
That concludes the preparation stage. Turn Your Wordpress Into A Sticker ScrapbookOn the front page of your Wordpress blog, press the key combination of “Shift + F2” to start Stiqr. As a first time Stiqr user, you will have to register first. Start by entering your email address and click “OK“.
Then continue by choosing your preferred password followed by another “OK“. My advice: please come up with a strong password for this one.
If the registration is successful, a notification window will pop-up along with a thank you note and what to do next: wait for the page to be refreshed and press “Shift + F2” button one more time.
You will be asked to enter your password to log in. Some might think that this step is unnecessary, but you really need the protection since everybody could access this page. You don’t want anybody to mess around with the look of your site, do you? This is also the reason why you need a strong password.
Upon successful login, an editor bar will appear at the bottom of your page. You can start using the tools and let your creativity go wild.
I will save the the discussion about editing the look of your webpage using Stiqr for the next part of this article. Until then, you can experiment and get yourself familiar with this cool web-based WYSIWYG web editor. So far, my opinion about Stiqr is that it has opened up a whole new horizon that I’ve never thought possible: live editing the look of Wordpress (or any other kind of website) directly from the browser without the need for coding knowledge. I am absolutely sure that I’ll use this service often in the future. What do you think of Stiqr? Do you know similar services out there? Please share using the comments below. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 3 Innovative Ways To Learn Or Improve A Foreign Language Posted: 30 Mar 2010 09:31 AM PDT
I’m reminded of studying vocabulary and grammar from a book, practicing to speak the language with fellow non-native speakers, and proving my skills in written tests. Now that doesn’t sound very stimulating or promising, does it? Personally, I had medium success with the traditional approach to learning a foreign language. Yes, it does help to study vocabulary and grammar. And exams are a good enough motivation to push you forward. However, that alone will hardly get you to the point where you fluently speak a foreign language.
PodcastsListening to language podcasts is a great way to get started. First of all you develop a feeling for the sound of the language. As you advance and learn more and more words, you also gain an understanding of how sentences are put together. In other words, you pick up the language just like a baby: first it’s all strange sounds, then it’s starting to make sense, and in the end you’re starting to speak. iTunesFor a start, you can go with the tools you already have. Browse iTunes for your language of choice or navigate to > Podcasts (source column) > Podcast Directory (bottom right) > Education (category) > Language Courses (more information) to get an overview of what’s available.
You’ll find more language podcasts in this list for Language Learning Podcasts and within the Podcast Directory. Frankly, podcasts are a one sided affair. Your iPod won’t object when you make mistakes and thus you will soon reach a premature learning plateau. This is where communities come into play. CommunitiesA great benefit of communities is that you don’t just digest lessons and learn a foreign language passively. Instead, you can interact with others, communicate with native speakers, practice understanding the language, and receive feedback regarding your skills. Here is a selection of communities with different emphases: RhinoSpikeRhinoSpike is the natural advancement from solitary podcast studying to exchanging audio files socially.
Lang-8Lang-8 focuses on writing in a foreign language. You write, native speakers correct your mistakes, and you can contribute by correcting texts in your native language. BusuuBusuu provides not only a community and a chatroom, but also courses, writing exercises, vocabulary training, and tests. You may also be interested to learn about LiveMocha, which Saikat covered in this article LiveMocha – Smell The Coffee & Learn The Lingo. Study ContextOnce you start speaking fluently, casual conversations won’t do the trick anymore. Improving the language further now is a matter of accumulating more words and expressions into your active vocabulary. In other words focus and close your gaps. VocabSushi (English)This is the perfect tool if you’re studying for an English language test. It lets you pick the type of test and a quick diagnostic determines your skill level. Flash Cards (any language)You know best what your gaps are. So gather up what you want to learn and create your own flash cards. Karl wrote an article on how to Learn A New Language With Anki’s Flash Card System. Varun introduced Pauker – An Easy-To-Use Freeware Java Flash Card Program. Shankar compiled 30+ Online Resources to Expand your English Vocabulary. Are you interested in more free resources to learn a foreign language? Have a look at these articles:
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| Listen To Streaming Music On Your Windows Mobile With Slacker Posted: 30 Mar 2010 08:31 AM PDT
Some users on XDA-Developers hacked it up to work again but we have all been waiting for an official re-release. Slacker denied it over and over again. Finally T-Mobile released the HTC HD 2 with guess what on it….you guessed it – Slacker Mobile!
They seem to only have a BlackBerry and an iPhone/iPod Touch application. So what gives? Well I guess you just need their super secret special URL which is here. Just hit that link from your Windows Mobile device and we can start setting it up. After you download the CAB file you can simply run it and install it on your device. You can install it anywhere you please and I am running mine directly from the micro-SD card I have installed. Once you have completed the installation, go ahead and click on it to start it up. You will see a login screen when it starts for the first time. It looks like this:
You will need to create an account to use the application. You can click on Create Account and run through their wizard or go online to Slacker and set it up there. I will walk you through setting up your account from your device. You will need to fill in all the fields here including your year of birth (to verify if you are old enough to listen to explicit content).
When you have completed it, you can either leave the sign me up for the Slacker Newsletter on yes or turn it to no like I did. Then click create account. While Slacker creates your account you will see this screen:
When it completes you will move on to the main menu. From here you can search for radio stations, view your favorites, recently played stations and more. I normally go right to the Top Stations menu item. This shows the most popular stations in each category.
Each category is represented by a picture of an artist or group from that genre like you can see below:
I jumped into Hip Hop / R&B and it took me directly to the station and instantly started streaming the current playing song.
The song was Heartless from Kayne West. You can see who the next artist up is right below the current track information. And below that you have a pause button and a button to skip to the next track (it tells you how many you can move forward, next to the arrows). You will also see buttons for favorites, a ban list, a button to upgrade to a paid version and soft key buttons to go back to stations or see your settings. If you click on the ban button which is the circle with the line through it you can choose artists or tracks you do not want to hear like so:
And finally let's take a look at the settings page over here:
The settings page pretty much just allows you to change the account you are using, try Slacker Radio Plus for free, turn explicit content on and off, and a button to shut down Slacker radio and exit. This is an exceptional application for free! I tried it out on a Windows 6.1 device and while it worked, there were some screens that you were not able to navigate to easily. What do you use to listen to radio stations on your phone without an antennae? Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Last week Digg rolled out their much anticipated 
While I love blogging, there are times when I just want to whip together a simple webpage straight out of HTML. Of course, there is a lot of basic HTML coding that you really don’t want to have to deal with over and over, such as creating tables, inserting images, creating forms and other common webpage components.
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