MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [April 4th]” plus 6 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [April 4th]
- Thank You To MakeUseOf Friends!
- Do You Download Movies Illegally? [MakeUseOf Polls]
- Thanks to the Best of YOU on MakeUseOf Answers
- 3 Best Thunderbird Extensions to Enhance Your Address Book
- Compile the Web into Folders with LiveBinders
- 3 Tools to Create Mock-up Designs and Wireframes Online
| Cool Websites and Tools [April 4th] Posted: 04 Apr 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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| Thank You To MakeUseOf Friends! Posted: 04 Apr 2010 07:31 PM PDT
It's time to say thanks to MakeUseOf’s friends who, once in a while, tip us great story ideas, help out on different projects and in some cases offer their services at discounted prices. Thank you, guys!
Walyou – Cool Gadgets for Geeks
Pair – Reliable Web Hosting
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| Do You Download Movies Illegally? [MakeUseOf Polls] Posted: 04 Apr 2010 06:30 PM PDT
Last week, we asked you How many operating systems do you run? We received around 800 votes and here is the break down. The majority of you are using two operating systems (that is 43%), following that is just one operating system. I really thought it would be the other way around but, hey times are changing! 19% of you are running three operating systems and 8% of you are running four. Then it starts to dwindle down to 2% for five operating systems and after that we can only imagine those of you who choose more than 5 operating systems have to be system administrators after my own heart! The full responses are listed after the jump.
We also recently moved away from our poll plug-in and have adopted PollDaddy which seems to be working very well. And now on to our new poll: Do you download movies illegally? Remember this poll is completely anonymous and we will not be reporting people to their respective governments – we swear! We are just looking to see what types of content our readers are interested in! Please select an answer from the poll above and feel free to leave a comment or pen in your own answer by checking ‘Other’. Do you have ideas for upcoming MakeUseOf polls? If so please, leave your ideas in the comments or email me at karl at MakeUseOf dot com. Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Thanks to the Best of YOU on MakeUseOf Answers Posted: 04 Apr 2010 05:30 PM PDT
We would like to thank every one of you who contributed with your answers and especially honor the top 3 MakeUseOf Answers contributors. Thank you very much for your contributions! We encourage everyone to keep the comments coming as we’re planning to reward the top MakeUseOf Answers contributors with awesome prizes! So are you dying to win something but your name is not on the list this month? Please have a look at the Latest Questions and see whether you can help someone. You may also follow all published questions through Answers RSS Feed. Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3 Best Thunderbird Extensions to Enhance Your Address Book Posted: 04 Apr 2010 03:30 PM PDT
Of course, Thunderbird’s greatest feature remains its extendability. In this article, I explore extensions that enhance the Thunderbird address book to make it working faster, easier, and more enjoyable.
AddressBook Tab (experimental)Traditionally, Thunderbird’s address book is accessed through > Tools > Address Book or using the > [Ctrl] + [SHIFT] + [B] shortcut. Either way, the address book will open in a new window. Thunderbird 3 supports tabs. Consequently, the AddressBook Tab extension allows you to open the address book in a tab by providing a new toolbar button.
Select Address Book TextHave you ever noticed that you cannot select and copy text from your Thunderbird address book? Especially not in the contact summary page.
The Select Address Book Text extension frees you from this annoying limitation and allows you to select and copy data from wherever you want. Contact Photos (experimental)As seen in the screenshot for the Select Address Book Text extension, you can add photos of your contacts to the Thunderbird address book. Unfortunately, these photos are only displayed in the address book and nowhere else. Contact Photos puts the respective images next to the eMail header.
Naturally, you won’t have photos for each and every contact. However, the extension provides an awesome extra feature which helps you avoid the ugly default image: Contact Photos supports Gravatar. Gravatars are “Globally Recognized Avatars”, which are tied to your eMail address. When you sign up with Gravatar, you can register one or multiple eMail addresses and add custom photos to each eMail address. When you use an eMail address registered with Gravatar, for example to post a blog comment on a site that supports Gravatar, your custom image will be displayed next to your comment. Go to > Tools > Add-ons and open the > Options for the > Contact Photos extension. Here you can edit the size of the photos and enable or disable Gravatars. By default, this option is enabled.
If one of your contacts has registered with Gravatar and uploaded an image, Contact Photos will display their Gravatar image in case you didn’t add your own contact photo for them.
And even if your contact does not have a Gravatar image, the default Gravatar image series (identicon, monster, or wavatar), which provides a unique icon for each of your contacts, is much nicer than the default Thunderbird image.
Interested in more Thunderbird resources? How about these…
How do you organize your Thunderbird address book? We NEED Your Comments! Please do share your thoughts in article comments! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Compile the Web into Folders with LiveBinders Posted: 04 Apr 2010 12:30 PM PDT
LiveBinders is an awesome tool that works like web folders in a digital 3-ring binder. You can create as many as you would like, you can share them with the world or keep them private, you can search other binders, and, most fantastically, LiveBinders is free! While there are other great research tools out there, I like LiveBinders because it is visual and easy for others to use.
LiveBinders is a little different than robust tools like Zotero, iCyte, and Diigo. For starters, it looks like a real life 3-ring binder with virtual web folders. You can store useful websites and PDF files, annotate them, make tabs and sub-tabs. The binders are easy to update, as well. You can create a visual bookshelf with different notebooks and make them available to students without hassle. To use LiveBinders, simply register for a free account, watch the tutorial, and begin searching! When I searched for stuff to do with my children (both in first grade), I was pretty excited when I found a binder on math worksheets for first graders.
What makes the site really sweet is that I can share my various web folders easily on Facebook. Since a lot of my friends have first graders, and we live around the world, being able to post on Facebook walls helps us to share great ideas!
LiveBinders covers a wide range of topics, because the content is user generated. Recently, there were a series of web folders dedicated to celebrating “pi” day!
Of course, the best part of any tool is its ease of use. LiveBinders is dead easy to use. Simply fill out the form, and make choices about collecting and sharing sites; the program does all the work for you! In this example, I am researching MakeUseOf, and this is the form I filled out:
Be sure to “enter a Google search term” if you want LiveBinders to collect the websites for you. If not, leave it blank and you can manually add sites later on. Once you click “Create New Binder,” you will get results! As you can see below, the new results come in the form of new tabs. In settings, you can decide how many tabs to collect.
LiveBinders is committed to the free sharing of knowledge (WOO!). While you can maintain a private binder for your own use, it is just as easy to share your binder or use a binder shared by another person. You can have as many binders as you choose.
Organizing and sharing content in the form of web folders has never been easier. LiveBinders is an easy and catchy way to collect and share content. It is also a great place to look for information on a topic you might be interested in studying. Do you use LiveBinders? What are your thoughts? Image credit: Funch We NEED Your Comments! Please do share your thoughts in article comments! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3 Tools to Create Mock-up Designs and Wireframes Online Posted: 04 Apr 2010 10:30 AM PDT
Proprietary software, although very capable, is often incredibly expensive and needlessly complicated. For something as simple as creating wireframes, this borders on ridiculous. With web 2.0 (and more recently, with HTML5), the software battle is taken to the cloud. And best of all, most of it is comes entirely free of charge! In this article, we'll show you some online alternatives to create conceptual software and website designs.
MockFlowThis is an incredibly extensive wire-frame editor. The basics are simple. In the right-hand side toolbar, you browse for objects that resemble the object you're looking for, and you drag them on the screen. There, you can edit and adjust those objects until they fit your needs. MockFlow has an enormous amount of objects, and some of them incredibly specific. When you create a new design, you can start from one of the design templates, with choices including the iPhone, Android, and iPad interfaces.
These wire-frames can be shared and co-edited with other users – limited to two in the free version. Other limits imposed on free users are a maximum of 10 MB of storage and one mock-up with four pages and up to five remembered revisions. However, registered free users can download your projects in a number of file formats, including PNG and PDF, or use MockFlow's desktop application with online sync for more reliable editing. MockingBirdMockingBird is similar to MockFlow on a number of levels. The interface is comprised of the same drag-and-drop principle, although better executed and easier to handle. In most cases, MockingBird can help you create your wire-frames in a fraction of the time it'd usually cost you. A lot of said 'free limits' are also absent. There is no apparent limit on the amount of storage or the amount of pages you're able to create.
Then again, MockingBird lacks some of those more extensive features. Although you can similarly export and share your mock-ups with other people, there doesn't seem to be an option for real-time team collaboration, tracking changes, or a built-in chat. Made with HTML5, MockingBird also doesn't work on Internet Explorer. Concluding, MockingBird is unrestricted in its free version, and offers a slightly simpler user experience. In exchange, you're giving up on extensive collaboration and other advanced features. The CommentorWith the wire-frame aspect covered, it's time to move on to the next step in the design process: mock-up, rinse, and repeat. We're talking about putting the proverbial flesh on your wireframes, probably using Photoshop or another image editor. This next tool focuses on the latter part of business.
The Commentor, although not particularly useful while designing, helps you with comments and revisions. Instead of creating a bulk of disorganized email traffic, it takes your designs into the cloud. You can invite up to three free users to comment on your mock-ups, with sticky threads and support for revisions – up to 100 images. Mock-up, rinse, and repeat. I think you get the drill. Do you know any other tools that might be useful to create a software or website design? Let us know in the comments section below! 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 
It has been two months since we launched 
To me, 
To add the new button to your toolbar, > right-click a space in your toolbar and select > Customize… Now simply > drag and drop the button to the desired location and click > Done in the > Customize Toolbar window.
It’s not possible to highlight and subsequently copy text from the book or contact summary page. The only way to copy a name for example, is to open the contact’s card, where you can edit the data.
I am always on the hunt for tools that allow me to collect and share information with students, colleagues, and friends.
There are a number of steps you have to go through when designing a piece of software or even a website. After that moment of insight, the designer on duty needs to create an actual design and 'sketch' the look and feel of the application, essentially defining the graphical user interface. For this purpose, they usually use mock-up conceptual drawings and wireframes.
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