MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [April 12th]” plus 10 more | ![]() |
- Cool Websites and Tools [April 12th]
- Top 10 Most Downloaded Desktop Enhancement Applications [Movers & Shakers]
- The Best 12 Free Wordpress Themes With Built-In Ad Space
- Online Resources to Help You Learn More About Apple’s Time Machine
- 10 Websites to Discover Hot Domains You Wouldn’t Have Thought About
- How to Print From Your iPhone for Free in Three Easy Steps
- How to Use Delicious to Completely Organize Your Student Life
- Hot Tech Deals [April 12th]
- How to Create a Claymation or Stop-motion Video
- How To Set Up An FTP Site With An Easy Front End [Windows]
- Rediscover Your Disk Usage with DaisyDisk for Mac [MakeUseOf Giveaway]
Cool Websites and Tools [April 12th] Posted: 12 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. Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Top 10 Most Downloaded Desktop Enhancement Applications [Movers & Shakers] Posted: 12 Apr 2010 07:30 PM PDT
You can also check out our very own Tina's post on Docks – The 6 best friends of your Windows Taskbar. Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Best 12 Free Wordpress Themes With Built-In Ad Space Posted: 12 Apr 2010 06:30 PM PDT
The most common way to earn money is by placing advertisements on your site. In this article, I’ll share 12 clean and free Wordpress themes with ad space built-in. These themes are listed in no particular order. If you need help changing your blog theme, we can show you how.
FREEmiumFREEmium is an excellent theme that’s just as good as many commercial themes. It was designed by Paul Kadysz and coded by Dariusz Siedlecki. It has built-in support for 125×125 ads that are displayed in the upper-right corner of the site by default, which is a good "hot spot" for advertisements. Check out the demo or read more details. Simple Balance 2.2Developed by Alex Cristache, Simple Balance is a great 3-column Wordpress theme with a nice setup for ad space too. Using the theme’s native options, you can tell it to use 125×125 banners or replace them with a 250×250 Google Adsense square. You can easily choose from a couple locations of the ads as well, without any coding required on your part. Check out the demo or read more details. GameZineGameZine is developed by Jinsona Designs and is a great magazine-style theme for gaming sites, or any other site for the matter. The theme was designed with Adsense and 125×125 ads in mind. With its grungy blue design and Javascript effects, it’s sure to impress your readers. Check out the demo or read more details. ZinePressZinePress is another magazine-style design with built-in 125×125 square ads support. Created by Andrew Lindstrom, ZinePress is a beautiful and calm tan design that’s definitely pleasing to the eyes. It’s very customizable and even works nicely on old browsers, such as IE 6. Check out the demo or read more details. Small MagazineI see Small Magazine as an ideal layout for a news site, with its clean style, built in Flickr support and grid layout. It has native support for 125×125 image ads and 250×250 Google Adsense spots. Check out the preview image or read more details. MasaganaWith its clean blue header and freshly styled design, Masagana is worth a look. The theme comes Adsense and 125×125 ad blocks ready to go. It has many nice features enabled by default, such as gravatar support and threaded comments. There’s also a nice Javascript header for featured articles on the home page. Check out the demo or read more details. FirebugThe Firebug theme uses colors in one of the best ways I’ve ever seen on a blog design. Not only that, but it’s packed with features like Gravatar comments, 125×125 banner ads, and support for widgets. If you’re looking for a theme that really stands out, be sure to not pass this one up. Check out the demo or read more details. Timeline DigestTimeline Digest by Dezzain Studio is so good that it could easily be a premium theme. Luckily for us, we can have it for free. The theme was built with ads in mind and has plenty of places for 125×125, 728×90, and 300×250 ads. One of the more unique features of the theme is the post styling, which helps you make important messages stand out to your readers. Check out the demo or read more details. CSS GalleryIf you’re running a blog that is focused on photography, take a look at the CSS Gallery theme. It’s a slick and clean theme with nice highlighting and star rankings of photos. Comes with built-in tagging, Google Adsense and 125×125 ad support. Check out the demo or read more details. Blue Green HarmonyFor a pleasant nature-colored theme design, check out Blue Green Harmony. With its minimalist design, fast load time and integrated ad-management features, I see this as a great design for many types of sites, particularly gardening or vegetarian recipes. Check out the demo or read more details. DailyPressDailyPress is an excellent theme with its color choice and 3-column layout. This is an ideal theme for delivering daily tidbits to your readers. Tabbed content makes for easy browsing. It comes ready for widgets, banner ads, 125×125 ads and more. Check out the demo or read more details. TypebasedDesigned by Armono Wibowo, Typebased is one of the most polished themes on this list. It has the type of design that just "pops" off the screen and makes the whole blog more interesting. Comes with built-in ad management, stylish drop-down menus and Flickr photo sidebar. Check out the demo or read more details. How About You?Do you plan to use any of these themes? Or do you have a great suggestion of any Wordpress themes with ad space that we left off our list? If so, please leave a comment below! We NEED Your Comments! Please do share your thoughts in article comments! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Online Resources to Help You Learn More About Apple’s Time Machine Posted: 12 Apr 2010 04:30 PM PDT
While the ultimate free backup tool for Mac backup is an application like Carbon Copy Cloner, Apple Time Machine comes installed with Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard. Apple has made setting Time Machine about as easy as frying a two eggs in a skillet. So there's little excuse for not setting it up. When you attach a large external drive to your Mac, you will be asked if you want to set up Time Machine to run on that drive. From there, it will take you through the process of set up.
Though Time Machine is pretty easy to set up, the purpose of this article it to direct to other resources that will help you understand various problems and other information that you might need to know for Time Machine to run effectively on your Mac. Time Machine 101The first place to look is the source itself. Check out Apple’s Mac 101 document on Time Machine. It includes a summary of how to set up Time Machine, how to set preferences, how to select and restore files from within the application, and how to transfer your current hard drive to a new hard drive. The instructions are very clear and concise. Apple Time Machine VideoI couldn’t locate the original video about Time Machine on Apple’s site, but here's copy of it on YouTube. Though it doesn't tell you how to troubleshoot the program, it gives you an introduction to its capabilities. Troubleshooting Time MachineFor the most part, Apple Time Machine should work fine on a well-running Mac and external drive. But as with other computer programs, there will often be times when you need to troubleshoot problems with the application, or when you have particular needs beyond a basic Mac setup. The Apple discussion board includes two very good documents, one for Frequently Asked Questions and the other for troubleshooting issues. The FAQ document covers a list of 25 questions, such as "How big a drive do I need for Time Machine?" to "How do I restore my entire system?" Although the document is lengthy, you should check it out before asking a similar listed question on the discussion board. Similarly, the Troubleshooting document includes solutions for problems pertaining to when backups fail, when the Select Disk button doesn't work, and various error messages. These documents also link you to useful free third-party resources that work with Time Machine, such as an application called Time Tracker, which shows most of the files saved by TM for each backup (excluding some hidden/system files, etc.). If you're wanting to back up multiple computers with Time Machine, writer Joe Kissell explains how to do so in this Macworld article. I have been running Time Machine for over year now and have not had too many problems, except for occasionally not remembering to reboot the external drive that Time Machine is saving backups to. When the drive is not running, of course, Time Machine can't perform backups, and sometimes it fails to notify you when backups were not done. So it's important to keep the Time Machine icon running in your Mac's menu bar, so you can check to make sure it's running on a regular basis. Also, remember to try to use an external drive large enough to include some of your most precious media files stored in say iPhoto, iTunes, and your documents folder. The rule is always to have files backed up in at least two places, so an application like Carbon Copy Cloner, which backs up your entire internal disk drive is another essential resource. Let us know about your experiences with Time Machine. Have you ever needed to restore files from it? Has it ever failed on you? What recommendations do you have for using it? Do you like MakeUseOf articles! Please do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
10 Websites to Discover Hot Domains You Wouldn’t Have Thought About Posted: 12 Apr 2010 02:30 PM PDT
Why is choosing a good domain name important? Choosing a good domain name starts with memory and ends with search engine optimization; somewhere in between lies branding. Take your most favored sites – I bet most of them have easy-to-remember names. Most of them also can be easily typed into the address bar with less chances of a typo. Good domain names are also unique and descriptive. Great domain names, of course, become brands of their own. So, how do you choose domain names?
Let’s start by brainstorming on paper. But if your brain is not shifting gears, there are a host of domain name search websites that can help to crank it up. I am not suggesting that you rely on them, but domain name generators take your keywords and can come up with unique word combinations that you wouldn't have thought about. A lot of them also allow you to lookup the names with the Domain Registrars to see if they are available. A single domain name search website can give you lots of word combinations to play around with. Let me give you a few more to keep you occupied till you get the right domain name.
These ten picks are certainly not that's all out there. They are just the proverbial tip of the domain name searching iceberg. A few more that we have covered before: And do check out the one that came before this – 6 Domain Generators To Find That Killer Domain Name Did these websites help you get around through the domain naming brainstorming sessions? Let us know if you got your cool 'n hot domain name you wouldn't have thought up with the pen and paper way. Image credit: Thomas Hawk Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
How to Print From Your iPhone for Free in Three Easy Steps Posted: 12 Apr 2010 12:30 PM PDT
ActivePrint Traveler [iTunes link] does away with any concerns with what kind of router you have, what kind of network you are on, or how your printer is set up. All it takes is three easy steps. First, install the app on your iPhone. Second, register for a free account on your iPhone. Third, install a small module on your computer running Windows XP/Vista, and log in with your registered account.
Unfortunately, the desktop application is only available for Windows, but that said, Mac users can always install it using Virtual Box. During testing, WineBottler did not work with this application. Unlike other apps in the iTunes App Store that enable printing from your iPhone, you don’t need to be connected to the same network as the printer in order to get the job done — meaning that ActivePrint Traveler works on Edge, 3G and WiFi. Printing from the free version of ActivePrint Traveler application does of course have its limitations. You can only print text that appears in the app’s inbuilt note pad. If you want to print text from an email, a web page, or your note app, simply copy and paste the text into ActivePrint Traveler, choose how many copies you want to print and hit Send Print Job. The print job will automatically be queued in the ActivePrint desktop application that you have registered on your computer. With ActivePrint Traveler, you can print up to 50 copies of any given document at a time, and can choose between the Portrait and Landscape settings. Launching the Windows application, you will be able to retrieve your print queue, and print all the documents you have lined up. True to its name, ActivePrint Traveler can be used from anywhere as the desktop application can be installed on a USB flash drive, giving you the ability to print from your iPhone on the go, as long as there is a Windows machine at your disposal. Installing the program to a USB flash drive is no different to installing it to your Windows machine. When unzipping the file, navigate to the USB flash drive as the location to unzip the file, and it will automatically install. Upgrading to the $3.99 Pro version will give you the ability to print from your contacts, photos and web pages using the inbuilt browser. There is also a paid version of ActivePrint available for Windows Mobile, while the Blackberry and Android versions are in the works, with no word of whether or not they will be free. What method do you use to print from your mobile device when you're on the go? Let us know in the comments. Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
How to Use Delicious to Completely Organize Your Student Life Posted: 12 Apr 2010 11:30 AM PDT
Don’t think this guide is just for students in formal education. Every day worldwide, many people are self-educating for current jobs or career changes. People also take short courses, seek out mentorships or sometimes employers offer some other form of education. Whatever your level or mode of study, this method of using Delicious bookmarking will put you well ahead of your peers and keep your valuable lessons easily accessible for the rest of your life.
Simple steps to using Delicious Bookmarking for study
Note that for each tag, you can view everything that has ever been tagged by using http://delicious.com/tag/yourtag. This means you can see everything your classmates, tutors and lecturers have tagged with the class code too – and not just during your course. After your course is finished, there will still be people using this course tag – especially if you train your lecturers and tutors to suggest it to future classes. This means you can continue to be informed of useful articles, books, journals and quotes relevant to your qualifications long after you are finished your studies. It’s quite worthwhile taking your time to introduce this system to your classmates, tutors and lecturers. The more people using it the better. What should you bookmark?Ideally, you should bookmark anything directly relevant to your course or class that either you or a classmate might be pleased to find one day. Always add information about why it was relevant. For example, “Tutor said this was a perfect example of poor website design”. Start with reading your course material. Bookmark the following:
Don’t forget to use the class code tag and any relevant tags to indicate class topic, course topic, section in coursework, related essays, etc. It’s easy to do this step at the very beginning of each class, before the assignment deadlines start looming. You’ll appreciate it down the track as you’ll have everything at your fingertips and an overall grasp of your class before you get stuck into it. Building on your recordsAfter the basic coursework links are bookmarked, it’s time to build on this and add your own links. You might like to keep some of the following private until after your assignments are handed in (so no one else in your class uses your best articles).
When you’re reading these articles properly, take a little extra time to note the things you will want to use in essays or find again later. Add this extra information to your Delicious description. For example, add complete quotations with appropriate referencing details. When you’re writing essays further down the track you will pat yourself on the back. Especially in your final year, when you can easily spot the quote you need from a bookmark of a first-year reading. How to keep track of all the tags?The Delicious tag bundle is a great start to keeping track of all the tags. With everything collected, you can see all the relevant tags clearly. You can also get “meta” and save the bookmark for http://delicious.com/tag/yourtag so that you’ll never forget that everyone else’s bookmarks are easy to find too. RSS is an excellent way to access your Delicious bookmarks. Remember two simple things:
Also, see these other great MakeUseOf articles on Delicious:
Now you are well aware of how easily you can keep track of all your study notes in Delicious, you should have a great headstart in your next course. Don’t forget to teach your classmates and lecturers. Share your success stories here! Image Credit: Lcrward Do you like MakeUseOf articles! Please do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Posted: 12 Apr 2010 11:00 AM PDT
For more fresh hot deals, visit our Hot Tech Deals page, which is constantly updated.
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How to Create a Claymation or Stop-motion Video Posted: 12 Apr 2010 10:30 AM PDT
Claymation is an animation technique used with clay figures. Basically, each movement is a new “shot” and the “shots” are connected together at the end to make a movie. Famous claymation cartoons like Gumby and Wallace and Gromit have made the artistic form popular. Stopmotion is the original animation technique used to create cartoons. You can use any kind of toy (legos, for example). This technique was replaced by computer animation. Old cartoons used this technique to replace drawings and cells. There is no clay involved.
Ingredients
Step 1: Plan, Plan, PlanThere is a really good reason that old cartoons are short. They take a long time to create. So, if you need a quick project for school, learning how to create a claymation and stopmotion are not your best bets. Think about it. To have your character raise her hand, it can take about 30 positions. If you want your character to raise her hand, wave, jump for joy, and run away, you might need hundreds of positions! If you add in another character, like a puppy, you need even more pictures. So, before you get started, plan which form you will use (clay or toys), plan for a lot of time, and plan to do a lot of laborious work. The end result is worth it! Step 2: Create a Story BoardEvery good movie starts with a story board. A story board maps out every single scene (including audio and special effects) within a movie. There are all sorts of fancy ones you can pay to own, or you can find a lot of good free ones online. For claymation and stopmotion, you want to make sure that you document every single movement that you will need shots for to create the exact movement of each scene. One excellent resource is offered free by Atomic Learning; you can watch free tutorials on Storyboarding and download free software to create one. Pizza by the Slice has some nice free storyboard downloads, as well. Step 3: Build your clay models (or gather toys)Clay is really fun to play with, but you will need to remember a few specific things…models that are too small are hard to work with when you have to change poses (a lot). Large clay figures often fall over. Try to work with action figure sizes. Use wire inside the clay to keep the parts together (like a skeleton). This will make life so much easier when you change the poses. If you are working with toys, be sure all the parts work and that they can stand independently. Also, be sure the toys aren’t too small or too big. Wes Fryer’s stopmotion camp has some great photos if you would like to see some examples. Step 4: Start Snapping!Remember this golden rule for both claymation and stopmotion: each new position needs a new photo. Even if it is just slight, a new photo needs to be taken. For example, if you blink, you might think it is just eye open, eye shut. But, if you really think about a blink, your eyelid is open, closes a quarter, a half, three-quarters, is fully closed, opens 3 quarters, half, a quarter and opens fully. That equals 9 shots (though you can save time and use the duplicates twice so long as no other part of the body is moving). Remember, you can never run out of digital film. Take lots of shots so you don’t have to go back and redo an entire movement. Get every possible angle you might need while the figure is in position. Step 5: Load Images into Movie ProgramMac and PC users can use programs specific to the platform, but I find that Picasa’s movie maker works really well and is easy for my kids to manipulate. Simply load in the pics, set the flip speed to the lowest setting, and presto! But, remember to load all of the pictures in order. If you want more polish, use Photoshop or Gimp to clear photo blemishes and trim edges. Mac users can try using FrameByFrame or iMovie to create stopmotion videos. Windows users may try Windows Movie Maker or VirtualDub to export the sequential images as a video file. Why Bother?Claymation and stopmotion teach patience, attention to detail, photography and communication skills. Creating a movie from a lot of hard work is rewarding, as well! Check out this final stopmotion video by Bang-yao Liu, a student at Savannah College of Art and Design. You can see how the movie was made here (Thanks to Cindy Lane for the lead!). Have you made claymation or stopmotion videos? If they are kid-friendly, please post the URL in the comments box! More Resources: Kevin Hodgson has a great page devoted to using stopmotion in the classroom. Images by Statico, Wesley Fryer, Chris Campbell, Leo Reynolds, Joriel “Joz” Jimenez, Capt Kodak Do you like MakeUseOf articles! Please do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
How To Set Up An FTP Site With An Easy Front End [Windows] Posted: 12 Apr 2010 09:30 AM PDT
Today let’s venture into the wild a bit and see how to set up an FTP site for yourself, which is just another way of saying that the configured computer will be able to serve files to other people who possess the valid credentials.
In short it allows you to access your files from a remote location while giving you greater power and control over who can access the files and with what permissions. Let us now quickly get to the business side of things and start with some configuration. Please note that I am using IIS 7 on Windows 7, the steps would apply to earlier versions of Windows as well with the occasional obvious changes here and there. Step 1: First off, open up Control Panel then Programs and then click on “Turn Windows features On or Off” Step 2: We need to enable (install in other Windows versions) Internet Information Services and in the detail view check FTP Server. Click OK and Windows will do the rest. If you are using an older version of Windows you might need to insert your Windows disc. Step 3: Once IIS and FTP server are enabled, we need to tweak a few settings, so go ahead and open up Control Panel > System and Security > Administrative Tools > IIS Manager. Step 4: In the left pane, Right Click on Sites and choose New FTP Site. Choose a name for your site and the directory that will serve as the root FTP folder. Step 5: Click Next and you can now configure the IP Address and SSL settings according to your needs. If you have a static IP, put it in here, otherwise leave it as it is. Again if you want to enable SSL, it can be done from here on in. Step 6: This step involves setting up “Authentication and Authorization“. You can choose to allow Anonymous FTP (meaning that anyone would be able to access files) or you can choose to give access to selected users or to a user group. Next choose the permissions that will be available to these users and click Finish. Connecting to the FTP siteAt this point, you have successfully learned how to set up an FTP site. You should now be able to connect to your newly created FTP site using your favorite FTP client. To connect, users would need to point their FTP clients to a hostname or IP address. Depending upon how you configured the site above and whether you have a static IP or not, you can provide them with a static IP or hostname if you have one (that is the easiest). Folks with a dynamic IP address can look into dyndns, which would give you a hostname that would resolve to the current IP address of your FTP site. If you enabled authentication and disallowed anonymous connection, users would also need a username and password to access files. By default, the Windows account credentials for any given user should do the job. You can also provide the users with an easy front end and save them the trouble of using an FTP client. To do so, you can look into Oliver, which is a simple web-based FTP front end. Users can then access all the files in your FTP directory by simply pointing their web browsers onto Oliver’s location. Keep in mind that Oliver is written in PHP, so you would need PHP installed on your computer and working in conjunction with IIS. Alternatively, you can download and install XAMPP, which includes FileZilla that will let you serve files as well. Do you use FTP? If so, what are your favorite applications to get the most out of FTP? Image Credit: Eric Kilby Do you like MakeUseOf articles! Please do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Rediscover Your Disk Usage with DaisyDisk for Mac [MakeUseOf Giveaway] Posted: 12 Apr 2010 08:30 AM PDT
This week, we are giving away 20 free copies of DaisyDisk worth $400 to some very lucky winners. In addition to the 20 copies, we also have a 25% discount code for those who are looking to purchase the app themselves. Both the giveaway and the discount code offer expires on Saturday so you can decide which route you wish to take.
Once you select a drive, the scan process takes about a minute depending on how many files you have in the drive. After DaisyDisk scans your drive, you get a colorful graphic that illustrates where your computer is storing files and what types of files are being stored. In the example below, I can see that “User” (me) uses the most space. If I shared the computer with a coworker or with my children or spouse, I could see which one of us used more space. If I click on “User,” I can drill down to see how the space is being used. Space usage is symbolised by the area being taken up — the larger a section, the more space is occupied. Not surprisingly, music takes up most of the space. If I want to return to the previous level, I can simply click on the center black circle to go back one layer at a time. If I want to continue drilling down, I can see that all of my music is housed in the iTunes folder. If I want to break down music according to artist or theme, I can drill down another level. Of course, this all depends on your iTunes organisational structure since DaisyDisk only takes the folder size into account. You can keep drilling down until you have exhausted the search. While it is great to know that these files exist, DaisyDisk also helps you clean them up. Simply right click on an item and choose “Preview” from the menu to first check what the file is. Then return to DaisyDisk, select “Show in Finder” and it will take you right to where the file is stored. If you don’t need it, trash it. DaisyDisk allows you to visualise what takes up the biggest amount of space, and helps guide you to delete large unwanted files. How do I win a copy?It’s simple. Just follow the steps.
This DaisyDisk giveaway begins now and will end on Friday at 2100hrs PST. From tomorrow onwards, we will be announcing 4 random winners each day — so you’ll know if you managed to secure a copy! The last 4 winners will be announced on Saturday. If you feel your luck running out, you can purchase DaisyDisk at a discounted rate. Use the promotional code “MAKEUSEOF” at DaisyDisk’s online store checkout and get 25% off the $20 retail price (or click on this link to have the entire process completed automatically). Code expires on the 17th of April. MakeUseOf would like to thank Oleg from DaisyDisk for his generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email. Do you like MakeUseOf articles! Please do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles |
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