MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [April 27th]” plus 9 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [April 27th]
- Join MakeUseOf On Facebook!
- 3 Facebook Proxies & Hacks So You Can Check Your Profile From Anywhere
- Keep Your Family Safe On The Internet With K9 Web Protection
- Hot Tech Deals [April 27th]
- How To Create Custom Stationery With A Quick Letterhead In MS Word 2007
- Create A Custom Video Player For Your Website With VP Factory
- Download & Play Flash Files Using SWF & FLV Player
- Upload To Video & Social Networking Sites At Once With TubeMogul
- Lock Your Windows Computer With Bluetooth Proximity Lock Utility
| Cool Websites and Tools [April 27th] Posted: 27 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 17,000 fans already!
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| Posted: 27 Apr 2010 06:31 PM PDT
You’ll be rewarded with exclusive previews of future publications, what we refer to as “Sneak Peeks”; and the best posts from the day before, “Yesterday’s Best”. We also use our fan page to inform you about premium software giveaways and discounts that are not announced on the website. We get a lot of those from software developers and distribute them mainly on Facebook. So grab some friends and join us on Facebook today! Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3 Facebook Proxies & Hacks So You Can Check Your Profile From Anywhere Posted: 27 Apr 2010 04:31 PM PDT
But none of these fancy fixes will help you when you’re unprepared, sitting at school or work desperately wanting to check up on Facebook. For this, you need a quick fix.
#1 – Web Facebook ProxiesThe most basic thing to try first are websites which run proxies for you. These are most likely blocked by your firewall too, but it’s worth checking. This is quick and it’ll stop you chewing off all your nails. Keep in mind your firewall probably also blocks URLs with the word “proxy” in it. Take a look at these: If these aren’t working, try this fantastic list of free web proxies which is rated and updated all the time. #2 – Change Your Browser To Use A Facebook ProxyIt’s really easy to change the settings in your browser to use a proxy. Look in “Preferences” under “Advanced Settings” and “Network“.
Finding Facebook proxies you can use can be a little bit problematic as things change quickly. This is why some websites feature great lists of public proxies you can use that are updated daily. To keep up with the best proxies, bookmark the list, not the proxy. #3 – Use Facebook Via emailWhen it comes to communicating with your Facebook friends, don’t forget that if you have email notifications turned on, you can now email replies directly back to Facebook from your email. This will keep you in the conversation for anything you’re already following, so if you’ve “liked” a bunch of status updates before you go to school or work you should be able to read and reply to those notifications by email as the conversation develops. Now, if only Facebook would allow you to always get notified of any action from certain friend lists you could keep track of all the important people by email all day long.
Prepare Yourself For Using Proxies In The FutureIf needing a proxy is an ongoing problem for you you can prepare yourself a little. For future access, you could save yourself some hassle and sign up to one of these 4 services that will send fresh proxy lists to your email and bookmark these 4 sites that give you a free updated proxy list. Image Credit: JayCameron and Mobology Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Keep Your Family Safe On The Internet With K9 Web Protection Posted: 27 Apr 2010 02:31 PM PDT
Filtering, in my opinion, plays an absolutely necessary role in keeping you, your family and your computer safe while on the Internet. Forget about accidentally coming across offensive content. An Internet filter can also keep you safe from spyware, malware, viruses, and even information theft.
As it turns out, K9 Web Protection happens to be a pretty good solution as it is free for home use. Let me share with you how easy it is to install and set up and we’ll see some of the many features that will help keep you, your family and your computer safe on the web. Installing K9 Web ProtectionInstallation is very easy. Start by heading to the website and clicking on “Download K9 today for free.”
Next you are given some instructions and a short form to fill out. You need to give your name and email address so they can send you a license key. Don’t worry because even though you will be given a license key, it is still free.
Once you have the email message, you will have the download link, the license key and some further instructions. You will need to enter the license key and a password during the installation process. Do not, under any circumstances, forget your password. Being security software, getting around without the password will be quite impossible. You will need it to make changes and even to uninstall the software, should you ever need to. Once the installation is finished, you will be asked to reboot your computer. Annoying, I know, but it is necessary. Set Up Your OptionsAs you can see from the Administration panel, you have several options such as viewing Internet activity, setting up and getting help.
We’ll check out the Internet activity section later but for now let’s get things set up properly. In the setup menu you have several areas to deal with. Let’s begin by choosing what kind of content to block.
You can block anything such as pornography, security threats, social networking sites and illegal activity. You can choose one of the categories on the list, set up your own custom settings under “custom” or even set K9 to just monitor the sites being visited. It’s all up to you. Another area of settings you may find helpful is the time restrictions section.
K9 Web Protection can help you manage what times of the day the Internet can be accessed. Either set it to unrestricted (Internet is always accessible), NightGuard (blocks access every evening between the times you choose), or custom (choose access times throughout the day allowing different times for different days). There is also a section to have some websites as exceptions to the rules you have set up.
For instance, you can choose sites to always block or always allow. Also, when a restricted site comes up that you want to allow, you’ll be given the option (provided you know the password). You can also choose what happens when a page is blocked.
You can choose to have a barking noise sound, have some options to change the settings, and you can even enable a timeout of internet access if restricted site access is attempted too many times in a row. There are even more options including a whole advanced options section. Install K9 Web Protection to try it out and see what kind of use you can put it to. The “View Internet Activity” SectionThis is where you can keep tabs on what sites are being accessed.
On the summary page you can get an overall idea of the activity. You can also view the details of the activity. Is K9 Web Protection an end all solution to keeping your family safe online? Probably not. You still need things like education and parental involvement but K9 Web Protection can be a real help in the filtering department (also check out Karl’s review of OpenDNS as another filtering option). What do you use for content filtering for your family’s Internet use? And do you even agree with me that filtering should be part of an Internet safety plan? Please share in the comments. Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 27 Apr 2010 01:33 PM PDT
For more fresh hot deals, visit our Hot Tech Deals page, which is constantly updated.
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| How To Create Custom Stationery With A Quick Letterhead In MS Word 2007 Posted: 27 Apr 2010 12:31 PM PDT
With the logo, a letterhead also becomes part of the branding process. Beyond its visual appeal, letterheads can also be treated as legally binding documents. Correspondence on paper imprinted with the official letterhead gets bona fide recognition by the rules of law and business.
The trusty Microsoft Word is one such alternative to design a neat professional looking letterhead. You can also save your letterhead design as a template for reuse. This is a short tutorial on how to design custom stationary letterhead using just the tools that Microsoft Word carries in its Ribbon. Step 1: What Is The Letterhead Going To Carry?A typical letterhead carries data like a logo, name, contact details, fax numbers, website address etc. Jot down what your letterhead's going to reflect and prepare the data. For example, you can prepare the logo and keep it as an image file on your hard drive. Step 2: Save A New Word Document As A Template FileOpen a new blank document in Word in the Print Layout. The Print Layout view shows exactly how your document will look when printed. Also, from the Page Layout tab, set the Size to A4 which is usually the standard letterhead size. Click on Margins and select an appropriate setting for your letterhead document.
Save it as a template, with the .dotx extension for Word 2007 in your templates folder so it will be readily available and reusable whenever you need to draft a new document. Step 3: Fill Up The Document Header With The ContentIn this step, we will insert our custom stationary letterhead text and picture in the topmost section of the document called the header. Click on the Insert Tab on the Ribbon and select Header – Blank.
This creates the Header section and opens up the Header & Footer Design tools tab.
Type in the text that you want for the letterhead; a name, address, website URL, telephone number, etc are some of the details that can be included. You can be creative with fonts and symbols to dress up the text. For instance, I have inserted Wingdings characters from the Insert – Symbols tab to separate the text information.
From the Design tab, click on Picture to add an image or a logo to the header. You can use an image editor like Paint to size the picture beforehand or fallback on the Picture Tools available on the Ribbon.
Step 4: Designing The Layout Of The HeaderTo arrange the image around the text, click on the Text Wrapping command given in the Arrange group. Choose a wrapping style other than 'In Line with Text'. Drag the image to the desired location and position it in the desired location. You can use the image control handles to resize the image by some degrees and make it proportionate to the page.
You can indent the text to the right using the CTRL+M shortcut key. If you go too far across, press SHIFT+CTRL+M to correct it to the left. The Decrease/Increase Indent buttons on the Home tab do the same job. You can further fine tune the image position from the Advanced Layout box. Select the image, right click on the image and go to Text Wrapping – More Layout Options.
As shown in the screenshot above, you can set an absolute position of the image relative to the page. Step 5: Close & Use
That's it! Click on the close button to close the edit view. To return to the edit mode, you can double click the header area. Your letterhead saved as a template can be loaded as a new document from Office Button – New – (Templates) New from existing… You can print it out or use the soft copy for your online document jobs. Even though this is a quick way to print out a letterhead, you can painstakingly use elements like tables in the header area to further design the look. MS Word also has many graphic aids like Shapes and Clip-arts which again can be creatively arranged around the text to create neat letterheads. This is just a simple and quick way to create some customized stationery. Professional letterheads are of course, designed in page layout software. Have you put together a quick letterhead using MS Word? Maybe you can also drop a hint or two in the comments. Also, check out our free MUO Guide – How To Create Professional Reports and Documents. We NEED Your Comments!!! Please do share your thoughts in article comments. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Create A Custom Video Player For Your Website With VP Factory Posted: 27 Apr 2010 11:31 AM PDT
It’s almost ludicrous to look where we’ve come. And we’re just about getting started. A full day’s worth of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute, and that pales in comparison to the total streaming count. It’s only natural to match your website strategy accordingly. Video is on the rise, and it won’t hurt to consider it a vital information medium. And although this is far from lost on many websites, there’s more you can do than just embedding YouTube or Vimeo movies. That’s where VP Factory comes in.
VP FactoryTo avoid confusion later on, let’s discuss what VP Factory is not. VP Factory is not a video content managing system. It doesn’t offer a video-centered authoring platform like you’d see at YouTube, or other websites back-ends like GameTrailers or Hulu.
VP Factory allows you to create a custom video player, which you can use to play videos or video playlists on your website. Plain and simple. You also needn’t worry about installing anything on your own website’s server, because the players – if not the videos – are pulled in from the VP Factory server and embedded in your website’s HTML. This also means you can easily combine VP Factory with other CMS suites like Drupal, Joomla, or even WordPress.
The VP Factory process consists of three simple steps. First you want to add videos to your collection using the VP Factory interface pictured above. Note that the free plan does not include video storage, so you need to pull in videos from your own server, or embed them from YouTube.
Next up, you can design your own custom video player. The free version gives you four standard skins to start from. These can then be further customized by changing the color scheme, buttons, and default settings.
Finally, we can build our player. A player, using VP Factory, doesn’t just consist of the flash object, but is paired with a certain set of videos. Now it’s time to make a selection from the videos uploaded in the first step of the process. Free Version Limits
As mentioned earlier on, the free version is limited to four starter skins, and does not include free storage. Probably the biggest limitation, however, is the 10,000 player views limit per month. As such, contrary to creating single-video players, creating playlists might help you keep below the player views limit. Do you know of any other way to create a custom video player with free features? Let us know your personal recommendations in the comments section below! Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf fan page on Facebook. Over 17,000 fans already!
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| Download & Play Flash Files Using SWF & FLV Player Posted: 27 Apr 2010 10:31 AM PDT
Unfortunately, unless you are living in Finland, a broadband internet connection is not one of your human rights. Most of us still have to put up with snail speed connections and watching “coughing” streaming videos is a torture. That’s why people come up with many alternative methods to download web videos.
Go Beyond VideosSWF & FLV Player is a free app – available for Windows and Mac – that you can use to play all kinds of common Flash files that you would find on the net like movies and games. To try the software, I downloaded a YouTube video and then opened it using SWF & FLV Player.
The video is played in the main window.
The playback control is opened in a separate panel where you can play/pause. fast forward, rewind, increase/decrease the volume, adjust the zoom, etc. There’s also a tiny preview screen that you can reveal/hide.
But the app can do a lot more than play Flash files. I tried playing one small SWF game that I downloaded years ago using Safari and everything went well without any glitch. All the game controls is functional.
The app also allows you to open Flash files on the web. If you know the exact location of the file, something like “http://www.whateveraddress.com/flashfile.swf“, you can use the “File – Open URL” menu.
Then write down the address in the pop up window and click OK.
But if you only know the address of the site (which has a flash movie), use the “File – Download online Flash movies” menu instead. Write down the site address, click browse, then SWF & FLV Player will analyze the site and list all the files on that address which are supported. You can treat the page as you normally do in the browser, or you can choose one of the filter results and click Preview to watch it.
The paid Pro version of the app allows you to save the flash files to your hard drive. So you will have more convenient ways to download flash files from the net. There are more advanced features in the Pro version for those who need extra bells and whistles. Another noteworthy feature of this app is the ability to manage flash files in a playlist. Open the Playlist window using the “Window – Playlist” menu.
Then you can manage your playlist from the playlist window. Beside adding and removing files, the playlist also allows you to repeat and shuffle.
There are many ways that you can use to download flash videos from the web, there are also multimedia players that are capable of playing flash videos. But SFW & FLV Player lets you do everything from one place. Plus this one does flash games too. Have you tried SWF & FLV Player? Do you know other alternatives? Share your thoughts and opinions using the comments below. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Upload To Video & Social Networking Sites At Once With TubeMogul Posted: 27 Apr 2010 09:31 AM PDT
Video sites like YouTube and Viddler are benefiting from this. Their popularity constantly attracts mainstream attention. If you’re a vlogger (video blogger) or create any type of video content, it’s important that you reach more people and attract more eyeballs to your content. Do you want to become a TubeMogul?
In this article, I am going to cover the features you will get with a free TubeMogul account. Support For Multiple Sites & File FormatsThe TubeMogul free video upload site currently supports over 25 sites, including YouTube, Blip.tv, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Yahoo Video, Viddler, Vimeo Plus, 5min, and Dailymotion.
When uploading a video, TubeMogul supports 7 different file formats: avi, wmv, mov, mpg, mp4, flv, and m4v. Simple Video Tagging & Uploading
Uploading a video using this free video upload site is easy. You simply go to the Upload tab on your account and select your video for upload. The regular upload box allows for videos up to 100MB in size.
If you want to upload a video larger than 100MB, simply use the Java uploader on the right side of the page.
Once your video is uploaded, you will need to fill in the information for it, which includes a title, description, tags, and category. For tags, TubeMogul displays how the tags will look on all of the possible video sites.
After your video is uploaded, you are taken to a screen where you can select which sites you would like the video to be posted to. You can submit all of your account information to the sites (usernames, passwords) and customize settings (like allowing comments) for each site individually. Video Tutorial: Uploading Your VideoIf you want to see TubeMogul in action, check out this video tutorial from their website. It walks you through the video uploading process. Custom Destinations & Feeds
You can also set up custom destinations (Hulu, iTunes) and feeds (Yahoo, iTunes) that you would like your video sent to. Promote Your Videos
After you get all of your settings straight and click the Launch button, you can begin promoting your videos and monitoring their stats. For promoting options, simply go to the My Uploads tab, and click on [More] under the Tools column. Then click Viralize.
You are taken to a screen where you can embed the video on blogs and websites, send it to bookmarking and news websites, create a TubeMogul badge for your blog, and create a link to your video. Get Cross-Site AnalyticsOne of the features that sets TubeMogul apart is their analytics. They allow for cross-site tracking statistics for all of your videos. From the reporting dashboard, you can view and compare viewing information on your videos across the different sites you’ve uploaded them to.
Analytics include views, comments, and ratings and are shown trending over time. View the attention span of viewers for your videos and the number of embeds as well. For a more in-depth look at TubeMogul analytics, you can check out this video tutorial from their site. This tutorial shows you the detailed tracking process. ConclusionIn conclusion, TubeMogul allows you to get your video content out to the masses while saving yout the time and hassle it takes to upload it to each site/network individually. For more information on using TubeMogul, they offer free demos every Friday at what they call TubeMogul University. It is designed to help new users become familiar with all of the available features. The information is sent to your email after you create a free account. Are you a creator of video content? Do you use any free video upload sites and apps for your video creation/distribution? Let us know in the comments! Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lock Your Windows Computer With Bluetooth Proximity Lock Utility Posted: 27 Apr 2010 08:31 AM PDT
But what if I wanted something a little more automated? Well we have covered uses for Bluetooth on MakeUseOf before but never as a digital key! When I found a little freeware application on SourceForge called Bluetooth Proximity Lock Utility – I fell in love!
Then when your computer loses the Bluetooth signal from your device it assumes you have moved away from the machine and locks it up! The application is 201KB making it very small and easy to use on any system with Bluetooth. To start, we will need to download the application here. Grab the latest file with the .exe ending on it. You can check out the projects page here as well. It will install rather quickly and when it is complete you will have a new start menu item called BTProx. Once you run it you will see a minimalistic console that looks like this:
Click the three dots next to the Used device field. This will start your machine looking for a Bluetooth device to use as your digital key. If you see the following error, make sure your Bluetooth is turned on. The device needs to be paired with your computer prior to clicking on the three dots or you will see the same error message below:
Once you see your device in the list simply select it and click OK. That will take us back to the same screen we were on before but our device will now be listed next to the used device field like so:
You will also see a few more options listed in the main window including timeout, lock command, release command and a check box for don't lock , only run the command. The timeout field is VERY important for the sheer fact that if you leave this at the default you can be away from your computer for 4 minutes and 59 seconds before your screen locks! I chose 15 seconds and dealt with it if I walked away to retrieve a fax or something else that I needed to walk away for. This is security at its best. The lock command option allows you to choose a command such as a batch file or Perl script to run when you lose the connection with your Bluetooth device. The release command does the opposite and runs a command when you come back into range (well at least when your device comes back into range!) You should see the text that says Device in range at the bottom of your Bluetooth proximity lock screen. When your device comes within range and is connected you will see this icon in your taskbar like so:
And as you leave the range it will turn red, wait for your timeout period and then lock your workstation. I am sure some of our clever MakeUseOf readers can come up with some clever uses for the lock and release commands. Are you using this or another proximity access system that automatically locks your workstation or servers as you move away from them? We would love to hear about them in the comments. Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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