MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [April 28th]” plus 9 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [April 28th]
- Special MakeUseOf 20% Discount For Eltima Software
- Packrati.us Makes It Super Easy To Store Twitter Links in Your Delicious Account
- How To Create A Professional-Looking Flash Website For Free
- Hot Tech Deals [April 28th]
- 3 Google Chrome Extensions to Save $$$ When Shopping Online
- How to Easily Make Custom Brushes in Photoshop
- The 3 Best Free iPhone PDF Readers
- Super Mario War: Multiplayer Chaos That’s A Ton Of Fun
- Study Chemistry and its Elements the Right Way with pElement
| Cool Websites and Tools [April 28th] Posted: 28 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. NEW: Download MakeUseOf iPhone App. FREE! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Special MakeUseOf 20% Discount For Eltima Software Posted: 28 Apr 2010 06:31 PM PDT
The coupon code for both apps is MUO-ME-20. Please note, this code is only valid for SyncMate’s Personal license and Family Pack and the Single license (1, 2, 10 and unlimited number of devices) for USB to Ethernet Connector. SyncMate
USB to Ethernet Connector
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| Packrati.us Makes It Super Easy To Store Twitter Links in Your Delicious Account Posted: 28 Apr 2010 04:31 PM PDT
Enter the completely free Packrati.us to solve all our problems. All you need, apart from a Twitter account, is a Delicious account. Grant Packrati.us access to both accounts, and when you post a link or receive a link via @replies or Favorites on your Twitter account, it will instantly be sent to your Delicious account, all tagged up, where you will be able to find it later if need be. I tested it before writing this article and it works perfectly.
Since there are a lot of options, I have split the screen up into three parts and we will go through them gradually.
These are fairly straight forward. The most important ones to make decisions about are Replace Existing Bookmarks (which I personally have unticked), whether you want the Twitter hashtags for that link to be turned into Delicious tags (you may not want this if you have a nice neat set of tags already) and whether you only want a certain set of Tweets indexed with a certain hashtag. If all this talk of hashtags is making you wonder what the hell a hashtag is, check out this explanation by Steven. The Bookmark my Favorites is also one to consider. Ticking this one will allow you to save all links you mark as your favorite. In the absence of Packrati.us saving ALL links from those you follow on Twitter, this is the next best thing. OK, onto the second section :
This section mostly deals with tags. You can exclude tweets with certain hashtags, you can exclude tweets from certain websites, you can tell Packrati.us to remove certain tags before posting to Delicious and you can have a special Delicious tag added to all links sent by Packrati.us. All straight forward and easy to understand. Moving swiftly along with the last section of the options screen :
Again, this part is fairly easy to set up. This part allows Packrati.us to collect links sent to you by Twitter @replies. You can also choose whether these links get their own special Delicious tag(s). As I said, the big downside about this app is that Packrati.us doesn’t collect ALL weblinks automatically from everyone you follow on Twitter. It can only be a link in a @reply or a link you mark as a favorite. In future versions of this app, maybe the developer can consider this extra feature? If you don’t want your Delicious account being flooded with links, you could always start a second account, purely for this. So the only thing left to do is test it out. I found an interesting story on the BBC and decided to tweet about it.
As you can see, I added a hashtag which I wanted converted into a Delicious tag. I then looked right away at my Delicious account and there it was :
So as you can see, things work very quickly. Why don’t you sign up for the service, try it out and then come back and let us know what you think? Or maybe you know of something better that does the same thing? If so, I would love to hear about it. Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How To Create A Professional-Looking Flash Website For Free Posted: 28 Apr 2010 02:30 PM PDT
Wix is a free, Flash website builder that allows you to create a flash website easily through a drag and drop environment. Today, I am going to show you how easy it is to create a professional-looking Flash website for free.
Creating an AccountFirst of all, you have to create an account, and it’s pretty straight forward. Just click on the big yellow Start Now button and enter your details. Once you have successfully created your account, it's time to creating your first website. Creating Your First WebsiteLet's begin creating your first website with this flash website builder. As you can see in the image, I have already created one, so I am going to create another one just for demonstration purposes. All you have to do is click "Add new site" which is under "My Account".
Choosing A TemplateThe next step is to choose a template that will be the base design of your website. So far, Wix has 271 templates that you can choose from which are assorted into categories. A few of the categories you can choose from include:
Just browse through the templates, and when you find one you like, move your mouse over it and click on "edit". You can also view it to get more of a feel for what it looks like.
Customising Your Flash WebsiteOnce you click on edit, a pop-up window will appear which is where you’ll edit your website. I picked the "My Personal Portfolio" template. It is now time to customise your template and add content and customise pages.
The editor within this flash website builder is quite powerful, easy to use and learn. The left hand side has all the features that you can add or change such as how the page looks (background colour and styles), the images and video's that you see, the text, and widgets (such as displaying an RSS feed). The top bar has your basic editing options such as settings, preview, save button, undo/redo etc. The bottom displays the customisable options for the selected elements, and the right hand side navigates through each web page. It will take me a while to explain everything that you can do, so I am just going to go through some of the basics. Changing The TextThe first thing that you want to do is to change the text to what you want. To do this, simply click on the default text that is already on the screen and click edit.
Changing the Background Colour and StyleOn the left hand side, select "Page Parts" and select "Background" to change the background, or select "Page Frame" to add a nice looking border around the page. You will the be presented with a box where you can choose a style. You really have to play around with all the styles and options to find one that you really like. Adding PagesIt is important to note that a new page gives you a blank template, whereas a mini-page uses the parent frame design and adds a new link to the navigational structure. To add a new mini-page, click on "mini-page" in the navigational element and select add. This will create a new mini-page and automatically update the links. To create a new page, on the top right hand corner of the editor, click "Add Page". It is now up to you to design your site, and add your text, and make it look how you want. Publishing Your WebsiteNow that you have created and finished designing your website (having saved it of course), it is time to publish your website. To publish your site, just hit the green "Publish" button on the top of the site. Wix gives you three publishing options. The first option is to publish it on Wix. This will give your website the URL of http://www.wix.com/yourusername/wixSiteName. The second option is to send it via email, and the third option is to embed it in an existing document. With this option, you can easily embed your site into Facebook or Blogger, but if you want to use it on a webpage of yours, just grab the embed code and paste it in a HTML document somewhere. Although you can update your Wix site and pay a monthly fee to remove ads and use your own domain name (as seen below), there is a simple hack that allows you to have your newly created Wix site on your own domain name.
All you have to do is create a new HTML document, and inside the body tags embed the code. Simply change the background colour to match your Wix site and upload the HTML document to your appropriate website directory. Visit your domain name, and your Wix site should load. So there you have it. With a bit of time customising a design, adding some content, you can create a professionally-looking, free flash website in no time at all. If you want to see my websites I quickly created, check them out here, and here. Have you created a website with Wix.com before? How did you find it? Do you have any other web app to recommend? Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 28 Apr 2010 01:30 PM PDT
For more fresh hot deals, visit our Hot Tech Deals page, which is constantly updated.
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| 3 Google Chrome Extensions to Save $$$ When Shopping Online Posted: 28 Apr 2010 12:30 PM PDT
This guide will cover 3 great Google Chrome extensions – Ookong, InvisibleHand, and The Camelizer – which can save you money on sites like Amazon, Newegg, and BestBuy. OokongOriginally available for Firefox, Ookong has recently been released as a Google Chrome extension and brings several great features from the original version. The Ookong extension works exclusively with Amazon.com and helps you buy products at the "right time" with very useful price tracking. After installing Ookong from the Google Chrome Extensions page, head over to Amazon.com to give it a try. The Chrome version of this extension doesn't work exactly the same as the Firefox version, but overall it accomplishes the same tasks. Instead of including buttons on the item's page, you need to click the Ookong icon located at the top right of Chrome.
If you use the Ookong button on a non-Amazon page, it will display a search box where you can easily look for items on Amazon by title or keywords. Clicking the links takes you directly to the Amazon listing.
If you click the Ookong button while viewing an Amazon item listing, you'll see a graph with price tracking for that specific item. Below the graph, you'll see the highest and lowest prices throughout that item's history. This graph is a great way to figure out if you're buying a product when it's selling at a low price.
Ookong also displays a useful list of items that are related to the item you're viewing.
InvisibleHandAlso mentioned in my Firefox guide, InvisibleHand makes a great appearance in the Chrome extensions gallery. InvisibleHand works by discreetly notifying you when a product you're viewing is available for a better price on another site. This extension supports over 100 retailers in the US, UK , and Germany – with more retailers continually being added. For example, I just did a search on Amazon for 'Sherlock Holmes' on Blu-Ray. InvisibleHand immediately notified me that the item was available at another retailer for $5.00 less, and you can use the convenient drop down menu to see offers from other retailers as well.
InvisibleHand recently added a feature that displays price results when doing Google searches for products. When I searched for "Microsoft Zune", InvisibleHand popped up with 7 suggestions on where I could purchase it.
The CamelizerSimilar to the price tracking feature in Ookong, The Camelizer provides graphs of price changes over time for products on sites like Amazon.com, BestBuy.com, and Newegg.com. This extension appears on the side of your browser window when viewing an item on supported sites, and you can click it to view detailed price tracking (including tracking based on new and used versions of the item!).
The Camelizer also offers product tracking which allows you to receive alerts when the price drops. These alerts are managed through the camelcamelcamel.com website and can be sent via email, Twitter, and RSS feeds.
Clicking the Track This Product button takes you to the products page at camelcamelcamel.com where you can view additional information and longer price histories.
ConclusionThese great extensions for Google Chrome should be able to help you pinch some pennies while shopping online, and are a great asset for anybody who uses Google Chrome. Have a recommendation for a Chrome extension I didn't mention? Share it with me in the comments, and be sure to check out our other articles about Google Chrome. Image credit: swimparallel Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf fan page on Facebook. Over 17,000 fans already!
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| How to Easily Make Custom Brushes in Photoshop Posted: 28 Apr 2010 11:30 AM PDT
Forget about all the hassle of searching for and downloading brushes from the Web. With Photoshop, it’s a breeze to create your very own so that you can use a unique and a little bit more of a personal brush tip to whatever you are working on. Let’s get right to it and find out how to easily make your own Photoshop brushes.
Make Your SelectionTo get started, we’ll need an image to make the custom brush out of. It’s up to you as to if you’d like to use the entire image or just a specific part of it. Just use a selection tool like the Lasso or Magic Wand to select an area of the image you want for the brush. Otherwise, simply use any of the Marquee tools and drag around to make the selection.
Color and Size LimitationsKeep in mind that if there’s color in the image, the brush tip image will be converted to grayscale. This means that white will be transparent (0% opacity) and black opaque (100% opacity), with any other colors resulting in shades of gray with varying opacities between 0% and 100%. There’s also the issue of size limitations. In Photoshop CS2 and above, the brush shape can be up to 2,500 pixels by 2,500 pixels in size. In older versions, you’re limited to only 999 px. It’s highly recommended that you try to aim close to that maximum size to allow for the quality of the brush to remain decent at all sizes. Otherwise, the brush may tend to start blurring at greater diameters. Make and Name Your BrushNow, with your image selected to your liking, go up to the menu bar and click on Edit. Go down and hit Define Brush Preset….
A window will pop up with the brush image and feel free to give your new brush a name.
Save Your New BrushYour brush is now ready to enjoy, but in order to permanently save it or export the brush to other users, we’ll first need to save it as part of a set of brushes. With your Brush tool selected, click on the brush preset picker in the options bar to open up the drop down menu. Now, hit the small arrow on the upper, right-hand corner and click on Preset Manager….
Now, simply click on your new brush and hit the Save Set… button.
That’s all there is to it. Your slick new brush is now ready for use anytime you need it. Pretty simple, huh?
If you’re looking for places to download brush sets or maybe upload some of your own for all to enjoy, be sure to check out the 6 Best Sites To Download Free Photoshop Brushes. Don’t forget to also read our Idiot’s Guide to Photoshop. Do you download your Photoshop brushes or make your own? Let us know how you make Photoshop brushes in the comments below. Image Credit: petitshoo Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The 3 Best Free iPhone PDF Readers Posted: 28 Apr 2010 10:30 AM PDT
The best part of being a MakeUseOf writer is that we get to play with lots of tools and apps. Hunting for the best free PDF readers was a challenge because there aren’t too many that are truly free and don’t require an eventual upgrade. Of the handful that exist, a lot of them were too complicated to use and, in some cases, were document readers but not actually PDF readers.
In the quest for the best, I am happy to recommend Aji Reader, iPDF, and DropBox. Aji Free PDF ReaderThe Aji Reader [iTunes link] is a nice and easy to use PDF reader. You can download a document directly from the web using the URL, or you can fetch it from their server. The only drawback is that you need to know the URL if you want something specific. Otherwise, you can simply do a Google search to find a PDF.
For an example, I wanted to download a huge PDF file to see how Aji Reader would handle it. Terry Freedman’s awesome PDF book, Amazing Web 2.0 Projects, is a resource that I can use when working with faculty in the field. Since the URL of the PDF is really (really) long, I decided to use Aji’s Google search tool instead. The book was listed first, and all I had to do was double click the link and it started downloading immediately.
The best part of Aji (besides being able to download the PDFs, of course) is that they offer excellent help screens. In the image above, Aji lets me know that the PDF has been downloaded and is readable, but features like search and PDF outline won’t be available until it has been processed by the Aji Reader Service. Aji Reader is a wonderful free tool, and in less than two minutes, I was able to get my own portable copy of Terry Freedman’s book!
iPDFAnother free PDF Reader, iPDF [iTunes link], offers a lot of the same features. It is simple to use, offers the ability to search, and stores the PDFs right on your iPhone.
While the overall appearance is awesome, the search capabilities are not as intuitive as other PDF readers. You don’t know, for example, which results are PDF in the example above. However, if you actually put PDF in the search bar, you get better results. In this example, I was able to find and download a sweet lesson plan for Alice in Wonderland. I can store it right in the program and use it whenever I need it! DropboxAnother clever way to read PDFs on your iphone is by using the sweet Dropbox [iTunes link] app. Dropbox has a free version that is incredibly useful, and it also turns out that you can read PDFs with it, as well. After you register for a free account with Dropbox, you want to make sure that you get all your machines registered with Dropbox. Once you install the app, it will also appear in your list of computers.
Once you have the iPhone app installed, simply use Dropbox as an online storage bin. You can share documents between computers.
Before you leave your home, use your wi-fi connection to sync Dropbox on your iPhone.
Simply click on the PDF you want to read, click on the little star at the bottom of the iPhone screen, and the document will be saved to your Dropbox favorites. You won’t need to access the web again to get it again.
Build Your Own PDF Reader on a Mac in 10 Easy StepsLet’s say you don’t really want to download another app, and just want to create your own reader. You can do this fairly simply using iPhoto and iTunes.
That’s all there is to it! When you open your iPhone, the files will appear in your picture gallery, and you can read them right from there. The WrapNow that you can use an awesome app like Aji Reader, iPDF, Dropbox or even create your own PDF reader, you don’t need to run right out and drain your piggy bank for an iPad! Do you use another free iPhone PDF reader that can compete with any of the 3 above? Let us know about it! Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf fan page on Facebook. Over 17,000 fans already!
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| Super Mario War: Multiplayer Chaos That’s A Ton Of Fun Posted: 28 Apr 2010 09:30 AM PDT
They’re not. You can turn your computer into the ultimate media center with Boxee, and you can even set up Boxee to launch your favorite games and old-school ROMs. If you like playing old-school ROMs you’ll adore the Super Mario War multiplayer game. This fan-made game is basically Super Smash Brothers set in a 16-bit world, but it’s superb. It was among my favorite videos games to play in college—group sessions were invariably a blast. The nice thing with this Super Mario free game is it’s accessible—even your non-gamer friends can get into it quickly. You can get it working on any Linux, Mac or Windows machine, so let’s take a look!
The Basics
The Super Mario War free game is, at it’s heart, a multiplayer game. While you can play against the computer, it’s not nearly as fun as playing against your friends. Picking up some cheap USB joysticks is great idea, but without them you can crowd around a keyboard with your friends and still manage a 4-player game by sharing.
There are up to four players on screen. You can choose from a wide variety of characters, but these only vary in the way they look. The point of the game is basically to stomp your opponents without being stomped yourself. You can do this the old fashioned way, by jumping and landing on your opponents, or by using one of the many power-ups the games includes. Except all your favorite Mario classics, with a number of things borrowed from other franchises including Sonic the Hedgehog. Customized Levels
SMW comes with a level editor, allowing you to create a level however you please. Most people will understandably want only to play the game and not to work on it, but this visually-oriented level editor means you can customize the game without loading to code. In fact, you can even share your custom levels with others fans of this free Super Mario game… Fan Content
There is a lot of fan content out there for SMW. Head over to smwstuff.com and you’ll find fan-made levels, music, sounds, characters and even alternative skins for the entire program. You can contribute your own content, or just download content and add it to SMW yourself. The most recent news post at smwstuff.com says the community is not as lively as was hoped. I’m sure our amazing readers can change that, so get to it: check out SMW, fall in love with it and then head over to smwstuff.com and join the community there helping to make the game better. This game deserves it. Download the Super Mario Free Game!You’ll find downloads for the game over at the official Super Mario War forums. There’s a version for the usual platforms—Linux, Mac and Windows—and for some unusual ones–X-Box, PSP, Dreamcast and even Amiga. Heck, there’s even Wii version if you’ve got a crack system. A quick tip to Ubuntu users: you’ll need to install libsdl-image1.2 libsdl-mixer1.2 and libpng3 before you’ll be able to get this game working. If anyone knows of a place to get a simple Ubuntu package please share in the comments below; the link on the forum seems to have broken. Remember: this game works best with a console-type setup with multiple joysticks, but can also be a great excuse for gathering around a single keyboard with your friends. If you’ve got a Boxee setup with your television I highly recommend adding Super Mario War to it, using my recent tutorial on setting up Boxee as a game launcher. Conclusion: It’s All About FunAs I said before, this is one of my favorite multi-player games and it’s not hard to see why. This game combines all the charm and nostalgia of old-fashioned side-scrollers with the fun of stomping on your friend’s heads. This is a game I always like to keep around, because it’s good for hours of multiplayer fun. Do you guys like the game? Can you suggest another free game that’s this much fun? Or do you think I’m inexcusably cheap for playing this free game instead of just buying a Wii and getting Super Smash Brother’s Brawl? This would be a great place for a clever comment about why you should comment, but I don’t have one! Just comment. Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Study Chemistry and its Elements the Right Way with pElement Posted: 28 Apr 2010 08:30 AM PDT
Either which way, pElement is for you. Let's check it out. You can download the application via CNet from here and the project's home page is here.
For those of you who have not been to a junior high school science class, this is the period table of the elements. It shows us each element’s atomic number, symbol, name, atomic weight as well as other information like physical information, chemical information, nuclear information, general information, electron information and crystal structure information. The majority of us will not need this information on a daily basis but for a student who needs a quick study chemistry solution, or a scientist, this can be invaluable. By clicking on a element you can bring up its properties like so:
I clicked on Au, the abbreviation for Aurum; more commonly known as gold. We see its statistics here and we can click on each of the buttons at the top of the info window to see more like so:
The physical information tells us gold's melting and boiling point as well as some other statistics that are over my head. There are 4 more pages accessible for gold's physical properties accessible by clicking the black right arrow at the bottom of the window. Clicking on the chemical button for gold displays this:
Here, we see things like the atomic radius, gold's oxidation states and it's effective nuclear charge. I remember memorizing that for a college course! The other tabs work the same way and allow for you to see a wide range of information. There are buttons on the right hand side of the interface that allow us to see the element classes, forms as well as search for elements and view the help or extras section.
Clicking on classes shows us how the table of elements is broken down into similar elements. When you click it you will see the chart below:
Next, clicking on forms shows us what physical form each element is (solid, liquid or gas). You can see the chart below:
The Find dialogue box works by clicking on it and specifying what you are looking for like so:
And on clicking Find, the application quickly returned the element platinum as seen below:
And the last menu before help is Extras. The extra menu contains the other charts that you may find useful like unit conversions, fundamental constants and more. You can see the full list below:
I wish I had something like this when I was going to school! And you can be sure I will let my daughter use this and any other tool to aid in her education. Do you a similar tool to help cram for a Chemistry test? Let us know in the comments. Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I am sure there are a lot of students out there in MakeUseOf land. So when I came across pElement, I knew I had to share it with the group. pElement is an interactive periodic table of the elements. It provides you with all the data you need for your chemistry or other science class. Maybe you are a closet geek and you need to know certain facts about the elements. Using this to complete your homework is a lot more fun than staring at a large chart.
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