MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [May 4th]” plus 9 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [May 4th]
- How To Paste & Edit Screenshots Online For Instant Sharing
- TravelPod – A Free Travel Blog To Share Your Amazing Adventures
- Incarnate – Help Your Visitors Find Their Avatars From Around The Web [Wordpress]
- Hot Tech Deals [May 4th]
- How To Personalize Skype’s Mood Messages With Twitter
- Stop iTunes From Interfering With The Mac Media Keys [Mac]
- How To Bring Your Favorite TV Shows On The Road With Your iPod
- 3 Online OCR Services That Let You Intelligently Scan Documents
- Find Popular Videos On Twitter & The Ones That Will Go Viral!
| Cool Websites and Tools [May 4th] Posted: 04 May 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!
Similar MakeUseOf Articles
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How To Paste & Edit Screenshots Online For Instant Sharing Posted: 04 May 2010 06:31 PM PDT
You’re already sharing pictures online so wouldn’t it be easier if you could just paste the screenshot somewhere online and just share the URL? Let’s look at how you can do that and even share an edited version of your image the easy way. You can certainly download often-loved Jing (or another screen capture utility), but if you’re not a full-time blogger and thus don’t need another program clogging up your registry, you can certainly make use of these workarounds to share screenshots.
Taking & Pasting Your Screenshot
You can click on the image or the View Full Size button above the screenshot to see your original screenshot in .JPEG format. Since you can tweet your screenshot, you’ll be able to check statistics so you’ll know how many times your screenshot has been viewed (hit the Statistics button above the uploaded screenshot.)
Considering the site is free to use, offers a Firefox extension to grab screenshots of any website, requires no registration, and has no ads, I’m totally sold. Quickly Editing Your ScreenshotMaybe you don’t just want to share your raw screenshot. Maybe you want to add a caption on it, circle the juicy part or even crop it. The excellent Falcon tool by Aviary has a variety of features to facilitate quickly editing your image. Aviary also has a more advanced image editor with filters if you want to use that instead (or any other capable image editor).
You can also save the image to your desktop or create an account on Aviary so you can claim your image in the Aviary Creations gallery. If you plan on annotating images often, you might want to check out Aviary’s webpage capturing Firefox extension that imports automatically into Falcon. Sharing By Email, Blog, Or TwitterWith either the raw or edited screenshot’s direct URL, you can share your image by email and in Twitter, and use the embed codes for your blog. This is nothing new but for anyone who doesn’t know, in Gmail, you can display the image in your email body without having to add attachments by clicking on Insert Image, selecting Web Address (URL) and pasting the image URL.
Here, I’ve taken the URL of the thumbnail version from a screenshot hosted in UploadScreenshot (just copy the HTML code, paste it in Gmail and delete the non-URL bits).
If you use Windows Live Hotmail, switch to HTML view when you compose a new email so you can paste the HTML embed code. If you switch back to Rich Text mode, you’ll see the screenshot in the body email.
To Share Screenshots Of WebsitesThis method of instant screengrab publishing allows you to share screenshots from your programs and desktop activity, but if you’re interested in capturing webpages, there are bookmarklets, screencapture-and-share programs (even an open-source utility), Chrome extension or websites. You could always just add “aviary.com/” in front of the URL too. If you’ve used these tools, tell us about your experiences! If not, what methods do you use to share your screenshots instantly? Image credit: John Sexton NEW: Download MakeUseOf iPhone App. FREE! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| TravelPod – A Free Travel Blog To Share Your Amazing Adventures Posted: 04 May 2010 04:31 PM PDT
Here at MUO, that spirit is strong – just check out Aibek’s list of 10 great travel websites just to get started. It is for this reason that I’m always in search of the most effective way for people to share their travel adventures with the world. This is why I was so excited to find TravelPod, a free travel blog where folks with or without web design or blogging experience can open an account and start blogging about their interesting trips and the sights that they see along the way.
TravelPod Brings the World To YouI am the type of person that loves seeing the world through the eyes of others. Most avid readers are the same way – there’s something magical about not only seeing photos and maps that outline a trip, but also reading the thoughts, fears, excitement and insight of the person seeing those places. For me, even reading someone’s account of a simple walk through the forest is an amazing adventure.
From the very front page of this site, you can type in anything you want to see and view listings of hundreds to thousands of blogs that contain experiences along those lines. For example, searching for “pyramids of egypt” turn up almost 4,000 blog entries.
As an avid adventurer myself, I get goosebumps just scrolling down through these posts. Thousands upon thousands of personal experiences, maps and amazing photographs of the greatest places on earth. Whether you just want to see actual images of a certain part of the world you’ve always wanted to see, or you’re planning out a future trip for yourself, these posts contain a plethora of information you will be hard pressed to find in travel guides or tourist maps. Don’t forget to read Tina’s review of Packwhiz to help with your packing! The Layout Of TravelPod PostsThe thing I love about TravelPod in particular is that every post has common elements that you can expect when you open up a post – a map, the blog entry, a photo gallery and then the trip itinerary at the bottom that maps to previous or subsequent posts in the trip.
The map is usually at the upper right of the post, although some bloggers use a cool format with a large map above the blog entry itself. This map traces the travel route of the traveler (and sometimes even the hiking route if that’s the sort of trip being logged).
Under the blog entry and photo gallery, you’ll find the “Table of Contents” which is actually a very useful itinerary of the trip. I love the fact that you can follow along the storyline of the entire trip by just clicking on each subsequent post. Some of these travel blogs are like reading novels – with all of the unique characters people meet and amazing experiences people have when they travel. If you start reading through these blog entries, you will find hours of intrigue, excitement, wonder and more. Try to find a novel that offers all of that! Become A TravelPod BloggerThe most important thing I’d like to stress about TravelPod is that it isn’t so much a blogging platform as it is a large social network of adventurers. I have my own blog where I chronicle my outdoor adventures, but the allure of TravelPod is that you are submitting your adventures to a community of fellow travelers who love the same sort of things that you do – an instant audience of people who are seeking out the same insight from other travelers as you are.
Signing in is a one-step process, and you can even use your Facebook account to sign in if you want to. Once you’re in, the first thing you’ll see is your dashboard which logs all of your past travel entries, maps, stats about your visitors and even how many fans you have.
When you start a new itinerary, you can plan out your entire trip by date and location even before you start blogging. This lays out your planned trip, which you can modify later if you need to. Once this is set up, every location becomes a blog entry that’s ready to be filled in once you’re there.
Each blog entry form has the standard look and feel that you expect from most blog CMS forms – typical formatting tools like bold, italics, underline and linking – but you can also click on the “edit HTML” button to tweak the page if you have the HTML skills required – a very nice feature for experienced bloggers.
TravelPod is well integrated with your Facebook and Twitter accounts. After each blog entry, when you click on “send notification” at the top of the screen, you have the option to send out an instant update to Twitter, Facebook or even to the contacts that you’ve added to your TravelPod account. In most ways, TravelPod is so much more than a blogging platform. It’s an ideal way for people to log their adventures in a format that’s fascinating and fun to read, and it’s the simplest way to distribute your travel experiences to friends, family and to fellow adventure enthusiasts. Do you blog your travel experiences? Do you use your own free private travel blog, or do you like the social networking aspect of sites like TravelPod instead? Share your insight and experiences in the comments section below. Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Incarnate – Help Your Visitors Find Their Avatars From Around The Web [Wordpress] Posted: 04 May 2010 02:31 PM PDT
As a blogger you are probably trying to build some sort of community on your site. In doing so, you need to be sensitive to how you give your visitors the ability to relate to you and the other users. Allowing them to show an avatar aids in giving them the ability to visually identify themselves within your community.
Many people are fine with that but there are still many people who just don’t feel like registering at one more site just for a little icon. That’s where Incarnate comes in.
Incarnate attempts to address this issue by making it possible to find your avatar from another social network, saving visitors the trouble of registering and uploading yet another avatar. In fact, visitors can choose which avatar to use from amongst their social networks. The sites that are searched are Twitter, Facebook, Gravatar.com, MySpace, XBox Live and YouTube. To start out, check out Incarnate’s site and run a test search on the user name or alias that you use across the web.
Cool, eh? Now that we get an idea of how it works, let’s see how it works on a Wordpress blog. In the Admin area of your Wordpress blog, add a new plugin. Run a search for WP-Incarnate. It should come up as one of the only listings and it will be called “Incarnate for Wordpress.”
Once installed and activated, you should see another field at the top of the regular comment section asking for your name, handle, alias or email.
All your visitor has to do is read the simple directions, type in the information and choose the avatar they want to use.
That’s about how easy it really is. This way your visitors can now find and carry their avatars from the social networks they already use. No need to register at another site and upload another icon. Also, they will be more recognizable because the avatar will be the same as on the other networks. As a side note, if you are looking to create an avatar for commenting and your social network presences, check out these MakeUseOf articles:
Do you use an avatar when you comment on blogs? Do you prefer the Gravatar way or do you think the Incarnate way would be easier? Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 04 May 2010 01:30 PM PDT
For more fresh hot deals, visit our Hot Tech Deals page, which is constantly updated.
Image credit: Modified from Svengraph’s icon set Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How To Personalize Skype’s Mood Messages With Twitter Posted: 04 May 2010 12:31 PM PDT
But Twitter is where it all seems to be happening. Then again, I need to have my Skype kept open too. Of course, it's no big deal to have both of them open alongside each other. Although, it does do some slight harm to my attention spans. The fact that I can connect Skype to Twitter makes the whole superfluous problem less so. Think of any chat application and you are sure to find some way to link it with Twitter. Heck, in the end it's all about social networking. So it is with these four Twitter to Skype apps.
These Twitter apps use your freshly posted tweet as a way to personalize your Skype mood. Here's how they do it. MySkwitter
MySkwitter personalizes your Skype Mood with your latest tweet. Like all mood messages, your contacts can see what you are tweeting about. MySkwitter is available as a Skype Extra and you can install it directly from the Skype Extras Manager. After installation, you have to feed in your Skype User ID and Twitter log-in details to map both to each other. Note: - The configuration are saved in a text file located at – %userprofile%\TweetConfig.txt. To reconfigure the settings, delete the text file. - Skype Extras are not officially supported anymore as of September, 2009. Though, the gallery and the Skype Extras Manager Manager still continue to exist. No new Extras are being added. Skitter
Skitter also works similarly to MySkwitter. The plug-in connects to your Twitter account (you don't have to give the password), and displays your tweets in the Mood box. The Mood box is thus kept refreshed with the Tweets as it updates every minute. Twype
Twype is a small system tray application that monitors your Twitter account and updates Skype's mood area with the latest tweet. Optionally, it can also post the currently playing track on Winamp, if you have it open. According to the author's notes, Winamp takes precedence over Twitter. But if you pause the media player, then the mood area reverts to the tweet. The tweets get auto-refreshed every 5 minutes. Twype is a labor of love for the developer who coded it around his own personal habits. It's a neat little app that works without the need for an installation. SyncMood
SyncMood got its inspiration from Twype and it is a similar System Tray plug-in. The essential difference between the two is that in SyncMood, you can configure the update interval and also set it up to ignore @reply tweets. You need to have Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0 installed. These four apps are very basic in the way they let you personalize Skype's status message with a tweet. Although I was a bit disappointed not to find a Skype plug-in that would let me go the other way – post a message to Twitter or even use Skype as an instant messaging Twitter client. A one-time web service called twitter4skype doesn't seem to be working anymore. But until an application like that comes along, I can make do with these four to keep my friends on Skype abreast with my tweets. Image Credit: malthe We NEED Your Comments!!! Please do share your thoughts in article comments. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Stop iTunes From Interfering With The Mac Media Keys [Mac] Posted: 04 May 2010 11:31 AM PDT
There’s only one problem. Although they are essentially compatible with all applications, as a ‘feature’, these media keys automatically launch and start playing songs from iTunes. Even when you’re using them in another application. And there’s absolutely no easy way to turn it off. Most call it a bug, but Apple calls it a feature, and they don’t seem to be planning to release a fix for this iTunes problem anytime soon. Over the past few years, people have come up with all sorts of tricks to be able to use these keys properly. We’ll be discussing a number of them below – ranging from quick fixes to total workarounds.
Solution One: Delete iTunesWHAT? We told you we’d be seeing some pretty easy work-arounds. Well, this is about as quick as it gets. If you delete iTunes, you won’t be bothered by it launching in the future. Of course, this solution is only applicable for people who don’t use iTunes at all. If you ever want to reinstall iTunes, you can download iTunes from the Apple website for free.
HOW? Go to your applications folder by opening Finder and selecting Go -> Applications. Find the iTunes application and drag it to the trash can. Finally, select Finder -> Empty Trash… This will completely erase iTunes from your computer. + Quick and easy Solution Two: Keep iTunes Or QuickTime Idle In The BackgroundWHAT? There are two other situations where iTunes doesn’t steal your focus. In the first scenario, iTunes is already open. In the second, QuickTime Player is. Basically, this solution will allow you to use the media function keys without interruption, but can be CPU intensive. For that reason, the QuickTime technique is preferred. HOW? Open QuickTime, but no video. The application will run in the background and prevent iTunes from picking up the media key signals. Alternatively, you can also use iTunes, but be sure to open the iTunes store before hiding or minimizing the application. That way, no songs will start playing spontaneously. + Quick and Easy Solution Three: Disallow iTunes To Start By Media KeysWHAT? There are basically two things we’re going to do. First, we’ll rename an essential file in the iTunes application package. That way, iTunes can’t start – not even when the media function keys try to. Second, we’re making an alternative executable that will launch the altered iTunes file. HOW? Time to get our hands dirty. Open the Terminal application from Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal. Type the code below, or use copy-paste. Press enter after each line. You’ll be asked for your computer password after the second command.
Close the terminal and open AppleScript Editor, also via Applications -> Utilities. Copy-paste the code below.
Select File -> Save As… and change the File Format to Application. Call it iTunesX and save it to your applications folder.
This executable will still be able to launch iTunes for you, and best of all, you can drag it to your dock. Alas, launching iTunes this way will also open a terminal window for the duration of the session. + Complete solution – no further hassle Do you have any other suggestions on how to deal with this problem? Let us know in the comments section below! Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf fan page on Facebook. Over 17,000 fans already!
Similar MakeUseOf Articles
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How To Bring Your Favorite TV Shows On The Road With Your iPod Posted: 04 May 2010 10:31 AM PDT
You could sleep, read books, chat with the person sitting next to you, listen to music, or – my personal favorite – catch up with your favorite TV shows. Most modern mobile gadgets come with the ability to play videos. Among the mobile gadgets that I’ve tried, I personally think that my iPod has the best audio/video playing quality. So I always have it by my side as a traveling companion.
Acquiring The ShowsThere are several ways to acquire TV shows (or movies) on your iPod. You could:
Converting The ShowsYou can skip this step if you are using the first and second method above to acquire your TV Shows. But if you are using the third method, most of the movie files that you end up with are not iPod friendly, so you need to convert them. The easiest – and multi-platform – way is to use Handbrake.
You can even use it to attach subtitles to the movie. And best of all, Handbrake comes with pre-configured settings for the iPod. We’ve discussed this before so I won’t blab too much about it here.
Managing The ShowsAgain, you can skip this step if you use the first method to acquire TV shows as everything is done for you. Second and third method users, keep on reading. After the conversion process is done, add the movie to your iTunes Library using “File – Add to Library” menu (Command + O) or by just simply dragging and dropping the files to iTunes.
But your quest doesn’t end there. By default, all manually added iPod compatible movie files will be placed in the “Movies” folder, naked and untagged.
To put the TV Shows in order in the “TV Shows” folder, right click the file(s) and choose “Get Info” from the pop-up menu, or select the file(s) and use “Command + I” combination.
There are many things that you can do in the info window. But for our adventure today, please go straight to the “Options” tab.
Change the media type from “Movies” to “TV Show“.
Then continue on to “Video” tab and fill in all the necessary information. Start from the “Show” or series title, “Season Number“, “Episode Number“, down to the “Description” of the movie.
When everything is fine, click “OK“. The edited file(s) will disappear from the “Movies” folder and reappear in the “TV Shows” folder, neatly grouped according to the series.
The next time you sync your iPod to your iTunes, the latest episodes from your favorite TV shows will find their way to the iPod, ready to accompany you in your long lonely hours. How do you spend your long traveling hours? Do you watch TV shows on the road? Share your thoughts and opinions using the comments below. Image credit: wan shariffuddin Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf fan page on Facebook. Over 17,000 fans already!
Similar MakeUseOf Articles
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3 Online OCR Services That Let You Intelligently Scan Documents Posted: 04 May 2010 09:31 AM PDT
The technology dates back to the late 1920’s, when the first OCR patent was issued in Germany. Today OCR is mainly used to convert scanned documents into text. It can come in quite handy if you want to use text from an image or edit a scanned document. Within this article I describe the three free online OCR services, which offer the most comprehensive features and the best quality.
OnlineOCR
This service can recognize text and characters from PDF and image files and convert them to several file formats, including PDF and Microsoft Word. The original formatting, such as tables, columns, bullets, and graphics, will be maintained. This last feature is rare among web-based OCR services. You can use the online ocr service without signing up, however you’ll face several limits. You can upload one file with a maximum of 1MB, the language recognized is set to English per default and cannot be changed, and the output is plain text with no formatting. If you decide to sign up, you’ll be able to choose from several recognition languages and output formats, as well as upload several files at the same time of up to 30MB total. You’ll start with 5 credits, whereas one credit allows you to upload one image file (single or multipage) and recognize one page. If you do not want to use up a credit, you can check > Demonstration mode to see a preview and get an idea of what to expect. You can purchase additional credits, starting at 6 cents per page.
I tested the service with a scanned formal letter. The scan image contained clear folding edges and shading. Nevertheless, both recognition of formatting and text worked flawlessly. Unfortunately, this service does not recognize handwritten text.
NewOCR
Free Online OCR is straightforward. Uploads are unlimited in number. The file size may not exceed 5MB for image files and 20MB for PDF documents. When uploading a file for optical character recognition, you can select a language for optimized results and rotate the document. Registration is not required. Unfortunately, all formatting is lost and Free Online OCR does not recognize handwritten text. Moreover, in my test document some parts from the bottom of the scanned document appeared in the header. Hence, this tool is only useful for obtaining plain text that you want to copy and paste into a new document. However, it’s quick and easy to use.
Free OCR
Free OCR accepts image and PDF files of up to 2MB. It will recognize only the first page of the PDF. You can select the language of the document to improve recognition of language specific characters. A bonus is that you can upload up to 10 images per hour. Although multi-column text is supported, the recognition result is plain text, meaning that all formatting is lost. There is no membership option.
Although this service appears to be very popular, it returned poor results in my test. Many characters that were recognized perfectly with other online OCR services, were not recognized at all. Apparently, the previously mentioned folding edge was a problem for Free OCR. Moreover, several parts of the text appeared in a random order, which could be due to their technique of scanning formatted text.
Karl wrote a detailed article introducing Free OCR. Have a look at it for more tips and tricks on how to obtain better results: Convert Images To Text Online With Free OCR If you’re looking for more web-based OCR services, have a look at WeOCR. As you may have realized by now, using a web-based OCR service is suitable only for quick and dirty text recognition. If you need to scan multiple documents and need perfectly formatted text, I would recommend downloading and installing OCR software. Here are two articles that will get you started:
What are your experiences with online OCR services? Image credits: mihow Similar MakeUseOf Articles
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Find Popular Videos On Twitter & The Ones That Will Go Viral! Posted: 04 May 2010 08:31 AM PDT
Using a website called Zoofs we can see what videos are the most popular on Twitter right now. The website's creator has this to say about his project:
So what are you waiting for? Let's go check out Zoofs and see what it has to offer us. When arriving at the homepage you will see a grid with 7 video thumbnails by 6 video thumbnails. Each video shows you its respective running time in the lower right hand corner of the thumbnail.
We can click on any of the thumbnails to watch the video. Some of the thumbnails are marked with a star and a Zoof's Pick banner. These videos are hand picked out of the popular videos by the people at Zoofs. I clicked on the image in the upper right hand corner which I instantly recognized from last night's Simpsons episode.
We see a window that allows us to watch the video in HTML5 format or flash so it is compatible with Apple devices (iPad, iPhone iEverythingElse). You will see statistics in the video window showing you how many views the video has on YouTube as well as how many people have tweeted its URL. The above example was watched 25,346 times and mentioned in 613 tweets. It also categorizes the video's genre and this one is entertainment. There are links to share the Zoofs link out on any of the popular social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Digg. Clicking on the Zoofs Picks link at the top of the window will bring up all the videos chosen by the good people at Zoofs. This is what you see when you click on it.
So apparently these are the best of the best. I chose the first video to take a look at what the Zoofs team thinks is funny. Then I also clicked on the last 72 hours button at the top of the screen to see what is new and hot. You can see that button in the screenshot below:
I chose one of the videos at random and had a good chuckle over an animated orange doing that whole Wassssssup bit back from 1999…
Now I wanted to see what the most popular video on Zoofs were but I could not figure out how to sort them by tweets or views. I was able to show the videos in a list format that did have the views and tweet counts listed as you can see in the shot below:
If anyone can let me know how to sort the videos by views or tweets let me know in the comments! Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. 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 
Maybe you use 
It is a natural part of human nature to seek out adventure. While every person has a unique desire for the sort of excitement they would love, traveling and seeing new and amazing things seems deeply ingrained into the human spirit.
These days, whether it’s on 
If you’re in the market for a new computer, laptop, mobile phone, games and other accessories; don’t waste your time searching online. We’ve taken the liberty of locating the best deals tech deals and unifying them into a single post for your convenience.
The little blue bird called Twitter is flapping its wings everywhere. For most of us excessively chatty folks out there, it's important to keep up with all the tweets the bird makes. Like a lot of others, Twitter is my first port of call just after my inbox. My Skype address is the other place you can find me.
Modern Mac keyboards are outfitted with a number of extra function keys. Using those, you can instantly adjust your volume, screen brightness, or command media playback.
Long distance traveling is all about spending a large amount of time on the road. Once I had to sit for more than 24 hours on the bus on my land trip across the island of Java. The obvious question is: what should you do during those long sitting hours?
OCR stands for 
No I am not a mind reader. I am not even good at picking lotto numbers but I can tell you what YouTube videos will be going viral on Twitter in the next couple of days. This is not a magic trick but a clever use of resources.
| You are subscribed to email updates from MakeUseOf.com To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment