MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [May 5th]” plus 9 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [May 5th]
- Special MakeUseOf 20% Discount For Eltima Software
- 3 Awesome Firefox Addons For Parents & Families
- 10 Tips To Take Better Digital Pictures With Your Phone’s Camera
- Hot Tech Deals [May 5th]
- Track the Books You Have (and Want To) Read with Goodreads
- 10 Interactive Games To Teach Your Kids Alphabets & Numbers
- 10+ Tricks To Try With The Google Android Operating System
- How To Use Your Google Voice Number For Call Display In Skype
- The Top 4 Free Tools To Split Or Merge Music Tracks
| Cool Websites and Tools [May 5th] Posted: 05 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. NEW: Download MakeUseOf iPhone App. FREE! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| Special MakeUseOf 20% Discount For Eltima Software Posted: 05 May 2010 06:30 PM PDT
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| 3 Awesome Firefox Addons For Parents & Families Posted: 05 May 2010 04:31 PM PDT
There’s often a family computer that everyone shares, along with laptops or other desktops throughout the house. Families of today are connected through the Internet and more aspects of managing a family are conducted online than ever before. For this reason, I decided to take some time to review 3 of my favorite Firefox addons that can help parents easily manage the most important family matters all from the convenience of a single web browser.
Banking Quickly & Securely With FirebuxThe first Firefox addon is one that focuses on family finances. I personally believe that a healthy financial plan leads to a healthy family. At MakeUseOf we’ve often provided free tools that can help with budgeting and financial planning. For example, Nancy reviewed how to use Google budgeting tools, and I also reviewed tracking your budget with SimpleD. While these tools are useful, in order to simplify your already hectic life, I’m going to introduce a Firefox addon called Firebux. This addon is an offering from Buxfer, a free money management site that offers a single-account free option. By installing the Firebux addon, you’ll be able to track and manage your finances, with perfect integration with your bank account, at a simple click of a button.
Before you can use this plug-in, you’ll need to sign up for a free basic Buxfer account. Once you’ve configured your account, you can install the Firefox addon, and program it to automatically log into your bank account and upload the latest statement so that it remains perfectly synced with your bank account.
First, go to your bank account website and click on the Firebux icon in the lower left corner of Firefox and log into your Buxfer account. When you’re ready, click “synchronize” and the plugin will start recording your actions. Log into your bank account and go through the process of uploading your statement in Quicken format. When you’re done, log out of your bank account and stop the Firebux recording. Your account will now be synchronized with your bank account.
Now, just by clicking on the Firebux icon, you can view your balance, check out your current budget details and more. No need to log into your bank website anymore. Don’t worry if the recording process fails – you can always log into your Buxfer account and just upload your monthly statement manually, that works just fine. Find Supper Quickly With The GoCook Search EngineOne of the things that both my wife and I hate to do is cook. It’s hard enough to labor over the stove for an hour to put together a meal that the kids don’t even want half the time – but coming up with good recipes is a nightmare, especially in a home with picky kids. Luckily, you now have another Firefox addon to the rescue – introducing the GoCook search engine addon. GoCook is actually a popular standalone recipe search engine, but why not integrate the search by embedding the GoCook search field right into your Firefox browser?
Now, when you’re in a hurry and not sure what to make for supper, just open up Firefox and type in an ingredient, like pork or chicken, and you’ll receive instant recipe search results from websites like the Food Network, AllRecipes, Betty Crocker and much more.
GoCook aggregates search results from all of the major recipe sites and brings all of the results right to your door. For a parent in a hurry – no need to sift through all of these sites or even remember a single website name. Just open up Firefox and type in your recipe search into the quick and convenient GoCook search engine addon. Turn Your Computer Into The Family Bulletin Board With GlubbleOne of my favorite family-oriented Firefox addons is Glubble. This addon is especially useful for families that spend a lot of time online. It lets you communicate with everyone even if their faces are glued to the computer screen, and more importantly, if you have small children it lets you assign only a specific list of “approved” websites they can visit. Glubble basically transforms your Firefox browser into a child-safe browser for children, and a central location for family communications for the rest of the family.
The first thing you’ll need to do is set up your family page on Glubble. This is one of those sites that isn’t exactly the prettiest out there, but it’s the functionality that matters. Glubble provides three important services for your family – above, you can see the central bulletin board for everyone to communicate.
On the right side of the family page, you’ll see an event calendar where everyone can view upcoming events, and a photo album of family pictures that you’ve uploaded to the “timeline.” Over time, this timeline certainly starts to reflect the progression of time and the changes your family experienced through the years.
Most importantly, Glubble integrates the control and monitoring of the Internet for younger members of the family right into your Firefox browser. You can switch in and out of child mode so long as you have the adult-only password. When you log into your Glubble account as an adult, you can add or remove any website that you like to the “Kids collection,” which allows your child to visit that domain.
To include serious protection, you’ll want to be sure that you enable Glubble to start Firefox in Child mode every time Firefox starts up. This may not work for teenagers or older children who could just install a different browser, but for young children under 6 or 7 years old, this provides parents with peace of mind, knowing that the kids won’t inadvertently land on a site that they shouldn’t see. These three Firefox plugins represent the best solutions I’ve put in place to convert Firefox into a browser that is more useful and safe for my family. These apps help to simplify your banking, cooking and online activities by grouping them into your browser. Are there any other Firefox plugins that you’ve found are especially useful to your family? Please share your own favorites in the comment section below. Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| 10 Tips To Take Better Digital Pictures With Your Phone’s Camera Posted: 05 May 2010 02:31 PM PDT
That’s why I almost couldn’t forgive myself when I forgot to bring my digital camera when my office sent me to take a peek at Bali. The extraordinary scenes were everywhere, but I had nothing to capture the breathtaking images. Nothing but my cellphone camera.
Part A: The Technical TipsPart B: The Non-Technical TipsPart C: Other Obvious ThingsI’m sure the more experienced photographers among our readers have more tips that could be shared here. Feel free to use the comments below. And if you are in to photography, don’t forget to check out some of our related articles, including how to quick share your photos from cell phones and how to utilize your cellphone’s camera as a copy machine. Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| Posted: 05 May 2010 01:30 PM PDT
For more fresh hot deals, visit our Hot Tech Deals page, which is constantly updated.
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| Track the Books You Have (and Want To) Read with Goodreads Posted: 05 May 2010 12:31 PM PDT
We've talked about Goodreads on MakeUseOf before. It's one of a list of virtual libraries in a post from Bakari, and one of the four great ways to keep track of an expanding book collection according to TJ. I want to dig a little deeper, because in my next post I want to show you how to get information out of Goodreads for other purposes.
There are essentially two common tasks you're going to want to undertake in here. Let's just work through them. Add Books You Own Or Have ReadDepending on your needs, and likely your personality type, you may or may not want to trawl through your bookshelves at home and add all the books you already have. Or you might just want to start from where you are now. I'm a mixture. I have added books around the home, but increasingly now I'm reading some books electronically, so there is no evidence in the shelves. I add them anyway. I have something of an interest in vampires and werewolves. I've been around long enough to remember the genre before it became trendy, but that's another story. How about we go through and add a vampire book? Richard Matheson's I am Legend for example.
First, you need to search for the book, click the button, and find it in the list returned.
As you can see, GoodReads has a comprehensive set of books. Fortunately for us we want the first one in the list.
Firstly, you can assign a rating. I'd give this a three… Then you can complete the review and date sections if you wish.
Before we go further though, I'd like to talk about the shelves.
When you first start using Goodreads, the only shelves to put your books on are read, currently-reading and to-read, and these shelves are exclusive. That is, each book can only be on one shelf at any one time. You're read it, you are reading it, or you plan to read it. You can add more shelves, and they are not exclusive. That is, this book can be listed under both vampires and horror, if that is appropriate. For now, click on read. Click close, and save. Does this ongoing lack of upper-case letters drive you nuts? Oh, it's just me? Oh.
Locate the my books link at the top of the page, click that, and we can take a look as some of the options.
As you can see, I'm not very good at classifying my books. I'll get there. At the top of the list is an edit option for the shelves. If you want to do some heavy shelf construction this is the spot. The main part of the page lists all your books, or the filtered list if you've clicked on one of the shelf titles. You can edit the details for each book at any time. Add Books You Haven't ReadThis should be easy, right? I use Goodreads as my main way to track the books I need to buy or borrow, because without some help I'm prone to picking up a book and getting fifty pages in before realising that I've read it before. That's just me too, right? Goodreads does a great job of finding books that you might like to waste some time with, but in this case a good friend has told me that I need to read a book called The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, which may or may not be good advice. It's a story about Dracula, so the chances are good. First, do a search, and find the book.
We are in luck again. The book we want is the first on the list. Click the add to my books button again.
In my case, I want to tag it as a book to read, and also tick the library shelf I created, so I know to look for it next time I'm cruising the real shelves in town. On that subject, my next post is about how to take this booklist out of Goodreads and take it to the library with you. More on that soon. In the meantime, don't you need to work your way through the living room shelves? So, any questions? Thoughts on how else this might be used? Anyone have some cross-over interests, uses Goodreads, and would like to compare lists? Put it all in the comments below. We NEED Your Comments!!! Please do share your thoughts in article comments. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| 10 Interactive Games To Teach Your Kids Alphabets & Numbers Posted: 05 May 2010 11:31 AM PDT
In the Web 2.0 age, is it any wonder that they are online and browser based education tools? Now, a lot of households have computers. So, it would be easier to head towards a website rather than a children's bookstore.
That's the thought that bolstered me as I kept the books aside and headed to the Internet to find alphabet learning games for kids online. My search was for learning websites that could give some pre-schooling interactively. Children might have some fun while learning. With these ten websites, maybe we can have fun teaching them too. Simple ABC's
Start off with a very simple way to learn ABC's, but in a colorful manner. Learn Your ABC's from Fisher-Price and its online games section is a Flash based tool. The game introduces the child to the letters, one at a time. The letters change in different colors and all the child has to do is to press any key on the keyboard. Help The Monkey
Alphabet Antics is about a monkey who need some help with coconuts. The alphabet game has three levels. The game is about a monkey who says the letters out aloud and the child has to click on the right coconut to help the monkey clamber up the tree. With each wrong answer, the monkey comes down a notch or two. Also, choose between capitals and small letters to make the child recognize both. Pick One From The Floor
Poisson Rouge has a bunch of games that appeal to kids between the ages of 3 to 7. On the colorful homepage, you get to see a lot of objects without any information on how to use them. That's a deliberate design to encourage discovery by kids. As the user guide explains, kids hardly read (and you can't expect a 3 year old to read!). So you get games which teach you about letters and numbers starting from the real simple ones to others that teach more fundamental things like reading time or guessing colors. The site is completely ad free and supports French and English. Haunted Alphabets
The Funschool game takes the child into a haunted house where letters are hidden. With the ghostly music playing in the background, the learning task is about discovering the hidden letters. Find out if the scary stuff helps kids remember letters more effectively. Whacking Pesky Moles To Friendly Bees & Frogs
PlayKidsGames has a lineup of alphabet games which can thoroughly make your kid an alphabet whiz. The child can hammer the annoying moles in alphabetical order. He can help a little ugly frog lap up some letters for lunch. He can also help the bees build their hive of letters. And lots more. Most of these are Flash games. From Matching Alphabets To Connecting Number Dots
ABCya! is another site with a lineup of Kindergarten children’s computer games and activities. Alphabet matching games and connecting numbered dots should be great primers for a young child. You need not delete the bookmark, as the child can graduate to games like Make a Pizza and other puzzles. The site also features a few storybook based learning games. Catch The Train
LearningPlanet has two nice games which could be good starters for number recognition. You can let your child catch the number train and then count a few chickens. Learning At The BBC
Picking the BBC for pre-school learning sounds strange, but the BBC happens to be a great education resource too. Bernie and Bill, the two characters, are there to help you out with a few number games for ages between the ages of 4-11. I went back to Snakes and Ladders after a long time. Get The Numbers At Sesame Street
You can find Sesame Street on television. And it's there with a host of learning activities on the web too. You can watch Mumford the Magician pull out numbers from his hat or any of the other four that are there in their Numbers/Counting category. Finally, Chill Out At This Pretty Place
Orsinal is almost picture perfect. Although it's not about letters or digits, it could be about developing motor skills as the games are quite rapid. The games should be simple fun for children. What's really eye-catching are the graphics. Everyone deserves a break after some hard studying. These ten sites with alphabet learning games for kids online could provide the right spark to take your kids from pre-schoolers to scholars. Okay, that's a bit early to predict, but these sites are all about learning activities. Though, no one would advice that a child spends too much time in front of the computer; the PC has a becoming a great education tool for all ages. The only thing that we need to worry about is chocolate smudges on the screen. Let us know about your favorite sites for some home schooling. Image Credit: listentoreason Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf fan page on Facebook. Over 17,000 fans already!
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| 10+ Tricks To Try With The Google Android Operating System Posted: 05 May 2010 10:31 AM PDT
This year seems to be the beginning of the full launch of Android as a powerful mobile operating system. Now that so many people are transitioning to Android, what are some of the coolest tricks and tips Google has hidden in its OS? Below is a taste of the less known features you can find.
Gesture Search
One of the new Labs applications forAndroid operating system 2.0 phones is called Gesture Search. It allows you to search your phone by using your fingers to write letters on the screen instead of using the keyboard. Instead of typing letter by letter on a search bar, simply tap the little hand sign on the screen and draw a letter. Android will search your phone for anything starting with the letters you type. Gesture Search can be configured to search through your whole phone, or you can select it to search only through certain specific folders, such as contacts or music. You can also erase a query by gesturing. Going across it horizontally, left to right, erases the entire query, and going across right to left removes the last letter or space in the query. Creating Shortcuts & Adding Slots To Your HomepageYou can create a shortcut to your favorite websites on your homepage by simply pressing and holding any site in your browser’s bookmarks and then selecting “Add Shortcut to Home”. Now what happens when your home slots are full?
Download a little free app called “UltimateFaves Carousel” from Google Market. It allows you to add 16 new icons to one slot, but using a very cool 3D rotating viewer to a single slot. The Many Uses Of The Search KeyThe search key on Android gives you specific search options according to where you are, particularly with Google sites. For example, if you click the search button while on Google Maps, you’ll get a prompt for street, city and zip code, but if you click the search key while on YouTube, it will search YouTube for the term you selected. Unfortunately ATT has disabled several of Android’s features and added their own choices to the phone and locked them in place, so the search feature on ATT phones uses Yahoo, not Google, so the features don’t work the same way. Browsers & Their PerksThe full HTML browser from Google does a great job at showing sites in full HTML, but a few other Android-compatible browsers have their own charm. One of them is the Dolphin browser, which is an app that allows you to download YouTube videos to your phone to watch on the go. It is fully integrated with social networks, allows you to sync with Google Bookmarks and to save webpages to read later. The Gesture Search feature also works with the Dolphin browser.
Voice Dial & Its Other UsesVoice Dial is one of the apps that come with Android, and it has more uses than it seems. You can, of course, use it to call people without having to look for their number. Simply click on voice dial and say the name of the person you want to call or say “call (name of person)” to make a call. But you can use Voice Dial to search for many other shortcuts. Want to know detailed information about your battery, such as charge and voltage? Open the Voice Dial app and say “Open battery Info“. You can basically open most programs by saying “open” and the name of the program. Make sure you pronounce things clearly though. I’ve called the wrong person before. Shortcut To Programs You Used LastOn some phone models, Android will show you the last six programs you used if you press and hold the home button. Voice SearchCurrently available for Android 2.0 and up. Simply click the microphone button on the search widget and wait for the ‘Speak Now” prompt. You can just say what you are looking for and Android will find it for you. That feature is also available on the Android browser. Press the “Menu” button and tap “Search“. You will see the microphone there and you can use it for search words or for website URLs.
Connecting To Your Computer To Transfer Your FilesYou don’t need to have any special software to connect your Android phone to your computer. Some models will automatically detect if you are connected via USB and prompt you with options. If that doesn’t happen, after attaching the phone via the USB cable (it usually comes with the phone), an image of a USB appears on the top bar. Tap on it and drag down, then click on the USB connected box and the option to mount appears. Click on it and you can now drag and drop files to it like you would do to an external drive.
A Few Other Tips
With so many features, there are sure to be many other tricks you discovered and we missed. Share them with us in the comments. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| How To Use Your Google Voice Number For Call Display In Skype Posted: 05 May 2010 09:31 AM PDT
Google Voice, in case you weren’t aware, is also awesome. You’re given one phone number that, when called, causes all your phones to ring. Combine this with online transcribed email you can have SMSed to your cell and you’ve got a pretty incredible free service. Browse our collection of recent Google Voice articles to find out more, but remember: this service currently works only in the United States of America.
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| The Top 4 Free Tools To Split Or Merge Music Tracks Posted: 05 May 2010 08:31 AM PDT
After downloading and using MergeMP3 I got a call that they also wanted to split several music tracks into smaller pieces. I found several tools that do these jobs. I figured that I would share my research with you guys. Let's take a look at the applications that I found.
The application is very straightforward. You click on the add files button to add files. This is how you choose the audio files that you would like to split. Then on the right hand side of the interface you will see options to split the file into x equal parts or to split the audio file after a specified duration. You choose your sliced folder at the bottom of the window and then click slice. The application will do all the heavy lifting for you and you can add multiple files at a time to do large batches. Next up we have an application that can split audio & video files. This application is called Media Convert and it is online. You can use this in a pinch if your initial files are not huge or you have a fast Internet connection. There are a few really good features that I saw in Media Convert. Besides being able to handle ALL audio and video formats it also handles ALL ringtone formats. You can convert your files to something else but you can also convert it to the same format using the split feature.
Simply visit their website, upload your file at the top of the page and select your setting towards the bottom. You can select the input and output format to be the same. In the above screenshot it is set to MP3. Then at the bottom of the screen you can check the check box to split the file into xKB chunks. Then simply click the I accept the terms button and you will be able to download your converted file. I have also found that this application can split ZIP or RAR files as well. Our third free program to edit music is called Media MP3 Joiner 1.2. The download was 1.5 MB and installed very quickly. When the application opened it was pretty easy to figure out and use.
I clicked on the plus button to add my tracks. Then you can click the up and down arrows to move around the order of your tracks. Then simply hit the play button to start your merge. It will prompt you to create a filename for the new merged track. It will then merge them. You can then open the merged track and listen to it. And last but not least we have MergeMP3 which we covered here previously. You can download the application from the authors homepage. The application was a tiny 719KB file. Just like the other applications we need to add our tracks to the program. You can drag and drop or use the File –> Open feature to get your songs in there. Then you can move the tracks up or down in the order that they will be played with the up and down arrows. Click on the music notes button selected in the shot below to merge your songs into one file.
You will be prompted for the new file name and then the program will assemble your newly merged file. Do you have a favorite application that allows you to split or merge music tracks? If so we would love to hear about it in the comments! Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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As a parent, it can be pretty difficult sometimes to manage everything that you need to do. As your kids get older and start in with the sports, school projects and other activities, family life becomes a hectic mix of finances, cooking, homework and more.
I always thought that cellphone cameras were a joke. Even though the quality of the cameras in general have increased over the past few years, it’s nothing compared to the standalone digital camera. I believe that real photos can only be taken with “real cameras”, not some tiny hole behind the phone.
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Goodreads describes itself as the largest book social network for readers in the world. I can't comment on the scale of the site, but it sure does a great job of tracking books, and like the best libraries, it's both quiet and unobtrusive. Let me show you around.
Click the add to my books button, ignoring the other options for now, and you'll land on a page where you can take some more comprehensive action.
Down the left side of the page is a list of your books. If you've just started then the only book listed will be the one you just added. The books are totalled on the basis of the shelves they are on, and you can click on the shelf title to filter to just those books.
Teaching kids all about alphabets and numbers used to involve plastic blocks or glossy books. Of course, you had to throw in lots of patience too. The patience bit has remained unchanged across generations, but a few new teaching tools to help with alphabets and numbers have come into the picture.
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Skype is awesome, but calling regular phones with it can lead to confusion – particularly if you haven’t paid the $60 annual fee for an online number. You’ll have no display number, so people you’re calling will often not pick up because they think you’re a telemarketer – or worse.
Today I got tasked with finding a program that would merge music tracks together for free. I quickly found an application that Mark wrote for MakeUseOf on 
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