MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites And Tools [May 10th]” plus 9 more |  |
- Cool Websites And Tools [May 10th]
- 10 Most Downloaded Software For Audio Files [Movers & Shakers]
- Join MakeUseOf On Facebook!
- 10 Websites To Download Older Versions Of Software
- Hot Tech Deals [May 10th]
- 3 New Ways To Discover Popular Online Content
- The Secret To Watch Movies On The Internet With YouTube
- How To Take Your Goodreads Booklist With You Using Windows Mobile
- Finding Your Friends Via GPS With These 9 Free Mobile Apps
- Safe-Keep Precious Data with ioSafe Solo [MakeUseOf Giveaway]
| Cool Websites And Tools [May 10th] Posted: 10 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. Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| 10 Most Downloaded Software For Audio Files [Movers & Shakers] Posted: 10 May 2010 06:31 PM PDT
This week we will be looking at MP3 & audio software. These are the apps that we use to convert, organize or listen to our digital audio files as well as rip physical music to a digital format. There are some awesome applications on this list.
If you have other personal favorites let us know in the comments. We want to hear about everything from music players, to rippers and back to applications that help you manage your audio collection. Put us on below. Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| Posted: 10 May 2010 04:30 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! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| 10 Websites To Download Older Versions Of Software Posted: 10 May 2010 02:31 PM PDT
It also has a word of its own – Abandonware. Though meant for old and discarded games, it also covers older version software. When it comes to technology, the speed of change is so rapid that we don't really miss the older versions. Perhaps, with applications like operating systems and Office suites, we do fall into habits that sometimes are difficult to give up. But the changeover to the newer version of the tools is just a matter of time.
Just like when one of our readers asked an apt question. His query in MUO Answers touches upon his need to get a trial copy of Access 2003 so that he can study for an exam. I tried and have so far failed. Maybe you can help him out? But while I was searching for that elusive software, I came across a few websites that keep copies of older software versions. Call it nostalgia or call it a 'timely' need, it's important to know a few sources to get the oldies from. OldVersion (Windows & Mac)
Start off from the categories under which all the old software are arranged. If not, there's the search field on top. If both fail, the site has a forum of its own where you can post a question or help someone out with theirs (the forum seems to be down temporarily). The site has been there since 2001, so expect to get some of the real oldies. The site lists 2,869 versions of 192 programs for both Windows and Mac. Mac users can choose from 601 versions of 35 programs. From our archives: OldVersion: Find Older Versions of Software OldApps (Windows & Mac)
OldApps.com lists both Windows and Mac software. You have older messengers, browsers, file sharing apps and more. For Windows you have 2,843 old versions of 194 programs. Mac users can choose from 550 old versions of 40 programs. You can quickly glance through the Most Popular and Newly Added older version software sections on the side column. The site also has a community discussion board. You can also send in any old software that you might have lying around. From our archives: OldApps: Get Older Version of any Popular Program VersionDownload
This is the place I stumbled on when I was searching for an older (less bloated) version of iTunes. The site is neat and looks like one of the newest, going by its first blog entry dated March 2009. The software page lists out all the chronological version number changes and you can download them with a single click. From our archives: VersionDownload: Archive Of Old Software Versions Oldware
This is a well organized site for old Windows software versions. Most of the software available on this site has been verified and installed by the site author. The site lists 2,453 old software. On the homepage you can make out with a glance the alphabetical list of the software, the number of versions available, version that was last added, and when it has been updated. Old-Versions
The site presents a very simple interface with all software listed out. Apart from the usual categories, there are a few older versions of enterprise level software like Cisco TFTP Server, 3Com Daemon, and SolarWinds TFTP etc. Old-Versions.net
This website is almost a namesake of the previous one and does not differ by much in the way it has organized the old software collection. You can drill down through the categories on the homepage or use the Quick Jump dropdown. For some of the software, you get a simple download link, while others come with a brief description and the versions available listed out for download. Last Freeware Version
This site can be a very good resource because it lists out the last freeware version of many popular programs that have become paid now. It's perfect for downloading software that is less system critical. Take for example a calculator app like Showcalc. The latest version is v5.1 and it retails for $17.50. If I can make do with the functionality of its last available freeware version (v3.01), it's well worth a download for me from this website. Download Old Version
This site has a selective list of older version software. The software listed are all free but not current. You can browse through the categories like Chat, Multimedia, Internet, File Sharing, Graphic Apps, and Utilities. What this site lacks is a search box, so you just have to go through the categories. The specific software page lists the changelogs and descriptions of the available versions. Old-Software
186 programs available in 1,335 versions is a good enough resource. The website is available in three more languages. You have categories for old drivers and rather uniquely, a section on older mobile software. Jaghouse's Links Page For Classic Macs (Mac Only)
Mac users can try out this page which lists out a lot of really old Mac software and points to lots of other pages where you can find more old Mac software to run on an older Macintosh. Random browsing revealed that some pages have become non-existent, while some have moved. But it is still browse-worthy because of the number of FTP links that you follow through for some needed download. The page doesn't seem to be updated. Using old software versions is not only about nostalgia or a one-off use. One direct practical use is that some low end machines are not capable of meeting the hardware requirements of the updated software. Instead of throwing away an entire computer, they can be made useful with the older, less system intensive versions. Think of young students who cannot afford the latest software or the latest machines. Installing old software is certainly not recommended for anti-virus and firewall functions, but for tasks which are less system critical; their use in special situations can be considered. What are the reasons that might make you go looking for software you left behind long ago? Image Credit: Szilveszter Farkas NEW: Download MakeUseOf iPhone App. FREE! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| Posted: 10 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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| 3 New Ways To Discover Popular Online Content Posted: 10 May 2010 12:31 PM PDT
There’s no denying the popularity of sites like Digg and StumbleUpon, but there are a ton of other options available, each with an interesting twist, whether it’s in the way the content is presented, or by gathering popular content from specific social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.
Find The Most Popular Online Content With The Bus RideThe Bus Ride is an aggregator of sorts that gives you a simple and unique way to navigate through information on your preferred topics, much like being on a bus and going from one stop to the next. The Bus Ride frontpage features popular stories from all around the web in a variety of categories. You can choose to display different types of stories, from the newest, to the most creative, entertaining and educational. You can also browse through specific categories such as News, Products, Sports, Technology and Travel.
Selecting any given story, you will then be taken on a route of sorts. Each stop consists of a post related to that story from a different website. So opening up a post on “alternatives to the iPad” takes you to an article on Wired, with the next stop on Engadget, followed by The Huffington Post.
By the end of the route, you should know all that you ever wanted to know about alternatives to the iPad. You can also search for any topic and The Bus Ride will create a personalised route for you to discover articles, videos from YouTube, Wikipedia entries, Gowalla posts, and much more. Each route consists of 6 stops. Repeating the same search for a personalised route will sometimes result in new content for you to read, although some of it is repeated. As you go through your routes, you can earn stamps. The stamps are displayed on your Facebook profile, and require that you connect to your Facebook account. Connecting to your Facebook account also allows you to comment on and ‘like’ posts from a sidebar directly within The Bus Ride.
Find Interesting Content On Twitter With ReStreamReStream makes it easy to filter through the abundance of information available on Twitter. What makes ReStream particularly useful is that you have complete control over what kind of information is included in your stream. Setting up your stream of content couldn’t be easier. After connecting to your Twitter account, you can enter as many keywords or tags as you like. If there are more tags that you want to add at a later date, you can do so by going into your profile settings.
You also have the choice of importing your Twitter favourites as a means of further personalising the content that will be made available to you. You can then look at the Recommended Reading tab based on the tags that you entered when first setting up your account. Articles can be marked as read, and are also accompanied by ‘comments,’ so you can see who has mentioned these articles on Twitter.
Using ReStream, you can also look through your own Twitter stream, and it will feature select tweets from the people you follow, you can browse content by popularity, or certain featured categories.
Find Interesting Content On Facebook With ItsTrendingItsTrending is like a Digg of sorts for Facebook, and the best part is that you don’t actually need a Facebook account to benefit from it. Using this site, you can easily find the most popular online content such as news, tech and sports stories, along with popular videos and images that are being shared on the social networking site. The front page features the top 5 stories in each category.
Opening up any given category will show a list of the most popular stories with a counter for how many times each post has been shared on Facebook.
If you are logged into Facebook, it will allow you to comment on and ‘like’ stories directly from ItsTrending.
How do you find interesting content from around the web? Let us know in the comments. Image credit: Svilen Milev Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| The Secret To Watch Movies On The Internet With YouTube Posted: 10 May 2010 11:31 AM PDT
Luckily the folks at YouTube have tried to make it easy for us to find all the full-length movies available – and then they did their best to hide the fact that they’d done this. So, it’s now time to fix this problem and let you all know where YouTube have hidden the movies.
YouTube Movies
Ready for this? It’s unbelievably simple. It’s right here: http://www.youtube.com/movies. Yes, they hid it right where we’d least expect it – right under our noses. By the way, this trick also works for TV shows. It seems the YouTube Blog is willing to list all of these awesome curated content areas, but you’ll be hunting around forever if you try to find a mention of them on YouTube.
Looking at the full-length movies available, it’s a very documentary and independent film heavy selection. However, there are some great films in the collection. Here’s Animal Farm and Night of the Living Dead for starters. Plus, the animation and foreign film sections are bursting with films. Take a look around!
YouTube Screening Room
The YouTube Screening Room is another area you might like to check out – especially if you’re a fan of art-house movies and new animation. Basically, independent filmmakers are encouraged to submit their films in their entirety for some extra promotion through the screening room. YouTube then chooses a handful of these submissions to be featured for a while. These are high quality films too – often these are films from the Sundance Festival or other high profile movie festivals. These YouTube clips are always the full length of the film, however some are short films. Never mind how short they are – some of these are award-winning films. Scroll through the archives to watch previously featured films – I heartily recommend Skizhein, Super Size Me, Harvie Krumpet and Bartholemew’s Song. By the way, some of these films have technically been removed from YouTube, but a copy is still available for the YouTube screening room archive. So, the screening room (or these links) are the only way to view them on YouTube. More Stuff To WatchIf you’re keen to watch more great content on YouTube (or elsewhere online), here’s some other great things to watch:
YouTube TipsNow that you know where to find the movies, remind yourself how to watch YouTube movies on your iPod. This is a winning combination, for sure. Also check out these great MakeUseOf tips and tricks for YouTube lovers: Hopefully this post will keep you entertained for a while. Let us know which full-length movies on YouTube you enjoyed the most. Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| How To Take Your Goodreads Booklist With You Using Windows Mobile Posted: 10 May 2010 10:31 AM PDT
I use a Windows Mobile smartphone, and this article is all about getting from one to the other as easily as possible. We have talked about things associated with goodreads before. Bakari did a great comparison with LibraryThing and Shelfari, Simon discussed some stand-alone book recommendation engines along with library management, and Stefan built a list of the best book review sites. Most recently I gave you a deeper look at how to track your book collection in goodreads.
What Is Goodreads Good For?Two things, in my opinion. First off, I can use it to find out what people who read the books that I like are also reading, along with checking up on what books my friends are consuming. Secondly, and more relevant today, I use goodreads to compile and maintain a list of the books that I haven't read yet, but would like to. Then I can use that as a shopping or borrowing list. I love libraries, but wandering aimlessly for interesting books is something I can seldom find the time for. The Take AwayThis is really what we are here for. How can I take my goodreads information with me? In my case, I need to export a list of books I want to borrow from the library, add that list to my phone, and take it with me. Couldn't I just browse to the goodreads site on the phone? Probably. But cellphone reception isn't great in the library, and the regular goodreads interface does NOT work well on a phone. If you're an iPhone or Blackberry user you might have more fun with the special goodreads mobile site, but it didn't help me out much.
So, back to exporting the data. The chances of you wanting to follow the exact same process as me is slim, but there's enough general information here to modify things to suit your needs. Export From goodreadsWe need to get the information out of goodreads in a format which is more accessible to other tools. That turns out to be easy. Click the my books link at the top of the page.
At the bottom of the book list is a list of tools, including an import/export option. Click on that.
On the right, an option to export to a csv file.
You'll be presented with a confirmation dialog. That's probably a little over the top, as no changes are being made.
Nonetheless, boldly click OK. Depending on your setup, your operating system, your browser, and quite likely the phase of the moon, you'll see some sort of question about what you want to do with the file. Save it somewhere you can find it again, and move on. Finding The Good StuffThe only real problem with this process is that you now have a file that has a whole lot of books in it that you have already read, or have no desire to read. We need to filter out the gold, and we're going to use Excel for that, though you could use any other tool that deals intelligently with CSV files. Open the file in Excel and take a look.
The data is all there in a tabular fashion, but it's pretty awful to look at. The first thing is to pare it back to the columns we are actually interested in. In my case, that's:
Depending on the level of sophistication you want, you can use lots of other information, but all I need is an alphabetical list. So, delete the other columns first, resize the ones you have left, and then take another look.
Nearly there. I still have books in the list that I have already read. Sort by the Exclusive Shelf column, and delete those ones.
Now, given that the fiction shelves in most libraries are sorted by author name, let's match that by resorting the list. That way we can walk through the shelves with a lot less bother.
There's our newly added book on row 37. You can delete the Exclusive Shelf column if you've filtered out the books you've read, and then all you need to do is to save the file to a format your phone/PDA can use, and sync the device. I'm pretty sure you know how to do that. I have some more sophisticated Excel formulas that I use to do things like extract the series information from the title field (not quite sure why it doesn't have its own column in the export) and to exclude the books that I have tagged as probably-won't-bother, but you can build those sort of things in to suit your own needs. So, how was that? Did I leave out anything that might be helpful? Do you have similar processes? Any recommendations? Questions? I'd really like to hear all about it in the comments below. Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| Finding Your Friends Via GPS With These 9 Free Mobile Apps Posted: 10 May 2010 09:31 AM PDT
Being able to locate your friends without having to call them is a major bonus. And since we’ve become so adept at using social networks anyway, this is just one more tool added to the toolbox. Want to be able to find your friends even if you can’t hear them? If you want to locate their position (or give them yours) these 9 applications should help.
LOCiMOBILE [iPhone & Android]LOCiMOBILE has a few great GPS tracking apps out at the moment. The two that I would like to feature are the free/lite versions of the software. GPS Tracking Lite
This app supports up to 6 users (paid version is unlimited) and integrates with Twitter and Facebook. GPS Tracking populates your phone’s built-in Google Maps with the locations of people in your private opt-in buddy list. You can let users know where you are or request their location, and you can post your information to your social profiles. iLOCi2 Lite
iLOCi2 is the “Interactive GPS People Finder.” Add people to your contact list and you can receive their location through notification alerts. The app seems like a simpler version of GPS Tracking that is focused more on keeping your contact information organized. This app works in the background as well. Loopt [iPhone, Blackberry, Android & More]
We’ve covered Loopt briefly in the past through a directory listing. Loopt is perfect for finding your friends via GPS and to learn what they’re doing. You can discover events or places around you or your friends with Loopt Pulse, as well as check in to places and share directions. Loopt runs on over 100 phones. Mobcast [iPhone & Web Browser]
Mobcast is a Facebook application that lets you meet up with your friends without calling back and forth. View your friends’ locations on a map and post “mobcasts” which update your Facebook status with your location and push notifications to your friends. Since the app is integrated with Facebook, there is no need to add your friends. You can also use this application from any web browser simply by signing in. Friends Around Me [iPhone & iPad]
Use Friends Around Me to interact with friends across social networks and meet new friends based on a location-based search. Features include a free group chat, open profiles with alerts, integration with social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and a rewards system. HeyWAY [iPhone]
HeyWAY stands for Hey Where Are You. HeyWAY emphasizes privacy by making you individually authorize others to see your location. You can also choose when you want to receive updates. The app also logs location updates so you can refer back to your friends’ locations whenever you want. Find My Friend [iPhone]
Find My Friend is a Facebook app, which means it cannot be used if you don’t have a Facebook account. The main purpose of the app is to be able to meet up with your friends without having to tell each other where you are. It is integrated with Facebook and you have the ability to accept/reject requests. Privacy is taken into account with this app. Friend Mapper Free [iPhone]
Friend Mapper updates your position live every 15 seconds. You can hide your position at any time. One-touch call or text your friends and view their locations. The time of their last update is noted. The free version of this app only allows you to view one friend’s location, however. The paid version (99 cents) allows up to 23 streams simultaneously. GeoTwitts [iPhone]
GeoTwitts posts your GPS location to Twitter. It also reads your friends GeoTwitts and gives you their location, along with directions to them if you would like to meet up. The app uses Google Maps to monitor/display directions and navigation. ConclusionWith these apps installed on your mobile device, finding your friends via GPS should be easy. Have you used any of these apps before? Are there any geo-location apps you use that I didn’t cover? Leave your thoughts, ideas, and comments below! Image Credit: Rotorhead We NEED Your Comments!!! Please do share your thoughts in article comments. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| Safe-Keep Precious Data with ioSafe Solo [MakeUseOf Giveaway] Posted: 10 May 2010 08:30 AM PDT
Just like how insuring a car or a house will help to minimise unforeseen loses, doing everything to keep your data safe is priceless. Enter ioSafe. This week, we will be giving away one 500GB USB ioSafe Solo external hard drive which is fireproof, waterproof, shockproof and crushproof. Believe you me, you’ll sleep better at night if your data was stored on one of these. I know I would. Find out how you can win this giveaway prize after the jump.
Key Features:
We will be giving away one 500GB USB ioSafe Solo external hard drive with a 3-year warranty and 1-year Data Recovery Service (shipping included). Anyone is eligible for this prize.
So let’s see how you can win! How do I win a copy?We have just implemented a new giveaway form, please take the time to read the instructions. It’s still simple. Just follow the steps.
This giveaway begins now and will end on Friday, 14th May at 2100hrs PST. The winner will be selected at random and announced via email. Spread the word to your friends and have fun! MakeUseOf would like to thank Brett Callow from ioSafe for his generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email. Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf fan page on Facebook. Over 17,000 fans already!
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The old always gives way to the new. This fact is true of life. It's even truer when it comes to software. Before you can say – “what a great piece of software!" the version changes. It takes just a click to uninstall the older software version and download the spanking newer variant. The memory of the older software gets left behind as a just a registry trace somewhere.
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