MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [May 22nd]” plus 4 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [May 22nd]
- Microsoft Docs – A Supplement To (Not A Replacement) MS Office
- How To Sync Tomboy Notes Across Different Computers & Operating Systems
- MakeUseOf Team Spotlight [May 22nd 2010]
- 9 Websites To Show You The Hottest Stuff on Twitter Now
| Cool Websites and Tools [May 22nd] Posted: 22 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. Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| Microsoft Docs – A Supplement To (Not A Replacement) MS Office Posted: 22 May 2010 06:31 PM PDT
We've written more than our fair share about Google Docs, the most recent piece being Tim's about 5 New Google Docs Features You Might Have Missed. Google’s goal in creating Google Docs, it would seem, was to bring down Microsoft Office – which is perhaps the most universally installed piece of software on the planet. Google Docs hasn’t yet managed to lessen Office’s behemoth market share, but apparently Microsoft’s worried enough to experiment with the cloud.
Getting Started With Microsoft DocsMicrosoft Docs is technically in beta, but I received my login within minutes of signing up. Just head over to Docs.com and click the “Sign Up” button. You can create a new document by clicking the “Add a Doc” button at the top of the screen. Do so and you’ll see a familiar interface:
The ribbon has made it to the web. If you like Microsoft Office’s interface you’ll find this a welcome relief from Google Docs’ menu-driven interface. You’ll quickly find out that Microsoft Docs is not meant to be a completely online alternative to Microsoft Office. Only the most basic word processing features, for example, have made it over to Word as you can see in the picture above. The Excel interface is similarly limited:
Note that there’s only two ribbons: “Home” and “Insert.” To many this may be a relief from Office’s often-complex interface. You can upload any existing Office document to Docs, assuming it’s a Microsoft document – no Open Office integration here, unsurprisingly. Some features, including macros, will not work online. Still, Microsoft Docs is cool in some ways. Your documents look the same online as they do on your desktop. That compatibility is valuable. Docs is also integrated very well with Facebook. Facebook IntegrationYou’ll notice right away that signing into Microsoft Docs requires not an MSN username and password but a Facebook one. You can easily share documents with your Facebook friends, and every document has a Facebook-driven “wall” which you can use to leave comments about a given document. Heck, there’s even a “Friend’s Docs” wall where you can see documents all your friends on Facebook have shared. If Facebook is the center of your work life you may find this integration useful. It’s a pretty cool platform for sharing funny PowerPoint presentations, too. There was one from The Oatmeal featured on the front page:
Compared To Google DocsA few things Google’s document offering has that Microsoft lacks are obvious. First of all, Google allows users to download their documents in both the Open Office and Microsoft Office formats. Microsoft Docs offers instead an “Open In Office” button that opens the document in the proper Microsoft-approved piece of software. Try this out if you don’t have Office installed, or on a Linux system, and you’ll see a message like this:
You’ll find the same error message pops up if you have a version of Word older than 2007, which is a little disappointing. There’s no obvious way to download documents from Docs without Microsoft Office, but I did find a workaround. Click the “Finish Editing” button and re-open your document. You’ll now see a “Download” button that will give you the document in the proprietary Office 2007 format. This is kind of hidden but is at least possible. There’s also, as of this writing, no equivalent service to Google Forms in the spreadsheet app (although this may be in the works). It should also be noted that I experienced numerous bugs while using the service. If you’re looking to use an online service as your primary office suite I’d suggest waiting until Microsoft Docs comes out of beta. Still, there are some advantages to this service over Google’s. Since the programmers have access to Microsoft’s proprietary formats, every document uploaded to Microsoft Docs looks identical to the same document on the desktop (though the same could be said with Google Docs and Open Office documents, which Microsoft Docs can’t even open). IE & SilverlightI experienced nothing but crashes attempting to use this service in Firefox and Chrome. Your mileage may vary, but for the best possible experience using Docs I suggest using Internet Explorer with Silverlight installed. As such, this service sucks on Linux. Without Silverlight you’ll have very limited functionality; install Moonlight and the service will crash constantly (or at least it did on my Jolicloud setup). ConclusionAny wholesale comparison to Google Docs is unfair, as Microsoft Docs is still in its infancy. Considering how tied this webapp is to its parent software, Microsoft Office, I'm not certain this is even supposed to compete with Google Docs. And the fact is that Microsoft Docs is a pretty cool service if you’re already reliant on Microsoft Office and plugged into Facebook. If you’re someone who wants to stop buying Microsoft Office altogether and store all your data in the cloud, however, the limited feature set and relative instability outside of Internet Explorer may be a setback. This webapp seems like more of a supplement to Microsoft Office than an alternative to it. What do you guys think? Am I being to hard on Microsoft Docs, or not hard enough? Are you excited to see more and more programs make their way over to the cloud? Commenting is your chance to express yourself, so please share! Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf fan page on Facebook. Over 17,000 fans already!
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| How To Sync Tomboy Notes Across Different Computers & Operating Systems Posted: 22 May 2010 03:31 PM PDT
I have always believed that note taking apps should be simple bare minimum apps. The more features, the more you are likely to get distracted while creating notes. You don’t need fancy formatting and tags and categories. Most of the time all you want is to file away a thought or a task that you need to get back to later. Tomboy notes does that very well!
So I have my homebrew method of syncing Tomboy notes across operating systems and across different computers, which I think is worth sharing here. There is nothing so special about the technique. All it uses is some built in Tomboy features and our favorite sync tool Dropbox. Here are the steps to achieve a perfect seamless sync:
A Few Noteworthy Points
Overall the technique works seamlessly. The only thing I wish I could do was to access the notes on a mobile device as well. We could use the Dropbox public folder for read-only access but the notes are not stored in plain text and aren’t readable as such without the Tomboy application. If you can think of a way to do so, share it with us in the comments! What is your favorite note taking app? How do you sync your notes? NEW: Download MakeUseOf iPhone App. FREE! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| MakeUseOf Team Spotlight [May 22nd 2010] Posted: 22 May 2010 12:31 PM PDT
In this edition of Spotlight, we will be profiling the work of Ryan, Steven, Evan, and Taty. But we will also be letting you know the Twitter streams maintained by the MUO team, in case you would like to subscribe to them. Our team loves feedback and conversation from the readers. If you would like to take part in that conversation, subscribe to their Twitter streams today.
1. iPhone vs Android – Who Wins? The Google Droid Does.by Ryan Dube @ Ryan Dube.com
2. 10 Branding & Social Media Blogs You Should Be Followingby Steven Campbell @ Social Branding
Out of the hundreds of blogs Steve follows, he has compiled a list of some of the very best when it comes to social branding. 3. A Google Earth Secret: Flight Simulator Modeby Evan Wondrasek @ Techerator
Sure, there are plenty of practical uses for Google Earth, but a fantastic hidden feature allows you to turn Google Earth into a global (and interplanetary) flight simulator. 4. Picasso’s Guernica In 3D (with video)by Taty Sena @ Beholders.org
It is certainly an interesting use of technology that allows us to perceive this incredible painting and its stunning details from a different perspective. 5. Subscribe To MakeUseOf Twitter Streamsby Mark O’Neill @ Mark O’Neill’s Twitter Stream
If you would like to follow the MUO staff yourself on Twitter, check out this Twitter list, which is updated on a regular basis, as staff are hired or fired. From there, you can click through to each writer’s Twitter profile where you can subscribe to them for all their latest updates. Image Credit : Visualogist Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| 9 Websites To Show You The Hottest Stuff on Twitter Now Posted: 22 May 2010 10:31 AM PDT
In this article, we’ll take a look at search Twitter for the most popular stories by the number of retweets or favourites a tweet receives, as well as how to find specific kinds of interesting information on Twitter.
Search Twitter For Information Based On PopularityTweetMemeThere are a variety of services for finding the most retweeted blog posts, stories and articles linked on Twitter, the most popular and influential of which is TweetMeme. Stories on TweetMeme can be browsed by the most popular from all categories in the past 24 hours, the past 7 days, or by specific categories including Entertainment, Comedy, Gaming, and Technology amongst others. Content can be further broken down by News, Images and Videos. TweetMeme also allows you to keep up to date with the content on their site by subscribing to their RSS feeds. TweetMeme is also searchable if you want to find the hottest stories on specific topics.
Logging into TweetMeme with your Twitter account will then enable you to retweet the stories that you want to share with your followers directly from within their website.
TweetMeme also have a few extra goodies for users including a bookmarklet, a retweet button or chicklet for your blog posts, and plugins making it easy to incorporate the button on your blog. DailyRTDailyRT takes a similar approach to TweetMeme, by ranking the most popular Tweets in the past hour, 24 hours or 7 days. The difference however, is that the content is not limited to blog posts and articles, but also includes the most popular tweets in general.
This does have its downside of course, as the most popular tweets are not necessarily the most informative. Using their search feature however allows users to harness the information found on DailyRT and get the most out of it. One interesting feature found on DailyRT includes the ability to search for the most retweeted items from specific users.
Logging in with your Twitter account allows you to retweet directly from the website, but gives you no choice in the wording, and each retweet includes a direct link to the DailyRT homepage. DailyRT has a list on Twitter of the 50 most retweeted members on Twitter. ThooraThoora is another site that plugs into the information on Twitter letting people know what the most popular stories are, but it also gets its statistics from the number of blog posts and news articles covering a certain topic. Each article is accompanied by the number of retweets as well as the number of articles or blog posts found online.
Information is broken down into categories including Business, Controversy and Sci/Tech, amongst others. Stories can also be browsed by the newest developing stories, stories that are currently popular and by those that have been popular for the past week. Signing up for an account allows you to share the content on Facebook, Buzz, Twitter and via Email, and discuss the stories on the website. Opening up any given story is where Thoora truly excels in comparison to other similar sites. It provides users with statistics on the story, recent tweets about it, links from blogs and official news sources.
Finding Tweets With The Most FavouritesFavstarAnother method of tracking popularity on Twitter is keeping track of how many favourites any given tweet has. Favstar does just that. This might not necessarily lead to a wealth of information and links, but it’s interesting and funny nonetheless. The website gives users a way to pass some free time, reading jokes, interesting witticisms and commentaries on current affairs, and you’ll even find the occasional link to an article or video.
Tweets are divided into popular, rising and new. Signing in with your Twitter account allows you to quickly follow interesting users featured on Favstar, add tweets to your favourites, and even retweet. Favstar should however come with a warning that it is not at all PG. Favstar also has a three lists worth following – Tech and Social Media Tweeters, Celebrity Tweeters and Funny, Entertaining or Insightful Tweeters.
You can also search Twitter for specific users to see which of their tweets have received the most favourites. The website is available in English, German and Japanese. Finding Job ListingsMicro.VoisMicro.Vois features tweets relating to freelance work. Tweets listed on the site are divided into users looking for freelancer work, and users who are looking to hire freelancers – and it does so in a very simple way. Micro.Vois uses Twitter’s hashtags to label the tweets, using #havework or #wantwork to distinguish the tweets from the rest of the chatter online.
The listings can also be further narrowed down by profession, with web development, programming, graphics, writing and miscellaneous jobs. TweetyJobsTweetyJobs is another site that features job listings mentioned on Twitter. One main difference between Micro.Vois and TweetyJobs is the fact that the latter is searchable. You can search for a specific job title in a specific city or zip code, and filter the results into either listings from corporate sites or Twitter.
Finding Items for SaleTwitShopTwitShop is another listings site that uses Twitter’s hashtags to aggregate its information. If you have an item for sale, appending the hashtags, #forsale, #4sale or #auction, will ensure that your tweet shows up on the site.
TwitShop is searchable, so if you want to buy something in particular from another Twitter user, it’s easy to find. CheapTweetCheapTweet, like TwitShop, aggregates items that are for sale on Twitter. It features listings in a variety of categories including Tech, Food and Home & Family, amongst others. Not only does it provide you with listings, but users can also vote on how good a deal each listing is.
Finding Popular MusicWe Are HuntedWe Are Hunted is a slick site which combs Twitter, along with other social media sites like Facebook and MySpace to give you a list of the 99 most popular songs at the moment. If you want to listen to all 99 songs, simply start at number 1, and it will automatically play through the entire list. You can also limit the results to only the songs that are popular on Twitter.
It also allows you to share any given song on Twitter, Facebook or via email. If you want a more extensive list of what music is currently popular on Twitter, check out David’s article on using The Hype Machine to do just that. In the the future, we'll take a look at more ways to search Twitter to get the most out of the content, including finding out what new movies are popular on Twitter, how to find personalised content for you, and sites that list all the information available on specific topics. How do you find the content that matters to you on Twitter? Let us know in the comments. Image Credit: Dave Smith Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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In 2006 Google acquired 
Tomboy is a 
MakeUseOf Team Spotlight is our occasional feature where we profile the work of our writers outside of MakeUseOf. We have some very talented employees who like to spread their talents all around the web and it’s only right that we should recognise and showcase those talents.
Whether you’re a brand manager, marketer, or just someone looking to make a name for yourself or your product/business, following the right blogs can be a source of free education.
Google Earth is a revolutionary application that allows you to explore the entire planet in 3D using Google's satellite imagery data. Users are not just limited to terrestrial earth anymore either – you can journey under the oceans, gaze at the night sky, travel to the moon, and visit Mars.
As the managing editor of MakeUseOf, I make a big effort to follow the MUO staff on various social networks, and Twitter is no exception.
We've already taken a look at how to 
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