MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [May 27th]” plus 18 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [May 27th]
- 4 Ways To Make Linux Compatible With Even More Software
- Test Your Graphics Card Stability with Furmark [Gaming]
- Hot Tech Deals [May 27th]
- ActiveWords Lets You Perform Lengthy Actions On Your PC Simply By Typing Words
- 3 Fast and Easy Online Screen Capture Tools
- How To Create A Membership-Only Website using Wordpress
- Finally, A Dead-Easy Tool To Organize Your Photos
- Cool Websites and Tools [May 26th]
- gpEasy – The Really Simple CMS (No Database Needed)
- CD Art Display – Free Album Cover Art Display App for The Desktop
- Reminder: 2 Mega Giveaways Happening
- What is Google TV and why do I want it?
- Hot Tech Deals [May 26th]
- How to Make an Animated GIF Image with GIMP
- Two Awesome Free iPad Twitter Clients
- The Ultimate 5 Ways to Go Green on Your Computer
- How To Find Out If Your Facebook Account Has Been Hacked
- Remotely Erase Data From Your Stolen Phone using Lookout
| Cool Websites and Tools [May 27th] Posted: 27 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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| 4 Ways To Make Linux Compatible With Even More Software Posted: 27 May 2010 04:30 PM PDT
Happily, it’s not all you have access to. Thanks to many technologies out there committed to cross-platform compatibility you can give any Linux distribution-from Ubuntu to Fedora to Gentoo-access to even more software than is out there by default. In the rare instance where you can’t find a tool for a job you’re trying to do this can be very useful, as it gives you access to even more free software. Let’s check these technologies out!
1 – Use Adobe Air AppsAdobe Air, if you’re not aware, is a software platform that runs on Linux, Mac and Windows. There are hundreds of free applications over at the Adobe Air Marketplace that do everything from giving you newspaper-like access to the New York Times to viewing your Google Analytics Data.
Getting Adobe Air working on Linux is surprisingly easy. You’ll find a Linux-based installer over at get.adobe.com, or you can simply attempt to install any Adobe Air application and Air will install automatically. Some MakeUseOf posts covering cool Adobe Air apps: 2 – Get Java Going
Java is the original cross-platform programming language. To this day many programmers use Java to create programs that work equally well on Linux, Mac and Windows. We’ve covered many Java apps, the most recent being “Pauker – An Easy-To-Use Freeware Java Flash Card Program” which Varun wrote all about. Java’s probably in the repositories of your Linux distribution already. If you’re on Ubuntu you’ll find that Java is instaled when you install the “ubuntu-restricted-extras” package discussed in Varun’s article “10 Applications You Must Install On Ubuntu Lucid Lynx” Alternatively, you can install only java with the following command:
Thanks to Ubuntu Geek for that command. 3 – Wine For Windows Apps
There are millions of Windows appications out there, and the Wine project gives Linux access to many of them. Wine attempts to provide a compatibility layer between the Linux operating system and Windows programs. It’s far from perfect, but it’s worth a shot. Check out “Run Windows Applications on Linux (or Mac) with WINE” to learn all about making use of wine. Wondering if a certain program is compatible with Wine? Check out the database over at WineHQ. Wine is availible in the package manager of pretty much every Linux distribution in existence, so check yours. 4 – DOSbox for Old DOS Games
Simon recently pointed out 4 sites where you can download old games for free. If these old games were meant to run in DOS you can run them in Ubuntu; all you need is DOSbox. This DOS emulator can run most any DOS program you can throw at it, but it’s really tailor-made for games. DOSbox is included in the package manager of most fine Linux distributions, so look for it and set it up. You can learn all about using DOSbox in Shaminder’s article about using DOSbox on Windows XP. Yes, the article is about Windows XP, but the principle is basically the same. If you’re really geeky you could even setup DOSbox to run Windows 3.1. I did using this guide just for so I could play Chip’s Challenge the way God intended: in Windows 3.1. ConclusionUsing these tools you’ll give Linux access to many programs it does not by default. They won’t necessarily run as well as native programs, but are worth taking a look at if you want to run a certain program or can’t find a native tool for a particular job. Can you guys think of any other ways to make Linux comptible with more software? If so, I’d love it if you shared. I’d also love to hear what sorts of programs you use in Linux via these technologies, so comment away. NEW: Download MakeUseOf iPhone App. FREE! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| Test Your Graphics Card Stability with Furmark [Gaming] Posted: 27 May 2010 02:30 PM PDT
Furmark is capable of putting so much stress on your video card that it may crash. While this may sound bad, it allows you to test your video card’s stability in a controlled environment. Furmark also helps you track video card temperatures to troubleshoot possible cooling issues.
Running Furmark to Test Graphics Card StabilityFurmark creates a worse-case scenario. In most cases your games won’t place as much stress on your video card as Furmark does. Only games like Crysis, when ramped up to maximum detail, are as demanding. However, this worse-case scenario allows you to rule out your video card’s stability a possible issue. Using Furmark to test your video card’s stability will help you ensure that your card is rock solid. Start Furmark and click the Stability Test option under Run Mode. A stability test is a test which runs constantly until you decide to shut it down. Click the Go! button in the lower right hand corner of the application.
You many want to sit and watch the stability test, but it isn’t really necessary, and will be rather boring as you’ll want the stability test to run for around thirty minutes and you shouldn’t run any other programs during the graphics card stability test. This will make sure that you are provided with solid temperature data which reflects how your video card is working when playing a demanding game for hours on end. There are two possible results from your Furmark stability test. One is that Furmark crashes, and the other is that Furmark runs without issue. Each result gives you important information about your video card. The Results: If Furmark CrashesIf Furmark crashed it means that your video card wasn’t able to handle the load that Furmark was sending to it. Data became corrupted and the video card started sending out erroneous data, which caused Furmark to crash. If you do decide to sit down and watch Furmark in action during testing you will find that just before a crash the Furmark image starts to look very odd. Small dots starts to appear across the image. These occur because the video card is becoming too hot and the data being sent out from the card is corrupted.
The most common reason for Furmark to crash is a graphics card overclock which is too aggressive. If you have overclocked your video card you”ll need to back off a bit on your overclock in order for your video card to be stable. If you have no overclocked your video card, however, the crash is probably happening because your video card’s cooling is inadequate. Check the card to make sure that the fan is working and that dust has not clogged the card’s cooling. The Results: If Furmark Doesn’t CrashIf Furmark runs for thirty minutes without crashing it is safe to say that your video card will be stable when running any game you throw at it. Any crashes which occur will most likely be due to the program’s coding, no your hardware’s inability to handle the strain. That doesn’t mean we can’t gather some interesting information from our test, however. Before exiting Furmark take a close look at the GPU Temperature graph located at the bottom of the Furmark window. This graph shows a timeline of your video card’s temperature as the benchmark progressed. This graph should show a fairly linear increase in temperature up to a certain temperature ceiling, at which point the temperature stays essentially the same for the rest of the test.
If there are any major hiccups, however, you may want to check you video card’s cooling anyway. It is possible that the fan is not working as it should, causing spikes and dips in the temperature. This behavior may not be a stability problem yet, but it can become a problem if it worsens. If you’re a gamer you might be also interested in following two MakeUseOf articles: - Check Whether Your Computer Has Enough Muscle For Specific Game Share your thoughts and tips in comments below! Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| Posted: 27 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 Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| ActiveWords Lets You Perform Lengthy Actions On Your PC Simply By Typing Words Posted: 27 May 2010 11:30 AM PDT
The idea is that with ActiveWords I can take many tasks and accomplish them just by typing a word. For instance, I can all sorts of stuff from using shortened key words to get longer words to pop up making typing quicker to opening programs or websites just by typing a designated word. Let’s not get ahead of things because I will definitely show you some of the functionality later in this article.
ActiveWords is a free program to the individual user and is only for the Windows user. To see what all the fuss is about, head over to ActiveWords.com. Meanwhile I would like to give you an idea of what ActiveWords can do to speeds things up a bit for you. Once you download, install, and read some of the tutorials, you should click on the yellow “add” button in the toolbar. This should give you a box full of options allowing you to add some shortcuts.
As you can see, there is a list of actions you can associate with any key word your heart desires. Let’s start with the first one: substituting text. I noticed that one of the default shortcuts had to do with typing something like “signature” and out would pop an email signature of sorts. Think of something that contains quite a few words that you find yourself typing a lot and we’ll start with that. Click “Substitute Text” and then “Next.” Then just type what text you want to show up and the description (so you can easily find it on the “View ActiveWords” list.
On the next screen you will need a key word. Choose your keyword and enter it in the “ActiveWord” box. This is what you will type in order to get the replacement text you entered in the last screen.
Note that since the program comes with a default ActiveWord triggered by “signature”, you’ll either want to delete the old one or just modify it instead of making a new one. I chose to make a new one for the purposes of showing the feature. There are other tasks that you can do like opening an oft used program (having it open whilst setting it up will make it easier for ActiveWords to find the program file) or document. Let’s quickly try to set up an activeword for an oft used folder (I use my screen shots folder all the time). Hit “add another”, highlight “open a folder” and click next. The only difference between this setup and the setup for a word replacement is that instead of typing replacement text you just browse for the folder you are looking for.
ActiveWords will give you a default description similar to this: “Open – Screen Captures.” Personally, I would add in parenthesis “folder” so you can easily identify it later. Then on the next screen enter an activeword just like last time. Now, if you ever want to use any of the activewords you’ve set up, you trigger them by typing in the chosen activeword and then hitting SPACE twice. You can also use F8 to trigger them (either having highlighted the activeword or directly after typing it). Try out ActiveWords and see if it will make things quicker and easier for you too. Do you have a program that makes using your computer easier and faster? What about similar solutions for other operating systems? Please share in the comments. Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| 3 Fast and Easy Online Screen Capture Tools Posted: 27 May 2010 10:30 AM PDT
Here are 3 different online screen capture services — 2 for still images and one for recording your screen.
1. Capture Full PageThe motto of the site is Take Screenshot on the Fly. There is no registration required.
The application allows you to select the dimension, size, and format after it captured the website for you. Since a full size screenshot is taken before you can downsize, the process takes a little longer. Once it’s done you will see the screenshot on the left and a menu on the right. The options for dimensions are top screen or full screen, the size can be anything from full to extra small, and the available output formats are JPEG (smaller file size) and PNG (better quality). Clicking > View will give you a preview in your browser and by selecting > Download you receive the file.
2. Super ScreenshotSuper Screenshot is much faster than Capture Full Page, although it essentially works the same, minus the fancy layout.
After the screen was captured, you can select dimensions, size, and format. Before you view the screenshot you can also refresh it.
3. ScreenToasterScreenToaster is a free online screen recorder that allows you to capture videos of what’s happening on your monitor, independent of your operating system. Quite obviously, this tool is perfect for pre-recorded screencasts or tutorials. To use it you have to register. You also need to enable Java for whichever browser you’re going to use.
Once you’re logged in, click the > Start Recording button and the application will launch. You can then select which portion of the screen you want to capture and whether sound and webcam should be recorded as well. When you decide to make a screencast of only a small section of your screen, yo ucan drag a black rectangular to the desired location. Hit > Record to start. The key combination > [ALT] + [S] will both start and pause recording. This is useful when the website is in the background as you need to bring it to the foreground to stop the recording.
Here is an excellent YouTube review of ScreenToaster by iComputerHacker:
We have previously reviewed online screenshot and screencast services:
Looking for more, maybe a Windows software or browser extension alternative? Please have a look at these articles:
What is your favorite strategy for taking screenshots? Image credits: hugama We NEED Your Comments!!! Please do share your thoughts in article comments. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| How To Create A Membership-Only Website using Wordpress Posted: 27 May 2010 09:30 AM PDT
The membership itself is also something that you can sell. There are people who create new products on a regular basis and instead of selling each product individually, they put everything inside a members area then give ongoing timely access to members who pay regularly. Something like magazine subscriptions.
This idea of a membership-only site raised more questions in my mind. How difficult it is to build your own membership-only site? Is it even possible for common people like us? What about the security issue? To answer those questions and more, let’s explore the possibilities of creating membership only websites.. Building a Membership-Only Site In WordpressThe first things that came to my mind about building a membership-only site is a self-hosted Wordpress and a membership plugin. Actually, any Wordpress blog is already some kind of members-only site. But a plugin specifically built to handle membership will surely enhance the functions. So I go to one of my experimental Wordpress blogs and do a quick search for a good membership plugin. I launched the plugin page and click the “Add New” button. You can also use the “Add New” link from the plugin sidebar.
To save you the searching time, I’ll just tell you what I chose: a membership plugin called s2Member. Enter the name into the search field:
And you will go directly to the plugin.
Click the “Install” link at the right of the box.
Click the “Install Now” button in the lightbox confirmation window.
Please note that s2Member plugin is tested to work with Wordpress version 2.9.2 and above. Use it under lower version of Wordpress at your own risk. And it also requires PHP version 5.2 or higher. After the installation, click the “Activate Plugin” link at the lower part of the notification.
Due to the complexity of the membership site management, the first greeting that you will get after activating the plugin is an advice to read the Quick Start Guide.
And I personally think that you should at least take a peek at the extensive guide.
Some basic settingsUp to this point, your membership-only site is already up and running, but there are several adjustment that you need to make. The plugins has tons of settings that you can customize to shape your site to near perfection. You can access the settings from s2Member sidebar.
But before you modify anything, you would want to create a Wordpress page that would serve as “Membership Option Page”. This is the page that your future member will see whenever they try to access materials which are restricted as “Members only“: the product that you are trying to sell. To create a page, simply click the “Add Page” button from the “Pages” sub-menu of the sidebar.
After the page is set, go to the plugin’s General Options.
Open the “Membership Options Page” and choose the page that you’ve just created.
Customize the PayPal Options by following the instructions one by one, then you can continue with generating PayPal buttons.
The generated PayPal button should be placed in the page that you use as “Membership Option Page“. To restrict the content based on membership level, go back to the “General Options” and adjust the settings in several of the “Restrictions” options.
With this basic settings, your membership-only site is ready to take new members, accept payment and provide access to restricted content.
We will cover more advanced settings of the membership site in the next discussion. Meanwhile, you can play along with the basic settings, then share your thoughts and opinions using the comment below. Image credit: healthserviceglasses and ttarasiuk Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf fan page on Facebook. Over 20,000 fans already!
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| Finally, A Dead-Easy Tool To Organize Your Photos Posted: 27 May 2010 08:30 AM PDT
If you have to deal with a lot of images and you want to be able to easily tag, arrange, search and play in a neat interface, then Viewer2 is the application for you. It has command keys and lots of functionality for the advanced user and ease of use for beginners. There is an online manual and all for the low, low cost of free.
We start by downloading the application from here. Install it and then launch it. You will see a blue screen. Do not worry, this is what the application looks like. If you move your mouse up to the top of the screen, you will see the menu bar like so:
The first thing I did was to attempt to get my images into Viewer2. I clicked on the ‘Open folder’ button next to the asterisk on the left hand side of the menu. Clicking on that brings up an open file box as you can see below:
Choosing one image will select the entire folder. I do not know if this is how the application is supposed to work or I just could not figure out how to add single images. But this worked perfectly for what I wanted to do. For this experiment, I choose a group of pictures from my trip and copied them to another directory. I then opened an image in that directory. Viewer2 quickly showed me all of my thumbnails:
You can move them around by dragging and dropping. Go ahead – it's fun, we will wait… Now double click on an image. That will bring it up full screen and you will see a tag button in the right hand corner. Click that to "Tag" an individual image.
Type your tag into the ‘add tags’ box. You can enter multiple tags separated by a space.
When you are done, you hit the Enter key to return to the main menu. That took me a while to get the hang of as I kept hitting Escape. Escape quickly exits the application with no warning so beware. You can click on the tag button on the main menu to search for tags. That will bring up the find tags box as shown below:
Simply type in your search term and hit Enter.
Your images with that specific tag will be highlighted.
That is how you deal with individual images but how about a group? Well you can control click on the images and highlight each one you want or you can draw a square, with your mouse (or some other shape) around the images you want to work with like so:
Then hit Enter. Anything touching your shape will be selected. You can then add a tag to the entire group. You can drag the group away and move them anywhere you want. There are also other sorting buttons at the top of the screen for sorting by date, size, name, resolution, tags and others. Play around with them and see what they do. You can mouse over each of the menu items and it will tell you what it does on the bottom of the screen. The manual spoke of teaching it to automatically tag your images through a bit of what I can only call magic. If you got this working let me know in the comments. Now check out this video:
What do you think? Will you stick to the good old Picasa or switch over to this awesome app? Let us know in the comments. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| Cool Websites and Tools [May 26th] Posted: 26 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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| gpEasy – The Really Simple CMS (No Database Needed) Posted: 26 May 2010 06:30 PM PDT
Here at MakeUseOf, we’ve covered a number of WordPress competitors, like Drupal or Joomla. However, for this use, a really simple CMS (Content Management System) is ideal – because it would make it easy to add new content quickly.
I actually blew my entire Saturday attempting to install and test these systems – only to discover that the installation process was just to complex or required too many “tweaks” and modifications. I wanted something that could install as quickly and easily as WordPress, but was scaled down. Finally, on my fifth try, I discovered a very simple CMS called gpEasy. Installing gpEasy in Three Ridiculously Easy StepsThe installation for gpEasy is unbelievably small compared to WordPress. It’s just over 2MB, compared to WordPress, which is about 10 Mb. Once you download the zipped file, just place all of the files into your public web directory. Then, open up the website (which should be the directory where all of the files you just uploaded are stored.) You’ll see an install screen with a status of what is or isn’t configured correctly.
Oops! Forgot to set permissions on the data folder so that it’s writeable (should have set it to 777). With other CMS systems, you have to edit a config file or tweak the code to define your database – not the case with gpEasy. It’s so easy that someone without a bit of coding experience could set it up. Once you’ve got everything set up right, enter your admin ID and Password, and refresh the install page again, you’ll get a successful install notice.
That’s it! Your site is now live, and you can log in and start editing it or playing around with the template to make it look however you like. If you thought the install was easy, wait until you see the administrator area.
This is the default template of the site. It’s nothing terribly impressive, but then again, it’s a website that lets you instantly update components of it – pages, sidebar, footer, and header – with just a few quick mouse clicks and keystrokes. Absolutely no coding required.
My favorite feature of this CMS is the ease with which you can modify the menu bar, which will show up on every single page. The formatting and font choices are a bit standard, but then again, much of the style will come from how creative you are with your writing and image placement.
Once you log into the admin area, I am certain that you’ll be just as blown away as I was at how functional the editing areas are. As you can see here, there’s a lot that you can modify about your website – you can even choose from a dozen or so alternative themes, and the CMS will automatically change the theme for you (see below).
Every component of the website – header, footer, sidebars or content area – is editable using the very functional WYSIWYG editor. As you can see in the screenshot above, this editor is a lot more functional than many of the other free CMS systems out there! When you click on the “configuration” button, you’ll find many of the same fields as you’d find in your Wordpress blog setup – complete with meta-keywords and description fields.
When you want to add, remove or edit new pages on your website, just click on the “File Manager” and you’ll see the coolest graphical interface that you’ve ever seen. The parent and child pages are displayed in a very cool, easy-to-follow hierarchy, which you can click on and modify as you please. Want to edit a page? Just click on the green arrows, go to options, and Edit File.
If you click on the “Themes” button in the admin area, you’ll have the opportunity to change your Theme to one of the dozen or so preloaded themes. These themes are the ones displayed when you click on the link to browse the available themes. Just make a note of the name of the theme you like, and then click on that button in the theme area. The system switches themes for you – no file upload, no tweaking, no nothing. Done. Here’s my new theme.
Now, gpEasy redefines the word “Easy” with this interface. Once you have a theme you like, you can edit different areas of the page by just hovering your mouse over that area and then clicking on “Edit.” I have never seen a CMS interface that you can host on your own web server that is so amazingly intuitive and functional, even though it’s free.
The beauty of gpEasy really stands out when you’re in the situation that I described at the start of this article – when you want a quick and simple website that looks good, but is also easy and convenient to update whenever you like. gpEasy is for creating those sites where you just don’t need a lot of extra plugins or bells and whistles – you just want to deliver content to your readers. With gpEasy CMS, you’ll have a new page up and adding your content in less than 30 minutes. Once you’ve formatted your page with the theme and style you like, adding new pages is just as easy (if not easier – dare I say) than using WordPress. Have you ever used gpEasy? What do you think about it? Do you have a different easy CMS system that you like more? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| CD Art Display – Free Album Cover Art Display App for The Desktop Posted: 26 May 2010 04:30 PM PDT
Let's just say that it's a fragment of memory left behind from the times when the cover art on a LP, cassette (or a CD) mattered in terms of style. A music buff spends painstaking hours correctly tagging his song collection with the right details. Believe me, the JPEG that stands in as the album cover is as much a part of a song as the singer.
CD Art Display (ver.2.0.1) is a 1.3MB free download that runs on Windows 7, Vista or XP. The musical front end tool runs with music players like WinAmp, iTunes, Windows Media Player, foobar2000, MediaMonkey, Quintessential Media Player, and a few more. Choose the player of choice from Options. CD Art Display is not just a pretty face for your songs. It has a few more tricks hidden behind the virtual jewel case. Let's play a few songs and look at the wow factor of CD Art Display.
Display a Gallery of Covers
CD Art Display can play a slideshow of covers if your song file is tagged with multiple album covers. You can configure it from Options to play a slideshow of pictures from a folder even if the main player is stopped. Another option lets you save a custom slideshow for later. CD Art Display can be set up to show front covers as well as back covers of albums. The display window can be moved around or pinned at a location. Skin It!
CD Art Display comes with a skinnable interface and a free gallery of skins that can be separately downloaded. Use It as a Screensaver
CD Art Display has a screensaver module. Set it to run from Display Properties. Some downloaded skins may not support this feature. Go Searching for Covers
Use the built-in search feature to search for album art from Amazon, Discogs, and Google. You can also set it up to download covers automatically from these sites. For iTunes, CD Art Display can embed the covers into the song file using iTunes API. The search is not perfect as rarer albums hardly yield results. In those cases, it’s better to go manual. Music and Lyrics
Moreover, CD Art Display comes with a lyrics editor that can search and store song lyrics in text files. Lyrics can be displayed on the desktop in a transparent window as the song plays or in a window in the maximized view. The Lyrics settings also depend on the skin on show. Lyrics can be setup to be downloaded automatically and displayed. Or you can use the Lyrics Editor window to do it manually. Manual search is better because it prevents errors like wrong lyrics. A single checkmark ensures that the lyric text is stripped off any spaces before being saved (auto-clean). Lyrics are downloaded from LyrDB.com, which is a large database of song lyrics. Some utilities like one-click song rating, several hot-keys, drag-and-drop support; all packaged in a small and sleek interface hike up the appeal of this freeware. Here’s a look at how it all comes together on a desktop:
The above view is with the default skin and in a maximized window. Cover art is quite prominently displayed in some of today's music players, for instance iTunes. CD Art Display throws in a few more features around album cover art. If you have an ear for music, you might like to eye CD Art Display too. Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf fan page on Facebook. Over 20,000 fans already!
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| Reminder: 2 Mega Giveaways Happening Posted: 26 May 2010 03:30 PM PDT
Win a trip for 2 to New Zealand for 7 days, enjoy glorious wine-tasting sessions and eat great food prepared by master chefs. Anyone from around the world is eligible! zozi will generously sponsor up to $2000 allocated to cover air fare. Accommodation, food and travel within NZ are provided. No expense spared! Next, looking for a way to connect more than 1 external display to your laptop? We’re offering 3 Sewell USB to DVI Minidecks for readers from around the world to take home. Find out more on our Special Giveaway page. NEW: Download MakeUseOf iPhone App. FREE! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| What is Google TV and why do I want it? Posted: 26 May 2010 02:30 PM PDT
Google states that 4 billion people across the world watch TV – but many of us are not getting the modern experience we expect of media in the Internet Age. With Google TV, Google plans to combine the familiarity of “old TV” with the freedom and power of the internet. But what is it exactly?
What is Google TV?
Google puts it this way: the traditional way to watch a television show is to wait for it to air on a network, meaning you change your schedule to match that of the show you want to watch. The internet breaks that barrier, allowing you to watch shows whenever you feel like through outlets like Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube. With Google TV, you can watch online content out of the confined space of your computer's monitor and instead play it on your TV – together with standard TV content. Getting Google TVGoogle is working with companies like Sony and LG to integrate Google TV into televisions and BluRay players which will be available exclusively through Best Buy. If you alredy have a TV or BluRay player, you can instead purchase an external Google TV box that will connect to your TV via an HDMI connection. The great news: the Google TV service will be offered completely free (minus the cost of hardware).
Future plans have also been announced that Google TV will integrate with video game consoles, like Netflix has done. Searching and BrowsingGoogle TV will include a powerful search engine (of course) so you can easily find the shows you're looking for without browsing through lists and guides. When you find a show you want to watch or subscribe to, you can quickly add it to your home screen which makes it just like a traditional TV channel. Google TV merges content from sources like Netflix, YouTube, sports websites, and many other sources along with your traditional television content, so everything is available in one central location. A full version of Google's Chrome browser will also be included with Google TV, so you can browse the internet just like you would on your computer. You'll also have access to your photos and web applications like Pandora. Apps
Popular Android applications like Google Listen will be updated to provide many more features for Google TV. The best part about including the Android Market is that new features will constantly be added to your TV, as we've seen with Android phones.
Google TV itself is based on Android 2.1 and Google Chrome software. Google has stated that the Google TV software will become fully open-source in 2011. MultitaskingMultitasking is a big deal for most people, and Google TV will not disappoint. With this software, you'll be able to watch a TV show in the corner of your screen while browsing the internet with Chrome. Google TV will also be able to interact with hardware you already own like a DVR to schedule recording of TV shows while you continue to watch TV as usual. Automatic Subtitles (with translations)Using Google's tremendous translation and voice transcription resources, Google TV will be able to automatically generate subtitles for content and even translate those subtitles to your native language (as long as Google supports the language). AvailabilityGoogle TV is slated to be released to customers in the United States this fall, and international expansion will take place throughout 2011. The Android Market for Google TV will also launch in 2011.
ConclusionThe announcement of Google TV is exciting and really broadens our concept of what we consider television. Since it includes Android software, the sky is the limit for what developers can do – I expect dozens of new features to appear after the Google TV Android Market opens. Are you excited about Google TV, or are you worried it will be doomed to the same existence as Apple TV? Would you buy a new TV for Google TV or just the companion box? Share with us in the comments! Photos credits: magerleagues, dailylifeofmojo, nDevilTV Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| Posted: 26 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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| How to Make an Animated GIF Image with GIMP Posted: 26 May 2010 12:30 PM PDT
However, there are not very many good GIF editing programs available for free. Those which are available for free usually have some pretty hefty strings attached, such automatically placing a watermark on the image or requiring that the image size be below some ridiculous standard. Those animated .GIF programs which are truly free are usually web-based GIF maker apps, not tools which exist on your computer.
Step 1: Starting Your GIFIn this tutorial, we are going to create a simple .GIF image in which we’ll have the words “This is how you make a .GIF image” appear in succession one by one. To start go to File and then click on New. Create an image which is 300 pixels wide and 100 pixels high. Now, go to the Text Tool in the toolbox. It is represented by the large ‘A’ icon on the right side of the GIMP Toolbox.
Click in the upper-right corner of the image. This should open a small window called GIMP text editor. Type in the word “This.” Now go to Layer and then click on Duplicate Layer. Use the text editor again to include the word “is” after “This.” Duplicate the layer again and then type the new word, “how.” Continue this process until you have the entire sentence “This is how you make a .GIF image.” Don’t worry about having the words perfectly aligned – this is just a test, after all.
Step 2: Creating the AnimationYou now have a .GIF image with numerous layers. This is the basis of what you need to create an animated .GIF with GIMP, but you’re not quite there yet. Right now, you just have an image which will display the text all at once. First, let’s view the basic animation of your .GIF by going to Filters > Animation > Playback. Click on Play in the upper left. The animated .GIF will play back fairly rapidly, looking something like this.
That’s way too fast for most .GIF images, so you will probably want to play with the timing a bit. There are two ways which you can do this. Step 3: Manipulating Your .GIFThe easier way to change the timing is when you actually create your .GIF image. Go to File and then Save As. When you are prompted for a file name make sure you add .gif to the end of the file name. You will be prompted with a box which will ask if you’d like to flatten the layers in the image or convert them to animation. Click on the option to convert them to animation. The next screen will have an option called Delay between frames where unspecified and then a number field. Change this field from 100 to 400 and then click Save. You will end up with something like this.
Much easier to read, isn’t it? However, you may decide that you’d like to change the length of each frame of the .GIF individually. If you decide to do this you’ll need to edit the layers Go to Windows > Dockable Dialogs > Layers. This will open the Layers window. Each individual layer in the .GIF file will be shown here. Right click on the first layer, which is called This, and click on Edit Layer Attributes. Type in the text (100ms) after the word ‘This’, then click Okay.
Do this for each layer after words, but increase the number by 100 each time. Now save the file as a .GIF, and make sure that the layers are saved as animation. You’ll end up with a .GIF where each word appears slower than the one prior, such as below.
These are the basics you need to know in order to create .GIF images with GIMP. By manipulating the timing of each layer, you can create very intricate .GIF images which are customized to fit your needs. Forget dedicated .GIF programs – GIMP can handle your animation needs without a problem. Questions? As usual, let them loose in the comments. Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| Two Awesome Free iPad Twitter Clients Posted: 26 May 2010 11:30 AM PDT
In this review, we’ll look at two free Twitter client for the iPad. Both of the apps are well established Twitter clients that are already available for both the Mac and the iPhone.
1- Twitterrific for the iPadAmong the social networking apps to first get an iPad update is the terrific free Twitterrific for the iPad [iTunes Store link]. I have been using it as my main Twitter app on my iPhone, so I was elated to see it come so quickly to the iPad.
When you download Twitterrific, the first thing you notice is how well designed it is for the iPad's format. It makes great use of the extra screen real estate, and nothing about the app seems wasted in terms of the user interface. Twitterrific contains all the features that you find in the browser version of Twitter, plus additional ones. In landscape mode, all the features of the app are upfront and accessible. In the sidebar, you can access all your tweets, Mentions, direct messages, searches, favorites, list and trends. What's useful about this features is that these menu items are not hidden, and thus you don't need to make several taps in order to access say your saved searches.
You also get a couple of tweet posting options. You can add photos from you iPad photo library and you can upload to other Twitter related services like Posterous, TwitPic, and TwitVid.
In landscape mode, the sidebar disappears but you can easily access with a single tap of your Twitter name. The menu bar items are there as well for sending new tweets and refreshing updates. The menu bar also includes a quick access to your Twitter account. The free version of Twitterrific is of course ad-supported, but the ads are very unobtrusive; and to be honest, I've clicked on them more than I do on ads of most favorite websites. The only drawback to the free version of Twitterrific is that if you want to add multiple Twitter accounts to the app, you have to upgrade to the paid version of the app. If you're not a heavy Twitter user, Twitterrific is a great free app that you will want to have on your iPad. 2- TweetDeck for iPadIf you are a Twitter power user, I would suggest TweetDeck [iTunes Store link] for both your Mac and your iPad. As with Twitterrific, TweetDeck makes excellent use of the iPad format. And what's unique about TweetDeck is that you can have several columns of tweet streams open at one time. So one column may consist of All Friends tweets, another of your Mentions, and few more of your favorite keyword searches.
And just because only three columns can be viewed on the screen at one time, it doesn't mean you can't have several more open; for all you have to do is slide columns to the left to see more of the.
Another cool feature is that when you tap and hold on a tweet, menu controls (reply, retweet, direct message, favorite) pop-up for easy access and navigation.
In portrait mode, you of course can only view two columns at a time, and the top half of the screen gets filled with a single tweet based on a selected tweet in one of the columns. This seems sort of redundant in my view, but for some users, it could be useful for better viewing of single messages. TweetDeck has various other features, including tagging, geotagging, map links, and adding photos from your photo library. Some users have complained in the iTunes App Store that TweetDeck has been crashing a lot. If this occurs, you might try shutting down your iPad and restarting it to see if there's better performance. I haven't used the app enough to gauge the performance in this regard. TweetDeck is totally free and the developers have written about additional features for version 2 of the application. So what Twitter client are you using on your iPad? Let us know how it's working. We NEED Your Comments!!! Please do share your thoughts in article comments. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| The Ultimate 5 Ways to Go Green on Your Computer Posted: 26 May 2010 10:30 AM PDT
We’ve touched on several ways to be environmentally friendly: - How To Calculate Your Ecological Footprint Before The Earth Day But ultimately, here are the top five ways to make a difference.
When not in use, turn off the juiceYup, the easiest way to save energy is to simply turn your computer off when it’s not being used, and the savings from doing so can be substantial. According to ComputersOff.ORG, simply turning your computer off at night or when it’s not being used can save as much energy as it takes:
It’s worth noting that in recent years it’s possible to buy a very green desktop energy efficient computer, if you have a newer system and use it with the power management features enabled (see below), your savings will probably be smaller. But every little helps, right? Before moving on, let’s dispel a frequently heard myth: namely that turning your computer on and off regularly will cause it to wear out more quickly. This is not the case. Today’s computers are designed to last through in excess of 40,000 on/off cycles and, even if you turn your computer on and off several times a day, it’s unlikely that you’ll reach anywhere close to that number of cycles before your computer is retired. Use power managementIf you really can’t bear to completely switch off, then using power management options to put your computer into an energy-saving sleep mode when it’s not being used is the next best thing and will save almost as much electricity. When operating normally, a computer and LCD monitor will use between 100 and 300 watts of electricity – but this reduces to only 1 to 6 watts in sleep mode. Climate Savers Computing provide some recommended power management settings and instructions on how to configure those settings.
Extend the life of your current computerIf every computer was to remain in use for, say, an extra 12 months, then substantially fewer computers would need to be produced and substantially fewer resources would be used in manufacturing, packaging and shipping. Consequently, the longer you can delay the retirement of your computer, the better it is for the environment. There are a couple of ways you can do this, this first and easiest of which is to simply keep on using your current computer for longer. Add some RAM, a bigger hard disk or a better graphics card – get as much mileage out of your computer as you can before replacing it. The second way to prolong the life of your computer is to make sure that it’s reused rather than scrapped. While it may not have enough horsepower to enable you to play to latest games, your old computer would almost certainly be appreciated by somebody who only wants to browse the web and email. So, sell it, or give it to a needy friend or relative, or use Google to find a local donation scheme – just don’t put it out with the garbage! Hint: before parting with your old computer, be sure to wipe the data (How To Completely & Securely Erase Your Hard Drive). Print smartIt takes resources to manufacture ink, ink cartridges and paper, so it makes sense to think about what and when you print.
There are a number of ways that you can print smarter:
Buy an ENERGY STAR rated computer
So, being green really is quite easy. And the best part about it is that you’ll not only be doing your bit to help the environment, you’ll also be keeping your electricity bill down – and saving money is something we all like to do, right? Do you have any computer energy-saving tips? Let us know in the comments section below! Image credit: Looking Glass, marsi Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf fan page on Facebook. Over 20,000 fans already!
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| How To Find Out If Your Facebook Account Has Been Hacked Posted: 26 May 2010 09:30 AM PDT
You could, but it’ll be a dramatic understatement. Privacy settings are changing rapidly, and many users are confused. There’s a lot you can do to protect yourself, of course; check out Mahendra’s piece entitled “10 Solid Tips to Safeguard Your Facebook Privacy” for more information on potential Facebook security flaws. Privacy’s not the sole concern, however; there are security risks as well. Recently, millions of stolen Facebook accounts were stolen and sold. You can protect yourself from such Facebook security flaws by regularly changing your password, and Tina wrote a piece all about picking a good password that you will not forget; be sure to check that out for good password ideas.
Getting StartedHead over to Facebook and log in, assuming you haven’t already logged in. Click the “Account” button in the top-right corner, then click “Account Settings” to get the preferences page we’re looking for. You’ll notice a new addition: “Account Security.” It’ll look like this:
To enable this feature, click “Yes” followed by “Submit.” You’ve now turned on Facebook’s new account security settings. How it WorksI’ve got an old iMac in my lab right now; I set it up for Boulder Community Computers and am now making use of it until it’s sold. I’ve never logged into Facebook using this iMac, so I thought this would be a great way to test how the new feature works. I logged into Facebook and here’s what I saw:
I needed to choose a name for the iMac, so as you can see I gave it the most creative name I could think of: “Work iMac.” This computer is now identified by Facebook as one I use regularly. In and of itself this wouldn’t be that useful, but there’s more: I get a follow-up email informing me that someone logged into my account from a computer I’ve never used before. Check it out:
As you can see, I’m told the name of the computer that connected to Facebook, the time it was connected and that I should change my password ASAP if it wasn’t me that did this. This may seem a little annoying, but the upside is obvious: if someone logs into my Facebook account without my permission, I’ll know. This is comforting when you consider the story I linked to above, wherein Facebook username and passwords were sold to individuals who could use the information contained within for anything from identity theft to extortion. ConclusionThis new feature doesn’t solve all of Facebook’s security flaws, but it does give people a way to protect the data they store on Facebook from unauthorized use. I’m going to leave it turned on, that’s for sure; it’s good to be informed when a new computer connects to any online account. I wish banks had a similar feature. What do you think? Do you think it’s the best way to find out if your Facebook account has been hacked? Will you use this new Facebook feature, or do the annoyances outweigh the security benefits? Do you feel Facebook is doing enough to protect your personal information? Are you thinking of leaving Facebook, disconnecting from the Internet and seeking shelter in the mountains? No conclusive study has ever proven that commenting can cause cancer, so you might as well! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| Remotely Erase Data From Your Stolen Phone using Lookout Posted: 26 May 2010 08:30 AM PDT
Up until now, all of the apps that allowed you to remotely track your device or even remotely erase all the data on it cost money (except for this other one called MobiWee). Now I found a free application called Lookout that allows you to backup your data, track your phone, make your phone remotely "Scream" or even erase all the data on it. Lookout works with Windows Mobile, Android and Blackberry mobile phones. As an added bonus, they throw in a anti-malware application, anti-virus application and a backup (remote) utility on your mobile device to keep it nice and secure.
Click on the big yellow button that says ‘Free Download’. That will take you to a page where they will ask you what country you are in in addition to your mobile phone number.
You can also just visit m.mylookout.com on your device. This is what the text message looks like. As you can see, it is just a link to http://mylookout.com/m.
When you arrive at the mobile page for myLookout, you will see a list of operating systems. You may have to scroll down the page to find it.
Then when you’ve located your operating system, click on the link to download the myLookout application. You can see the example below shows the Windows Mobile download link:
Then when you are asked where to install the application, I recomend using the internal or device storage for optimal performance. If you have a fast MicroSD card then you can install it to the storage card. I opted to install it to my device. It will use a little more than 1MB of storage space.
Once the application is installed on your mobile device, you will see a warning telling you to make sure that you have an unlimited network data connection. Remember going over your allotted plan can be very expensive so tread with caution.
Your device will then need to be restarted. When it comes back up, you will be prompted to create a new myLookout username and password or you can use an existing account if you have one.
After logging in, you can choose which components to enable. Your options are Anti-Virus, Firewall and Data Backup. I chose all three.
If you choose to include data backup, you will see a sub-menu after you hit OK, asking you which components to backup. They include:
When you are done, all your functions will be enabled and you should see a screen like this:
Now we are ready to use the website to track down my device. Let's see how it works. Log in using the same username and password you set up earlier.
You can view anti-virus activity, data backup files and the most interesting component is the missing device: find my phone link.
After clicking on it you can locate your device on a map, make it emit a LOUD scream or delete all the data on the device. You are allowed to back it up again remotely before wiping it as well. Let's see how well the locate command works. Below, you can see I hit the locate button on the upper left hand side of the interface.
In about 2 minutes, it located me almost precisely on a map inside a building 14 stories up.
All in all this is an awesome free application. And it will be awesome as long as it remains free! Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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