MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [June 4th]” plus 9 more |
- Cool Websites and Tools [June 4th]
- The 5 Best Questions From You [MakeUseOf Answers]
- How to Set Up a Small Business Computer Network
- The 2 Best Non-Techie Ways To Backup Wordpress Blog
- Hot Tech Deals [June 4th]
- Gruml – The Unofficial Google Reader Desktop Client for Mac
- Connect To Radio Stations on The Internet From Any Computer with RadioSure
- 3 Easy Steps To Repair Internet Explorer 8
- Scrumy – Finally, A Truly Simple Project Management App For Groups
- Backup Your Twitter Tweets with Twitter Backup
Cool Websites and Tools [June 4th] Posted: 04 Jun 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 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
The 5 Best Questions From You [MakeUseOf Answers] Posted: 04 Jun 2010 06:31 PM PDT This week’s winner of our Best Answer of the Week contest is Merryann Palmer for her answer to #5 of our Best Questions today. You could win $50! It’s easy. Just answer questions at MakeUseOf Answers and provide your valid email address or log in using your Facebook account. The Best Answer of the Week is picked manually.
For more interesting questions, browse MakeUseOf Answers by Latest Questions, Unanswered Questions or Most Popular Questions. For regular updates subscribe to the Answers RSS Feed. Need help? Ask us at MakeUseOf Answers! Free and no strings attached. Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf fan page on Facebook. Over 20,000 fans already! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
How to Set Up a Small Business Computer Network Posted: 04 Jun 2010 04:31 PM PDT By setting up a network, your computer will be used to its full potential and all your business needs will be met. You can access the Internet with any computer on the network, as well as share files and devices across it. An effective computer network design can make a big difference for you and your business.
Networks – Wired vs. WirelessThe first decision you will need to make about your new network is whether you would like it to be wired or completely wireless. These two methods obviously have their upsides and downsides, but either one is suitable for your business needs. Wired (or Ethernet) networks are said to be extremely reliable, economical, secure, and easy to install. If you have a lot of components you would like to access the Internet with, however, you might opt for a wireless network, which allows you to have broadband access from a distance. Wireless networks have become very easy to install as well, thanks to Wi-Fi. You also eliminate the need for wires or cords in a wireless network, hence the name. Wired networks are more geared towards desktop PC setups and wireless is more of a laptop thing. If you have both a desktop and laptop in your office (like me), you can simply use a combination of the two. For instance, I have my desktop physically connected to the Internet with an Ethernet cable and my laptop connects via the wireless router. Network Setup – Peer-To-Peer Vs. Client-ServerThe next step in how to set up a small business computer network is deciding whether to make it a peer-to-peer setup or a client-server one. Both networks connect computers so that resources can be shared between them. The fundamental differences are in the setup configuration. Peer-To-Peer SetupIn a peer-to-peer setup, every computer acts as both the client and the server. Each computer communicates directly with the other computers in the network and resources can be added or removed. A peer-to-peer setup is much more common in the home. Equipment You Will Need:Setting up your network peer-to-peer only requires you to have a router (possibly with wireless capability) and the necessary Ethernet cords to run the router to the modem and from the router to all of your computers. Settings You Will Need:Depending on the operating system your computers may be running on, you should have some built in functions for a network. In Windows, for example, you can opt to put all computers on the same Workgroup (XP) or Homegroup (Windows 7) and enable print/file sharing. The built-in Network Setup Wizard in the control panel will walk you through your setup. Client-Server SetupIn a client-server setup, multiple clients (computers) connect to a single, central server. Public data and applications are only installed on the server and the clients connect to the server to use the resources. This type of setup is more typical in larger offices or businesses. Equipment You Will Need:In order to create a client-server setup, you are probably going to need a server, or at least a server-friendly operating system. Microsoft Windows Server Edition and Linux are very good for this. You can install one of them on a PC and use it as a server if you like, but if you have a large business it would be wise to consider purchasing a stand-alone server for the job, especially if you are going to be adding or expanding to your network in the future. Settings You Will Need:Hooking up the network properly is half the battle. Once hooked up, your server – or the computer running the server OS – should be pretty straight forward to configure. All of your client computers should have computer names (e.g. Steve-Desktop1). You can use these names to set restrictions or grant privileges to any or all of the clients on your network. Securing Your New NetworkNetwork security is also important to consider when you’re running a small business, particularly in a wireless configuration. (See: Is Your Wireless Network Safe?) Log into your router settings by navigating to 192.168.1.1 in your browser. Depending on the brand of router you are using, you should be able to locate a security tab of some kind. The current security standard for encrypting wireless networks is Wi-Fi Protected Access, or widely known as WPA and WPA2. If your router supports this option, select it and enter a strong alphanumeric password or passphrase. For tips to create a strong password, refer to these posts:
It’s also important to protect each computer on the network individually with passwords, restrictions, and programs such as firewalls anti-spyware, and anti-virus programs. ConclusionSetting up a small business computer network is all about preference. Once you decide on the layout and pick the tools you need to do the job it’s just a matter of hooking everything up and tweaking a few settings here and there. Do you have any tips to add about how to set up a small business computer network? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below. Image Credit: Cylonka, mrgoose, bigevil600, Linuxgeek Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
The 2 Best Non-Techie Ways To Backup Wordpress Blog Posted: 04 Jun 2010 02:31 PM PDT Here at MakeUseOf we have covered the topic of how to backup a Wordpress blog before. In fact, I plan on referencing a couple of the articles in this article. What I have found through reading and experience is that there are multiple methods of storing your site files once you have backed them up.
First let me mention that there are several different parts to your blog that you will want to back up:
Each part of your blog is able to be stored in the 2 methods I am about to share. 1. Back Up Your Wordpress Blog LocallyOne of the possibilities when it comes to storing backed up website files is to back them up locally on your own computer. Files: In order to back up the files, you can use tools such as FTP clients FileZilla or Cobian Backup. Just access your site via FTP and copy over everything to your local machine. Databases: In order to back up your databases one of the best plugins to go with is WP DB Manager (makes both backing up and restoring a cinch). A local copy gives the best control and flexibility. The downside about a local backup is that you’re also vulnerable to a computer crash. What are the odds of both your site crashing and your computer at the same time? I don’t know but it does happen. You may want to also back up your local files remotely with a service like Mozy. 2. Back Up Your Wordpress Site To A Third Party ServiceAnother option is to rely on a third party to host your backed up Wordpress files. Files: The tip at the end of the last method is a good example of using a third party to keep a backup of your website’s files using Mozy. You can also save your files using Google Docs now that they allow you to save and access any type of file. Just zip all the files (keeping the directories the same) and save them there, depending on how much data you have. However, for an easier solution, keep reading past the database section. Databases: A good example is how Online Backup for Wordpress works when it backs up the Wordpress database to the service’s server instead of your own computer. Both of the third party solutions for files and for the databases may work fine for you but if you want an easier solution that covers both, I have the plugin for you. Check out the Automatic WordPress Backup plugin. This plugin will backup both the files and the database(s) and upload them to Amazon S3 for you. Cheap storage plus an easy backup? Nothing to complain about. The third party method has several pluses including not having to manage the files on your system, you don’t have to worry about your PC crashing, and a website restoration could possibly happen from any place if need be. The downside is that you may not want to rely on someone else to handle your precious data. What if they mess up? Like I said before, using multiple methods together is a better idea, just in case. How To Restore Your Site From BackupKnowing how to restore your site if something should go wrong is also important. Files: In order to restore the files, use an FTP program and upload the backup copy of the files keeping the same directory structure. Database: I mentioned the WP DB Manager plugin earlier. This plugin comes with a restore feature which does the database restoring for you. If you have just the database file, you can also use phpMyAdmin (the Wordpress site has a tutorial on this). What type of Wordpress backup tips do you have? Are there any tools that I could have linked to in any of these methods? How do you backup your Wordpress blog? Our latest mega giveaway: zozi is sponsoring a FREE 7-day, wine-tasting trip in New Zealand for two. Here’s how you can sign up. Contest ends June 25th. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Posted: 04 Jun 2010 01:30 PM PDT For more fresh hot deals, visit our Hot Tech Deals page, which is constantly updated.
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Gruml – The Unofficial Google Reader Desktop Client for Mac Posted: 04 Jun 2010 12:31 PM PDT A free alternative to NetNewsWires however, is Gruml. Both local clients sync with your Google Reader account so that any changes you make in one reader will be applied in the other. This means you can easily turn Gruml into a Google Reader desktop client on your Mac Gruml is currently in its beta version, so it may not be as stable as NetNewsWire, both of which have similar features and user interface. If you're not currently using a RSS feed reader, you might want to give Gruml a try. It contains some useful features not found in NetNewsWire or Google Reader itself.
After downloading Gruml, you will be directed to add your Google Reader account to manage your Google Reader feeds. You can also click on Gruml's preferences and add your account. Gruml will download your feeds the way they are organized in your Google Reader account, so both will be in sync. Reading and navigating Gruml is pretty similar to how you use Google Reader, so I'm going to point to features and preferences in Gruml that you might possibly overlook. Preference SettingsAs with all new applications you download and use a few times, you will want to check out its Preference settings to customize the app for your particular needs. For example, the default font size of Gruml is little small, in my view. So you will definitely want to click on Preferences>Appearance>Fonts and change the font size to your liking. Below the Fonts settings, you might also want to click off (disable) some of the sidebar items, such as Notes or Shared items which you might not be using. This makes the application a little less cluttered in that area. If you don't plan on tagging items, you might to click that item off as well. You can also view your latest feeds in Gruml by clicking on its icon in the menu bar. This is set by default. If you prefer it doesn’t appear there, simply click on Preferences>Advanced and disable it. However, if you do plan to use it, you might consider having selected articles open in your default browser instead of in Gruml, which is its default setting. I suggest this because accessing articles in the menu bar means that you probably don't want to open Gruml, but just want to check your latest feeds for anything interesting. If you double-click on an article, it will open in your web browser. It would be great if accessing articles in the menu bar would give you a preview of say the first paragraph instead of just the titles. Customize ToolbarNext, Gruml's toolbar has icons and buttons for nearly all its features. For those who prefer navigating and activating items with your mouse instead of shortcut keys, you should click on View>Customize Toolbar and add icons that you think you might be using on a regular basis. You might also add your favorite web-based bookmarking account, such Diigo or Instapaper to the toolbar. By the way, Gruml adds many more ways to share articles than what is available in Google Reader or NetNewsReader. When right-clicking on an article, you can share it on Delicious, Reddit, StumbleUpon, your Evernote account, and so on. Each of these sites also has its own icon that you can put in the toolbar. Change The LayoutThe default setup for Gruml is that when you click on a feed, the list of its articles will appear, and then when you click on the article it will appear under the list. But you might want to use the three-column view which puts a selected article in a third column instead of below, which might make for better reading. Opening LinksWhen you click on the titles of articles, you might only get the lead paragraph for that selection. If you want to read more of the article, right-clicking on it you will give you options for how you want to view the linked page. If you want to view it in Gruml, simply select Open Link. If you prefer to view it in your default browser, select Open Link in Safari. Again, in Preferences>Advanced>URL handling, you can set how you want links to open by default. Marking All ReadIf you have lots of feeds like I do, you no doubt can't keep up with them all, and often times you just want to mark them as All Read. Gruml provides a way to do that outside the app. Just right-click on the app's icon in the dock and select "Mark all articles as read." I have been a NetNewsWire user for a long while, and I can't say that Gruml is much better than NNW at managing Google Reader feeds, but in its current beta stage, it is a free application and offers many more features. It currently doesn't have a mobile app counterpart, but I'm sure one is in the works. Let us know what you think of Gruml or any if there any other Google Reader desktop client for Mac that you prefer. Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Connect To Radio Stations on The Internet From Any Computer with RadioSure Posted: 04 Jun 2010 11:31 AM PDT As I listen to Jazz guitarist Peter White in the background, let me introduce you to RadioSure. RadioSure (ver.2.0.886 ) is an internet radio player and a really cool and simple one at that. This attribute along with its unzipped size of 4.57 MB makes it a great media software to include in your portable apps lineup.
But the yardstick of a great portability loops back to how good the app really is. That's where RadioSure is pretty much surefooted in its performance. So, let's tune it up and catch a few song streams. A Clean Simple LookThe radio interface is as simple as it can get. The design is like a traditional media player. You have a small button on the right corner that can collapse or expand the radio interface. The Options On Stations12,120 radio stations on the Internet from across the globe are enough for even an ardent audiophile. The stations are listed by name, country, genre, and language. Alongside the station names, you also get the bitrate of the radio stream on offer for some of the radio stations. You get to hear lots of FM stations too which stream online. RadioSure supports most audio formats like mp3, wma, ogg, vorbis, aac, and more. The track and the singer are displayed on the interface, the title bar and the status bar. Got your own radio station on the Internet? Add it to RadioSure by adding a few details. Picking The One To HearYou really need good and precise filters to narrow down to the station of your choice. RadioSure doesn't make it obvious, but choosing stations from the 12,000+ on offer is easy. Use the little search box on top and narrow it down. Or you can go with the filters. Right click on the column heads and check any of the filters that are available. You can use the search and filters in combination to quickly narrow down to the right station. Clear the search field and the filters to get the entire 12,000+ strong list of radio stations again. Recording From The StreamRecording tracks while it's streaming into your computer is also uncomplicated. You just have to toggle the red button to start and stop recording. RadioSure's Options has a Recording tab for more hands-on control with setting a custom folder, choosing a bitrate, splitting recordings by track, and avoiding duplicates. You can open up multiple instances of RadioSure and simultaneously record multiple radio stations on the Internet. Skin It!Skinning is a must have for all media players. So it is with RadioSure. There is a whole gallery of skins developed by others and made available on the site for free or paid downloads. You can even make yours and upload it to the site for sale. The Listening ExperienceThe sound quality of course depends on your bandwidth (and the station). I have a slowpoke 256kbps connection and I can vouch that the buffering and streaming is more than adequate. Bandwidth is a variable, but what's impressive is the smooth switching between stations. You can polish it further by ticking on crossfading and volume normalization from the General tab under Options. RadioSure lacks a full fledged graphic equalizer but it has presets like jazz, pop, rock, and classic. Internet radio comes with the rider that you will hit and miss some stations while browsing. With RadioSure's large list of stations globally, you can dip into the radio stream and come away with something. RadioSure lacks a help file but with the simple features, you really don't need one. Play it by the ear and let us know your impressions on RadioSure ver 2.0.886 (portable or the installer version). Compare it with something like the online RadioTime which we have covered earlier or Screamer Radio. Then there are The 3 Best Online Radio Players for Your Desktop. NEW: Download MakeUseOf iPhone App. FREE! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
3 Easy Steps To Repair Internet Explorer 8 Posted: 04 Jun 2010 10:31 AM PDT The improvements made to Internet Explorer 8 doesn’t mean however that it is immune to occasionally going boom. While most IE8 users will happily use it without any problem, the fact that you’re reading this article probably means you’re not one of those happy campers. You’re one of the unfortunate souls who need to repair your broken Internet Explorer.
Step 1 – Check Your Antivirus & FirewallYou’d think that since Internet Explorer 8 is a standard Windows 7 program there would be no reason for antivirus programs to conflict with it. In theory this is true, but anti-virus programs are complex and conflicts do happen. The same is true when dealing with firewalls. Both antivirus and firewall programs will interrupt the functions of a web browser if they believe the web browser is a threat. Determining if this is the problem is very simple – just turn off your antivirus or firewall program for a moment and reload Internet Explorer 8. If it still doesn’t work you can write off this possibility and go to the next step. If Internet Explorer 8 does work you need to find out what is causing the conflict. Diagnosing each individual antivirus and firewall program is simply outside of the scope of this article, but most such programs do have the ability to exclude a program from being blocked, and adding Internet Explorer 8 to the exclusion list will solve your problem – although this could cause a security problem if malware ever hijacked Internet Explorer 8. Alternatively, you can try re-installing your antivirus or firewall software. Step 2 – Check Your Add-OnsInternet Explorer 8, like all modern web browsers, offers the ability to install extensions called add-ons. Add-on software theoretically improves Internet Explorer 8 by adding functionality which is not standard. However, if an add-on is poorly programmed or for some reason does not install correctly it can cause serious problems. To see if this is what needs to be repaired you’ll need to press the Windows key and R at the same time. This opens the Run window. Enter the text iexplore -extoff into the text box and click Run. If Internet Explorer 8 now runs without issue you know that one of your add-ons needs to be repaired or uninstalled. Enable your add-ons one by one to see if one of the add-ons causes the problems to reoccur. Click on Tools and then Manage Add-ons. Make sure all add-ons are disabled and then close Internet Explorer 8. Re-open Internet Explorer 8 using your normal shortcut and enable the add-ons one by one. Once you’ve found the add-on which reproduces the problems you can try reinstalling it or simply delete it. Step 3 – Return To Defaults, Captain!If the previous two steps do not repair Internet Explorer 8 for you, you’ll need to try resetting Internet Explorer to its default state. This returns the settings to a like-new condition. You can achieve this by opening your Control Panel and then opening the Network and Internet menu. Click on Internet Options and then click on the Advanced tab (the furthest tab to the left). At the bottom of the window you’ll see the Reset button. Click on it and all should be well. If you’re still having problems however, you’ll have to resort to a re-installation. This is a complex, multi-step process, but don’t worry – MakeUseOf already has a detailed guide covering how to reinstall Internet Explorer 8. Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Scrumy – Finally, A Truly Simple Project Management App For Groups Posted: 04 Jun 2010 09:31 AM PDT I like project management software, but for the most part most of them look like clones of Microsoft Project. Not long ago I explored Gantter, a free online project management tool that looks a lot like MS Project. Abhigyan has covered Collabtive, another group project management tool as well. And of course Tina provided a great overview of all of the project management tools so many people have come to know and love – like Remember the Milk and Google Calendar.
Create Your Scrumy Page With Just A URLThe simplicity of creating your own Scrumy project page just blew my mind. No account sign-up and no email required – all you have to do is type in the URL “scrumy.com/YourProject“, obviously replacing “YourProject” with the desired name for your project. If you don’t really care about the URL itself, then you can use the options on the main Scrumy page if you prefer. A free page is useful for simple, public projects that anyone can edit. This is important to understand – free Scrumy projects are public webpages that anyone can modify, so make sure you and your project team members understand this. (However, if you keep the URL of your project private and share only with the people involved it’s very unlikely for someone outside the group to find it on their own) Upgrading to premium lets you create a password protected private project area, keep an archive of past work, plan out future project work, live updates, and custom colors (you can select the color for each team member), among other benefits. Once you type in “Scrumy.com/YourProject“, you’ll see a blank project area with the option to create a “New Story.” A “story” is essentially an individual goal of the team. Each goal will consist of multiple tasks (ToDo list) that will be assigned to each member of the team. You can just keep adding new goals for the project by clicking on “New Story” and creating a description. Each new goal gets placed under the last, but you can easily reorganize how they are listed by simply grabbing one of the stories (hold down the left mouse click) and then drag the goal to wherever you would like it to go, and then drop it there. The background of this app is AJAX, and it’s all point and click – it’s an extremely simple and easy interface to use. Once you’ve listed your goals, it’s time to start creating To-Do lists that you can assign to people. You do this by clicking the “+” sign next to the goal. When you do, a pop-up box lets you type a short description of the task, and then type in the name of the person you’d like to assign it to. That name is automatically assigned a specific color. As you can see, as you add tasks and assign them to names, it’s very easy to see who is assigned a task by looking for their color. In this example, Dave is yellow, Chris is blue and Ryan is purple. Any task that you leave unassigned is white. Remember, each of these “sticky notes” can be moved around and rearranged just by clicking and dragging them wherever you like. This makes it very easy to visually organize each goal and task list. After you’ve created all of the tasks, the individual folks who are assigned those tasks can log onto the webpage and drag their task into “In Progress” when they’ve started. As you can see, the interface feels like it’s not even web based – as you can manipulate objects and rearrange everything visually in ways that usually aren’t how most web based systems work. As assignees finish their work, they drag their task into the “Verify” column. Then, a project manager can visit the URL, confirm that the task is truly satisfied, and drag the task into the “Done” column. The overall progress of a project and associated tasks is all contained on one webpage. With such an organized, visual layout, it’s very simple to see and understand everything that’s going on, no matter how many people are working on a project. The downsides, of course, is that with simplicity and ease of use comes limitations. Tasks are not integrated with each other, meaning that you don’t have to complete one before you can start another. There’s also no timeline or set dates, so it will be hard to establish deadlines. However, for many casual group projects, like group research, such a laid-back and simplified graphical tool is exactly what’s needed to keep the group cohesive and involved. Have you ever used any online project management tool? Do you have your own favorite? Have you ever tried Scrumy, and what do you think? Share your insight in the comments section below. Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Backup Your Twitter Tweets with Twitter Backup Posted: 04 Jun 2010 08:31 AM PDT Twitter can crash and they can restore from backup losing your recent tweets. Or perhaps they will one day start to purge older tweets. Well if this worries you then I have the perfect application for you. Twitter Backup is a small 423KB Java (.jar) file. What it does is effectively grab all your tweets from the Twitter website and save them on your local machine as an XML file. This means you will have your own data in your own hands. You can reference your data locally instead of online or use it to create an outline for a manuscript.
Go ahead and fill in your username and password in the correct fields. The password will be displayed in clear, plain text so be wary of anyone around you that you would not want to have your Twitter password. Then you will tell Twitter Backup the file's name and path where you want to store your outputted tweets. You can also fill in your proxy server if you have one. If you do not know what this is, chances are you do not need it. When you are finished filling in your data, the start button will light up and you can go ahead and hit it. You will start to see the output in the log window like so: The way the application retrieves the data from Twitter (via the Twitter API) requires it to wait 1 minute in between requests. This slows the process down horribly but if left overnight, when you come back, it will be done with all your tweets. If you have millions of tweets than this might not be the best solution for you but, for me it completed in about two hours (or maybe less – I did walk away). When I came back I saw that Twitter Backup was finished. I went to go check out the auto generated XML file with all my tweets in it. I navigated to the directory I gave in the file name field of the settings and opened the application in notepad ++. I was then able to see everything I have ever tweeted and I can even visually recreate my timeline and show what I was doing at certain points in time. It is very cool. Do you have another application that will allow me to back up my tweets – maybe a little quicker than Twitter Backup? If so and it is free drop me a line or leave a comment below. You can also check out TweetBackup if you want something a little more automated. Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles |
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