MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [June 26th]” plus 5 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [June 26th]
- Cog – A Simple Folder-Based Alternative to iTunes [Mac]
- How To Make Fake High Dynamic Range Photos In Photoshop
- How To Fix Bootloader Problems Due To GRUB
- Elite Keylogger Giveaway Winners
- Sync and Share High Defintion Files with Libox
| Cool Websites and Tools [June 26th] Posted: 26 Jun 2010 08:31 PM PDT
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| Cog – A Simple Folder-Based Alternative to iTunes [Mac] Posted: 26 Jun 2010 06:30 PM PDT
Which is great, if you want to do all those things on your work computer. I don’t. But I do want is to play music, which brings me to Cog. This bare-bones music player does one thing and one thing well: play music. The UNIX philosophy states that programs should do one thing and do it well, a sentiment I largely agree with. Cog works this way where iTunes fails.
Getting Started With Cog
Of course you need to begin by downloading Cog, and going through the usual Mac installation process. Find the Cog download here. Installing is done in the usual Mac manner, which I won’t rehash. Then you just need to fire up the program. You’ll quickly notice that there is no library like there is in iTunes; rather, the user drags music to a playlist in order to hear it. You can do this from the Finder, or, if you prefer, from Cog’s folder drawer.
Using the drawer is easy. Hit Command+D to bring up the drawer. By default, this will show you the “Music” folder on your Mac. You can browse your music and drag folders you want to listen to the playlist to add them. This allows you to quickly make a playlist and then get back to work. But I don’t have any music in my “Music” folder; I store all of mine on a network drive (my Boxee box). That’s okay; the drawer folder is easy enough to change. Click “Cog” on the menu bar followed by “Preferences.” The “File Drawer” tab will allow you to set the drawer to show any folder you please.
You’ll also notice a few other basic things to configure, including your shortcut keys and Last.FM scrobbling. Beyond this, however, Cog pretty much just plays music. Supported FormatsSimplicity isn’t the only reason to use Cog, of course; it also supports far more codecs than iTunes. Apple’s default player supports only MP3, AIFF, WAV, MPEG-4, AAC (.m4a) and Apple Lossless. Cog, on the other hand, supports many different formats, including some obscure ones. Here’s the run-down from the Cog website:
ConclusionI find Cog refreshing compared to the likes of iTunes, which has become too large for it’s own good. I think Apple should seriously consider offering a program that simply plays music and another program for managing iPods and iPhones. This would greatly reduced the footprint of iTunes for those who just want to play music. This is unlikely to happen, however, because Apple’s built its brand on the simplicity of managing iPods using iTunes. It’s ironic that this simplicity is directly responsible for iTunes being needlessly complicated, but such is life. In fact, this easy-to-use program is complex enough that the MakeUseOf team even has a PDF guide explaining how to use it: The Big Book of iTunes by Jackson Chung. There won’t be a big book of Cog anytime soon, because Cog is self-explanatory. That’s how I like my software to be. Do you guys think iTunes is too big, or am I just a crazy Ubuntu type obsessed with simplicity? Could you see yourself using Cog, or does iTunes work well for you? As always, I’d love it if you let me know in the comments below but be gentle, this is my first Mac article! Got Questions? Ask Them Now for FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| How To Make Fake High Dynamic Range Photos In Photoshop Posted: 26 Jun 2010 03:30 PM PDT
Whatever the case may be, the results can be pretty impressive, but how is it done exactly? Do you need a fancy camera and special HDR software? Not necessarily.
What Is HDR?High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography is simply about capturing a greater range of tonal detail. This usually entails taking at least three photos at different exposures of the same shot and merging them together. If you don’t have a camera that allows you to manually set the exposure, a tripod, or if the subject is moving, don’t worry; you’re not out of luck. So, How To Make High Dynamic Range PhotosHere’s the photo we’ll be working on. It’s a single JPEG image straight out of a camera.
First off, open up the image in Photoshop and duplicate the Background layer by dragging it to the Create a new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette or by hitting Ctrl + J (Command + J on a Mac).
With the layer copy selected, set the blending mode to Overlay.
Now, go up to the menu bar and click on Image. Scroll down to Adjustments and hit Desaturate.
After that, go to Image > Adjustments again, but this time click on Invert (Ctrl + I or Command + I on Mac). On the menu bar, click on Filter, go to Blur, and choose Gaussian Blur. Select a radius of somewhere around 50 pixels or so. If you notice any halos starting to appear around objects, increase the radius accordingly. Now, copy the Background layer once again. This time, set its blending mode to either Vivid Light or Linear Light. Start lowering the opacity of this layer to your liking. From my experience, you should end up at around 25%, more or less depending on the image you’re working with. It’s entirely up to you, though.
That’s it. Here’s what we’ve come up with:
Bonus TipHere’s an additional tip you can try out. Here’s another photo that’s been through the same technique explained above:
It looks pretty good, but let’s try to tweak the colors a little to make them pop. Make sure you have no layers selected and click on the Create new fill or adjustment layer icon.
Select Selective Color and start going through the colors and adjusting the sliders to your liking, focusing particularly on any dominant colors in your image.
Here’s the final result:
Do you have any experience creating HDR images? Has this high dynamic range photography technique worked for your photos? Let us know in the comments. Image Credit: MorBCN Got Questions? Ask Them Now for FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| How To Fix Bootloader Problems Due To GRUB Posted: 26 Jun 2010 12:30 PM PDT
Dual boot means you have two operating systems (most likely Windows and a Linux distro) on your computer. You get some kind of menu to choose which operating system to boot when you start your computer and depending upon your choice, the appropriate system boots up. More often than not, if you are dual-booting with Windows and Linux, chances are that the menu you see at boot time is the GRUB boot menu.
If you go the other route, that is — install Windows after Linux, or if you play with partitions on your hard drive too much; you can end up messing up GRUB. In that case, depending upon what you just did, you might only be able to boot into Windows or GRUB might fail to display any menu at all. In either case, before you panic and rush to forums or tech support, there is a simple fix that will most likely alleviate your woes. Its to restore GRUB, and you can do it in a snap. Let’s see how. First off, as is often the case when a new version to a popular software is released, both versions continue to be in use for some time before the newly version is adopted. The same with GRUB. Sadly, the procedure is a little different for both versions and we shall tackle both of them here. First off, you need a Live CD handy. Your Linux distro CD should work just fine if it installed GRUB on your computer in the first place. You can also use Knoppix or SystemRescueCD. We will be using Ubuntu Live CD. Keep in mind that the CD uses same version of GRUB. This can be insured by using the disc that you used to install Linux. Boot off from the Live CD and give it some time before you can view the desktop. Next up – fire up terminal and get ready for some command line action. Before we proceed keep in mind that hd0 refers to the first hard disk on your computer, second will be hd1 and so on. Similarly (hd0,2) means second partition on the first hard disk. GRUB
GRUB 2
After running these steps, you should be able to restore GRUB within 5 minutes. If things go well and if GRUB was the reason for your troubles, you just fixed them. If these didn’t fix your problem, you might want to have a closer look at your hard disk’s health and partitions. You can use GParted or the Ubuntu Live CD or any other Live USB/CD that suits you. Have you ever run into booting troubles? How did you fix it? Shoot off any tips in the comments, that might be helpful to fellow readers! NEW: Download MakeUseOf iPhone App. FREE! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| Elite Keylogger Giveaway Winners Posted: 26 Jun 2010 10:00 AM PDT
After a week, the giveaway is now over. We hope you had fun participating. Here are the 20 lucky winners! License information will be sent to your email addresses. Thank you for participating. Be sure to check back for our next giveaway on Monday.
MakeUseOf would like to thank Amy from WideStep for her generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email. Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| Sync and Share High Defintion Files with Libox Posted: 26 Jun 2010 09:30 AM PDT
Libox has several different functions. It acts as a means of syncing your media files across several computers, and and allows you to easily access your files remotely and share them with other Libox users. Libox offers unlimited storage, and allows you and your friends to access your files at any time, at the caveat that your computer has to be turned on, but you do not need to leave the application itself running.
Once your files have been imported, there are several ways you can browse through your media. The home tab displays all of the files that have been imported. You can either browse through all of your media files, or you can browse through your latest activity which includes recent imports and recently shared files.
You can also browse through each media type individually. Photos can be browsed by date, country and by albums, or you can also choose to browse all imported photos.
Videos can be browsed by date, country or playlist.
And lastly, music can be browsed by tracks, albums, artists, genres or playlists.
While you can play audio and video files directly within Libox, you can’t skip forward or rewind.
When it comes to sharing your files, you can either share an entire folder of videos, photographs or audio files, or you can share individual files. To share a file or folder, click on it, and at the top of the window, click the “Share” button.
This will open up an email like window, where you can see your attached files, and fill in the email address and subject for your message. If you want to share media from more than one place in Libox, you can continue to add files to the message by clicking on “Add files.”
Once your message is ready to be sent, type in the email address, after which you will be prompted to add the person to your contact list, if you haven’t already. You can create groups in your contact list to easily share files with entire groups of people at the click of one button. You can share your files with up to 40 different contacts. Libox is a little bit restrictive in its sharing method. You have to add email addresses to your contact list in order to send them any files, and unfortunately, they cannot access the files without signing up for an account, and downloading the software onto their machines. For tech-savvy friends and family, this isn’t a big deal, but this definitely puts Libox out of the running if you’re just looking for a quick and easy way to share media files with your less than tech-savvy friends. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’d be better of using DropBox, Drop.io or ZumoDrive. After you have shared, or received an invitation to share files from another Libox user, the files will show up in the respective folder, as well as on the home page displaying your latest activity. Shared photos can be commented on, exported to your computer and shared with other users.
Shared music and video files can be played but cannot be saved to your computer. If you’re accessing your own account remotely, you should be able to download any of your files. You can also create collections of media files by clicking on the Select button.
You can then begin to select files one by one to add to your collection.
If you are selecting photos only, you will be prompted to add them to an album,and give it a title of your choice.
If you are selecting audio or video files, you will be prompted to add them to a playlist. If you choose to delete a collection, the files in it will not be deleted from Libox. If you’re away from your computer and want to access your files from anywhere – you can do so with a mobile phone or any web browser. Simply go to the Libox home page and log into your web-based account. Accessing Libox from any regular browser is a similar experience to using the software. Accessing it from the mobile website is surprisingly pleasant and easy to use, allowing you to play back files, browse photos, and share your files with your contacts. The only drawback is that you cannot add new contacts to your Libox account from the mobile version of the site. How do you share your high definition media files with your friends and family? Let us know in the comments. Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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This was Widestep’s second giveaway at MakeUseOf. Elite Keylogger seems to be pretty popular among our users as a safe and secure way to monitor activity on computers.
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