MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [July 1st]” plus 9 more |
- Cool Websites and Tools [July 1st]
- 5 Best Computer Games for Toddlers
- 7 Great Completely Free eBooks on Social Media You Have to Read
- Unleash Your Über-Nerdiness by Using Google Apps via Command Line
- Hot Tech Deals [July 1st]
- How to Make a Visual Resume with PowerPoint in 3 Steps & Stand Out from the Crowd
- How To Manage Your Life Completely Online Using Netvibes
- The 5+ Best Sources To Download Freeware Programs
- Have Fun Polarizing Your Images with Poladroid For Windows
- Get 10GB of Free Storage & Share Files on the Go with quanp
Cool Websites and Tools [July 1st] Posted: 01 Jul 2010 08:31 PM PDT
These are just half of the websites that we discovered in the last couple of days. If you want us to send you daily round-ups of all cool websites we come across, leave your email here. Or follow us via RSS feed. Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
5 Best Computer Games for Toddlers Posted: 01 Jul 2010 06:30 PM PDT Playing some computer games with your toddler online is a good quiet and stationary activity for both of you to enjoy. It’s an excellent way to teach and introduce your toddler to some basic computer skills. At the same time, your child can learn and have fun with a variety of engaging games out there to choose from.
The Musical Instruments GameJoin the jam with the Musical Instruments Game from Fisher-Price. This fun and interactive music mixer game allows your toddler to learn about instruments and songs. Start out by choosing a song you’d like to play along with by clicking on one of the animals. Now, turn up your speakers, watch, and listen as the animals start playing the song you picked with their instruments. You can now stop and start each individual instrument by clicking on a musician in the band. Feel free to mix it up a bit by changing the song to take control over different instruments. Super Duper DolphinLet your toddler watch a dolphin perform tricks when you feed him. This entertaining Nick Jr. game demonstrates cause and effect and helps introduce your child to the mouse. Just click on the bucket of fish to feed the dolphin and he’ll do a different trick for every fish thrown. It’s recommended that you and your toddler try to count the fish or come up with names for the dolphin’s tricks to bolster creativity and language skills. Coloring BookColoring Book is just one of many games to play on the Sesame Street website. With the help of Elmo, just have your toddler move the mouse around the image to color it. Once completed, the picture will come alive with a bit of animation, music, and another image will come up for more coloring. Party CostumesRecommended for age 1 year and over, Party Costumes and Presents for Kwala is a popular computer game for toddlers at UpToTen. The website says that this activity will help your child develop skills in observation, understanding, decision making, orientation, and using the mouse. The game is pretty simple. You have to try to find who the costume pictured in the large circle belongs to by following the line to the correct character. You can keep at it until you get it right and once you do, a new game will come up for you to try again until all the characters are in their costumes. Music-MakerMusic-Maker is another simple and fun activity for your toddler to enjoy. This game is from KneeBouncers, which offers a variety of quality and full-screen games to choose from. On the right-hand side, you can select either the drums, piano, or guitar to play. Song selection is on the left, and from there, just start pressing any key to play the instrument to the tune you picked. For the piano, you can also move your cursor over the keys to play them. Be sure to check out the sites all these games come from for more activities for your toddler to play. What are some of your favorite computer games for toddlers? Let us know in the comments. Image Credit: Tom Carmony Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
7 Great Completely Free eBooks on Social Media You Have to Read Posted: 01 Jul 2010 04:30 PM PDT Do you love books? Love getting free stuff? Yeah, me too. That’s why I’ve decided to share with you all a selection of excellent books on social media that are all available to read for free. Here’s a selection of completely free ebooks which come highly recommended by social media professionals. They’re yours to read for free whenever you like. So, quit your random surfing for a while and get stuck in to reading something worthwhile.
ContentCory Doctorow’s “Content” is possibly one of the most important books in social media right now. If you really want to get a grip on copyright law as it stands right now, then this book is for you. If you want to do better than that and try to see what should be done about copyright law, then you absolutely must read this book. See where I’m getting at? Read this completely free ebook now. Get “Content” for free here. The Cluetrain Manifesto“The Cluetrain Manifesto” by Levine, Locke, Searles and Weinberger is still a guiding light for businesses online. Written in 2000, these pioneers hit the nail on the head, claiming that consumers would have a greater voice online and that marketing spin would be less effective on the internet. They aim to reminder businesses that they are talking to human beings, not just a market demographic. Get “The Cluetrain Manifesto” for free here. The Future of Reputation“The Future of Reputation” by Daniel Solove is a must-read insight in to how we perceive privacy and how this is evolving. It discusses how the internet has changed the shelf-life of rumour and how a person’s reputation can be ruined forever by a single event that was shared online. Get “The Future of Reputation” for free here. The Wealth of NetworksYochai Benkler’s “The Wealth of Networks” is considered a vital book in social media research. Readers, however tend to take on a love-hate relationship with it. It’s a dense read, filled with academic prose. But, if you can enjoy that sort of writing you will uncover many great ideas about social networks and how they interact. It will change the way you view the internet. Get “The Wealth of Networks” free here. The Art of Community“The Art of Community” by Jono Bacon is a newcomer to the must-read social networking book list. It’s the perfect book for any online community manager who wants to ensure they work with their community towards the best possible outcome for their group. Get “The Art of Community” free here. The Future of IdeasLawrence Lessig’s “The Future of Ideas” is a timely exploration in to how the internet has fostered a wide array of creativity and how big business from ages past is endeavouring to stifle that creativity. It’s a lesson I hope we all learn in time. Get “The Future of Ideas” free here. For good measure, there are many more social media books by Lessig available free to download. Check out “Free Culture” and “Code Version 2.0″ for some extra free reading. Get “Free Culture” free here. What Matters NowThe last book we have for you today is “What Matters Now” by Seth Godin and a great number of others. This book is basically a compilation of essays written by over seventy smart professionals about how best to start thinking about the future. It’s not entirely about social media, but with thoughts from many of the minds big in social media, there’s plenty of good ideas for social media professionals. Get “What Matters Now” free here. If you’re keen for more free ebooks, check out this post on free ebooks to learn Linux. Also read up on how to use Google to co-ordinate your lifelong learning, how to use Goodreads to keep track of all the books you want to read and four great websites to get free eBooks. With all of these completely free ebooks, please be generous and give back to the writers. They’ve made their work free because they want people to read it. So, share these links with people. If you love the book then consider buying a copy for yourself or a friend. And please, let us know in the comments which of these books you’ve enjoyed most! Image Credit: Lawrence Lessig by Robert Scoble Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Unleash Your Über-Nerdiness by Using Google Apps via Command Line Posted: 01 Jul 2010 02:30 PM PDT Yes, the command line – that sexy, monochrome, text-based terminal where hackers do their dirty work in movies – and now you can show your friends just how hardcore you are by uploading your photos to Picasa with it.
Getting Started
First, the tough part. GoogleCL can be used in Windows, Linux, and Mac operating systems, but there are a few prerequisites before you can get started. If you have any problems with this guide, make sure to check out GoogleCL's system requirements page for more information. Google Command Line for Windows UsersWindows users have to follow a few extra steps to make this work. The following information is based off instructions from public int's instructions (but hopefully a little easier to follow).
Finally, you can make a "google" command line script to easily launch GoogleCL. Create a blank text file, enter the following information (making sure to change the bolded part to the location where you saved the GoogelCL files in Step 2), and save the file as google.cmd in the folder where you installed Python (mine being C:/Python26).
Now you can type a command like google docs list in your command line to bring up a prompt for your username. After you type your username, you'll be taken to a browser page where you need to grant access for GoogleCL to access your information. You will only need to authenticate each service once. Finally, go back to the command line and press Enter. You did it! GoogleCL should now be working, so give yourself a high five. If you have problems, refer to public int's guide or check out PCWorld's guide for alternate instructions using Cygwin. Mac and Linux Users:
Using GoogleCLNow that we've gotten through the bad stuff, it's time to have some fun with GoogleCL! Creating a Blogger postYour blog will gain an infinite amount of nerd-cred if you post to it via command line. Use the following command to post directly to your blogger account:
Press enter when you're finished, and you'll have this: Using your Google CalendarTo view events on your Google Calendar, use the following command and specify a date range, separated by commas, after –date. In the example below, I'll list events for the month of May.
You can easily add events to Google Calendar with the following command:
Create a text document in Google DocsYou can easily create and edit Google Docs from the Google command line with the following command. You'll have to specify a text editor in this command – Linux users can use Vim (which keeps you in the command line) and Windows users can use Notepad. Save the document when you're finished and it will be uploaded to Google Docs!
And much more…There are many more functions available in GoogleCL – check out some of Google's example scripts to learn the basic syntax and start experimenting. GoogleCL's functionality will only be increasing as more APIs are available, so keep an eye out for good things to come. Now that you've gotten a crash course in GoogleCL, I hope to see you sharing some creative code in the comments! Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Posted: 01 Jul 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 a Visual Resume with PowerPoint in 3 Steps & Stand Out from the Crowd Posted: 01 Jul 2010 12:30 PM PDT Why make a visual resume? With the job market in a vice, the competition is fierce. Visual resumes are becoming more and more popular, but not everyone and their mom are submitting a visual resume along with their traditional one (yet) – so at the moment they can really help you stand out.
Job search engine sites are getting hip to the idea of visual resumes; Jobster.com allows users to upload visual resumes right onto their site, while MyWorkster.com has a place for a link to a visual resume on a user’s profile. What Not To Do: Don’t be an Elle Woods or an Aleksey VaynerIn the feature film “Legally Blonde,” bubbly and blonde protagonist Elle Woods gets accepted into Harvard Law School because of her visual resume, which shows her flouncing around in a pink bikini. Sex appeal is something you definitely do not want to show off in your visual resume. Secondly, don't lie in your visual resume like Aleksey Vayner, a Yale graduate who was pursuing a career as an investment banker. Vayner’s resume, which he uploaded to YouTube in 2006, was full of outlandish lies and hilarious. The visual resume showed Vayner, who had a thin and lanky build, supposedly bench pressing a 495lb weight and hitting a tennis ball at 140 mph. The resume went viral – the entire blogosphere got a great laugh. MSN and several other national news organizations even picked up and broadcast the story. Bottom line; you don’t want anything even remotely like this happening to you. Showing your sense of humor in a toned down way is a good thing – looking ridiculous will just give everyone in human resources something to talk about around the water cooler. Video vs. PowerPointThis tutorial is about how to make a visual resume using PowerPoint, not with a video camera. There are a couple reasons why I think this the PowerPoint resume method is superior. First, videotaping takes a lot of time. You have to get a haircut, dress up, find someone to film you, think long and hard about what you’re going to say (and more importantly – how you’re going to say it), re-record the whole thing since you’ll inevitably mess up at least ten times and then edit the entire piece. PowerPoint is simple, quick and easy. Secondly, after viewing hundreds of video resumes, I came to the conclusion that most people just end up looking slightly cheesy, silly, camera-shy or dorky. A few people looked great, and they were mostly in the fields of journalism, public relations or marketing. However, the rest of us who are not in these fields just aren’t movie stars – that’s totally OK and nothing to be ashamed about. However, I think a visual resume made via PowerPoint will serve this group of people (myself included) much better. Thirdly, a visual PowerPoint resume can really showcase someone’s creative side and personality, while being quite entertaining without being too far out there. Video resumes typically start out the same way; “Hi my name is so and so – I am looking for a job as a xx.” This can start to get rather drab. If you do decide to do something outside the box with a video resume, there is a greater chance of you missing boat completely. How to Make a Visual Powerpoint ResumeThis is such an easy how-to, a six year old could probably do it!
And that’s all it takes! The harder part is deciding what to include in your visual resume. In general, you’ll want to include what’s on your traditional resume in a very concise format – while showing off a glimpse (keyword here is glimpse) of your personality. Now how you do this is completely up to you – but here are some standout examples of slide show visual resumes for you to use as inspiration. 10 minutes of me: Giordano Scalzo’s Visual Resume View more presentations from giordano scalzo. Reproduced with permission Has anyone else created a visual PowerPoint resume? If so, let us know in the comments what kind of response you received from potential employers and if you thought it helped you at all in the job application process. Image Credit: Devo In Regress Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
How To Manage Your Life Completely Online Using Netvibes Posted: 01 Jul 2010 11:30 AM PDT Most of us need to mix up our organising with a little creativity to keep ourselves motivated. We need to be able to see not just the tasks at hand, but reminders of our goals and all the useful things we found along the way. What we need is a way to bring it all together visually and memorably. To have all your pictures, links, tasks relevant to this aspect of your life together and ready for action. This is where Netvibes becomes an amazing asset.
I’m personally a fan of Netvibes as a start page for many reasons. It’s not my main feed reader, but there are good reasons for duplicating a few RSS feeds in to Netvibes. You’ll see why soon as I outline how you can use Netvibes. The Set UpIt’s surprisingly easy to set up, too. Head over to Netvibes and get an account. Create a new tab for your goal. For instance, I’ve chosen to make a “Holidays” tab. A project you might have in mind could be your online job search. You can choose how you want the column layout of the tab to be by choosing “edit”. Now, you want to add a module for your tasks. If you’re using Remember The Milk, there’s a great ready-made module. If you can’t find a widget for your usual task manager, see if you can get an RSS feed for your tasks. Then you can simply add the RSS feed as a module. You can find modules on Netvibes for most of the popular online to-do lists. Remember The Milk is my to-do list of choice, but each to their own. Set up your task module so that it only shows the relevant tasks for this part of your life. In RTM, it’s easy to pick a pre-made smartlist (the picture above shows how to save a search as a smartlist in RTM). For others, you might be able to filter by tag or something. Now, make a module for your links. If you’re using Delicious or some other link manager with RSS, you can use an RSS widget to bring in your relevant links. For instance, links tagged with “Holiday” would be brought in to mine. Also grab a few pictures that remind you of your goals. There’s a Flickr module which brings in a grid of pictures using RSS. I love this module particularly because the feed doesn’t have to come from Flickr – it can be any picture RSS feed. Bring in relevant picture RSS feeds from your albums on Flickr or ideas on Tumblr. Bring in Flickr group photos that remind you of your goals. Take a look at the sorts of RSS feeds you can get from Delicious bookmarks. Mix that with a little strategy for organising your studies using Delicious and you can see that we’re able to get some extremely useful information by RSS. Then add a few inspiring RSS feeds of blogs relevant to your goal. For instance, in my “Holidays” tab I’ve added travel advisories, French travel blogs and French learning blogs. If you want to mix and match your RSS feeds before importing, use something like Yahoo pipes to tweak them first. As you can see, with everything together like this, it’s hard not to feel motivation towards your goal. Also, when you focus the page on the tasks you really want to work on, then you’re not going to wind up feeling like you should be doing everyday tasks instead of focusing on your goals. Do you use a system like this? Which apps do you use? What priorities have you dedicated a tab to and why? Let us know your great ideas! Image Credit: WorldIslandInfo.com Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
The 5+ Best Sources To Download Freeware Programs Posted: 01 Jul 2010 10:30 AM PDT The good news is that there are thousands of software developed everyday that do most of what commercial software does, but for free! Some of the best places to download freeware programs can be found here.
1. CNETCNET has a huge selection of freeware programs for all platforms and almost 100,000 of them are free. The site also has an active community which comments on the software and editors that review and rate them. The users’ reviews are a major contribution, since you can see what other users' experience has been with the software. 2. ZDNet downloadsZDNet also has a huge number of downloads, and selecting "free" as one of the search options will list all of the freeware programs. ZDNet lacks CNET's interactivity and user feedback, but it advertises itself as being the Web’s largest library of software downloads. 3. Tucow's ButterscotchButterscotch proposes itself to "…turn you on to the latest and greatest in language everyone can understand…", and for the most part it succeeds at making the site user friendly and warm looking. Starting from the sweet Butterscotch name to the list of "delicious downloads", it's a good site for those who don't want to experiment much with their freeware, but prefer to follow what most people seem to be using for those particular tasks. 4. BrothersoftBrothersoft also has a very large selection of free downloads. Not much differentiates it from the sites above, except for the Editor's Blog, which can be informative and a good source of news about lesser known software. 5. FreewareFilesThe main advantage this site has is that it takes the guesswork and the need to sort through paid software to find the freeware out of the equation, since all of the software featured on FreewareFiles is free. 6. Get Jar – Mobile Downloads OnlyGet Jar is one of the best websites for freeware programs for your mobile device and you can access it directly from your phone, even if it's not a smartphone, using any phone browser. It currently has over 70,000 applications and games, many of which are completely free. One of the features from Get Jar that make it a very appealing mobile option is the fact that if you access it from your phone, it will automatically detect what phone you are using and display software that would work on your particular phone model. When choosing freeware, there are a few things to pay attention to, such as whether the software you are downloading really is free of charge. At that point, the software will stop working unless you pay for the "full version". It is also very important to download, freeware in particular, from reliable sources, to ensure that it doesn't come infected with viruses. Checking reviews for potential spyware or hidden ads is also a good idea. Most of the freeware programs you will find are created by dedicated people who are willing to share their work with you for free. Be generous in return. If you really love certain software, and have been using it as a way of helping you make some income, go to their website and check if you can donate a few bucks. It would help ensure that those who create good programs continue to produce them for free. What is your favorite freeware? And where do you usually download it from? Post a comment and let us know. Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Have Fun Polarizing Your Images with Poladroid For Windows Posted: 01 Jul 2010 09:30 AM PDT A couple of years back, Jackson wrote about the Mac version of the application, but I'm really pleased to have discovered a Windows version since then. It's not the most frequently updated program, but it works just fine. Jump in any time and have a go.
Getting a copyEasy. Visit the website, download in the usual fashion, choosing the platform you need. For Windows, unzip the download, and run the installer. Click on Poladroid in your Start menu, and the rather weird application will drop a camera on your desktop. First useIt doesn't get much easier than this. Find a file, and drag it to the camera. A rather dark-looking image will start to develop. Wait. Give it a shake. Wait some more. Drag another one while you wait. It's not a digital technology, guys. Poladroid will eventually complete the processing of your image, and will drop the result in your default photo location (usually My Pictures), along with a little cross on the developing Polaroid image to show it's finished. Enjoy. The resulting Polaroid image comes out at 1392 x 1692 pixels, including the classic Polaroid-style frame, and if necessary, some borders are added to the original image. Don't use too small an original, or you might think it's time to visit your optometrist when you look at the result. You should also expect some cropping on non-square images, like this, but actually I rather like the effect. Having a little more funIf you're anything like me, you just might be interested in the partially-processed images that you're watching on-screen. If you right-click an image, a sample of it at the current state can be saved. Those images show up in the same place as the final copies, and at the same resolution. The just have less contrast, with the amount depending on your trigger finger. Changing the way things workAs great as this is at its defaults, there are still a number of settings which can be tweaked. Click on the small blue circle above the camera, and you'll be presented with a menu. Most of it is pretty self-explanatory, but go ahead and click Settings… There are three tabs which allow you to modify things to work better with your mind: Not a whole lot here, but you can set the resulting Polaroid images to be put back in the folder the originals come from, or in some other specified folder. Important settings here is: Auto-rotate. If your camera knows when you're taking a portrait, then Poladroid can pick up on the information and get things the right way around in here. I really like these sound effects. If you have some time… tinker. In here you can determine whether or not any blurring happens, whether to put stripes on the image or the frame, and how much vignetting (that's darkening of the outlying areas of the image) should occur. Go on. You know you want to. MoreI have uploaded the 'Poladroided' images to my Flickr collection just here if you want to take a closer look. If you like the idea, but would like to try some other options, take a look at Pixisnap and Instantizer. That's about it. Have any problems? Got some samples to link to? Anything Mac folks might need to know that's different to the Windows version? Let me know in the comments. Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Get 10GB of Free Storage & Share Files on the Go with quanp Posted: 01 Jul 2010 08:30 AM PDT There are many different ways you can use the service – either through the site itself, through the free iPhone app, or with the Windows-compatible client. All users can benefit from the Adobe Air desktop widgets for uploading new files to your quanp account, and for viewing slideshows of your photos.
You can also share specific files or places with other users. Once invited to view them, users can leave comments on your files. The web interface is searchable, and also displays the percentage that you have used of your 10GB free web storage space limit. There are several layout options, consisting of various sized thumbnails, and accompanying text or captions with each file. When you invite other quanp users to access a Place, you can limit the extent of their permissions – allowing them to either view and/or edit the files. Of course, in order to access these files, they have to sign up for a free account. If you need to share files with someone who doesn’t have a quanp account, you can send a link to them, by selecting the file, clicking on ‘Send file’, and filling in their email address and a message. The link will expire after 7 days of sending the email, and each file can be downloaded a maximum of 5 times by each user. Using the desktop client, compatible with Windows XP, Vista and 7, you are able to do everything you would from the website, and more. The Windows client requires Microsoft.NET Framework 3.5 SP1. You can upload files one by one to specific places, add tags, and a description. Or you can configure auto-uploading from specific folders on your computer, making it easy to keep certain files or folders constantly backed up. You can view your files either in a 3D format, as thumbnails or as a detailed list. You can create new places, drag and drop files to share with other users, search your files, and keep track of your file sending history. One of quanp’s best features has to be the Adobe Air drag and drop widget. After installing and launching the widget, you can choose to keep it on top of all other windows. To upload a file, simply navigate to the file of your choice and drag and drop it onto the widget. The first time, you will be prompted to enter your log-in details, after which you will be prompted to choose the location to upload the file to, and you can choose to add tags and a description. You can cancel the upload by right-clicking the widget, and can upload multiple files simultaneously either by selecting several files, or even just dragging an entire folder onto the widget. There are also several themes for you to choose from, to suit your taste. A second Adobe Air application that quanp offers is the slideshow app. Using this app, you can display slideshow of all your photos, or just the latest photos, uploaded to your account. Lastly, the recently launched iPhone/iPad app [iTunes link] allows you to view and share all the files saved in your quanp account. An interesting addition to the quanp app is the ability to send files to other iPhone or iPod touch users using bluetooth. Using the app, you can upload photos from your iPhone directly to your quanp account, choosing the location. You can also record and upload voice memos. And as if all of that wasn’t incentive enough, in celebration of the launch of their iPhone app, check out quanp’s Twitter account for details on how to win an iPad and a couple of iPhone cases in their sweepstakes. Have you tried out quanp for your own free web storage space? Let us know what you think of it in the comments. Similar MakeUseOf Articles |
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