MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [July 6th]” plus 7 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [July 6th]
- 5 Sites With Job Interview Tips To Help You Ace Your Interview
- The Top 5 Websites To Spark Your Creativity
- 4 Easy Ways to Avoid Plagiarism on Your Blog
- The Best Free Online Grammar Resources
- 3 Not-So-Obvious But Totally Awesome Uses Of Xenu Link Sleuth For Webmasters
- Add Special Effects To Your Photos With Pixo [MakeUseOf Giveaway]
- What You Need to Play Video Smoothly On Your PC
| Cool Websites and Tools [July 6th] Posted: 06 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. Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf page on Facebook. Over 24,000 fans already!
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| 5 Sites With Job Interview Tips To Help You Ace Your Interview Posted: 06 Jul 2010 04:31 PM PDT
All of this and a lot more can contribute to the whole job interview experience becoming particularly stressful, but that’s where the Web can come in handy to make the process a little less nerve-racking. There are tons of great resources available online with job interview tips to help you have a successful job interview. Here’s the top 5 sites to help you ace your job interview.
HotJobsYahoo HotJobs’ Career Tools has an entire section dedicated to just preparing yourself for the all important job interview. You’ll find a whole flurry of well-written articles with job interview tips covering every aspect of the interviewing process, so it really makes for great material to review before any interview.
All of the articles are organized into different categories. The first category features everything you need to know about preparation. Types of interviews is the next category, which has strategies on how to handle the interview itself, including questions and answers. The presentation category has helpful information about how to present yourself, followed by articles on what you should do after the interview. AboutThe interviews and employment page at About is also chock full of articles to help you with every step of the job interview. The questions and answers guide is a good place to start, with articles on what kind of questions you may encounter and the recommended answers.
Additional articles include information about phone interview etiquette, what to wear, thank you letters, interview follow up, mistakes to avoid, and more. Be sure to also check out the website’s helpful job interview videos. MonsterThe employment website Monster has some of the most comprehensive interviewing resources on the Web. It’s all divided into four sections with job interview tips: interview preparation, questions, appearance, and follow up.
There’s over a hundred useful articles to check out. Just click on the “Browse All Articles” link for the full listings, sorted by its rating. As for the articles themselves, they’re written by Monster’s own job experts and are all very straightforward, so it’s a good idea to read up on them for invaluable information. Job Interview QuestionsJob Interview Questions is another great resource that offers help and advice for the entire interviewing process, not just questions and answers.
The left-hand side of the website displays links to all the sections you want as the job seeker, including interview questions, follow up, salary negotiation, and more. Be sure to also check out the articles on the job interview tips page and the interview guide for more unique topics, such as interviewing during a meal and questions for you to ask. YouTube
For some watching rather than reading, just turn to YouTube. The site has a great collection of videos all about job interviews, so it’s definitely another effective resource to improve your interviewing skills. Just search for “job interview tips” or job interview techniques.” What are some of your favorite sites with job interview tips to help you ace a job interview? Let us know in the comments. Image Credit : bpsusf Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| The Top 5 Websites To Spark Your Creativity Posted: 06 Jul 2010 02:31 PM PDT
But this is the 21st Century, and there are tons of websites out there that can give a much-needed spark to your creativity. Here are five of the best.
WebUrbanist
WebUrbanist has a huge variety of content, with articles on art, technology, and even abandoned places. Perhaps you’ll get just the spark of creativity you need to create some art of your own when you see all of the things that people can do with Rubik’s cubes. Or maybe you’ll be inspired by the ideas that people have for settlements of the future. How about these concepts for work stations? Just take a quick look around WebUrbanist and you’re bound to find plenty of things so interesting that you’ll have a hard time not being inspired. Moodstream
If you want to inspire in yourself a specific mood, Moodstream is an excellent website to turn to. It can play a stream of music and images that precisely fits the mood that you want. There are preset moods – stabilize, simplify, intensify, refresh, excite, and inspire (this last one might be the one you’re looking for if you’re reading this) – but the site really shines when you use the features that let you design your custom mood. There are several meters that allow you to select moods ranging between happy and sad, calm and lively, humorous and serious, nostalgic and contemporary, and warm and cool; it will combine your selections to create a custom music and image stream when you select “refresh stream.” If you register an account, you can save your custom moods as moodboards so that you can come back to them later. Moodstream has been previously mentioned on MakeUseOf along with some other websites that play music according to your mood. The 99 Percent
The 99 Percent might not have the stuff to directly inspire you, but it’s a website with articles dedicated to topics like creativity and inspiration. Articles are not only divided into industries – such as graphic design, technology, and writing – but also into unique categories like collaboration, execution, passion, prioritization, and self-marketing. With “tip” articles like The Key To Creating Remarkable Things, 10 Laws of Productivity, and What Daily Meditation Can Do for Your Creativity, you’re sure to find something that will help you learn how to better inspire yourself on The 99 Percent. FFFFound!
FFFFound! surely has some of the most unique images on the web. You won’t be able to register and get your own images posted on the site – that requires an invite – but you’ll still have access to all of the images that have been posted, which is really all that you need to find inspiration. Just take a quick browse through FFFFound! and see what new ideas fall right into your lap. If you like the images, download the screensaver for Windows or Mac. It displays FFFFound! images, so you can get a burst of inspiration every time you return to your idle computer. WhyNot?
WhyNot? is a website meant for the exchange of ideas. Users offer ideas that they have in all kinds of subjects, including businesses, cars, computers, phones, and even pets. Many of the ideas are as simple as an elevator deselect button and Ziploc chip bags, and a lot sound pretty strange but are really quite inventive, like microwaveable clothing and a bad breath monitor. In any case, you’ll surely find some great ideas that might inspire you enough to come up with your own and register to share them with others. ConclusionYou could also, of course, look to quotations websites for some inspiration. And I wanted to include Damn Interesting in this list, but it hasn’t been updated in almost a year; still, it has a huge archive of really unique articles that you can turn to in a jam. What websites do you use to spark your creativity? Image Credit: aldoaldoz Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| 4 Easy Ways to Avoid Plagiarism on Your Blog Posted: 06 Jul 2010 12:30 PM PDT
It may not be you, but one of the new interns at the blog could have lifted content off another blog to make the deadline. How to ensure your blog’s reputation is not tarnished? Check out our coverage of 4 online plagiarism checkers after the jump for excellent ways to avoid plagiarism on your blog.
PercentDupe
PercentDupe is an online plagiarism and duplicate content detection tool. This web app offers two ways to check the originality of the written content in question. You can either use a weblink from your blog (either from a test blog or a published post) or just copy and paste the content in the text box. Results are pretty comprehensive with the link to the original article from where the content was copied and how much percentage of the content has been plagiarized from the original. Since the service is still in beta, PercentDupe lists a maximum of seven links from where the written content was copied from. crossrefme
With its innovative & unique algorithm, crossrefme dredges through millions of web pages to check if the content under examination has already been published elsewhere on the Internet. The content check process as simple as copying & pasting text in the text box. The results page is nicely designed and displays multiple links from where the content is copied from, along with the percentage of similarity between both the versions. In addition to the individual percentages of originality, there is also an overall originality indicator on top of the results. The result also highlights sentences and words that have been copied from the original prominently. This tool is one of the best ways to avoid plagiarism. Dupli CheckerWith a bunch of options to tweak and multiple search engine integration, Dupli Checker is quite feature rich. Users can choose between the classic and advanced duplicate detection options. Neither of the option changes the way the search for duplicate content occurs, only the manner in which the results are displayed. When the classic option is selected, individual results are shown for each and every sentence. This sure is an unconventional way to check for plagiarism but the results turned out to be fine.
Results from the advanced search were more precise with only the most relevant duplication links listed and are presented in a more refined style.
Results from both advanced and classic modes were more precise with Google as the search engine, though users can toggle between Yahoo and MSN to execute the duplication checks. Now what to do when you forget to keep bookmarks of these plagiarism checkers or if any of these sites are down for maintenance? There is always the almighty Google to turn to. Online plagiarism checkers do not index the web themselves to check for duplicates. When you execute a plagiarism check, the algorithm under the hood of these websites searches the pages indexed by Google, Yahoo, MSN or any other search engine for that matter. So in most cases, online plagiarism checkers act as better wrappers to deliver the results from a search engine. Let us go ahead and see how to search at the source.
In the search box, just type text followed by the content in quotes. The syntax is: text “Enter the content to check here”. Voila! We now have the links to pages from the content has been lifted. Final ThoughtsDuring my evaluation, I found PercentDupe to be pretty good and very close to premium services like Copyscape. Though the Dupli Checker’s idea of searching for every sentence is weird, the results were fine in the advanced mode. The only downside of using Google to search for duplicates is that the search query is limited to 32 words. But considering the power of Google’s algorithm, the results were spot on. For a list of more plagiarism checkers, check out our roundup on “5 Free Websites To Catch The Copycats” and the one about Plagium. Are there any other better ways to avoid plagiarism using online or desktop tools? If so, please share it us. Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| The Best Free Online Grammar Resources Posted: 06 Jul 2010 11:30 AM PDT
If you’re already improving your writing quality and expanding your vocabulary, why not also get your grammar down pat? Know where to go when you have a bothersome grammar issue and need to do a quick online grammar check.
College GuidesSome of the best free grammar resources come from colleges that make their grammar guides available to the public online. Purdue University, the University of Illinois, and the University of Ottawa all offer great free grammar guides that can help you brush up on your grammar rules. If you try your best to not be bothered by the page layouts straight from the ’90s, the grammar guides offered by the College of DuPage and Capital Community College can be really helpful. Two of the best college grammar guides to use as regular references to perform a quick online grammar check are the Guide to Grammar and Style by Jack Lynch, a professor at Rutgers University, and Common Errors in English Usage by Paul Brians, a professor at Washington State University.
Unlike the other college guides that only give a general overview of grammar rules, these are alphabetical guides that provide answers to specific grammar problems. You should have no problem finding out whether “lay” or “lie” is the way to go with these guides. Full Books Available OnlineYou probably wouldn’t think to look for print resources online, but there are a couple good ones available. A major advantage to using these resources online—besides that you don’t have to pay for them—is that you can search through them with ease. Just type in the specific issue you’re looking for guidance on and it will pop right up. Bartleby.com offers the classic grammar guide The Elements of Style in full. Keep in mind that it’s only able to be offered online because it’s an outdated edition, so you might find its rules particularly stingy and old-fashioned. Google Books offers the complete Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. This is one of the best free grammar resources available online.
It’s huge—it really is a whole dictionary dedicated just to grammar—so it’s nice to have it in an easily searchable online format. The only thing you might not like about it is that it’s possibly too comprehensive: it often goes into the history of the usage of words and phrases before concluding on the most correct usage. But it has answers to just about any grammar issue you can think of. Grammar GirlGrammar Girl is a podcast and website dedicated to grammar.
Although less comprehensive than some of the other resources I’ve listed above, Grammar Girl gives clear explanations that will help you resolve common grammar problems. And if you’re a grammar nut like me, you might want to load up some of Grammar Girl’s podcasts onto your iPod so that you can listen to them on the go. ConclusionWe all know that the internet cant ignore incorrect grammar, so be sure to keep grammar resources bookmarked and handy for those quick online grammar checks. Do you know of any other useful grammar resources? Image Credit: iprole Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| 3 Not-So-Obvious But Totally Awesome Uses Of Xenu Link Sleuth For Webmasters Posted: 06 Jul 2010 10:31 AM PDT
That being said, the most obvious application of Xenu Link Sleuth is to use it to find broken links. You are equipped with various tools such as excluding some folders, restricting it to internal folders only and setting the number of retries for failed links, etc.
What I am going to talk about here are 3 other, less obvious ways to take advantage of the tool. 1. Find Huge Images & FilesWhile making your pages easier to remember, images affect your load time and hence user experience. Therefore finding your largest images and optimizing them is one of the first things to do if you are going to improve your site’s usability and rankings. To locate the largest images, run the general crawl for your site and then sort the table by “SIZE” column. This will bring up the largest files linked from your site pages:
Tip: if you right-click on any line, you will be able to access “Properties” to see which page exactly (hot)links to a file or an image:
2. Generate A List Of Valid LinksAfter Xenu finishes crawling a site, it generates a report that contains the list of valid URLs:
Tip: If you want to only crawl internal pages (and have them in your HTML map), uncheck “Check External Links” when adding your URL to crawl:
3. Find The Deepest-Buried PagesIf you run a huge (possibly dynamic or database-driven) website, it is so easy to lose track of some of your pages. Some of them are gold, yet they are buried so deep in your site structure that no one will ever discover them. Want to unveil the potential of those lost pages? Then sort your site crawl results by “Level” column to find those pages:
Tip: If you can’t access the page but you want to know how valuable the content there is, right-click on an URL to get instant access to Google Cache and Internet Archive; Bonus: Quick TipsSome essential tips every Xenu user should now:
Do you use the Xenu Link Sleuth for anything else besides finding broken links? Share your tips! Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf page on Facebook. Over 24,000 fans already!
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| Add Special Effects To Your Photos With Pixo [MakeUseOf Giveaway] Posted: 06 Jul 2010 09:30 AM PDT
We’re giving away 15 copies of Pixo 2.5 for Windows. Find out how you can win a copy for yourself.
Getting startedYou can obtain a trial copy of Pixo from Bendigo Design, and get started trying out the capabilities. Purchase a license from the same site to free things up and make full use of the package.
It's a little difficult to use screenshots of the whole app for this, so use the image above as reference, and let's get going.
There are two ways to open an image to apply effects. You can use Open item in the top left of the toolbar, or simply drag an image onto Pixo. Either way, you're going to finish up with something you can enhance.
The pictures of the flowers on the right serve as the menu for the various effects. you can turn the visuals off in the settings menu if you wish, but there's a good indication of what is available from the flowers. Click the small black arrows above or below the pictures to scroll through the list. Hold the mouse over the pictures to see what the effect is called. Let's scroll all the way down to Melt and click on the flower.
Down below the selection appear all the settings related to that particular effect. In this case, there's just a brush size. If you slide it left or right, and most the mouse over the door, you'll see the size of the circle. That's the brush. And this is where Pixo differs from other packages. All you need to do now is to drag the mouse over the area you want to change. In effect, you paint on the image to get what you want.
Underneath the image are some controls to zoom in and out, and to rotate the image. In this case, we can zoom in on the area around the leaf, and then melt the wrought iron. Before you apply the effect, you need to click on the Apply button beside the zoom controls. Then just paint on the iron.
Easy, isn't it?
Let's save this, and then I can show you another one. Click the save button from the toolbar at the top, and follow your nose. You can save as .bmp, .png, .gif, .jpg, and .pdf. A couple of things about saving. First, Pixo wants to keep saving with the same filename after you save for the first time, so remember to go and rename the original file before resaving.
The second thing is that by default, Pixo will resize your larger images before loading them. It doesn't affect the original, but the resulting image will only be 800 pixels wide by default. All of this and more is available for configuration from the settings tool in the toolbar. One more, and then we can move on to look at some other interesting things.
Scrolling back through the effect options, choose the Colourise flower. You'll see that for this effect you have to choose a colour as well as a brush size. Set, apply, paint. How easy is that? Frames
Along with the main special effects, Pixo provides some other useful tools for enhancing your images. First up, frames.
This is just as easy. Select two colours you would like to use for your frame, or select the colours from the image using the eyedroppers. If you want to keep things simple, click on the Use Same Colour option. Decide on an appropriate thickness for the frame, and hit the Apply button. VignetteIt's not going to be useful everywhere, but you more than likely have some images that would benefit from a vignette. It couldn't be much easier. Choose a colour, click Apply. You can again select a colour from the image with the eyedropper.
Old-styleI think I like these ones best of all. Find an image that could do with the antique treatment, and load it in the normal fashion.
Select the Aged option from the toolbar. it's the star shape. You might have to choose the Frame option first. That's the rectangle. Scroll through the flowers to get the one you want, and click it. No need for Apply with these.
That last one I'm uploading to my Flickr account, and there's some help from the toolbar for that as well. Click the button and you'll get the usual Flickr authorisation run-around, and then you'll be able to connect to Flickr and upload the image. Easy. Again. And that's it. The rest is just about experimentation. Enjoy, and let me know how it goes in the comments. How do I win a copy?It’s simple, just follow the instructions.
This giveaway begins now and ends Saturday, 10th July at 2100hrs PST. The winners will be selected at random and announced via email. Spread the word to your friends and have fun! MakeUseOf would like to thank Sean from Bendigo Design 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. Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| What You Need to Play Video Smoothly On Your PC Posted: 06 Jul 2010 08:30 AM PDT
However, anyone who has actually used a computer to play video on a regular basis has probably run into a few problems with this theory. While computers can run just about every video format imagined, and they have the performance to do so; software and hardware conflicts can rob computers of their advantage. Laptop computers and older computers are at a particular disadvantage, and it isn’t uncommon to have trouble playing video on these machines. So what do you really need to guarantee smooth video playback? To answer that question fully, we have to discuss both the hardware inside your computer and the software that runs on top of it.
The Hardware QuestionSoftware can hold up decent hardware and render it unable to smoothly play back video, but software can not make hardware surge past its normal abilities. Hardware can be a hard barrier. If your hardware is not up to the task of playing back video smoothly there isn’t anything you can do about it besides buying new hardware. Figuring out the bottleneck will make it easier to find the right hardware, however.
The GPU, or graphics processing unit, in your computer is becoming increasingly important. Once used mostly for 3D games, there are now many video players that support accelerating video on the GPU. If you don’t know what GPU is in your computer you can find out using GPU-Z. To run video smoothly on your GPU, you will want to have one of the following graphics solutions.
That is not to say, you absolutely won’t be able to run video smoothly on an older graphics solution – it might be possible – but I am confident that anyone who has one of the GPUs listed above will be able to run video smoothly when using a media player that support GPU acceleration. The second part of the equation is your computer’s CPU, or computer processing unit. The CPU is the main brain of your computer. You’re probably already pretty well acquainted with the CPU in your computer, but if you’re not sure you can check using CPU-Z, a program that provides detailed information about your processor.
Having a fast processor is important because it will be asked to pick up the slack when you play video in a media player that does not support GPU acceleration. Also, even those media players that support GPU acceleration have some reliance on the CPU. To play back video smoothly, it is recommended that you have one of the following processors.
Again, this is not to say you absolutely can’t run video smoothly on other processors, but these are the processors that are recommended. The Software QuestionHaving looked over the above information, you may be confused. You may have all the hardware side of the equation covered but still have trouble playing back video smoothly. This is because the software on your computer is also very important. Powerful hardware can still stumble if the software is lacking. GPU drivers are the first piece of software you should consider. The driver is the software that tells your hardware how to perform. The drivers that control your GPU are updated frequently, but most users forget to download the updates. These updates include new features and performance enhancements that may improve the performance of GPU-accelerated media players. If you’re having problems achieving smooth video playback, check the website of your GPU manufacturer to see if a driver update is available.
The media player itself also is a factor in the performance of video. As mentioned above, some video players support GPU acceleration, while others don’t. There is really no reason not to use a media player that supports GPU acceleration. Windows Media Player, VLC Media Player, and Media Player Classic are some of the most popular media players that support GPU acceleration in Windows. Adobe Flash also now supports GPU acceleration. Note that in all cases, you must be sure to use the most recent version of the media player. A final roadblock that can cause video playback issues is the type of file that you are playing. While the above media players listed do support GPU acceleration, they don’t support acceleration for all formats. The most commonly supported video formats are x.264, H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2. If the video format is not supported your CPU will be asked to handle the entire load of video playback. The most common video format that trips up Windows machines is the Quicktime format, but there are many other formats that are not supported. ConclusionThe PC is a popular device, and that means there is room for lots of competing hardware, media players and video formats. If you have video playback problems, just ask yourself the following questions.
Exploring these questions will usually lead to the source of the problem. Still having trouble? Shoot away in the comments, we’ll help you to diagnose the issue. Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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Ah, the dreaded job interview. We all know that you need to be prepared, but how exactly do you get yourself ready for it? Moreover, what kind of questions should you be expecting? Do you know how to answer them all?
Where should you turn to when you need an idea to set off an entrepreneurial endeavor or escape the shackles of writer’s block? If this was the 20th Century, you might have no choice but to sit around and think for a while, hoping that something might spark your creativity and an idea will just pop into your head.
Being original all the time can be tough, but copying another person’s work and passing it as our own is a punishable offense. Nothing can hit the credibility of a blog hard than a plagiarism charge.
Even the best of us have a grammatical issue from time to time. Where should we turn to to resolve those timeless questions about when to use “lay” and when to use “lie”? There are a ton of great free grammar resources on the web to answer these questions and just about any other grammatical question you have.
Pixo is an application that allows you to apply special effects to your photos. In this case, it's not about what you can do. You can replicate most of this functionality with numerous other tools. It's more about how you do it. This interface is easy, simple, flexible, and a whole lot of fun. They also have a new version available, so this is the perfect time.
In theory, a computer should be great for playing video. There is a wealth of video available for free online, and that is in addition to the computer’s ability to play 
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