MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [July 8th]” plus 7 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [July 8th]
- 3 Steps To Efficiently Work With Multiple Browsers
- 3 Popular Image Licenses You Need To Be Familiar With Before Using Someone’s Photos
- Hot Tech Deals [July 8th]
- View Google Adsense In Analytics & Why You’d Want To
- How To Create An Image Map Using GIMP
- 6 Quick iBooks Tips For Better Reading Experience On iPhone
- How To Block Annoying Ads When Using The Opera Browser
| Cool Websites and Tools [July 8th] Posted: 08 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. Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| 3 Steps To Efficiently Work With Multiple Browsers Posted: 08 Jul 2010 06:31 PM PDT
There is Firefox, which stepped into Netscape’s pioneer position. Opera, the fastest. Safari, the Mac browser. Flock, the social browser. And of course there is Google Chrome, the new simplicity. Among these and all the other browsers out there, which one is your favorite?
So how do you work efficiently with multiple browsers? 1. Sync BookmarksThis is a basic necessity. If you really want to use various browsers, you should always have instant access to your bookmarks. One of the best tools to sync your bookmarks across multiple browsers is Transmute. It will sync bookmarks between all major browsers, including IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, Avant, Flock, Konqueror, Chromium, and even social bookmarking sites like Delicious. In addition it is available for Android.
Saikat has thoroughly reviewed Transmute in this article: Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers. An alternative is AM-DeadLink, which Saikat covered in this post: Clean Up Your Bookmarks by Removing Dead Links And Duplicates. 2. Open Windows Side By SideThese days mostly everyone has a widescreen monitor with a high resolution and a graphics card to support it. If you use your computer a lot and still sit in front of a 1024 x 768 pixel monitor, you should consider upgrading your hardware to work more comfortably. If you do enjoy the comfort of a high screen resolution, you do not need to maximize your windows. This appears to be a no-brainer, but apparently not. I have found that people maximize browser windows whether or not it’s needed. So here is a “new idea”: open two windows next to each other to make the most of your screen. It could be your default browser on the left and your fast alternative on the right or any other combination of windows.
The usefulness of working with two windows side by side is also reflected in the respective Windows 7 feature called Snap. If you would like to simulate this windows behavior in Windows XP, try AeroSnap. 3. Automatically Open URLs In Secondary BrowserYou may want to open certain links in a browser that is not your default. You could open that browser, use your synced bookmarks or paste the link. Tedious. You don’t have to take that detour. Instead, create a shortcut that will open the URL where you want it to open. Right-click onto your desktop, then click > New > Shortcut and browse for the .exe file of the preferred browser. The link that appears in the shortcut field will look something like this: “C:\Programs\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe”
What you need to do now is enter the URL to the path, and it should look like this: “C:\Programs\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe” “http://update.microsoft.com” You can now use this shortcut to instantly open this link in a specific browser. If Firefox is your default browser, you can use an addon called Open With. It lets you open current pages in any browser of your choice. How do you use multiple browsers? 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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| 3 Popular Image Licenses You Need To Be Familiar With Before Using Someone’s Photos Posted: 08 Jul 2010 02:31 PM PDT
Some images aren’t subject to copyright, however, and there are three potential reasons for this. The first potential reason is the image is so old copyright no longer applies. The second reason is the photo was taken by a government branch, and as such belongs to the public. The third, and perhaps most common reason on the web, is that the original artist gave up his or her copyright.
This does not mean that all images on the Internet are free for you to use, however. You need to be familiar with the various licenses before you can start using other people’s pictures on your website. So let’s go over the basics! Creative Commons
The most common free license in use on the Internet is the Creative Commons set of licenses. People wanting to use this license can choose from a number of conditions, including that a given photo cannot by used commercially. As such, finding a photo licensed by Creative Commons does not necessarily mean you have the right to use the photo. The good news is that anything licensed by Creative Commons is clearly labeled, with a link to the terms of the license for those looking to use the photo. Read more about Creative Commons licenses, and make sure you understand what it means before you use any such photos. Also take a read of Sandra’s article on the subject. GNU Public License
Typically a software license, the GNU Public License (GPL) is frequently used to license photographs on the web – particularly at Wikipedia. This license is long – read it here – but for the most part what it means is easy to understand: you can use and even alter this picture as you see fit, provided you release your work under the same terms and include mention of its license. This means most GPL pictures aren’t useful for larger corporate blogs but just might work perfectly for some. As always, make sure you have a clear understanding of the license’s implications before you use a photo licensed using it. Public Domain
Public domain is a free-for-all, meaning you can do with the photo as you will. This is true of pretty much every photo older than one hundred years old, depending on where you are in the world. It’s also true of any photo produced by the US (and other) governments. This means any picture produced by NASA, for example, can be used without any concern for copyright at all. Royalty free photos in the public domain are clearly labeled as such, but may not be public in your country even if it is listed as such. Be sure to read up on your country’s copyright laws before making use of public domain photos. Where To Find FilesFinding free photos on the web is something we’ve discussed here at MakeUseOf quite a bit, but it’s still worth mentioning a few of the larger sites. My personal favorite is Wikimedia Commons. This site stores all the photos used in the various Wikimedia projects on the web, including the world-famous Wikipedia. Here you can search for free images and find many, a lot of them spectacular.
Don’t have enough sources yet? Check out John’s article 5 Free Websites for Copyright Free Photographs or Tina’s article Add Some Glamour With Royalty Free Images for more. ConclusionFor generating traffic on your page nothing matches original content. Making your own images is usually worth the time. Still, it’s nice having a massive database of free images to pick from. Familiarize yourself with copyright law and you’ll quickly find there are millions of usable photos on the web. Did I miss any good ones, you guys? Share in the comments below. I’d also like to hear about any licenses I neglected to mention, because there are hundreds out there. P.S. Having images isn’t always enough; sometimes you need to edit them. I myself enjoy and use The Gimp, but if you’re looking for a comparison of the free options out there I recommend Tina’s article 10 Free Image Editing Programs for Your PC. Image Credit : ŇÄĵŵÅ – Free Photographer 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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| Posted: 08 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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| View Google Adsense In Analytics & Why You’d Want To Posted: 08 Jul 2010 11:31 AM PDT
Today, I’d like to cover a change that took place over the past year or so where Google integrated Adsense information into Google Analytics. You use Adsense in your websites and your feeds, so wouldn’t it be nice to get a glimpse of what sort of performance your Google Ads are doing each time you monitor your Google Analytics account? If you didn’t know that you could do this, I’m going to show you how to integrate Adsense with Analytics, and what some of those reports look like.
How To Integrate Adsense Into AnalyticsBefore you can take a look at your Google Ad performance alongside your traffic data, you need to enable the feed between Adsense and Analytics. You can do so with a single click. When you’re logged into Adsense and viewing your report overview, just click the link to integrate Adsense with your Analytics account.
The next step is to tell Adsense which data you’d like to “marry” into Analytics. If you’ve only used one Adsense account for all of your websites, this is easy because there won’t be any choice. However, if you’ve organized your Adsense into “channels” for each domain, as I’ve done, this is where you can tell Adsense to only integrate the Adsense numbers for one channel into the Analytics account that you have set up for that domain.
In this example, I’m telling Adsense to use the ad information for RyanDube.com and feed it into my Analytics account set up for ryandube.com. Once you go through this simple 3 step “wizard,” you’re good to go. It may take a little while for the data feed to start flowing, but you’ll see the Adsense option in your Google Analytics account immediately. Adsense Data You Can View In Google AnalyticsOnce you’ve enabled this feature, the information you can use to compare to your overall site traffic is pretty cool. You can see Adsense data within Analytics when you click on the Content section. The menu option shows up simply as “AdSense.”
Once you dropdown the Adsense item, you can see how much information your account feeds into Analytics.
Now that you know where to view Adsense information within Analytics, let’s take a look at what that information means to you. The first overview will show you your overall Adsense income for the domain. You can see your daily revenue over time – which offers some pretty cool insight into how certain events affected your income on that day.
Did you do certain work on a certain day? Did you cover a particular topic or publish a very popular article on that day? You can monitor your daily revenue to keep track of how your ad income was affected by those events. If a certain topic consistently seems to draw better clickthrough rates for your ads and generates higher income, doesn’t it make sense to focus more of your efforts on that topic? It will sure affect your bottom line if you do. While the graphical display shows you the trend, if you click on “Top Adsense Content” you can actual see the details – exactly which of your pages are producing the most income for you?
You can see not only revenue, but how many ads were clicked, click-through rates and more. If you really want to beef up the monetization of your website through Google Ads, this is the place where you can get the best optimization data. This information doesn’t stop with articles, you can also click on Top AdSense Referrers to see which incoming links you receive that seems to generate a better ad clickthrough rate.
Obviously, it would make sense to establish stronger ties with those partner websites that are sending you traffic which results in your strongest ad revenue. Often this simply represents the “type” of visitor that site is sending you. Folks coming in from Google may not be the type of visitors that are as likely to click on your particular ads as people coming from StumbleUpon. If you want to improve your bottom line, focus on those things that are revealed by the AdSense data as working for you. Finally, another very cool piece of information is when you click on AdSense Trending. This display shows you how much specific Adsense variables have changed on a particular day.
For example, it will show you that on Saturday, your AdSense revenue increased by 3.74 percent. Or, you can change the variable to AdSense CTR and learn that on Monday your clickthrough rate shot through the roof. This is a great way to test certain changes to your site and then review how that change affected your user behaviors. I saw this just recently on one of my websites, where changing my entire site them increased clickthrough rates by almost 50%. Since Google added this feature, have you been using it? Share what you like or dislike about the AdSense integration with Analytics in the comments section below. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| How To Create An Image Map Using GIMP Posted: 08 Jul 2010 10:31 AM PDT
There are several pieces of design software that can help a designer to create an image map, but many of them are very expensive. I have chosen to learn how to use GIMP because it is free. Follow these simple steps to create your own image map using GIMP.
1. Create Or Find The Image You Want To UseAny image will do and a lot of it depends on what you are trying to accomplish as a designer. I have seen image maps where faces are clickable which bring you to the bios on each person. For this example, I will be adding several graphical logos that I will later make clickable.
2. Open The Image Map Editor In GIMP & Start MappingOnce you have the image where you want it, find the menu Tools –>Web –>Image Map. This should bring up the image map editor where you are offered several tools. You can use different shapes to accomplish the effect you desire.
There are also two workspaces: the image map and the list of links you have mapped.
Using the editor should prove to be self explanatory. Basically you use the shape tool most conducive to covering the area you want to be linked to the URL. You will notice that as you finish each shape, a pop up appears for you to fill in. The most basic settings to fill in are on the first tab. Fill in the address and the ALT text and you should be fine.
3. Get The CodeIt’s good to know that after all of the designing is done, what you need in the end is the code. You see, image maps are actually written in HTML and in order for you to actually get the image map up and running on your site, you will need to grab the code. With GIMP, this is easy to do. Just go to View–>Source to view the source code.
You’ll notice that I highlighted a part of the code. This is the address where the image being mapped is located. If the file containing the code and the image file are not in the same directory, you’ll want to put the correct location of the image there. 4. Test The Image MapIf you save the file, you will notice that it is nothing but a file containing the code but with a file extension of map. Change the file extension to HTML, make sure there is no period in the front of the file name, and make sure the image is in the same folder as the HTML file and you should be able to test it. Double clicking the HTML file should open it in your default web browser.
There you have it, a free and easy way to create an image map for your website using GIMP. Do you create image maps? If so, what tools do you use to do it? 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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| 6 Quick iBooks Tips For Better Reading Experience On iPhone Posted: 08 Jul 2010 09:31 AM PDT
Nevertheless I would never turn down the possibility of carrying a library of books in my pocket. So after downloading and installing iBooks for iPhone and loading a bunch of digital books to it (as discussed in a previous article), I opened the first page of one of the books – the free complimentary classic “Winnie The Pooh” by “A. A. Milne”.
It felt strange holding and reading a book the size of your palm. It’s smaller than ordinary printed pocketbooks and I have to admit that the reading experience was indeed different from reading a real book. But it’s anything but inconvenient. Here are a few things I can share after playing with iBooks for a short time. Jumping Around PagesOne of the advantages of digital books is its ability to jump around pages easily, and the first place to do that is the table of contents. You can tap one of the chapters to go directly there or you can resume reading the page you were previously on.
You can also go to one of the bookmarks you created while you were reading. We’ll discuss more about bookmarks later.
Modifying The LooksWhen you tap the page, the tools will appear. You can modify the look of the pages using these tools. For example, you can change the brightness by moving the slider.
You can also change the size and type of font used. The “Sepia” switch is to alternate the temperature of the page between warm and warmer for the eye.
At the top right of the page is the bookmark tool. Tap on it to place a bookmark, tap again to lift it. Bookmarked pages are accessible from the tab next to the table of contents.
Search & DefineYou’ll notice a magnifying glass among the tools. This is the search tool. Tap to activate the search function (you can also do a search on highlighted text).
Type in the search string and you’ll have the search results. Clicking on one of the results will bring you to the page where it’s located.
But that’s not all. You also have the option to get results from Google and Wikipedia.
Adding Notes & HighlightsOne of the things that I like (and hate) about buying used books is the amount of notes that I might find between the pages. Some people reading while making notes. You can do similar things – digitally – in iBooks. Tap and hold a word to select it. You can expand the selection by moving the marker. From the pop-up menu you can add “Highlight” and/or “Note” to the selected text. Then the highlighted texts will appear on the bookmark list so you can access them easily anytime.
If you choose “Note“, a notepad and keyboard will appear. Just type in your thought or comment there.
After that, a tiny marker will appear next to the highlighted text, and your note will appear everytime you tap the marker.
Tap on the highlighted text and a new menu will appear. You can remove the note or you can change the color.
There are five colors that you can choose.
Define In DictionaryStill using the tap and hold action, you can zoom in the text for better selection. A magnifying glass will help you select the text, and it will move along with your finger.
Another action that you can do with selected text is to find the definition in Dictionary. This feature will be a great help for students who read their textbooks in iBooks.
The first time you use it, iBooks has to download the dictionary first. tap on the “Download” button.
After the download has finished, you’ll have an elegant dictionary in the palm of your hand.
Flipping & Orienting PagesSo iBooks can give you a page-flipping like animation. So what? There are many applications that can do the same, right? This feature must be just eye candy. Wrong. Even if it is just eye candy, it’s a beautiful and well-thought out one. It’s not just a boring flipping page which always goes in the same repetitive manner, but you can actually interact with the way the pages flip.
Try to tap and hold your finger at the edge of the page and slide a little bit to the left. Without releasing your finger, try to move around the page – left and right, also up and down.
Now what about changing the reading orientation of your iPhone from Portrait to Landscape? Will the book be turned into two smaller pages like an iPad? It turns out that the iPhone version of iBooks will still keep the one page view, and also maintain the size of the font. The changes happen to the page numbers.
The app adjusts the page number to keep up with the constant size of the font. This method will ensure that the book is still readable even if you change the orientation.
I guess this is one of the advantages of digital books in ePub format compared to PDF. Reading proportionally fixed PDF pages requires you to constantly adjust the zoom to compromise between page view and readable text. So have you tried iBooks for iPhone? What’s your opinion about it? Please share your thoughts using the comments below. Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s someone that I have to meet at the Pooh corner.
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| How To Block Annoying Ads When Using The Opera Browser Posted: 08 Jul 2010 08:31 AM PDT
Opera does not have as wide of a user base as other web browsers, so a casual observer might notice a lack of an add-on to block advertisements and be dismayed. How could a modern web browser become even mildly popular and not have an ad blocker present?
So, let's take a look at how to make it work. Blocking Selected AdsTo block ads you first need to access the content blocker tool. You can do this by right-clicking on any blank area of a webpage and then clicking Block Content from the drop-down menu that appears. The page that you are viewing will fade out, and Opera will ask you to select the content that you do not want to view. Just click on the offending advertisement and then click the Done button at the top of the web browser. Presto! The ad is gone and will be whenever you visit the website.
If for some reason you want to make the ad re-appear you can reverse the process. The blocked content will appear in the faded view of the website with a big red BLOCKED CONTENT banner. Select the blocked content and then click Done to make it reappear. Blocking All (Or Almost All) AdsThe above process works well for blocking selected advertisements, but obviously it would be annoying to do it for every single website you ever visit. It works best if you only find a few particular ads annoying. But what do you do if you find all ads annoying? Opera has you covered there, as well. Right-click on an any portion of a webpage (any page) and then click Block Content. Once the page has faded out, click the Details button at the top of the web browser. This will open up a window that lets you enter in the advertisements that you would like to block. Note that although this filter does say "Blocked on current page" at the top, the modifications that you make here do apply to all webpages. You can also reach this window by clicking on the Opera icon in the upper left and then navigating to Settings > Preferences > Advanced > Blocked Content.
You will need to add the information about ads that you want to have blocked manually. Below are some of the most common ad servers. */ad.* This makes a big difference in how a website looks. Before:
After:
Adding these ad servers to blocked content will block many of the ads that you'll encounter, but this won't block every ad. For a more complete list, check out Fanboy's Adblock List for Opera. This list includes literally thousands of entries. It is a bit overkill, but if you really want to block everything, it is the most complete list you'll find. How Do You Like Opera Now?Blocking ads in Opera is easy. In fact, I think that Opera's method to block advertisements is superior to the methods used by other browsers, as they mainly rely on add-ons to do the dirty work for them. Opera may be a niche browser, but it has some very cool features, and the way it handles blocking content is one of them. Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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I always thought that reading 
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