MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [July 18th]” plus 7 more

Cool Websites and Tools [July 18th]
Latest Hilarious Picks [MakeUseOf Geeky Fun]
Thank You To MakeUseOf Friends!
If You Could Freelance Anywhere, Where Would You Live? [MakeUseOf Poll]
5 Must-Have Apps For Your Symbian S60 Touch Mobile Phone
10 Free MP3 Albums To Download [Sound Sunday]
Disable Windows 7’s Preview Tabs for Firefox, Chrome, Opera and IE8
TriDefense Giveaway Winners

Posted: 18 Jul 2010 08:31 PM PDT

Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. All listed websites are FREE (or come with a decent free account option). No trials or buy-to-use craplets. For more cool websites and web app reviews subscribe to MakeUseOf Directory.

List Your Website Here!

FreeFontConverter – Web designers often use a variety of font formats. If you are a web designer, you might be creating your own fonts using software that creates uncommon font formats. This can be a problem when you want to publish your fonts on websites that support some other format. A solution to this problem is Free Font Converter. Read more: FreeFontConverter: Tool for Converting Font Files into Several Formats.

		Audio Expert – is a free online sound editor that helps you to edit audio, convert it from one file format to other, merge different tracks and record sounds. Using this tool, you could quickly crop audio files, merge multiple files, batch convert multiple audio files, record your voice through a microphone and then download the resulting file. Read more: AudioExpert: Online Sound Editor & Converter.

		HistoryPin – They say every picture has a story behind it. Why not share your picture and your story with the world? HistoryPin is a tool that encourages people to do exactly that using Google Maps and Google Street View. Just pull out an old image from your hard drive and pin it to the exact location where it was taken. Read more: HistoryPin: Pin Your Old Photos To Google Maps Street View.

		LogAway – This website lets you login to multiple websites with a single click, no need to enter your username and password again and again. It also serves as a start page where you can add different gadgets to keep you informed of things like weather, movie showtimes, sports scores, news, stock updates e.t.c. Read more: LogAway: Single Click Login To Multiple Websites.

		TypeFolly – is a unique, one of a kind website which will greatly interest web designers and developers. Often while creating web layouts you use a CSS style sheet to obtain perfect object position and alignment. With this website, you can create visually brilliant type compositions and get their CSS3 and HTML code. Read more: Type Folly: Create Cool Type Compositions & Get Their CSS3 & HTML Code.

List Your Website Here!

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.

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Latest Hilarious Picks [MakeUseOf Geeky Fun]

Posted: 18 Jul 2010 08:01 PM PDT

Check out the top picks from MakeUseOf Geeky Fun during the last week.

If you would like to keep up with all latest Geeky Fun additions, please subscribe to the Geeky Fun feed here. You can also subscribe and get the latest additions via email.

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Thank You To MakeUseOf Friends!

Posted: 18 Jul 2010 07:31 PM PDT

It's time to say thanks to MakeUseOf’s friends who, once in a while, tip us great story ideas, help out on different projects and in some cases offer their services at discounted prices. Thank you, guys!

ShrinkTheWeb – Website Screenshot Thumbnail Service

Ever wanted to add website screenshots to your website? In my professional opinion ShrinkTheWeb is one of the best services for that, both in terms of performance and pricing. The free account gets you a whopping 250,000 impressions with nearly no delay. See it in action in our daily Cool Websites and Tools series.

Walyou – Cool Gadgets for Geeks

Walyou is a fun blog covering all sorts of new cool gadgets and other stuff every geek is likely to find entertaining. Everything from world’s largest Gunny Bears to E-hookah gadgets. Make sure to check them out.

PXLEyes – Photoshop Contests and Tutorials

The place for graphical artists! An awesome community with one common interest: a big passion for computer graphics! There are contests, prizes, tutorials, forums and an active community!

rade | eccles – iPhone Application Development

The perfect iPhone development team, rade | eccles managed to put our iPhone app together in record time yet exude professionalism and dedication every step of the way. Our collaboration wasn’t happenstance. We would make the same decision all over again. Our only recommendation for an iPhone developer – rade | eccles.

Thank you, guys!

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If You Could Freelance Anywhere, Where Would You Live? [MakeUseOf Poll]

Posted: 18 Jul 2010 06:30 PM PDT

Last week’s poll was a face-off between iPhone or Android. I thought it would be a much closer race, but the winner shone from the very beginning. Did you guess which it would be? Of course you did.

After receiving 618 votes, Android sustained a landslide victory over iPhone. The poll tallied just shy of 900 votes overall, with a mere 218 votes going to the iPhone. A surprising number of votes went to the little guys – the “neither” option collected 62 votes. The most fascinating thing about this poll though, was the comments. Many MakeUseOf users have done their research and listed positives and negatives for both Android and iPhone, yet often the final decision rested on one little detail they couldn’t live without. Both iPhone and Android have some adjustments to make, obviously.

Results and this week’s poll after the jump.

As you can see, Android is clearly the most popular choice with MakeUseOf readers.

And now on to this week’s question: If you could freelance online from anywhere, where would you live?

We realise that there are a lot of people who can telecommute or freelance from home these days. So, if you don’t need to be anywhere in particular for work, where do you want to be? Will the next ten years herald a mass exodus to beach resort towns? Forest areas? Will remote villages (with broadband) suddenly find themselves alongside an army of quiet freelancers?

Let’s find out! Tell us where you would go if you could work from anywhere.

If you’ve chosen “other”, please do let us know what sort of place it would be. Don’t worry about specifics, but let us know the main feature of the places you’re drawn to. It’ll be great to hear all of your ideas!

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5 Must-Have Apps For Your Symbian S60 Touch Mobile Phone

Posted: 18 Jul 2010 03:31 PM PDT

The Symbian operating system is the most widely used smart-phone platform on the planet. Despite not being the prettiest thing to look at compared to recent offerings from rivals such as Apple, HTC and Blackberry, the recently liberated Symbian operating system continues to ship on not only Nokia mobiles but Sony Ericsson and Samsung have started to use it too.

But you won't care, as you've probably already got one. Good start, as you really can’t live without these five on your Symbian device.

Jbak Taskman

This freeware task manager is definitely the most boring, yet most useful app on this list. Replacing the clunky, limited and sometimes slow to respond in-built Symbian task manager is one of the best gifts you can give your phone.

Jbak's offering provides a slick and minimal interface from which you can list processes, threads and memory information with ease.

Killing programs is a doddle – even if they're unresponsive and busy. There's a handy autorun feature allowing you to automatically launch programs when your phone starts up, and you can even view and manage the phone's hidden processes.

This should be the first application you install on your Symbian mobile phone.

Snaptu

The developers promise "a world full of free apps on any phone" and they're not wrong. This app functions as a one-stop portal to your social networking, news and information desires. There's full Facebook and Twitter support at lightning speed – you will not find a faster means of accessing your social networks.

The in-built news reader allows you to add as many RSS feeds as you like, and the weather and sports apps keep you in the loop, on the go.

At last count there were 33 applications within this one single app that can be added to the home screen. Snaptu provides a simple and fast interface from which to access some very often used websites and services, and best of all it's completely free (with the odd banner advert here and there, but who's complaining?) and available from Snaptu.com. Get the full low-down right here.

Opera Mobile

For a truly mobile web experience you'll want the highly acclaimed Opera Mobile. This bite-size browser packs enough punch to be able to bring full webpages to the confines of your mobile phone, allowing you to browse the "real" internet on the go.

The recently updated interface makes touch screen browsing easier than ever, and the in-built Opera on-screen keyboard looks and feels great. Use of the same SpeedDial quick-start interface as its bigger brother means your favourite websites are a greasy thumbprint away once the application launches.

The Opera Mobile browser also comes with Opera Turbo support, a service designed to cut down on the amount of bandwidth a website would typically use – although I'd recommend switching to Wi-Fi if you're planning on doing any serious browsing. Grab it for free from the Opera website.

Skype

The popular VoIP platform seems like an even better idea on your mobile phone, don't you think? Free phone calls, instant text chat and reduced rates to phone numbers are all good reasons to have this useful little program with you on the move.

You'll soon bin that USB Skype phone once you realise your Wi-Fi-enabled mobile can do the job, and stay in your pocket the whole time. As well as the standard voice and text features, Skype mobile allows you to update your profile and picture, add new contacts on the go and send or receive files from your contacts.

The client's free, but if you absolutely love it you'll probably want to invest in some Skype credit to allow you to call and SMS all your friends to tell them the good news. Download it from the Skype mobile homepage.

Skyfire

Introducing the only mobile browser with decent Flash support, Skyfire is by no means perfect but provides a great way to stream video to your phone. YouTube support within the browser is excellent, although you'll probably get some "Your browser's not up to it" messages from YouTube's end. Soldier on however, and you'll be able to use the full YouTube website on your mobile phone.

It's no replacement for Opera, but it gets the job done. There's no in-built keyboard, and a simple SpeedDial feature would be nice, but if Flash is your thing then Skyfire will excel where other mobile browsers call it a day.

Download it from Skyfire.com or read what the fuss is about right here.

Have you got any favourite apps not featured here? Trouble with an app on a particular device? Tell us about it in the comments.

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10 Free MP3 Albums To Download [Sound Sunday]

Posted: 18 Jul 2010 12:30 PM PDT

where can I download free mp3s During the past weeks of reviewing and compiling material for Sound Sunday, I came across an extraordinary amount of free rap and hip hop albums. Wanting to keep a balance, I saved most of the material for “another article”. Now that a decent number of albums has accumulated, the time has come for a hip hop & rap special.

If you discover something you like, please spread the word and be generous to the artists.

e.d.g.e. – Napalm In The Morning

Genre: hip hop, rap, soul

The acronym e.d.g.e. translates to Eternal Determination Grants Everything. It certainly does take a lot of determination to manage a full time job as a chef, a family, and a music career. In late June, e.d.g.e. released his mixtape Napalm In The Morning.

Download the mixtape in exchange for your eMail address from Bandcamp.

e.d.g.e. MySpace and Record Company.

Phil Adé – The Letterman

Genre: hip hop, lyrical, rap

Don Cannon mixed this 20 piece record of Phil Adé, which features several guests, including Raekwon, Raheem, Devaugh, Wale, Tabi Bonney, Skillz, KingPen, Slim, and Kyonte.

The Letterman is available from DJBooth.net with no strings attached.

Phil Adé MySpace.

Relic – The Green Light

Genre: hip hop

Following his 2006 self-produced album It’s all RELative and his 2008 EP Note to Self, Relic has recently released The Green Light. The “June only” free download was extended to last throughout August.

Relic is offering his free album as a direct download through divShare.

Relic MySpace and Twitter.

TabLiv – The Vermont Tapes

Genre: hip hop, rap, trip hop, lyrical

The Vermont Tape is a semi-concept album telling the story of a road trip to Vermont. The artists in charge of the 13 tracks record are Tab and Tone Liv.

The album is available through Jamendo, eMail address required.

Tab Facebook and Homepage. Tone Liv Facebook and MySpace.

Prote-J – Good Hip Hop Meets Radio

Genre: hip hop, rap, R&B

Prote-J is a rising star on the hip hop horizon. The present mixtape Good Hip Hop Meets Radio is a demonstration of his talent. Playing the drums, bass, piano, and guitar, he was able to record every track by himself.

You can download the album from Prote-J’s Homepage, no input required.

Prote-J MySpace and Homepage.

SoleGC – The Writers EP

Genre: hip hop, rap

SoleGC, clearly is a fan of the beach, but otherwise the internet reveals little of this rapper from New Jersey, USA. The Writers EP itself is a little revelation and every tune offers a fresh sound.

The Writers EP is available through Bandcamp.

SoleGC MySpace and Twitter.

JustMe and Cas Metah – Theory Hazit Beatdown

Genre: hip hop, rap

The duo JustMe and Cas Metah met at a Scribble Jam in 2002. Theory Hazit Beatdown is Theory Hazit’s remix of their 2004 debut album Scribbling Idiots Present: JustMe & Cas Metah.

An immediate download of Theory Hazit Beatdown is provided by Bandcamp.

Cas Metah MySpace. JetMe & Cas Metah Homepage.

CONQUEST – Radical Thinking Vol. 1 The Mixtape

Genre: progressive, hip hop, christian

CONQUEST, aka Jason Andre Roberts, calls a long list of artists his influence. His biggest inspiration, however, is the Christian way of life, a perspective that is tightly woven into his music.

The mixtape can be downloaded at Bandcamp, eMail address required.

CONQUEST MySpace and Facebook.

Nonstop – The Hustle 2: The Re-Up

Genre: hip hop, rap

Portland-born rapper Nonstop, also known as The Hitman, grew up dealing drugs. As the son of the Nu Shooz bassist, he eventually caught the music virus that had kept his dad away from home. It helped him escape the crime scene of his youth and start a new life.

The free download is available directly through Bandcamp.

Nonstop MySpace.

MeLo-X – Mustafa The GodKing: Rise of The Merch

Genre: experimental, hip hop, R&B, soul

MeLo-X works out of Brooklyn, New York, USA. For his first record since the 2008 release Mustafa’s Renaissance, he has completed the entire work by himself, from production to artwork.

Get your hands on a free and direct download of this album on Bandcamp.

MeLo-X MySpace and Homepage.

For more free music, dig into the past editions of Sound Sunday. If you offer free music downloads to the world and would like to see it mentioned here, feel free to get in touch with me (tina at makeuseof dot com). Please leave your requests, suggestions, and feedback in the comments.

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Disable Windows 7’s Preview Tabs for Firefox, Chrome, Opera and IE8

Posted: 18 Jul 2010 10:30 AM PDT

One of Windows 7’s most exciting new features was the redesigned task bar. Apart from bigger icons, open windows were now grouped per program, and sometimes expanded in so-called preview tabs upon mouse-over.

By now, this feature has been added to all major browsers. There’s but one catch. Not everyone enjoys it.

Whether it’s due to hardware restrictions, or simply because they’re used to a different user interface, “Try to keep up”, and “you’ll get used to it” aren’t valid solutions. In software, too, the customer is king. Below is how you can disable the feature in Firefox 4, Google Chrome, Opera and Internet Explorer 8.

In Google Chrome

The feature was only added to Google Chrome a couple of months ago. Since you can’t disable it in the preferences, here’s a nifty little workaround.

First, browse to C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\ – where ‘C’ is the drive of your Windows 7 install. Right-click on chrome.exe and open the properties pane.

In the compatibility tab, check the box next to ‘Run this program in compatibility mode for:‘, and select Windows Vista (Service Pack 2) from the drop-down menu. Click OK.

Google Chrome will now run like it would on Windows Vista. That is, without those preview tabs. Alternatively, you can also append these changes in the properties pane of a Google Chrome shortcut. If you ever want to re-enable the preview tabs, simply turn compatibility mode off.

In Mozilla Firefox

Open up Firefox, type “about:config” in the address bar (without quotation marks), and hit enter. This will open a screen with advanced settings. Please refrain from changing anything else that you don’t understand. In the filter field, at the top of the screen, type browser.taskbar.previews

This will take you to the relevant settings. Double-click browser.taskbar.previews.enable, so that its value changes to False.

If you ever want to revert these changes, simply visit these settings again, and return browser.taskbar.previews.enable to True.

In Opera

Turning off the preview tabs in Opera is mighty similar to the Firefox method.

First, open your browser, and direct your browser towards “opera:config” (without quotation marks). Go to User Prefs, and look for the “Use Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnails” setting. Make sure this box is unchecked.

To re-enable the preview tabs at a later point in time, simply tick that box again.

In Internet Explorer 8

Ok, nerds aren’t too big a fan of Internet Explorer 8, but as the standard browser on the world’s most popular operation system, a lot of people are still using it. Being a Microsoft product as well, this browser was the first to support the preview tabs feature. Here’s how you go about disabling it.

Disabling this option is probably easiest in Internet Explorer 8. Start by opening up your browser.

Go to Tools -> Internet Options and open the settings pane for ‘Tabs’. At the top, you should be able to find ‘Show previews for individual tabs in the taskbar’, a box ticked by default. Simply uncheck it, save the changes, and you’re done.

Do you know an easier way to disable the preview tabs in any of these, or even a whole-together different browser? Let us know what you think in the comments section below!

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TriDefense Giveaway Winners

Posted: 18 Jul 2010 10:00 AM PDT

Stay away from the summer heat by having some fun indoors. TriDefense is the perfect way for a mobile gamer to relax and just drift off to tower-defence land.

Celebrating TriDefense’s first anniversary, they’ve decided to give away 25 copies of one of the best tower defence games available for the iPhone/iPod Touch.

Will you be one of the lucky winners?

Michael Taye
Andrew Cruse
Cameron Corrao
Brooks Eakin
Ben Lang
Lesley Oswin
Les Siewert
Andy Roden
Grant Re
Ryan Williams
Chris Lozeau
Bruna Rasmussen
Jayne
Michael
Danny Reyes

Ali Broujerdi
Fiona Heng
Nikola Katsarov
Søren Lumbye
Ray Barr
Marco Flores
Koh Wei Han
Vaibhav
Rick Bannister
Luay Salman

Congratulations! An email has been sent to your inbox. If you haven’t received it, please check your spam folder.

MakeUseOf would like to thank Ciro from TriDefense for his generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email.

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FreakY TriKz

Monday, July 19, 2010