MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [July 24th]” plus 4 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [July 24th]
- Radian: An Awesome Mouse-Oriented Application Launcher [Windows]
- Portable Linux Apps Which Work With Any Linux Distro
- Hot Tech Deals [July 24th]
- How To Watermark Your Videos In Windows Movie Maker
| Cool Websites and Tools [July 24th] Posted: 24 Jul 2010 08:31 PM PDT
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| Radian: An Awesome Mouse-Oriented Application Launcher [Windows] Posted: 24 Jul 2010 06:30 PM PDT
MakeUseOf has covered application launchers in the past. However, more often than not, an application launcher can be heavy on system resources. They have been known to prolong system startups. Radian is another application launcher for Windows, which has a surprisingly tiny footprint.
Setting It UpAt first run, you will need to hold down your right mouse button to take Radian into the design mode. Radian basically resembles a circle divided into four sectors. Each of these sectors can hold up to 6 shortcuts, thereby giving you a choice of 24 launchers. Each of these 24 options can be customized completely to launch only what you want to use. In the design mode, 4 buttons are provided, which resemble 4 gears. Each of these can be used to access the settings of each quadrant (such as background color, etc.).
Let’s now add a shortcut to Radian. Once you’re in the design mode, click any of the buttons to customize it. This will bring up a small box with two fields. The first one, called “Title” is for you to give a caption to the button. The second one is to enter a path to what you want to launch. Use these boxes to input the settings for the button you just selected. Once done, either hit “Test” to try it out, or click “OK” when you are satisfied. In my example, I’ve set it to launch an image file. You can set yours to anything you like (an app shortcut, a file, a folder, etc.). Repeat this step for all the shortcuts that you want to use.
You can set each quadrant to display links from a particular folder as well. For example, the bottom quadrant, in its default settings shows the “Desktop”, and the top quadrant shows links from “Quick Launch”. You can customize what each quadrant shows by clicking on the gear icon for a particular quadrant and and specifying the “Mode” for the same.
Using RadianNow that the hard work is over, we can get down to using this nifty app launcher. Start by holding down your right-mouse button. Now, without releasing the button, move the mouse to any one of the four quadrants of the circle. This will cause the items of that quadrant to pop out. Thereafter, select the item you want and let go of the button to launch the app. Screenshots follow below.
Given enough time, you will find that an application launcher is something that is indispensable for a computer user. Once you are hooked to the convenience of a launcher, you will hate reverting to a situation without a launcher. If you are a keyboard ninja, you should give EnsoLauncher a shot. In case you use any other launcher, do let us know in the comments. Image credit: arvindgrover NEW: Download MakeUseOf iPhone App. FREE! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| Portable Linux Apps Which Work With Any Linux Distro Posted: 24 Jul 2010 03:31 PM PDT
Until now. New website PortableLinuxApps features a number of portable Linux applications, which will work on any Linux distribution. These can run off your flash drive or from a folder in your home directory; it doesn’t matter. Best of all, there’s documentation out there to help you make your own program, should you not be able to find what you’re looking for.
How It Works
Like portable applications for other operating systems, portable Linux apps bundle each and every dependency a program has within a single executable. This has downsides: applications with redundent dependencies will take up more hard drive space, for example. For many the convinence of portable applications outweight this negative, particularly in our present age of cheap hard drives. Because every dependency of each program is bundled in the program itself, these portable Linux apps can run on practically any Linux distro (although I’m certain someone in the comments will manage to prove this wrong). Ubuntu, Fedora and SuSe are all confirmed to work with these apps, which is a solid start. Just remember: once you download such an app, remember that you’ll need to change the permission to allow executing the file as a program. If you’re not sure how to do this the simplest way is to right-click the file, then click “Properties” followed by the “Permissions” tab. You’ll find the option to allow execution at the bottom of the window:
One Online CollectionIt would seem that, for now, PortableLinuxApps.org is the place to find…well…portable Linux apps.
The collection currently is quite small but features many MakeUseOf favourites, including:
Just download the software, set the permissions and you’re good to go! Rolling Your OwnCan’t find a particular program you’re looking for? You can bundle it yourself! The process is relatively easy, if not a little convoluted. The good folks at OMG Ubuntu recently wrote a post explaining how to convert an Ubuntu .deb file into a portable app, so check that out for more information. Here’s hoping that in the future creating a portable app from a .deb file will be a two-click affair! Conclusion
Package management is perhaps what makes Linux great, but it’s also one of the most common complaints newcomers to Linux have. Being used to simply Googling and downloading any program needed, the average new users are a little confused by what they find: .tar.gz files or worse. This is made worse by the sheer number of different Linux distros on the market, and the fact that they all have different ways of managing packages. The best thing to do, of course, is to learn to use your distro’s package manager. But portable apps are cool, and certainly have their place. Can you think of cool uses for such technology? Have any apps you’ve bundled yourself that you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments below! NEW: Download MakeUseOf iPhone App. FREE! Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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| Posted: 24 Jul 2010 01:30 PM PDT
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| How To Watermark Your Videos In Windows Movie Maker Posted: 24 Jul 2010 12:31 PM PDT
I certainly wish I did back when I fansubbed a music piece with some (as I was told later) metaphorically incorrect translations and later laughed when I saw the exact same, incorrect lyrics I had spent hours researching for in another similar video. As you can tell, there’s no real harm in spending a few more minutes protecting your work. It may even get you more motivated when you see your own logo in your videos that you’ll continue making videos!
Adding A Text WatermarkIf you want a simple text watermark, not a logo, of your username or name in the lower portion of your video, you can get started right away with one of the built-in Titles. First, start up Windows Movie Maker. Press Ctrl + I (or click on Videos under Import in the left sidebar) to import your video from your computer.
Drag your video to the timeline. Click on Title and credits under Edit in the left sidebar and then, click on Title on the selected clip.
Type your username or the text you want to appear as your video watermark.
Click on Change the title animation and choose Subtitle that appears under the first Titles, One Line section at the top of the selection box.
If you wish to position your watermark near the bottom right or left, click on Change the text font and color and choose the icon to align text right or left. You can change how transparent or opaque your watermark, as well as your font style (e.g. make the text bold or italicized), size and color.
Once you like what you see in the Preview (please note that the video player may take a few seconds to display any changes), click on Add Title. Using the resizer (which appears when your cursor hovers on the edge of the title in the timeline), drag it across the length of your video.
You can preview your final video if you’d like, otherwise, press Ctrl + P (click on File > Publish Movie) to save the video to your computer.
This is what the product looks like with the simple text watermark.
Adding An Image Watermark Or LogoFirst, if you haven’t already, create your image watermark. If it has a transparent background, it would look even better, so use Photoshop, GIMP, Paint.NET or most web-based image editors to achieve a transparent background (which the built-in MS Paint can’t do). Save it in .PNG or .GIF format in >C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared\AddOnTFX\. If you don’t have the Shared or the AddOnTFX folder, just create the folders with those exact names. You may also save your image in .JPEG format but note that it can’t contain a transparent background. If you already have your logo saved in your computer, make sure it is saved in either file formats, or you can create a new copy and save it as a .PNG or .GIF file in >C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared\AddOnTFX\. Now head to this FX Archive page and select either Windows XP Logo Creator or Windows Vista Logo Creator depending on your system.
Select the location in the video where you want your logo to appear.
Then choose the Screen Size which you can quickly find out by looking at your video file’s properties under Dimensions. If your video has different dimensions, just choose the closest numbers or (follow the original forum thread to learn how to modify the code). Then type in the dimensions for your image watermark or logo file. Now, in the Logo filename, where the default name is image.gif, type whatever the name is for your watermark or logo file, which you saved previously in .PNG or .GIF in >C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared\AddOnTFX\. In the Name of Title field, you can name it something like MyLogo. Copy the text that appears underneath.
Open Notepad, paste the text in and save as a mylogo.xml (choose All Files (*.*) in the drop-down menu for the Save as type field) in the >C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared\AddOnTFX\ folder.
Open up Windows Movie Maker (or if you have it open, restart it to see the new MyLogo), import your video, drag it to the timeline and choose Titles and credits. Choose Title on the selected clip and in the text box under Enter text for title, input a single space (this is important!), and click Change the title animation.
You should see MyLogo in the options. Select it and click Add Title.
Using the resizer (which appears when your cursor hovers on the edge of the title in the timeline), drag it across the length of your video. You can preview your final video if you’d like, otherwise, press Ctrl + P (click on File > Publish Movie) to save the video to your computer or share it with others or on YouTube! If you look really hard, there’s actually more tricks that good ol’ Movie Maker has to render a pretty professional video, like the Zooming effects. Do you use Windows Movie Maker or do you prefer another video editor? Let us know in the comments about your preferences and why! Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles
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