MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [September 3rd]” plus 10 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [September 3rd]
- Latest Hilarious Picks [MakeUseOf Geeky Fun]
- The 5 Best Questions From You [MakeUseOf Answers]
- Join MakeUseOf On Twitter!
- 6 MORE Best Web Design Blogs You Haven’t Heard Of
- Hot Tech Deals [Sep 3rd]
- What Is Lorem Ipsum & Where Did It Come From? [In Case You Were Wondering]
- 10 Environmental Games That Teach Kids About Earth, Ecology & Conservation
- Easily & Quickly Clean Up Web Text With CleanHaven [Cross-Platform]
- How RSS Bandit Can Feed You Everything You Need Online
- Vimperator – A Hardcore Firefox Add-On For Minimalists
| Cool Websites and Tools [September 3rd] Posted: 03 Sep 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. Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers!
    
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| Latest Hilarious Picks [MakeUseOf Geeky Fun] Posted: 03 Sep 2010 07:31 PM PDT
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. Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf page on Facebook. Over 24,000 fans already!
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| The 5 Best Questions From You [MakeUseOf Answers] Posted: 03 Sep 2010 06:31 PM PDT
This week’s prize for Best Answer of the Week goes to Dave for the answer to this question: “Where can I buy the best digital camera?” Congratulations! Could you use some extra cash in your pocket? Help us solve questions. No sign up required! You just need a valid email address or an existing Facebook, Yahoo, or Disqus account to post your answers. And these are our 5 best questions of the week:
Want to learn something new each day and share your knowledge? Browse MakeUseOf Answers by Latest Questions, Unanswered Questions or Most Popular Questions. For regular updates subscribe to the Answers RSS Feed. Need help? Ask us at MakeUseOf Answers! Dpmvisa Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf page on Facebook. Over 24,000 fans already!
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| Posted: 03 Sep 2010 04:31 PM PDT
You’ll be notified everytime there is a new post on the MakeUseOf Blog, a web app review on the MakeUseOf Directory or something new on Geeky Fun. Plus, we would love it if you would re-tweet the posts and discuss them, so more people get to know about us and join our community. Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter Now Thank you! Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter. Includes cool extras.
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| 6 MORE Best Web Design Blogs You Haven’t Heard Of Posted: 03 Sep 2010 02:31 PM PDT
By popular demand, I will be covering some of the lesser known web design blogs this time around. Without further ado, here are some of the web design blogs you may not have heard of. TrueKolor
The first website I feel obligated to mention in this post is TrueKolor. They do graphic design in the form of designing logos and banners, but their blog has a lot of great content that often goes unnoticed. Articles include lists of inspiring logos and font sets, Photoshop tips and tricks, and everything in between. [Disclosure] They designed our logo. We think they’re awesome. Designrfix
Designrfix is pretty popular numbers-wise, but I still don’t think they are getting the recognition that some of the other design blogs are getting, so I felt I should include them here too. They do a great job of giving examples of inspirational design in both online and real-world examples, as well as the usual stuff like cool icons and graphics. Paper Leaf
Paper Leaf is a legitimate unknown, but a good blog nonetheless. The site has some well-written, informative articles centered around design and it’s a good place to go for ideas. New articles are posted every few days, which isn’t as frequent as some of the other blogs on this list, but perhaps we can change that by delivering some positive attention. AEXT.NET
AEXT.NET stands for “An Extension of the Net”. While they cover some of the design aspects like the other blogs on this list, they do a good job of focusing on the development side of things, covering topics like server-side rendering and even SEO. They also have a good tutorial section you should check out. LooksLikeGoodDesign
I feel like I had to include this site on the list. I really like their design and layout, and if you are into design I think you will appreciate it too. They make great use of images as every post is just a large photo, and you can click on it to get to the underlying content. You can spend a lot of time browsing for ideas and inspiration on this site. There is a little strong language used in some places on the site – apologies. Just look at the pictures! idsgn
Speaking of giant photos, idsgn rounds out this list. I know I’ve mentioned inspiration and design ideas throughout this list, but if that’s the sort of thing you’re looking for you have to check out this site. They provide monthly reviews and throw out a lot of design love to important people in the industry. ConclusionLike I’ve stated before, there are an insane amount of design blogs and resources out there. It’s great to have so much information readily available and it allows you to focus on any aspect of web design you choose to master. My list might look completely different from what you could come up with. If this is the case, let’s help expose some of the best unknowns in the comments section! Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us.
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| Posted: 03 Sep 2010 01:15 PM PDT
For more fresh hot deals, visit our Hot Tech Deals page, which is constantly updated. Keep reading to find out today’s Hot Tech Deals.
Also;
Image credit: Modified from Svengraph’s icon set Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers!
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| What Is Lorem Ipsum & Where Did It Come From? [In Case You Were Wondering] Posted: 03 Sep 2010 12:31 PM PDT
After a bit of research I have some answers. What Is Lorem Ipsum?Lorem Ipsum is a group of text that people commonly use as filler text, or dummy text. It’s basically a bunch of mumbo-jumbo (at least that’s what it looks like) that people use to show what a design layout will look like when the proper text has been inserted.
Why Do Designers Use Lorem Ipsum?What I kept asking myself is why they would use this jumbled up mess of a foreign language and not some English text? It all comes down to focus. It’s a known fact that if they were to use actual copy, someone trying to look at only the design would be distracted by what the text says. That is one of the major reasons people choose to use Lorem Ipsum. With text that is unrecognizable, there’s nothing to read. Where Did Lorem Ipsum Come From?As it turns out, Lorem Ipsum did come from Latin. It’s actually a modified version of it. What does it actually say? According to Lipsum.com,
Lorem Ipsum has been used since the 1500’s. It was made popular in the 1960’s and has survived into the digital age with desktop publishing programs like Aldus PageMaker. As we also know, it is still being widely used among web designers such as Wordpress theme designers to show different design elements.
Can I Use Lorem Ipsum For My Projects?Sure, why not? It is still widely used so join the proverbial club. In fact there are many tools out there that make using it so easy. Here are a few of them. Lipsum.comI have already quoted from this site because it contains quite a bit of information on the subject. It also contains a tool to generate a portion of the text.
MakeUseOf’s Directory contains a writeup about it. Since that time they have released both a Firefox plugin and a Chrome plugin. Lorem2: "Lorem Ipsum" Text SamplesThis isn’t really a software program or tool per se. It’s really a website containing different sample Lorem Ipsum texts. It contains short paragraphs, long paragraphs, short list items and long list items. Web designers should add this site to their tool belt. HTML-IpsumThis tool takes Lorem Ipsum usage to a whole different level for web developers.
They offer much of what the last tools offers but with the HTML tags included, making development that much easier. Tell us, do you use Lorem Ipsum? If so, in what way? What tools do you use that we should know about? Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter. Includes cool extras.
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| 10 Environmental Games That Teach Kids About Earth, Ecology & Conservation Posted: 03 Sep 2010 11:31 AM PDT
With the right eco-education, we can hope they will hit the ground running. A lot of schools and educational institutions are doing their bit by including the environment as part of the curriculum. Words like 'carbon footprint' and global warming' comes to them as easily as the name of any present-day rock star. That's cool. But who said that ecological or environmental education needs to be bookish or donnish? Thanks to online games, it can be brought out from textbooks into the fun world. Online environmental games games that teach kids about animals and conservation make the task interactive.
Here are ten games and game websites that teach kids about the environment and the world around them. Planet Science
The Planet Science games cupboard is a collection of online interactive games and other fun activities like quizzes. Try your hand on Planet 10 and see if you can create a perfect world. It's not that easy because you have to mix and match the building blocks to create a perfect world. Or you could learn a bit about energy and its conservation from the lighter games like Energize. BBC Climate Change
Here's your chance to see if you can do better in the hot seat. The game tests your decision making skills while holding the top job of President of the European Nations. You must tackle climate change and stay popular enough with the voters to remain in office. Clim'way
The Clim'way game is again about helping the larger community reach some specific climate goals. You have to create a climate plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a certain percentage in a certain time frame. Your plans can include setting up alternative energy sources, reducing human consumption etc. Web Earth Online
How would you cope in the environment of today if you were an animal or bird? Use this multi player online game to find out. Pitted against you will be species which may be friend or foe. Then you have the natural world to deal with too. You will get to play through the entire life cycle of the animal you choose. Like all animal species, the objective is to survive and thrive. The basic game is free. Earth Day Games
Earth Day has passed us by, but the games that were set up to promote it endure on many sites around the web. Kaboose.com has a small collection of simple Flash based environmental games like Clean Up Your World. The games are simple enough to introduce the youngest of the lot to the need for environmental cleanliness. Recycle City
Continuing in the same spirit of cleaning up the litter around you, head for Recycle City. In the Dumptown Game, as the Dumptown Manager, you can create your own scavenger hunt and learn what it takes to help protect the environment. World Wildlife Fund
As WWF says, these are games with a message. Nine games listed on one page and a tenth one on Facebook (that's about looking after a polar bear). My picks are the blaster games. For instance, in the Toxic Blaster, I am piloting a jet-sub into the insides of a polar bear, a whale, and a man to blast away toxic molecules. But be warned, those contaminants can destroy the sub too. Ecokids
The Canadian website Ecokids has quite a list of little environmental games arranged in categories like Wildlife, Climate Change, Energy, Water, Waste, Land Use etc. The learning based environmental games are also bunched up according to age levels. For instance, in The Journey of a Wildlife Photographer you have to become a wildlife photographer and check out how animals and birds have adapted to the environment. The Adventures Of Vermi The Worm
Go along with Vermi the worm and learn the basics of vermicomposting and its benefits, plus other waste management strategies like recycling. Along the way you will meet other characters like Bubba the Worm, Hugh Hammer, Sunny Flower, and Trashcan. While learning you have to help your buddies too as they reduce, reuse, recycle what's waste. Environmental Education On The Internet
This huge list of environmental games and related learning activities is thanks to the North American Association For Environmental Education. From the Second Life based NOAA Virtual World to the educational Astro-Venture from NASA where you have to design a habitable planet, the web resources cover quite a lot of environmental ground. Thanks to online games of various hues, learning need not be a chore anymore. So finish all that homework fast. There's lot of interactive fun to be had on the World Wide Web. And tell us if you have a favorite environmental game that you would like the world to know about. Image Credit : woodleywonderworks NEW: Download MakeUseOf iPhone App. FREE!
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| Easily & Quickly Clean Up Web Text With CleanHaven [Cross-Platform] Posted: 03 Sep 2010 10:31 AM PDT
If cleaning up text has been a problem for you, Hoy Mackerel's CleanHaven application may be the solution. This free program performs dozens of text conversions and corrections. However, although it works pretty well, it can't read your mind. You will need to figure out which settings and attributes are needed to make the changes you want. How CleanHaven WorksAfter you download the application, you're presented with sample texts to help you learn the various conversion attributes. My suggestion is to cut and paste this tutorial text into a word processing document, and then start working through each individual sample. Let's start with an easy one. Say you have a list of words and you want to quickly get rid of any duplicates in the list. Here's an example: paste the following list in the main window of CleanHaven. car bus car plane bicycle car train plane Now simply click the Clean button. CleanHaven cleans up the text and delivers it in a new window. Thankfully it doesn’t delete or change the original/source text.
In the Cleaned Results window, you have the option to copy the converted or corrected text to your computer's clipboard. If you click the Source button, it corrects the original text in the main window. This Remove Duplicates attribute is very useful if you want to brainstorm a list of items and not fret over repeating yourself. A similar attribute can put an assorted list of items in alphabetical or numerical order. If you don't know the technical lingo, you might be a little confused about which attribute you need to get the job done. Use the Ascending attribute for this.
Another useful attribute is cleaning up line-wrapped text that has been truncated, such as the type of forwarded text you might receive in an email. Checking and selecting the Personal>Combine Paragraph attribute will get the results you need.
Converting the title case of names is another clean up job that CleanHaven can perform.
This works great for first and last names that are not typed correctly, and for long lists of incorrectly typed titles. The CleanHaven website lists all the conversions and corrections the application can make, including removing excess characters (excess returns, excess spaces, linefeeds, linefeeds to returns, non-ASCII, non-letters, non-numbers, periods, punctuation, returns, returns to linefeeds, spaces, tabs), combining paragraphs, adding salutations to names, converting phone numbers to standard formats, sorting numerical lists, etc. CleanHaven, in its second version, is a useful (free!) program, but it does lack features that might be incorporated into future versions. For example, it would be useful if you could save complex conversion settings for repeated use. Another issue is that when you get “cleaned results”, you can't add or change conversions settings to the results. You have to close the window and start over again. And finally, although there’s lots information about the updates made to the application, it could use a well thought manual so that users don't have to click on various attributes to figure which ones do what. CleanHaven might not be an application you use on a daily basis, but it's certainly handy to have, saving you time from performing tedious text conversions and corrections. Let us know how you like it. NEW: Download MakeUseOf iPhone App. FREE!
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| How RSS Bandit Can Feed You Everything You Need Online Posted: 03 Sep 2010 09:30 AM PDT
Between social networks, email and blogs, that pretty much sums up the streams of incoming “data” that I check every day, and to do so I was running at least three applications, plus a few other Firefox plugins. At one point, I looked at all of the apps that I had running and started thinking that there has to be a far simpler way to collect all of the data that I check on a daily basis into one place that is well organized and simple to configure.
I was surprised to discover the solution in a powerful little open source desktop application called RSS Bandit. Adam briefly mentioned RSS Bandit and many readers have mentioned the app in various comments, but the power of this little data-collection fiend deserves a full review. RSS Bandit Collects Social Network FeedsWhile most RSS readers are awesome tools for organizing all of the sites that you like to visit online, there are very few that can also incorporate new information or posts from your favorite social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook. RSS Bandit has now added the ability to directly poll your Facebook account for new updates – turning it from a simple RSS Reader into an online life aggregator. So delete all of those other applications you’ve got running in the background, open up RSS Bandit, and let’s roll.
The same thing is true for the Twitter feed, although in this case you’ll probably find yourself just scrolling slowly down the headline list since most of the Twitter updates fit in the Headline field.
Using RSS Bandit to Get New EmailTired of opening up a new app or your browser to check for new email? Why not let RSS Bandit do that too? Now that Gmail offers an atom feed for your email account, it’s easy. All you have to do when you click on the new subscription link is paste either “https:gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom” into the URL field. You’ll need to authenticate (RSS Bandit allows for authentication). With non-authenticating RSS Readers, you’d have to use “https://USERNAME:PASSWORD@gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom”. This is what your Gmail feed will look like when you’re done.
Of course RSS Bandit can aggregate blog and website feeds from any source, including news sites and podcast RSS feeds just as well as the best RSS Readers out there.
And the sweetest thing about RSS Bandit is that in the Options menu, you can enable Remote Storage of your feeds so that you can remotely access them from anywhere. Just set up an FTP account to your own web hosting or file storage folder and you’re good to go!
RSS Bandit can organize your online life unlike many other apps out there. Have you ever given RSS Bandit a try? Do you know of any other RSS Readers with these kind of features? Share your insight in the comments section below! Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf page on Facebook. Over 24,000 fans already!
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| Vimperator – A Hardcore Firefox Add-On For Minimalists Posted: 03 Sep 2010 08:31 AM PDT
If you’re thinking of switching to Chrome, wait. Don’t jump ship just yet. If you value minimalism in a web browser you may be interested in a Firefox add-on known as Vimperator. This add-on is just a bit insane, but that’s what makes it great. An Introduction To VimperatorThe goal of Vimperator is to emulate the look and feel of the Vim text editor, a now obscure editor that was released in 1991 for the Amiga. Over the last 19 years Vim has been developed as an open-source editor for Windows, Linux and Unix. The interface of Vim, along with the large number of keyboard commands the program accepts, makes it possible to edit text without using the mouse. This hatred of the mouse (or love of the keyboard) continues in Vimperator. The add-on places two new bars at the bottom of the Firefox browser. The black bar provides information about the page that you currently have open, while the white bar is a text field into which you can enter commands. That’s right – this add-on gives Firefox a text-based user interface. Vimperator also enables a large number of simple keyboard commands that can be used to perform tasks like reloading a page, moving through browser history and even scrolling. Obey The Text
The focus on text and keyboard commands is confusing at first, but it has its advantages. Vimperator gets rid of all the toolbars at the top of the typical Firefox window because you no longer need them to navigate the web. The result is a significant increase in the usable display space provided by the browser. This also makes Firefox more responsive. Webpages that previously felt sluggish now load in a flash. Learning to use Vimperator could be a huge mess if the support documentation was poor. There are literally hundreds of commands and keyboard shortcuts available for use. Thankfully, Vimperator comes with a very helpful manual that is broken up into sections and provides detailed information about Vimperator’s interface. It can be accessed at any time using the :help command.
Since Vimperator offers such an excellent help document I’m not going to go over the basic commands here. Instead, I’m going to highlight some specific commands that I found interesting. Buffers & MacrosSome of the best Vimperator commands can be found under the Buffer heading. These commands don’t necessarily do anything that was previously impossible, but the speed at which they operate is extremely impressive.
For example, pressing the keys “gf” while viewing a webpage will instantly switch the page to source view. This can be done on any webpage, and the transition takes less than a second. Vimperator also lets users open a page in an external editor with the keyboard command “gF.” A brief summary of a webpage’s information can be brought up using the “:pa” command. Macro support is included in Vimperator, and becomes very handy considering the heavy reliance on keyboard commands. Macros can be recorded by pressing “q” and then a number or letter key. The recording status will be shown in the bottom text menu. Pressing the “q” key again will stop recording. Further macro support makes it possible to replay macros a set number of time and use scripting. ConclusionPrepare yourself, brave Firefox user. Vimperator can be a bit bewildering at first, and it certainly isn’t for everyone. It offers a unique experience however, and it absolutely does make Firefox feel like a quicker, more streamlined web browser. Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us.
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