Sunday, October 31, 2010

MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [October 30th]” plus 3 more

MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [October 30th]” plus 3 more

Link to MakeUseOf.com

Cool Websites and Tools [October 30th]

Posted: 30 Oct 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. You can make use of them without spending a dime. If you want to have similar cool websites round-ups delivered to your email daily email subscribe here.

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MissyFlowers – Flowers are one of the most popular last-minute products that can be bought online. Online flower shops are very helpful especially if you almost forget to send gifts to your loved ones and you need something delivered for them just in the nick of time. MissyFlowers is a visual shopping engine and aggregator that helps you find the perfect flower by sorting through several online flower shops and comparing products and prices. Read more: MissyFlowers: One-Stop Shop For All Flower Delivery Stores

 

YouTube Proxy – If you want to access sites like MySpace or YouTube anonymously, or if you are on a restricted connection, then using a proxy server is one of the workarounds you could try. YouTube Proxy is a site which lets you access popular social sites, as well as email services through direct links via a proxy connection. Read more: YouTubeProxy: Helps You Access Restricted Websites

 

 

Money Trail – Most parents nowadays want their kids to start acquiring money management skills at an early age. MoneyTrail.net is a simple web based tool to help parents and their kids keep a track of the exchange of money between each other and the way the kid spends his or her weekly/monthly allowance. Read more: MoneyTrail.net: Allowance & Money Management For Kids

 

 

Kabroo – Many professionals upload their resumes to the web and make them searchable. You can search for these resumes and find them to be very helpful whether you are planning to hire somebody or simply looking for sample resumes. Kabroo is one website that lets find and download those resumes for free. Read more: Kabroo: Find & Download Resumes For Free Online

 

 

JotOnce – You may have come across a good number of online note taking applications. Usually these web apps let you share your text notes with others online. However they do not provide satisfactory privacy controls for your notes. Jot Once plans to deliver exactly that – more privacy for your online notes. Read more: JotOnce: Store Text Online & Share Easily & Securely

 

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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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10 Firefox Search Plugins That Support Search Suggestions

Posted: 30 Oct 2010 06:31 PM PDT

firefox searchThe Search Bar is the text bar found in the top right corner of the Firefox window (the feature is also available in Internet Explorer). With it, you can use your favorite search engines without having to visit their websites. As one who searches a lot, I find this tool invaluable.

The good news is that the Firefox search bar supports search suggestions and if you love as-you-type suggestions, you can access most of the providers right from your browser search bar.

Search suggestions can be used for any (or all) of the following purposes:

  • Suggestions (to be reminded of your previous related searches, to fix your spelling mistakes and get suggestions for popular/related results).
  • Auto-Completion (to make your life easier by saving keystrokes).
  • Instant Results (to be able to find something without even searching).

Here are the 10 plugins where you can get suggestions from different providers.

Unique Sources Of Search Suggestions:

1. Google With Search Suggestions

If you choose not to install the Google toolbar, you can still use Google enhanced with instant suggestions by installing this plugin.

  • Suggestions powered by: Google Suggest
  • Install here (top search plugin on the list)

firefox search

2. Youtube Search Suggestions

YouTube (unofficial) search enhanced with suggestions.

  • Suggestions powered by: Youtube Suggest
  • Install here

firefox search engine plugin

3. Amazon Search Suggestions

Official search plugin by Amazon.com (there are many more as well but this one installs as the search plugin and is thus the most clutter-free).

  • Suggestions powered by: Amazon
  • Install here

firefox search engine plugin

4. Bing Search Suggestions

This is the only officially supported Bing add-on, provided by the Bing team at Microsoft.

  • Suggestions powered by: Bing
  • Install here

firefox search engine plugin

5. Ask.com Suggestions

Like it or not, the Ask.com addon can be used for an additional source of as-you-type suggestions inspiration:

  • Suggestions powered by: Ask.com
  • Install here

firefox search engine

I know Yahoo has the auto-suggest algorithm as well, but I was not able to find a search plugin powered by it. If you are aware of one, please post the link to it in the comments.

Google-Powered Search Suggestions:

1. Twitter Search With Suggestions

Search Twitter with search suggestions. I wish Twitter had a Suggest API of its own! It would be so much fun to have real-time search suggestions!

  • Suggestions powered by: Google Suggest
  • Install here

firefox search engine

2. Flickr Search With Suggestions

Search Flickr with search suggestions: if you are a frequent Flickr user, this one will become really useful! Why doesn’t Yahoo provide an official search plugin for that?

  • Suggestions powered by: Google Suggest
  • Install here

firefox search engine

3. WordPress Search Suggest

Search WordPress.org right from the Firefox Search Box with Google-powered suggestions.

  • Suggestions powered by: Google Suggest
  • Install here

Wordpress.com search

4. Photobucket Search Suggestions

  • Suggestions powered by: Google Suggest
  • Install here

Wordpress search

5. eBay Search Suggestion

I am not sure if eBay allows its search suggestions to be used by third-party services but this one uses the Google Suggest API to retrieve search suggestions.

  • Suggestions powered by: Google Suggest
  • Install here

eBay search suggestions

Note: to get the suggestions to work for any of these search plugins, you might need to enable suggestions first. Click “Manage Search Engines” (found below the list of all your search plugins), enable suggestions (check “Show Search Suggestions”) and click OK:

firefox search

Do you like search as-you-type suggestions or do you believe they are useless? Please share your thoughts!


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Hot Tech Deals [Oct 30th]

Posted: 30 Oct 2010 01:15 PM PDT

If you’re in the market for a new computer, laptop, mobile phone, games and other accessories; don’t waste your time searching online. We’ve taken the liberty of locating the best tech deals and unifying them into a single post for your convenience.

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.

  1. Hitachi Travelstar 500GB 5400RPM Internal SATA Laptop Hard Drive $44.99 Free Shipping

  2. TODAY ONLY Lenovo G560 Intel Pentium P6100 2GHz 15.6in Laptop (4GB/320GB/Win 7) $399.99 Free Shipping

  3. Western Digital WD20EADS 2TB Internal SATA Hard Drive $79.99 Free Shipping via code EMCZYZX48

  4. Lenovo G560 Intel Core i5-450M 2.4GHz 15.6in Laptop (4GB/320GB/Win7) $599.99

  5. Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD5850 1GB HDCP PCI-E Video Card (DirectX11, Eyefinity) $209.99AR

Image credit: Modified from Svengraph’s icon set


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The Complete Guide To Watching Videos On Your iPad

Posted: 30 Oct 2010 10:31 AM PDT

watching videos on ipadWith the iPad’s large screen and light weight, it makes it the ideal device for watching movies and TV shows lying in bed, on the go, or pretty much anywhere you want to. That said, Apple’s embargo on flash makes it difficult to find a lot of content to stream online.

We’ve put together a comprehensive list of some of the major websites and apps you can use to watch TV shows, movies, documentaries, and much much more.

Some of the sites can only be accessed from their country of origin, so unfortunately not everyone can watch the latest network TV video on their iPad.

TV

ABC (USA only)

ABC is one of the few network channels that has a dedicated app [iTunes link] where you can watch full episodes on your iPad. ABC’s show list includes popular shows like Modern Family, Cougar Town and Grey’s Anatomy. They also have a separate app [iTunes link] for news buffs who like to get the latest news from CBS.

watching videos on ipad

Bravo (USA only)

Bravo’s iPad app [iTunes link] allows you to watch clips from their shows. The clips aren’t very long at 30 seconds, but if you’re a fan of Bravo’s reality shows you might like to watch short videos when you have a little bit of time to kill. Unfortunately, if you want to watch full episodes on your iPad, you’ll have to pay.

video on ipad

TBS (USA Only)

The TBS iPad app [iTunes link] has the same limitations as the Bravo app – you can only watch short clips from each show. But with shows like The Office and Family Guy, we’ll take what we can get, even if the app hasn’t really been optimised for the iPad’s larger screen.

video on ipad

The Ellen Show

If you’re a fan of The Ellen Show, you can watch clips from the latest episodes on the official website or by downloading the free app [iTunes link]. The iTunes app while compatible with the iPad has not been optimised for the larger screen. Of course this does not affect video playback.

video on ipad

NBC

The NBC mobile website leaves a lot to be desired, but if you’re a fan of their shows, you can at least watch short clips on your iPad. The size of the screen is not optimised for the iPad, but this does not affect the videos themselves.

watch ipad video

TVCatchup (UK Only)

TVCatchup is one of the best websites for UK residents to watch TV shows live as they are aired. With BBC, ITV, Sky and much more, their iPad optimised site makes it easy to find what you want to watch. If you’d rather watch your favourite BBC shows at any time, you can use the BBC’s iPlayer.

watch ipad video

Documentaries

The History Channel

The History Channel is another of the few channels that allows you to watch full episodes of a large selection of their shows on their website. They even have a large selection of Halloween related videos on their front page at the moment.

watch ipad video

National Geographic

Watch clips of up to 10 minutes in length on the National Geographic website on your iPad. Topics are varied from videos about animals, environmental issues, news, and kid-friendly videos, and much more.

NG.jpg

Sports

Sports fans can watch news and game clips from all the latest in sporting events on the ESPN and the Sports Illustrated websites.

SI.jpg

News

There is no limit to the sites that allow you to watch video clips to keep up with news from around the world, including CNN, Reuters, Time Magazine, and Fox News.

CNN.jpg

Movies

Muviez [iTunes link] is a free iPad app that allows you to stream a small selection of independent shorts using your WiFi connection, and you can even download the videos to watch when you don’t have an internet connection. The only drawback to the app is that the longer documentaries and movies require a paid subscription – with no obvious way how to sign up for the subscription on the iPad.

muviez.jpg

Channels

NFB Films

NFB Films [iTunes link] brings over 1,000 Canadian films and shows to iPad users for free. Their channels include short films, classics, animated films and documentaries, amongst many others.

NFB.jpg

Tap TV

TapTV is another impressive app with a large library of public domain movies, children’s shows, documentaries, and even audio books.

tap.jpg

Education

The free app, BrainPOP [iTunes link] is a great resource for educational videos for kids. With science, social studies, english, math, arts and music, health and tech and engineering, they haven’t left anything out. A new video is added every day.

brainpop.jpg

Vimeo & YouTube

Needless to say, if you want to watch user-generated content, the two best sites to go to are Vimeo and YouTube. While Vimeo doesn’t have a dedicated app like YouTube, their website is iPad ready.

vimeo.jpg

Trailers

If all you’re looking for is trailers, look no further than Apple’s very own website. Fox Searchlight [iTunes link] and HBO [iTunes link] have their own dedicated apps, but it’s much easier to fire up Safari and get all of the latest trailers regardless of who’s behind the films.

watching videos on ipad

How do you stream video on your iPad for free? Let us know in the comments.


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