MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [November 6th]” plus 4 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [November 6th]
- How To Search & Credit Properly-Licensed Photos On Flickr [Firefox]
- Hot Tech Deals [Nov 6th]
- How To Instantly Review Email Sender Reputation on Gmail
- 4 Quick & Easy Ways To Review Your Writing Online
| Cool Websites and Tools [November 6th] Posted: 06 Nov 2010 08:01 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.
    
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| How To Search & Credit Properly-Licensed Photos On Flickr [Firefox] Posted: 06 Nov 2010 06:31 PM PDT
I once listed some awesome Flickr search tools that are HUGE fun to use and Nancy did a great job explaining how to upload and use Flickr photos the easy way. This post takes a bit different focus: it attempts to make it clearer for everyone which Flickr photos they are allowed to re-use and how to easily find and credit them. Anyone who has a blog may have used images published on Flickr but not everyone knows how to properly do that.
The most common Creative Commons licenses you may see on Flickr are:
Now, with that in mind, let’s see how we can easily find and use properly-licensed images on Flickr: 1. Flickr Creative Commons Search On FireFox1. Flickr CC (Most Interesting) (Small Thumbnails)This search plugin by Callum MacDonald:
Install the search plugin here
Results may be not exactly on topic (compared to sorted by relevant ones) but this search will work nicely to help you brainstorm and get you inspired. 2. Flickr CC BY SearchThis one is a similar version to the above search plugin (it also forces small thumbnails and filters by Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution) but for a couple of essential differences:
Install the search plugin here
This one will inspire you first by showing the related searches (which may expand your search) and then listing you small thumbnails of related images you can use on your site. Flickr Creative Commons – Attribution HelpSo we have that handy HTML code generated by Flickr that allows to quickly embed a Flickr-hosted image on any page (in any of available sizes).
However Creative Commons Attribution requires that images be credited the way the author prefers them to be and normally a person would like to be mentioned as the image creator. Besides, giving a credit to the image author is just polite. Moreover, you often want to host the image locally – and that hosted code is pretty much useless in that case. This handy Greasemonkey script will help you quickly grab the attribution HTML code: it will generate the proper credit HTML for you to quickly copy it to your page:
When added to a page, this will look the following way:
I am sure, as a blogger and / or active web surfer, you have lots of your own tricks and tips on finding and re-publishing awesome Flickr photos. It would be great to share some of them in the comments! Post image by openDemocracy Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers!
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| Posted: 06 Nov 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.
Image credit: Modified from Svengraph’s icon set Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf page on Facebook. Over 24,000 fans already!
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| How To Instantly Review Email Sender Reputation on Gmail Posted: 06 Nov 2010 12:31 PM PDT
Best of all: you can leave custom notes about a person for future reference, perfect if you’re the sort of person who struggles to keep track of all the people you’re in touch with. Information displayed includes career information, links to social networks and whatever notes you yourself add to a given contact.
A browser plugin for Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome, Rapportive takes minutes to set up. You’ll quickly discover whether this is something you’ll actually use or not, so let’s check it out! What It DoesInstall Rapportive, open Gmail and open any message. You’ll quickly see the sidebar contains new information:
Career information is highlighted; social networks are listed. This is a great overview of who a person is, assuming they’re fairly active online. If no information is provided, but you’d like to leave a private note for your own reference, that’s easy: there’s a button for that at the bottom of the menu:
Here you can leave notes about a given person. This could be quick notes about phone conversations, which aren’t easily searched for in your email. It could also include information about how you know a given person, which could come in handy if you get an email from him or her a year from now out of the blue. Finally, this could be a useful place to store alternative phone numbers and the like. What you use it for is up to you, but the possibilities are endless. The information is stored in the cloud. When you first install Rapportive, you’re given the opportunity to tie the service to your Gmail account. This means you’ll have access to your data from any number of computers, provided the Rapportive plugin is installed. Concerned how people will see your profile? You can edit that. Just take a look at your own profile and you can quickly edit it. However currently, you can’t edit your location.
Plugins For A Plugin?It sounds strange, but there are a collection of additional features you can add to this plugin – using plugins. You’ll find this screen if you click the “Rapportive” button at the top of your Gmail interface:
This is a collection of plugins called Raplets. For now the features mostly include information from various Customer Relation Management (CRM) systems, but you might find this very useful if you already use such software. Install RapportiveInstalling Rapportive is simple: just head to Rapportive.com and click the “Install” button. Assuming you use Firefox, Safari, or Chrome you should be set. Heck, the plugin even works for Mac-only Gmail client Mailplane. Sorry, Internet Explorer users: you’re going to need a better browser to use this. ConclusionI like this plugin quite a bit, and look forward to seeing how it grows. If you want an idea of how it will change I highly recommend you check out the Rapportive feedback forums to get an idea of the features receiving priority. Heck, you can even vote for the changes you’d like to see. What uses can you think of for this plugin? Are there any better tools for the job out there? Share in the comments below!
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| 4 Quick & Easy Ways To Review Your Writing Online Posted: 06 Nov 2010 10:31 AM PDT
While automated reviews and checkers leave a little bit to be desired, they can still come in handy when you need an instantaneous review just to get the ball rolling. There are several free online grammar and writing websites that will give you an instantaneous answer to your query – even if it's something a little more fun like wanting to know which famous author you write like. Word CounterIf you’re worried about being too repetitive in your writing, the simplest way to handle that is to stick your text into the Word Counter and it will rank the words that you have over-used, from most to least.
You can choose to exclude small words like ‘it,’ ‘the’ and other common words you’re bound to repeat. Other choices are to include only the root word, and group all variations together, and the number of words that will be listed, from 25 to 100. The PassivatorIf you want to avoid the passive voice in your writing, The Passivator will highlight all passive words in yellow. The Passivator works differently from the other services listed here, which allows you to copy and paste your text. The Passivator is actually a bookmarklet which will highlight passive text on any given webpage.
If you want to check your text before it’s posted online, you can use any blogging platform like WordPress or even a private journal service like OhLife which allows you to post text online which only you can see. Run the bookmarklet on the posted text, and find out how much you write in the passive voice.
Ginger Online Grammar CheckerWhile Microsoft Word and other word processors can point out grammatical errors as you type, you can always doublecheck, using another service to make sure you haven’t made any small grammatical errors in specific sentences, the free Ginger Online Grammar Checker could come in handy.
While you can only check one sentence at a time, if English is your second language, it always helps to get that extra reassurance about a sentence you aren’t too sure about. Simply type or paste the sentence into the site, and Ginger will underline any grammatical mistakes you have made. Page99TestIf you’re skeptical about how accurate automated reviews can be – how about trying out something a little more human? Page 99 Test is a website that is based on an interesting premise – all it takes is reading one page from a book to decide whether or not you think it would be an interesting read. Some might not agree with this premise, as it would be very hard to select just one page that represents what the book is all about. On the other hand, all it takes is one page to get a feel for style, rhythm and storyline. Signing up for a free account allows you to upload a page from your novel, accompanied by the novel's title, author name, genre and publication status. If you're a little shy, you can start out by reading other author's uploads. You can upload a maximum of 3 pages, each of which will be available for review for 30 days.
The feedback system is set up in a very user-friendly manner in which you answer the following questions:
I Write LikeFor a bit of fun, I Write Like, will tell you which writer you are similar to. This is by no means accurate, and any writer worth his or her own salt, won't take it seriously. After all, I highly doubt my style of writing is anything like William Shakespeare. Each attempt with a different piece of writing had me writing like a different author, from Stephenie Meyer to Ian Fleming – so it's certainly anything but accurate.
If you want to get in on the fun, simply paste the text into the service and at the click of a button you can find out which famous writer you write like.
What tools do you use to review your writing? Let us know in the comments. Image Credit: Denis Vrubelski
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Open an email and instantly see background information about the person who wrote it. That’s the idea behind Rapportive, a 
There are lots of sites and forums where you can go to get feedback or constructive criticism from peers or readers. Sometimes, a writer needs other kinds of feedback – like whether their grammar is correct, or maybe they resort to the passive voice too often.
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