MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [November 20th]” plus 7 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [November 20th]
- Latest Hilarious Picks [MakeUseOf Geeky Fun]
- Share, Share, Share…..Spread The Word!
- Embedly WordPress Plugin: Embedding Content On Your Blog Has Never Been Easier!
- Hot Tech Deals [Nov 20th]
- Gloobus Preview Opens Almost Anything, Quickly [Linux]
- 4 Simple Steps To Achieving & Maintaining Inbox Zero In Gmail
- Get $130 Worth of Software for $30, All For a Good Cause [News]
| Cool Websites and Tools [November 20th] Posted: 20 Nov 2010 07:31 PM PST
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. NEW: Download MakeUseOf iPhone App. FREE!
    
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| Latest Hilarious Picks [MakeUseOf Geeky Fun] Posted: 20 Nov 2010 06:15 PM PST
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. Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us.
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| Share, Share, Share…..Spread The Word! Posted: 20 Nov 2010 05:31 PM PST
To show you a website or a software program you can make use of is our number one priority. This time around, we would like something from you. Something really easy and simple. That is to share MakeUseOf articles you find useful with others. That’s really the best way for you to show your appreciation for our work. It’s quick and super easy to do.
As you can see, there are options to share the article with your friends on Facebook, Twitter (retweet), StumbleUpon and Digg. Also, there is a ‘ShareThis‘ button which lets you share the article on several other social networks as well as giving you an option to email the link to someone.
You might not realize it but this has a major impact on our daily workflow and the popularity of MakeUseOf.com. So if you’re an avid reader and like what we are doing, please make sure to always share the articles you find useful with friends. NEW: Download MakeUseOf iPhone App. FREE!
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| Embedly WordPress Plugin: Embedding Content On Your Blog Has Never Been Easier! Posted: 20 Nov 2010 04:31 PM PST
WordPress Editor is awful when it comes to embedding an iFrame – besides, in some cases, it chooses to strip the embed code once you click from “HTML” tab to “Visual” editor. Embedly is a new promising start-up that is said to help you “embed anything” to your blog post. It works via the Embedly oEmbed API that currently supports about 100 huge content sources that can be embedded to your blog with one click.
Installing EmbedlyThe Embedly WordPress plugin is installed just like any regular plugin: choose your preferred way (either manually or with the help of the WordPress admin area plugin installer) and activate the plugin. Immediately after that you should see a new menu section called “Embedly”. That new section lists all your services that you can from now on “effortlessly” embed to your blog. There’s an option to disable any of the services (I couldn’t find a reason to disable any of them – even if I am not going to use it in the near future, who knows, maybe I’ll need it at some point).
Besides obvious sources like YouTube, SlideShare and Scribd, you’ll be surprised to see a few popular sites you’d never think to embed content from, such as:
Give It A TrySo how exactly does Embedly make it easier to embed content? You are going to love it!
Now let’s give it a try. Create a new post, add some short introduction and try embedding, say, your Tweet. Embedding A TweetAll you need is to grab your Tweet direct URL and copy-paste it into your WordPress Editor. When you are saving the draft or publishing the draft, this URL will be turned into the embedded Tweet:
(Much easier than even BlackBird, isn’t it?). Now let’s try to embed other types of content: Embedding YouTube VideoJust grab the video URL and copy-paste it into the editor. I was curious to see which dimensions the embed video was going to be. The choice turned out to be a bit unexpected: looks like the plugin used the small size (see the actual output on my test post):
So we tested it with a Tweet and with a video. Now let’s try something different for a change: Compete.com. How has the start-up been doing in terms of traffic? All we need is to copy-paste this URL – http://siteanalytics.compete.com/embed.ly – right into the editor:
Looks like a great tool! What are your thoughts about it? Let us know in the comments. 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: 20 Nov 2010 12:15 PM PST
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 NEW: Download MakeUseOf iPhone App. FREE!
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| Gloobus Preview Opens Almost Anything, Quickly [Linux] Posted: 20 Nov 2010 11:31 AM PST
Plugging into Nautilus, the default file browser in Gnome, Gloobus’ preview tool can open just about anything. Be it a PDF, an AVI, a Word Document or an MP3, Gloobus Preview can open it quickly and easily.
I managed to install Gloobus Preview on Ubuntu, but it should in theory work on any distro. Installing Nautilus Elementary helps with the experience, but isn’t necessary. See Your Files QuicklyGloobus Preview can quickly open just about everything. Using it is simple: just open your file browser and hit “Space” when you want to preview a file. This will quickly open a slick window with a quick preview:
As you can see, this is perfect for pictures: you’re given a quick look at the photo that’s larger than Nautilus’ tiny thumbnail. But the program doesn’t only support photos. This gives you a fast way to browse your photos. But it doesn’t stop there. Word documents and PDFs are also supported, really useful if (for example) you’re looking for a certain document but can’t remember it’s name.
Not enough? Your media can also be quickly previewed, including videos and music. Click space to quickly identify your videos:
Music works just as well, which could come in handy when you’re looking for a specific tune. I could go on, but you get the general idea: all of your files, quickly previewed. The biggest shortcoming here, for me, is the inability to preview docx and xlsx files – Microsoft’s new(ish) file formats for Word and Excel. I assume this will come soon enough, though. Installing Gloobus PreviewReady to check it out? Time to install Gloobus Preview, then. Sadly this is not yet a straight-forward process, but don’t panic: we’ll get through it together. If you’re a Ubuntu user, open your Terminal. I know, you hate the Terminal, but it’s the easiest way. You’re going to want to run this command:
This will automatically install and autheticate the Gloobus PPA. Now all you need to do is update your package manager and install the “gloobus-preview” package. Do this with the GUI tools, if you like, or with the following two commands:
Just like that you’re done, but if you want to preview word Documents you’ll also want to ensure you have the “unoconv” package installed. Check the software center for it. A note: I wasn’t able to get this working on 10.10 until I installed Nautilus Elementary, so be sure to give that a try if you’re having trouble. It’s pretty great to have on your system anyway. Non-Ubuntu users: sorry. There’s not a lot of directions for getting Gloobus Preview installed out there, but Gloobus Preview’s download page is probably the best place to start looking. You’ll find the source code there, as well as a package for Arch Linux. Supported File Types
ConclusionThis program’s already saved me a lot of time, and I’ve only been using it for a week. What about you: do you think it’s useful? Or is it just more bloat? Let me know, and also let me know if you know of any better tools for doing this! Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers!
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| 4 Simple Steps To Achieving & Maintaining Inbox Zero In Gmail Posted: 20 Nov 2010 09:31 AM PST
Achieving Inbox Zero is actually a pretty simple task, and maintaining it can be done with minimal effort on your part, as long as you have a decent system in place.
Set up filtersThe first step when decluttering your inbox is to create filters. This is useful because the filters can be applied to all of the messages that are already clogging your inbox. While Gmail filters make it easy to create these filters, Syphir takes it all one step further, effectively putting your filters on steroids. With Syphir you can filter out mass forwards, archive emails once they’ve been in your inbox for a certain amount of time, push back personal, Facebook or Twitter related emails during your work day so you don’t get distracted and keep your inbox clean and tidy.
A key way in which you can use Syphir to keep your email tidy and organised is to create a label system that will suit your own personal needs, jobs and projects. That way finding older emails will be a snap. Of course, if you don’t feel comfortable giving a third party access to your email, you can make do with Gmail’s native filter system. Creating filters is very important when it comes to decluttering your inbox because once you have all of your filters in place, your inbox will stay organised. Convert Emails Into TasksAfter setting up your filters, the next step is to address the emails that are still in your inbox.
I tend to keep emails in my inbox until I’ve handled the related issue or task. More often than not, the task can be forgotten, and as you receive more emails, you run the risk of completely forgetting all about it. Before you know it, your inbox is once again full of emails you have read, but have not dealt with. To stay on top of things, convert your emails into tasks immediately using Gmail Tasks.
Each task will be accompanied by a link to the related email, so you don’t spend time looking for it if you need to refer to or reply to it. Reply To Routine Emails Using Canned ResponsesReplying to routine emails using Canned Responses makes it easy to clear out those emails that have you typing the same response over and over again.
Using features like Gmail’s canned responses makes it easier and faster to get to your final goal of Inbox Zero. Use Priority Inbox To Reply To The Rest Of Your EmailsNow that your Gmail inbox is organised, and you’ve replied to your routine emails using Canned Responses, all that’s left to do is prioritise the rest of your emails. Use Gmail’s Priority Inbox to figure out what order you’ll be addressing or replying to the emails you receive. Clean Out The ArchiveAs a bonus step, if you find yourself running out of space in your Gmail account, you might need a quick and easy to get rid of the emails that are taking up too much space. There are several ways you can search for the largest emails in your Gmail archive. The simples and and most direct method is to run the search has:attachment. If you would like to specify the kind of attachment, since a word document doesn’t take up as much space as an audio or video file, search for specific files using filename:mp3, filename:avi, filename: mov and so forth. If you want to hand over the task to a third party service, authorise Find Big Mail and it will automatically root out all the large emails in your Gmail account.
FindBigMail will perform a search and categorise your emails by size using labels in your inbox, which you can can then sift through.
What do you do to keep your Gmail inbox empty? Let us know in the comments. Image credit: Shutterstock Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers!
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| Get $130 Worth of Software for $30, All For a Good Cause [News] Posted: 20 Nov 2010 08:30 AM PST
And the best part is that it’s all part of a fundraising initiative for the South Africa based charity Qumi Homes, a home for the intellectually handicapped. As we get closer to the holidays, why not give yourself a gift of great software, knowing that you’ll make a difference in someone’s life.
KlokWorth $15.99, Klok Desktop Application is the perfect companion to freelancers for whom time always means money. Visually keep track of where your time goes in the easy-to-use calendar format. Klok is an Adobe Air application.
Genie Timeline Home 2.1Priced at $39.95, Genie Timeline Home makes it a snap to backup all your data. From disaster recovery to mobile access and monitoring, you know your data is secure. Genie Timeline Home is compatible with Windows XP, Vista and 7.
And Yet It MovesAnd Yet It Moves brings a bit of fun to the bundle. The award winning physics-based game worth $9.99 is a DRM free puzzle that will keep gamers busy with endless challenges. And Yet It Moves is compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux.
All My NotesAll My Notes is a personal information manager that can be used in a variety of ways. From storing sensitive information like passwords and pin numbers, to simply giving you a way to keep a private diary away from prying eyes. All My Notes is compatible with Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7.
Display FusionDo you have to focus on several monitors at once? If you do, Display Fusion streamlines the task of getting all your work done on more than one monitor. From wallpaper management to a multi-monitor taskbar, Display Fusion is compatible with all versions of Windows, from 2000 to 7.
Head over to Twinkel and get the bundle while you can! Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf page on Facebook. Over 24,000 fans already!
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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 
Check out the top picks from MakeUseOf 
With most of the MakeUseOf articles that we profile every day, our main goal is to give you something that you will find interesting and useful.
Anyone who has a blog on WordPress knows that embedding content normally goes pretty much smoothly there – unless you have to deal with different types of content and codes.
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.
Hit space, see a quick preview of almost any file. Gloobus Preview bills itself as “the holy grail of preview” which may be an overstatement – but not by much. Being able to, in one keystroke, quickly open documents, movies, pictures and music makes it easy to figure out if you’ve found the file you’re looking for.
With three email accounts, one for work, one personal and one for MakeUseOf, I find myself spending more time checking my email and trying to keep all the messages under control than actually getting much work done. Luckily, all three email accounts are 
At MakeUseOf, we love a good deal, and it’s even better when it’s all in the name of a good cause. Head over to Twinkel for an amazing 
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