MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [March 4th]” plus 8 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [March 4th]
- The 5 Best Questions From You [MakeUseOf Answers]
- Five Creative Writing Projects You Can Do Today
- 5 Great Applications That Will Enhance Your Foursquare Experience
- Hot Tech Deals [Mar 4th]
- 6 Inspiring & Funny Blogs You Should Read If You Are A Parent
- 4 Free Online Mystery Games For The Armchair Detective
- 8 Useful Strategies To Make Your WordPress Blog Popular
- Play Hand Gesture Games On Webcam Video Chat With ChatHopper
| Cool Websites and Tools [March 4th] Posted: 04 Mar 2011 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. Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers!
    
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| The 5 Best Questions From You [MakeUseOf Answers] Posted: 04 Mar 2011 05:31 PM PST
And the winners are… Best Answer of the Week – ha14 Congratulations to all of you and thank you very much for your support!
MakeUseOf Answers comes in three different flavors: Latest Questions, Most Popular Questions, or Unanswered Questions. For regular updates subscribe to the Answers RSS Feed. Need help? Ask A Question at MakeUseOf Answers.
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| Five Creative Writing Projects You Can Do Today Posted: 04 Mar 2011 03:31 PM PST
These creative writing projects only require you to write based on your own experiences or the wondering and fantasies of your constantly working brain. Let's check them out. Six Word MemoirsBy far the easiest and most interesting short form writing site is Six Word Memoirs. That's right, in less than a minute you can start writing about your life without the dread of finishing an entire book.
As the title suggests, you write about very detailed moments and experiences in your life in a mere six words. Here are a few of my own: Auntie hung me from a tree. Two poems published. Then stopped writing. 1976. Junior College. Majored in journalism. Assigned seat behind high school sweetheart. Pork chops, green beans, and rice. We sang under the street light. Founded in January 2006, Six Word Memoirs is a community of story tellers who share pithy and often clever stories about a wide range of topics and categories. There are categories on the site devoted to Memoirs of Love and Heartbreak, Happiness, Memoirs for Teens, Pain and Hope, The Food Life, The Digital Life, and Veterans. At least three books have been published based on the six word memories of both novice and published writers, including Wally Lamb (“Shiny head. Hippie hair. Shiny head.”), Frank McCourt (“The miserable childhood leads to royalties.”), Malcolm Gladwell (“Father: 'Anything but journalism.’ I rebelled.”), and Eddie Matz (“Met wife at her bachelorette party”). OneSentence.OrgIf six words is a little too limiting for you, you might prefer a similar but still short form genre site called One Sentence. You'd be amazed at how one complete sentence can convey so much. It's what the site calls, "an experiment in brevity."
Here are two samples. My friends can’t decide whether to be creeped out or amused by the fact that I have it bad for the girl who was my roommate for a week in a mental hospital. In the kitchen cutlery aisle, we smiled politely at the little old lady who leaned in close to tell us ‘you can never have too many knives’. Four World Film ReviewsFor all you film buffs out there, the Four Word Film review features a growing collection of over 328,000 extremely brief film reviews and summaries about old and new movies.
You really don't need the skills of an experienced film critic to share four words about your favorite or most disliked movie. I bet by the time you finish reading this sentence you could come up with four words to describe what you think about say, Gnomeo & Juliet. This I BelieveThis I Believe is a longer form essay writing project that is a mix of memoir, personal opinion, and wisdom. This site contains over 9,000 essays, "written by people from all walks of life," that center around the authors' core values about a wide range of themes, including family, fears, race, setbacks, war, music, birth, addiction, religion, atheism, equality, and nature.
Though there are no word count limits to these essays, the project encourages you to write your essay or statement in between 350 and 500 words. After you listen to and read many of the essays on the site, you will see how eloquent and insightful this short form of essay writing can be. Six SentencesIf you need to write something between 6 and 500 words, then you might want to check out Six Sentences. It's another short form writing project in which you can write about anything in six long, medium or short sentences. Your contributions may consist of the first six sentences of a novel or short story you plan to write, a quick review, a troubling or funny experience, etc. Here's one example from movie and film critic, Suzanne Baran:
Any one of these sites can get your creative juices flowing in a matter of minutes. Due to their short form, you will find that they can be quite addictive. If you're looking for even more creative writing projects and ideas of self-expression, check out Tina's 5 Ways to Document Your Life in Pictures Online, and Nancy's Top 3 Online Writing Communities to Get Feedback on Your Work. Also, let us know of other similar creative writing sites you like. Image credit: Shutterstock.com Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers!
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| 5 Great Applications That Will Enhance Your Foursquare Experience Posted: 04 Mar 2011 01:31 PM PST
I originally wrote about Foursquare - and its alternatives - back in July. Have you been utilizing these geolocation apps since then? If you have, good for you. If not, no worries, you still have time to get into them. As I’m about to show you, in fact, there are a lot of cool Foursquare applications out there (like Flicksquare) that complement the service really well, thus making it more useful.
1. Foursquare & 7 Years Ago
The first Foursquare application I would like to talk about, because it’s really cool, is Foursquare & 7 Years Ago. If you’ve been using Foursquare for a long time, this could be a very interesting app for you. All you do is sign in with your Foursquare account and Foursquare & 7 Years Ago will start sending you daily reminders of places you’ve checked into in the past. If you’d like to see where you were a year ago today, it can get you that information. 2. Agora
If you’d like to use your Foursquare information to connect with like-minded people on Twitter, you can do that with Agora. No one seems to be sure exactly how it makes its selections, but Agora will introduce you to people you have common interests with in real-time using your Twitter graph. It’ll also send you a tweet when it finds you’ve checked in somewhere with someone who is interesting. 3. FourGraph
If you would like to be able to visualize your data from Foursquare in the form of an infographic, check out FourGraph. In just one click, you can grant the app access to your account and it will automatically pull all of your data onto a page where you can visualize it in different ways. Maps, pie charts, and statistics will all be displayed for you. 4. Foursquare Lists
I can honestly say I’m a pretty big fan of lists, and Foursquare Lists lets you create a curated list of venues around any topic (e.g. bars). You can use this app to create fun lists of things to do in the cities you frequent and can be shared with your friends. To create one, you just enter the name of the list and add venues by their venue number. 5. Where Do You GoWhere Do You Go is an interesting app, especially if you check into a lot of different places. Essentially what it does is let you visually see the places you usually hang out at, giving you a visual representation in the form of a heat map.
When you use Where Do You Go, you’ll be asked to sign into your Google account first. This is because the app utilizes Google Maps, so it may not even ask you to complete this step if you’re already signed into your Google account. Anyway, then you can log in with your Foursquare credentials to grant the app access to your data. Once you create your map, you can tweak the settings to get it to look how you want, then you can take a snapshot of it and share with others. If you like Where Do You Go, Badge Assistant is a similar app you should investigate. It shows you where all of your friends have earned their badges using Google Maps as well. What are your favorite Foursquare applications? Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers!
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| Posted: 04 Mar 2011 12:30 PM PST
For more fresh hot deals, visit our Hot Tech Deals page, which is constantly updated.
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| 6 Inspiring & Funny Blogs You Should Read If You Are A Parent Posted: 04 Mar 2011 11:31 AM PST
Parenting can be quite isolating at times, since you’re often stuck at home while kids sleep. So the Internet is the ideal way to quickly reach the rest of the world and regain some much-needed laughs and perspective. DooceDooce is, well, Dooce. There’s an extreme personality lurking behind this blog and if it’s not for you you’ll know within seconds of arriving on the site. But those who love Dooce find themselves strangely addicted. There’s a reason this blog is still massively popular 10 years down the track and I’m certain that’s more to do with the personality than the poop. And really, there’s a lot of poop. As far as the blog itself goes, Heather is a professional blogger and mum living in a regular household of chaos and making sure the gory details are laughed at by more than just the people within her home.
Note I managed to find a screenshot which didn’t involve any mention of poop. I hope you’re proud. Theta MomNot the alpha mum, or the beta mum. Theta Mom is a blog for those who come a little further down the super-mum ranks and can honestly think of more than a few recent screw-ups to prove their position. In other words, it’s for most of us. This blog is all about balancing work and parenting roles, offering plenty of sound advice and a few funny anecdotes. It’s built a community to support working parents and allows members to write the occasional guest post for the blog.
Baby RabiesBaby Rabies is purely a stay-at-home-mum blog at the moment, but that’s not to say it’s not as valuable as the working parent perspectives. The writer is a 30-year-old mother of two who writes in a candid, often hilarious style about her new life as a mother. She’s the sort of person who used to be a career woman who loved her heels and Starbucks, but got an incurable bout of Baby Rabies and wound up mothering.
MushbrainMushbrain describes itself and the mental state of the writer and readers perfectly in one completely invented word. It’s all about the craziness of life, motherhood and the strange things you find yourself doing. Occasionally mentioning the horrible bits of parenting you wish you’d never experienced, this blog mainly laughs at how different parenting looks from the parent’s side of the picture.
Dagmar’s MomsenseDagmar’s Momsense is all about parenting from a frugal, green and generally sensible perspective. Dagmar rants about everyday parenting issues, such as balancing work and family. She’s a little opinionated at times, but if you’re open minded it can serve to enlighten you of new perspectives.
GeekDadWired’s GeekDad is much loved by geeks and dads worldwide. It blends a classy mix of geekiness with cool things you can do with your kids. There’s lots of DIY projects, games and sci-fi fanaticism.
If you’re looking after kids and trying to juggle freelance work or a home business alongside, these posts are for you:
Obviously there’s many more blogs for parents out there. Let us know of your favourite parenting blogs in the comments! Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers!
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| 4 Free Online Mystery Games For The Armchair Detective Posted: 04 Mar 2011 10:31 AM PST
We have the advantage of hindsight and that makes all the "unsolvable" crimes seem so easy in the end. But can you put your deductive logic to the test and find out the criminal before you reach the penultimate chapter? Well, now you don't have to apply for a P.I license as the web is the place where it's all happening. Calling all armchair detectives! Put on your sleuth caps and head to these free online mystery games. As Sherlock would say – “Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot. Not a word! Into your clothes and come!” Mystery Net
This site is almost like the “seedy underbelly of crime”. For the mystery fan (and the armchair detective), it's a proving ground for deductive skills. The site brings out See-n-Solve, Solve-it, Twist and Flash mystery stories every month. Each day you can come closer to solving a brain twister with the Get-a-Clue daily mini-mystery. The mini-mysteries are like time wasters if you need a break or two. The site is also an encyclopedic resource on anything and everything that has to do with detective fiction with short bios on legends of the genre and links which you can further explore. Then there's the community which is a cool place to hangout for discussions and more mystery games. Also, check out the kids section on the site. Sleuth
Sleuth (Shades of Mystery) is a series of open-ended, point and click detective role playing Flash games where you solve mysteries by searching for clues, interrogating suspects and interviewing witnesses. You start by creating your detective and his background. Your choice also determines the skills your detective avatar will bring to the mystery case. You can go through a tutorial training or jump straight into the case. You go into the crime scene and pick up clues. The goal is to pick up incriminating evidence and use deductive skill to accuse and charge the suspect. I got stuck midway into the game. The detective game site also has a paid subscription plan which unlocks more benefits like other games and also the number of games you can play in a day. A Case of The Crabs
This online Flash game has a bit of Frank Miller's neo-noir look to it. It's all in black and white and that sets the mood. You get to move the character around by pointing and clicking with the mouse. To move into the game, use a bunch of action commands given below the game. In the role play of Detective Nick Bounty, your job is to uncover the murder of the local seafood salesman. The game definitely has something to do with crabs. Who Murdered Marilyn Spencer?
The BBC page is no longer updated, but you can still land there and play the game. The setting is St Tim’s College, Oxford. The crime is the murder of one of their brilliant female students. As the detective, you have to solve the murder mystery over the course of five clues. The clues are provided as a video file and also in text. Before you “quiz” the suspects, hear English crime writer Norman Colin Dexter introducing the game to first-timers. The BBC hosts a few more free mystery games which are not updated anymore but remain playable. Another one you can try out is The Murder Mystery Play. Online mystery games, unlike a lot of other online games require a bit of thought and a bit more patience. Free online mystery games are sparse on the web. Do you have a detective game we haven't heard of? Let us know in the comments. Image Credit: Shutterstock Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers!
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| 8 Useful Strategies To Make Your WordPress Blog Popular Posted: 04 Mar 2011 09:31 AM PST
So let’s take a look at 8 strategies you can adopt from today to make your blog more popular without delving into the technical aspects of WordPress. Focus On One TopicMany people start writing a blog with the glorious plan of writing about their life and thoughts on the universe in general. The sad truth is that while one or two of your posts may appeal to some, the broad range of content will prevent many visitors from coming back for more. If you want to write a popular blog, you need to focus on one or two topics, and stick to them. If you don’t feel like you can write about a single topic that much, then try broadening your topic up a level – for instance, your real passion is strawberry plants, but that’s hardly going to fuel a blog for more than a few weeks, so why not write about growing fruit trees – when you get sick of that, move on to gardening in general. By keeping your content focused (and learning about the topic yourself in the process), you will keep people on your site looking for more of your content, and coming back for more next month. Make Friends In The “Blogosphere”Chances are you aren’t the only blog about gardening on the Internet, so find a few fellow bloggers and start participating and commenting on their blogs. Most will allow commenters to include a link with their name. You’ll not only get some visitors from their blog, but you may also build a rapport with the author and can consider a link exchange. A word of warning though – make sure your comment is genuinely adding something to the conversation, providing useful information for other readers and relevant to the post you are commenting on. It is extremely frustrating to have someone say “hey, nice blog post” in an effort to simply self-promote, and it will quickly get your IP address marked as a spammer.
Join Blog Carnivals & Blogging Support GroupsFor my past blogs, I’ve had enormous spikes in visitors by participating in so-called “blog carnivals”, where you write about a particular topic and submit it to the carnival host, who will include your post in their round-up of all the entires. Assuming the host is popular, or the carnival is correctly promoted by all participating blogs, it’s a very successful way to introduce readers to similar blogs and everyone benefits. The best place to find a carnival that suits your topic is to visit blogcarnival.com. Join a blogging support group too, like bloggers.com. It’s another great way to find similar blogs, and all members get listed in the database as well as their latest posts highlighted on various pages.
Keep Visitors On Your BlogIf you’ve got lots of related content, it’s fairly safe to assume any visitors will be interested in that too. We’ve covered a few plugins (LinkWithin, Best Related Posts, or SimpleTags which we use for MakeUseOf) that can do this automatically for you before, so be sure to read that as it’s all still relevant. Posts with a small preview image will do much better than simple text links (look at the bottom of this article for a great example).
Write Outside Of Your BlogGuest blogging on related blogs helps to establish you as an expert in a particular topic. In fact, we even accept guest submissions for MakeUseOf as long as they meet our stringent publishing standards. MyBlogGuest is an easy way to find blogs looking for guest writers, or even find guest bloggers for your own blog during those dry spells. You might also want to consider writing a quick article or two on some of the free article aggregate sites such as EzineArticles, which lets authors include a link or two and push their content out to a large audience of subscribers.
Engage Your Readers & Encourage CommentsIf a reader comments on your post, they obviously have something to say – but they might not have bookmarked your site, or shared it yet. By replying to your readers and keeping them engaged, you foster a relationship that keeps readers coming back, as well as making them more inclined to post your story to their Facebook wall or retweet it. Another way to encourage interaction is to reward commenters with a plugin like CommentLuv, which highlights a commenters latest blog post.
Add Social Sharing To Your BlogWhile I’m personally against the rise of social sharing widgets everywhere on the Internet, some small unobtrusive buttons on your website can do wonders to increase your blog exposure. Stick to the basics with Facebook, Twitter and StumbleUpon buttons to avoid the clutter that can make some blogs look messy. AddThis is one easy WordPress plugin to help you do this.
Keep At ItBlogging is not a short-term thing; you really need to be in it for the long haul if you want to build a large base of readers. Keep publishing fresh new content, accept guest submissions, and work at building your network of blogging friends and link partners. You will get there eventually, and as your blog ages, it gains more and more trust from the search engines. Image Credit: ShutterStock Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers!
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| Play Hand Gesture Games On Webcam Video Chat With ChatHopper Posted: 04 Mar 2011 08:31 AM PST
Another one of these up-and-coming communities is a site called ChatHopper, which promotes itself as a “random chat” system with over 10,000 users and rising. However, I personally might never have noticed ChatHopper if it wasn’t for the fact that the website is introducing an innovative and entirely new concept in online gaming. With ChatHopper, you not only randomly chat with anonymous people, but you get to play games with them.
Playing ChatHopper GamesChatHopper offers an entirely new concept in online gaming that incorporates intelligent video gesture recognition technology with fun Heads-Up style games. When I first heard that ChatHopper was attempting to create these sort of games, I really expected a difficult to manage interface that would fail to recognize what you’re trying to do nine times out of ten. Once I started testing the system with my daughters, it became apparent fairly quick that the folks at ChatHopper really did a great job with this system. Before we proceed, I should point out that if the games don’t work on your computer, then you should try the following:
When you first visit ChatHopper Games, you’ll see yourself displayed in your webcam on one side of the screen. The system will automatically scan for any active users that are logged in and also waiting for someone to play a game with. Once they connect, you’ll see the other user appear in the right side window. At the time of testing the system, there were two available games to play – Power Math and Color Buzzer.
Once you’re both logged in and you both press “Play”, the game is on! In Power Math, you have to quickly answer math questions by actually pointing to the correct answer at the top of the screen. As you bring your finger closer to the webcam toward the correct answer, the system recognizes your hand gesture and recognizes the answer you’ve selected.
I couldn’t believe the system actually worked, but sure enough when I tried it, it always recognized the answer that I was pointing toward with my finger. After you get the hang of it, it’s a little freaky how easily the system can recognize your selection just by watching you point your finger in the air in front of the camera. After a few misses, I realized that I had to make sure the tip of my finger was obscured by the correct answer. After that I was able to correctly press the button I wanted every time.
At the end of the timed game, each user screen displays the winner, the loser, the number of wrong answers and any time penalty. By the way, I totally let my nine year old daughter win at the math game…
ColorBuzzer is similar to the math game only in the way that you interact with the system. It’s always a matter of pointing to the correct answer. In this case, the system shows you a sequence of highlighted circles, and you need to press the colors at the top in the same pattern (similar to the popular 1980′s electronic game “Simon”).
Keep in mind that these games are only a way that ChatHopper is looking to enhance the anonymous video chatting experience, not take away from it. So, all of the features you’re used to when you use sites like ChatRoulette or ChatHopper is still available, including the audio chatting and text chatting functionality. You can text chat in the box right under the video display.
At the present time, ChatHopper Games is an entirely new concept in video chat, but I think it’s one that’s going to take the web by storm. Currently there are only two hand gesture games available, but I suspect there will be many more in time. Anyway, regardless of the game, half the fun of this setup is that friendly competition is the fastest way to break the ice when you meet someone new. So, if you’ve never tried anonymous chatting before – this is a great place to start. Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers!
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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 
When you think about writing, thoughts and experiences of long, boring research papers, difficult formulaic poetry exercises, and countless grammar correction marks from your teachers may come to mind. Many people may feel they have very little in the way of writing skills, but thanks to the Internet, there are a handful of really creative and short form writing projects that you can participate in right after you read this article.
With the recent spike in smartphone usage and the emergence of the tablet PC, geolocation apps are starting to pick up steam rather quickly. I’ve personally seen stories in the news of companies teaming up with services like 
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.
If you’re a stay-at-home or a work-at-home mum or dad you’ll know that it’s always pleasant to read well-written blogs by others in similar situations. There’s something in the solidarity – knowing it’s not just you dealing with an eclectic mix of clients and walls covered in spaghetti. Somehow this knowledge can help ease the stress of parenthood and relax you with the knowledge that you’re not the only one.
There must have been many a time when you wanted to turn to your sidekick and say “Elementary, my dear Watson!” Well, that's fantasy, as is the quote. But the genre of detective fiction leaves a lasting imprint in our minds even after we put down a book or switch off the television.
WordPress is a powerful blogging platform, and many thousands of people start a WordPress blog every day – whether it’s 
There is an online activity that’s growing so fast in popularity that it’s being called the “next big thing” similar to the social networking phenomenon. This activity is anonymous chatting and it’s becoming one of the fastest growing online pastimes. If you’ve never heard of websites like 
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