MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [March 29th]” plus 10 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [March 29th]
- The 7 Toughest Tech Questions [MakeUseOf Answers]
- The Best 5 Free Universal Video Players For Mac
- Fiverr: A $5 Marketplace For Anyone Looking For A Service
- Hot Tech Deals [Mar 29th]
- 5 Sources For Special Symbols To Spice Up Your Online Chat & Messaging
- Did American Express Just Launch A Paypal Killer? [News]
- ioSafe Rugged Portable and iPad 2 Giveaway Winners
- Tell Your Own Media-Rich Web Story With Storify [Unlimited Invites]
- Just Gestures Lets You Use Mouse Gestures To Control Windows
- 5 Popular Free Turn-Based Strategy Games
| Cool Websites and Tools [March 29th] Posted: 29 Mar 2011 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. Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us.
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| The 7 Toughest Tech Questions [MakeUseOf Answers] Posted: 29 Mar 2011 06:31 PM PDT
In our weekly contest the Best Answer of the Week is rewarded with $50 and two runners-up win $30 and $20, respectively. Every comment automatically enters the contest, however, valid login information is required and only skillful answers will win. Please help us out with these questions:
For regular updates subscribe to the Answers RSS Feed. Need help? Ask A Question at MakeUseOf Answers. Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter. Includes cool extras.
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| The Best 5 Free Universal Video Players For Mac Posted: 29 Mar 2011 04:31 PM PDT
One of the things I was curious about however, was which universal video player to install. QuickTime is pretty cool, sure, but I quickly found out its limits after a short time using it. Where can I find a good, lightweight video player that’s capable of playing every type of file? 1. VLC Media Player
Regardless of what operating system you’re using, VLC Media Player is one of, if not the, best video players out there. VLC is an open source cross-platform multimedia player that plays pretty much every type of video file, making it truly “universal”. You can also use it to play DVDs, CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. No codec packs are needed and it’s completely free. Anyone who is familiar with VLC should not be surprised to see it on this list. 2. DivX
DivX Player for Mac is also a nice alternative for you to play videos, especially if you’re looking to play something in HD. Naturally, DivX Player allows you to play all native DivX videos (.mkv), but it does also support other popular video file types, including QuickTime files. The player also includes a desktop dimmer, window fade, and free full screen playback options. 3. NicePlayer
NicePlayer is a relatively unknown application but it’s a pretty impressive video player for Mac. Jeffry dedicated a post on MUO to NicePlayer back in June 2010. It’s an open source app that was designed for playing movies and it features full screen or border-less floating windows, on the fly playlist creation, and more. 4. Elmedia Player
Elmedia Player is a Flash and media player for Mac OS X that supports playback of FLV, SWF, XAP (Silverlight), RM and RV (Real), AVI, MOV, MP4, and many other formats. It features a built-in web browser, so you can browse through websites and watch movies without leaving the application as well. 5. Windows Media Components for QuickTime
You may be surprised to learn that this even exists, but it’s a viable solution if you’re just looking for a little bit of Windows love. With Windows Media Components for QuickTime, you can play Windows Media files (.wma and .wmv) directly in QuickTime Player and view Windows Media content on the Internet using a web browser. It gives you added support for numerous audio and video codecs, as well as different file formats (like .avi). With the programs on this list, you should be able to watch any type of file you happen to come across. If you are a Mac wiz and you know of any other great video players, please feel free to mention them 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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| Fiverr: A $5 Marketplace For Anyone Looking For A Service Posted: 29 Mar 2011 02:31 PM PDT
Instead of hassling your friends, you can browse Fiverr to find someone offering the right sort of services. You can even check out examples of their work and ratings from previous customers before you ask them to do the job. And when you make the deal, you’re only promising $5. It’s only as risky as asking a friend to do you a favour and promising a few drinks in return. How’s that for a great idea? What’s Fiverr?In short, Fiverr is a marketplace, connecting people who have skills they’d like to sell for $5 with people who want small things done for $5. The $5 price point is crucial and leads to some fascinating offers.
Sign-up is quick, directly through Fiverr or even quicker with a Facebook login. What Do People Sell for $5?On Fiverr, there are people selling Photoshop skills, offering to draw pictures for you, offering to post postcards from a particular country, offering virtual assistant duties, posting special family recipes, singing happy birthday, offering critiques of websites, giving tourist advice of their local area, songwriting, giving industry advice, writing your name in Chinese calligraphy or elvish, taking photos of messages in coffee froth, proofreading and all sorts of other random offers.
Browse by popularity, rating or the type of service and you’ll get a feel for the variety of skills available on Fiverr. The ideas are wild and varied — some of them are so unexpected! Browse away and you’ll find yourself thinking “Hey, that would be cool. Yeah, I’d pay $5 for that!”.
If you do want to buy someone’s services, Fiverr links into PayPal to make payments simple. What If No-One Offers The Skill I Want?If no-one’s offering the service you’re after specifically, you can also advertise as a buyer in need of that service. To do this, look for “Request Gigs” in the right-hand column. Say what you’d like done for $5 and see if anyone takes you up on your offer.
What Could You Sell For $5?As you’ve seen, there are many possibilities as to what you can sell through Fiverr. What is clear though, is that people selling their skills must quantify exactly what they will do. For example, “I will proofread one essay under 2,000 words within three days”. If you don’t specify how long the essay, how many essays you will proofread or how long you will take, things will get confusing for the buyer. Also be careful if you’re offering to post things — think of how much it would cost to post worldwide before you offer!
It seems as if some sellers are trying to undercut others by offering to do an incredible amount of work for their $5 fee. That sort of thing happens everywhere — just don’t buckle to the pressure if you think you’re worth more (which you are). Browse the site thoroughly as there are some very imaginative offers out there which would be quite useful for the buyer and yet easy for the seller to do. Let them inspire you into profitable ventures.
At the top of most pages in Fiverr is a box where you can offer your services for $5. Start there and it will allow you to add more details in the next page, including specifics and an example picture. They also make it easy for you to share your Fiverr service offers with your friends on Facebook, Twitter or elsewhere.
What Else Might You Use?Obviously, Fiverr isn’t the only online marketplace for services in the world. There are many other ways you could solicit services or offer your services for hire online. The Facebook Marketplace is one of the simpler examples, followed by Craigslist. Any freelancing marketplace shows some similarity to Fiverr, eg. PeoplePerHour or MicroWorkers. Also worth considering are the other tools listed in this article on how teens can make money online. Despite all these similar market options, Fiverr still has a unique selling point – that is, the $5 price tag. This encourages both the buyers and sellers because it’s an appealing amount. What is the best service you’ve seen on Fiverr? Have you found it easy to use? What do you sell through Fiverr? 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: 29 Mar 2011 01:30 PM PDT
For more fresh hot deals, visit our Hot Tech Deals page, which is constantly updated.
Image credit: Modified from Svengraph’s icon set NEW: Download MakeUseOf iPhone App. FREE!
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| 5 Sources For Special Symbols To Spice Up Your Online Chat & Messaging Posted: 29 Mar 2011 12:31 PM PDT
There are lots of online places which do not support graphic symbols or picture emoticons. Facebook is a prime example. But that shouldn't keep you away from communicating more warmheartedly. A lot of online platforms might not support graphic symbols, smileys, and emoticons; but then you have the entire Unicode character set to play around with. If you care to explore the Character Map installed on your system, you can literally use the special characters to speak a language of your own. But that can be a chore. So, let's go online. These five simple online apps save you from rummaging through the Character Map on your system and give you one click access to communicate more animatedly. TwitterKeys
Twitter may be just about 140 characters, but even in that brief space, a symbol or two can brighten up a tweet. This Unicode character map available as a bookmarklet aims to do just that with its online chart of Unicode characters which you can use with your tweets. All you have to do is to pick from the different symbols available and decorate your tweets with a simple copy and paste. The best thing is that you don't have to give access to any third party app. Also try out the Unicode Symbol Map. FBSym
If Twitter is there, can Facebook be far behind. Facebook Symbols is a neat little chart of Unicode symbols that you can double click and paste on your Facebook profile. You can also use it as a bookmarklet on your browser's bookmarks toolbar. This character chart also works with Twitter and chat apps. Of course, in both the limitation is that you cannot format it beyond the paste. It just appears as it is. Interchangeably, you can use the Twitter Symbols chart. Facebook Symbols
This is a blog which lists all symbols and emoticon codes you can expect to use on Facebook and other platforms like chat clients, forums, MySpace messages etc. This is a well compiled collection of cool Unicode characters and the author has taken the pains to categorize the different symbols under distinct heads. Also handy are the other sections which point to text art generators, text combos as symbols for Facebook, cool letters for Facebook and MSN. CopyPasteCharacter
Use a single click to copy a character from the smorgasbord on display. The copied character is saved on the Clipboard and you can then simply paste it into your email message, chat program or social account. You can also view its corresponding HTML code. The web service also has an iPhone app which you can use to spice up your text communication. (See Directory mention) TypeIt
This very useful Javascript app covers 18 European languages and their unique character sets that include currency symbols and other special symbols. You can use the virtual multi-language keyboard to type in complete messages and then simply copy and paste it in any message. The languages can be loaded from the side columns. Using symbols to spice up your online conversations will make you seem like a pro. It will also put a lot of fun back into an otherwise drag conversation. If you think that chat symbols and special characters speak a thousand words, try out some of the previous posts we have covered – 15 Popular Codes For Smiley Faces & Their Meanings 10 Keyboard Techniques To Create Cool Symbols How to Create Copyright and Trademark Symbols via Keystrokes Are you a symbol whiz? Tell us if you think these symbol apps are useful for quick texting. Image Credit: Shutterstock Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us.
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| Did American Express Just Launch A Paypal Killer? [News] Posted: 29 Mar 2011 12:10 PM PDT
With American Express behind the new service, you should probably expect to see lots of online services making Serve payments the newest option, with Ticketmaster, Concur and Flipswap amongst their first partners. Serve could potentially be the first company to pose serious competition for Paypal, a popular service that hasn't been without its share of negative publicity. While Paypal does have a leg up on Serve when it comes to some of the service charges on transactions, there is something to be said for having another solid option for online transactions. After signing up for the free service, you can then link your Serve account to your bank using your bank account number, your credit card number or even the last four digits of your social security number. Once your bank account has been verified, you will automatically receive a Serve card in the mail.
As with Paypal you can add funds to your Serve account from your bank account or credit card, and can also withdraw funds into your bank account. One of the major differences between Paypal and Serve is that, while you can add funds to both services using bank transfers or a debit card, with Serve, you can also add funds using your credit card. That extra service does come with a fee of 2.9% + 30 cents. That said, Serve will not begin charging a fee for credit card funds for another six months. ATM withdrawals with your Serve card will be charged at $2 per transaction, with one free transaction per month, as opposed to Paypal's $1 per transaction. Signing up for Serve gives you several payment options all in one account, including person-to-person (P2P) money transfers, mobile payments, in-store card payments and online transactions. You can also access your Serve account on the go with their free iPhone and Android apps, allowing you to send, request and receive money no matter where you are. While Serve is currently only available for US bank accounts, if and when they begin to expand geographically, Paypal may lose some business. Are you going to sign up for a free Serve account? Would you be willing to abandon Paypal in favour of the new American Express service? Let us know in the comments. Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter. Includes cool extras.
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| ioSafe Rugged Portable and iPad 2 Giveaway Winners Posted: 29 Mar 2011 11:00 AM PDT
Wouldn’t it be awesome if you were selected as a winner? ioSafe Rugged PortableRolando Islas Genie Timeline Professional
iPad 2Sam Shields Congratulations! For the winners of the Genie Timeline Professional giveaway, your licenses will be sent via email. As for the ioSafe Rugged Portable and iPad 2 giveaway winners, we’ve sent you an email requesting for shipping information. Please reply that email within 48 hours or your prizes will be forfeit. Thanks! NEW: Download MakeUseOf App for Android. FREE!
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| Tell Your Own Media-Rich Web Story With Storify [Unlimited Invites] Posted: 29 Mar 2011 10:31 AM PDT
Now with the Internet at our disposal, we are constantly bombarded by stories and news from all over the world. It’s becoming harder and harder to make sense of everything. There are too many sources with too many elements that compiling them into one big picture is really difficult. Storify tries to change that. It’s is a web tool that will help you collect texts, photos, videos, and everything else from the web, into your own versions of media-rich stories. Storify will also help you share your stories to your friends and families. In The Beginning, There’s The Sign UpWhen you arrive at the site, you could start by looking at stories created by others. There are the “Featured Stories” and “Popular Stories Today” sections. After looking at those stories, you will learn what Storify is all about and be ready to create your own web story.
Currently, Storify is in private beta. To sign up, you will need an invite key. Luckily, the developer of Storify has been kind enough to provide MakeUseOf readers with the key (Thanks Burt!). Go to the site and enter sxsw.
There’s no limit to the number of invites, but it might expire in the future. Even though the developer has promised to keep the invite key alive long enough for us, you might want to sign up as soon as possible. After entering the code, you will need to sign in using your Twitter account.
Then you are ready to create your first story.
Start Building The StoriesJust like newspaper clippings, you are going to find similar news from different newspapers, then clip and collect them into one binder. The differences are, we are using the web and social media as sources instead of physical printed newspapers – and there are no scissors and glue involved.
Write down some keywords of the topic for your story in the search field. Clicking the “Search” button will bring you results from many kinds of sources. We are not talking about traditional kinds of sources here. Aside from web, news and images from within Google search and RSS Feeds, there is also Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and many more.
Drag and drop the “clips” from the search results into the clipboard to build your story. You can further enhance it by adding texts between clips. You can also give your story a title, a short general description, and a heading image.
Keep your story as a draft if you still want to tinker with it later, or hit the “Publish Story” button if you are done with the building process. Your published stories will appear on the main page of your Storify account. You can edit or remove them if you want to.
On the top right corner of every story, there’s the option to share it via Twitter or email. You can also embed the story to any webpage or blog after generating the embed code.
You can connect Storify with other sites to enable auto-publish. Click the “edit” button to add the sites. You can access this option from the settings. Similar social functions are available at the bottom of every story.
Clicking on the “Settings” on the top right corner of the page will give you several options. One of them is the ability to choose story “Sources“. Adding or removing sources is only a matter of dragging and dropping items to or from the sources box.
Another option under “Settings” is “Publishing“. If you want to quickly publish your stories to your blogs or websites, you can add them here.
For example, if you want to add your WordPress blog as one of the publishing locations, enter your blog information, and click “Save“.
Then the blog (and other publishing locations) will appear as quick publish options next to every story.
If you want to add the ability to quickly “storify” any webpage that you encounter, you could install the “Storify This” bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmark bar. This bookmarklet is available on the lower part of the main page of your Storify account.
Storify is a great way to quickly create a web story from every imaginable source. So far it has already helped many traditional journalists in their research, and it could also be a great tool for common bloggers like you and me. What do you think of Storify? Share your thoughts in the comment below. Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us.
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| Just Gestures Lets You Use Mouse Gestures To Control Windows Posted: 29 Mar 2011 09:31 AM PDT
This article will introduce you to Just Gestures, a program that let’s you turn your mouse into a valuable time saving tool by creating mouse gestures and assigning them to specific actions. Just Gestures is available for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 in both 32- and 64-bit versions.
Depending on your mouse, you will have a number of different buttons that you can use as toggle or modifier buttons to create various gestures. You can make a classic mouse gesture by moving the mouse in one of 12 different predefined paths while holding a toggle button. Just Gestures also supports double button and wheel button combinations, i.e. holding the toggle button and clicking a second (modifier) button or moving the mouse wheel.
Another element in successfully completing a mouse gesture is the sensitive zone, which is activated after the first (toggle) button is clicked. For example if your gesture involves the coordinated clicking of two mouse buttons, but you move the mouse out of the sensitive zone before you click the second (modifier) button, the gesture will not trigger an action. Finally, each gesture is subject to a deactivation timeout, thus if you are too slow in completing the gesture, no action will follow. Just Gestures comes with a selection of useful predefined mouse gestures. For example holding your toggle button, which per default is the right mouse button, and drawing an upside down ‘U’ shape, will show the desktop. Making the same gesture again, will restore your open windows. Also, if you rest the mouse cursor in its final position for a moment, a tooltip will show the action this gesture is going to trigger.
You can create global gestures or gestures that work only in a specific application. For the latter, you first need to add a new application group. Click the > Add Application Group button in the Just Gestures toolbar, browse to the .exe file of the application you wish to add, and add it. Now click the toolbar button to > Add New Gesture and under > Application Sensitivity, select to use this action > Under specific application, then select the desired program from the list.
The actions you can create are limited to the ones provided by Just Gestures. They are sorted into seven different categories: Windows Options, Windows Shell, Volume Options, Media Options, Internet Options, Send Keystrokes, and Extra Options. As you see, they cover the most common operations and a little more. My favorite actions are controlling the transparency level of a window, opening applications or folders, and launching the shut down dialog.
With a little practice you can do crazy things with Just Gestures, depending only on the click of a button and a gentle move with the mouse. The programmer of Just Gestures, Miroslav Dzurenko, would love to hear your feedback:
Post a message in the Just Gestures Forum to help make the tool perfect. MakeUseOf has previously covered mouse gestures and other shortcuts:
What gestures are you working with or do you think they are a waste of time? Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us.
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| 5 Popular Free Turn-Based Strategy Games Posted: 29 Mar 2011 08:31 AM PDT
Unfortunately, being niche means there are fewer free games to choose from, but some do exist. Let's take a look at a few rare, free turn-based gems. Battalion: Nemesis
This flash-based strategy game pays homage to Advanced Wars, the simple but fun turn-based strategy game found on the DS. As such, Battalion: Nemesis betrays its very serious name and instead shoots for pure camp, with cartoony graphics and secret levels that feature popular gaming characters. Serious and strategy don't always have to go together, however. The strategy of Battalion: Nemesis often focuses on terrain and unit combinations, so you have to pay attention to what you're placing on the field if you want to achieve victory. Fantasy Kommander
Remember Heroes of Might and Magic? Although the recent renditions of that franchise have been less than amazing, playing the first few titles in the series as left me with an occasional, reoccurring itch for a fantasy turn-based strategy game. If you're feeling that, Fantasy Kommander will likely be right up your alley. The game is a bit thick on story for a Flash title, but you can skip the elaborate cut-scenes and get down to the meat of things easily. Once you do, you'll find a deep game where unit combinations, unit type and terrain are all a major factor. There are also, of course, the appropriate fantasy units including knights, wizards and more. Freeciv
Founded in 1996, the Freeciv project is one of the oldest and most well regarded free turn-based strategy games ever released. This is for good reason, as while most free turn-based games are flash based, Freeciv is a fully downloadable and incredibly complete game with features like multiplayer. The project began in the same year Civilization II was released, so it's little surprise that Freeciv largely replicates that style of game. It retains the older 2D graphics and many features, such as the simplified combat system. Still, this will be interpreted as advantages to some; the direction of the Civilization series since Civilization II isn't universally praised. If you'd like to know more, you can check out Ryan’s full article on Freeciv. Freeorion
Obviously taking inspiration from Freeciv, Freeorion is a project that attempts to replicate the glory of the original Masters of Orion. While Civilization is a series that has moved on, Masters of Orion hasn't. After the introduction of the universally panned third entry into the series, the franchise died. It's understandable then that a free project would begin. Freeorion hasn't been around nearly as long as Freeciv, and it isn't quite as feature-rich yet, but it's still an excellent choice if you like turn-based space strategy games. The style is very reminiscent of the first two games, but it's also evident that the Freeorion project is relatively new. The graphics are better tailored for high-resolution displays and the menus are large and have very crisp text. Hopefully this freeware game will have a life as long and illustrious as Freeciv's. Megamek
This java-based downloadable game is a recreation of the once popular Battletech board game, which is the inspiration for the Mechwarrior series. In Megamek, you command a number of huge, hulking warrior machines in battle against an opposing force of the same. You will have a number of lasers and missiles are your disposal. Megamek includes an AI opponent for offline play, and it is reasonably competent, but the real fun of Megamek is the multiplayer. Battletech is fun to play, but like most complex boardgames, it could bog down under the weight of its own rules. With the computer handling the complexity you're free to play the game and pay attention to your battalion of battlemechs. ConclusionThese five turn-based strategy games are among the most popular I know of, but they're certainly not the only ones available. If you're having fun with a particular free turn-based title let us known in the comments. And if you’re not concerned about keeping in the turn-based genre, check out our recommendations of the 3 best strategy games. Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us.
 More articles about: fun, multiplayer games, online games, strategy games
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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 
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The turn-based strategy genre has always been a niche, lacking the popularity of even real-time strategy, never mind first person shooters. This is probably because of the slower pace of turn-based strategy games which makes them a bit less gee-whiz exciting – but if you're a strategy gamer like me, that's exactly what you like.
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