MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [April 23rd]” plus 5 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [April 23rd]
- 8+ Most Awesome Third-Party Flickr “Interestingness” Tools
- Otterbox Reflex Case for iPhone 4 and iPad 2 Giveaway Winners
- Hot Tech Deals [Apr 23rd]
- Rdd.me: A URL Shortener With Readability Built-In
- Collect Videos To Watch Later On Your iOS Device Using Squrl
| Cool Websites and Tools [April 23rd] Posted: 23 Apr 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.
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| 8+ Most Awesome Third-Party Flickr “Interestingness” Tools Posted: 23 Apr 2011 06:31 PM PDT
It is quite obvious that we (as well as our readers) love the feature because it is unique and really smart. It’s been working wonders for discovering the most creative photography artwork and offering them great exposure. For me, Flickr Interestingness has always been a constant stream of inspiration. This post looks at more Flickr Interestingness third-party tools created through the Flickr API: 1. Flickr Interestingness Search ToolsFlickriverFlickriver is one of the most popular tools for searching the Flickr Interestingness section and viewing high-resolution images on a black background:
FlickrleechFlickrleech doesn’t have too many search options. Essentially what it does is retrieve interesting photos for a specified day. The good part about this tool is that it lists them all on one page (“Because paging sucks”) and allows you to change the thumbnail size:
GEOinterestingnnessThis is both a fun and unique tool that breaks the Flickr interestingness photos into categories by country:
MulticolrMulticolr is the visual Flickr “Interestingness” search engine and the most awesome tool for color-inspiration you’ll ever be able to find. The tool lets you browse through “10 million” of Flickr’s most 'interesting' Creative Commons images using colors instead of words. You can choose up to 10 colors to mix in your search results’ color palette:
Flickr ExplorerThis is the fun way to search Flickr Interestingness by username. Find out of any of your photos has been explored!
2. Flickr Interestingness Lean-Back ToolsSometimes we are just too tired to actually browse. The following two tools will let you get inspired while doing nothing but watching. Endless InterestingnessEndless Interestingness is the tool that does exactly what it is called: it creates an endless stream of thumbnails from Flickr “Interesting” section. Lean back and watch! Anytime you click on a thumbnail that stands out from the crowd, you’ll be redirected to the image page on Flickr.
Gimme ShinyThis is a JavaScript slide-show of today's most interesting photos from Flickr and popular images from deviantART, as well as the most recent images on FFFFOUND.
3. Flickr Interestingness Monitoring ToolWeirdly enough, Flickr does not provide us with good tools to keep track of daily interesting photos. Therefore the users have had to build such a tool themselves. The result is the Flickr photo RSS that lets you subscribe to either one interesting photo or four photos a day. That’s an amazing stream of daily inspiration (and one which is easy to scale!)
Bonus! Bring Flickr Interestingness To Your Desktop!Would you like to get inspired each time you close all your windows and look at your desktop? I am sure you’ll find this tool awesome then! I got addicted to it as soon as I installed and ran it for the first time! John’s Background Switcher is a cool little utility that runs in your system tray (down by the clock) and periodically changes the background image on your computer (every ten minutes, hourly, daily or weekly) to something interesting. This tool has turned my Windows desktop into a constant stream of inspiration. Using “Settings” you can set it to use the Flickr Interestingness section as the source of background images as well as customize the frequency of updates.
Are there any other cool “Interestingness” tools you are aware of? Please let us know what you think! Hey Facebookers, make sure to join MakeUseOf on Facebook and get access to some exclusve stuff. Over 70,000 fans already!
 More articles about: Flickr, image, Image Search, Interesting, photography, photography tips, photos
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| Otterbox Reflex Case for iPhone 4 and iPad 2 Giveaway Winners Posted: 23 Apr 2011 03:30 PM PDT
Here are the winners of our second 16 GB iPad 2 and Otterbox Reflex Case for iPhone 4 giveaways. iPad 2 Giveaway Winner
Otterbox Reflex Case for iPhone 4 Giveaway Winner
Congratulations! Emails have been deployed to both of you. Please reply us within 48 hours to claim your prizes. If you still haven’t received it please check your spam inbox for any emails from @makeuseof.com or contact Jackson. Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter. Includes cool extras.
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| Posted: 23 Apr 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 Need Assistance? Ask questions to MakeUseOf staff and thousands of other readers on MakeUseOf Answers!
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| Rdd.me: A URL Shortener With Readability Built-In Posted: 23 Apr 2011 12:30 PM PDT
Web-app Readability is a great way to reduce the clutter of any website and just read the article that you’re looking for. It’s a great way to read MakeUseOf articles, for example: you’ll only see the content you care about. Readability is so good, in fact, that Apple used Readability code to add the “read later” function in Safari 5. If you’d like to offer this functionality to your follower on Twitter or other social media outlets, you’re in luck. Rdd.me shortens URLs, then gives those who click the shortened URLs the option to read the articles in a clean, clutter-free manner. Whether they use this functionality is up to them, of course, but they just might thank you for giving them the option. A Customised URL ShortenerIt’s simple to shorten a URL; just head to rdd.me and you can paste any link:
Click “Shorten and Read” and you’ll have your link, ready to copy and paste into you social networking sites. It’s really not much more complicated than that if you’re just posting; what’s cool here is what the links do with your work. What Readers SeeIf this were the entire story, of course, there wouldn’t be much else to say. But when your followers click the link you generated, they’ll see the article along with this top-bar:
Click here to see this in action, right now. If readers chose to enter Readability mode, they’ll see the entire page re-formatted to show only text:
All of the usual Readability options can be found here, from custom fonts to converting all links to footnotes. Once someone decides to enter Readability mode, all “rdd.me” URLs will automatically take them to this mode. This is nice, because your social followers will come to associate content you share with clean and easy to read formatting. ConclusionIt’s pretty clear what this service is about: increasing Readability’s presence on the web. If people start using this URL shortener regularly, Readability will have more oportunities to show off its usefulness. I’m okay with that, because I think this is well done. I like the idea of a URL shortener with added value, and I’ve always loved Readability, so to me this application is a no-brainer. What do you think, though: is there value here, or is this just a cheap ploy to advertise Readability’s subscription service? Fill us in below, in the comments; that’s why we have comments (though if you’re using Readability the comments are hidden…) Also feel free to suggest ideas for other value-added customised URL shorteners. For example: I think it would be great if links to the Huffington Post automatically re-directed to the source material linked to at the bottom of the article, saving me from the effort of scrolling past the poorly-written summary just to find a link to the actual article. But that’s just me. Please share your ideas for alternative URL shorteners below, and we’ll see if any become a reality. Hey Facebookers, make sure to join MakeUseOf on Facebook and get access to some exclusve stuff. Over 70,000 fans already!
 More articles about: better alternatives, browsing, browsing tools, reading, URL, url shortener
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| Collect Videos To Watch Later On Your iOS Device Using Squrl Posted: 23 Apr 2011 10:31 AM PDT
Both the website and mobile app benefit from all the same features, saving and sharing your favourite videos, and the iOS and web interface are practically identical, so you won't be missing out on anything as far as the Squrl experience is concerned. All features listed in this review of the iOS app also apply to the website itself. After downloading the free app from the iTunes store, you'll be prompted to create a new account, or sign in using your Facebook account. You can also create your account on the Squrl website.
If you choose the former, you will then be prompted to connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts to Squrl for easy sharing of the videos you collect and watch using the app.
Not only can you share individual videos, but you can also share entire collections of videos, as well as selectively share with either your followers, a social network or both at the same time.
When it comes to sharing the videos, you won't have any control over the content of the tweet or Facebook post, with both posts using the same text. and with Facebook, videos aren't automatically embedded in your profile, but rather they contain a link to the video on Squrl.
On iOS devices, Squrl is divided into three tabs – My Videos, Discover and Community. Under Discover, you can search for videos using the various services linked in to the app. Squrl aggregates videos from various services including YouTube, Vimeo, TED, Funny or Die and Revision3, amongst others.
Accessing any given video service will bring you to that site's homepage as you would see it on the web, and in some cases, such as YouTube, the mobile site will be displayed. You can then search the video service for the videos of your choice and save them.
Under My Videos you can access your video queue, your galleries, recent activity and messages. Once you've searched for a video, you have two choices of what to do with the video. You can add them to your queue, the home tab when you open Squrl, to quickly watch the video later, or you can create a new gallery of videos, that will be shared with your Squrl followers.
The queue is useful for adding videos you will delete or organise into collections later.
Squrl over-complicates things just a little bit when it comes to creating galleries, as you have to go through two steps when saving videos. First, you add the video to a Gallery.
Next you have to add it to yet another sub-category, or Collection. Unless you're an incredibly organized person, the sub-folder may seem a bit superfluous. It would be nice to have the option to choose between using one or two folders.
Your galleries are then viewable as a grid, which can be sorted by date modified, name, most viewed or top rated videos.
The last tab, Community, is where Squrl's social network aspect comes in. While you can easily share videos from Squrl directly with your Twitter or Facebook friends, Squrl also has its own social network built in, where you can follow other members to keep up with the videos they save to their galleries. You can discover other users by keeping an eye on the activity page, displaying the latest videos that have been watched or 'squrled.'
You can also keep an eye on the featured galleries, under the Videos tab.
Or you can take a list of the top curators.
Not only can you follow users, you can also choose to follow specific collections they have created. To do this, open up the user's gallery, and click the 'squrl it' button at the top of the page. This will then allow you to select which specific collections you want to follow. The gallery will then be added to your Videos page, and when it is updated by its curator, you will receive a notification. You will also receive notifications when shows you subscribe to from sites like Revision3 are updated.
If there was one more feature we could add to the Squrl wish-list, it would definitely be offline viewing using the iOS app. What app do you use to watch videos on your iOS device? What do you think of Squrl? Let us know in the comments. Hey Facebookers, make sure to join MakeUseOf on Facebook and get access to some exclusve stuff. Over 70,000 fans already!
 More articles about: iOS, ipad, iphone, online videos, video sharing, videos
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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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It has been an exciting past two weeks. We launched one iPad 2 giveaway after another and so far, it’s been great!
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Don’t just shorten URLs; make the pages you link to easier to read. Readability’s new “rdd.me” service combines the function of a traditional 
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