MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [June 25th]” plus 4 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [June 25th]
- How To Find Travel Inspiration With Various Twitter Accounts
- Google Music Puts All Your Tunes Online [Currently US Only]
- Giver – Still The Best Way to Send Files Across A Network [Linux]
- Tales Of Monkey Island Comes To iPad, First Episode Is Free! [News]
| Cool Websites and Tools [June 25th] Posted: 25 Jun 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. Hey Facebookers, make sure to join MakeUseOf on Facebook and get access to some exclusve stuff. Over 105,000 fans already! Cool Websites and Tools [June 25th] is a post from: MakeUseOf More articles about: cool web appsSimilar articles:
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| How To Find Travel Inspiration With Various Twitter Accounts Posted: 25 Jun 2011 06:31 PM PDT
We have already shared quite a few tools to broaden your travel outlook: here are some travel quizzes improve your travel IQ, here’s a fun smartphone app to discover and share journeys and don’t forget to check these sites for virtual sightseeing with travel videos. This post is about finding travel inspiration by planning your journey with Twitter! Track Traveling HashtagsTraveling is more about fun than anything else and if you need more ideas on how to enjoy your time here’s the list of popular Twitter hashtags to fill up your week: Monday: #MexMondayIf you are going to Mexico or are just looking for a Mexican restaurant, this hashtag will get you inspired any time you check the latest search results.
One more less popular, yet very interesting one I have found via this travel blog: #MountainMonday This hashtag is a great way to really want to go on vacation: watch people share beautiful photos of the mountains they are climbing right now! Tuesday: both #TravelTuesday and #TTA very popular hashtag about all things-travel: find memes to follow here, travel-related news and scandals, trending destinations, etc:
Wednesday: #WineWednesdayAnother one for food travelers: share your wine on Wednesday and get inspired by seeing what winery others recommend.
Thursday: #BeachThursdayA great one for the summer vacation. If you are still unsure which beach to spend your summer vacation at, monitor this hashtag for plenty of photos and ideas:
Friday: ##FriFotosThe theme is announced on Tuesday, then on Friday the participants are tweeting photos of the declared destination.
Follow & Track the Right Twitter AccountsDepending on your destination and aims, there may be various accounts you can try and follow such as official city Twitter accounts, local bloggers, tour operators and hotel managers. There is no way that all possible travel-related Twitter accounts can be listed in one article. Below are just a few useful and creative examples – you’ll need to find more using one or all of the following tips:
GeneralTravel – State Dept is an official Twitter account for U.S. Department of State Bureau of Consular Affairs. If you a US citizen traveling abroad, be sure to follow this account and check it for some essential news and updates like worldwide hurricanes, embassy news, passport procedures, etc:
Twitter Accounts For US TravelingMost of the US cities are on Twitter, so if you are planning a trip to the United States, it’s a good idea to find the city officials on Twitter. We can’t obviously list all tweeting cities here, but here’s a large list of California cities on Twitter, for example. Below are some more cities : TravelPortland is an official Portland account that tweets all local events and also answers related questions (asked with #inpdx in the tweet) Twisney is an interesting example of a creative Twitter bot – it automatically tweets and retweets all updates that are geotagged from Walt Disney World Resort. NewYorkology tweets many times a day sharing interesting events in New York which are taking place right now.
UK TravelingGoodPubGuide tweets a pub of the day: follow the account to discover new places to spend a fun evening at! Londonist publishes frequent updates with fun ideas about what you can do right now in London, from community festivals to great sales – you won’t find these events anywhere else!
More examples? Here’s a great list of the most popular hotels on Twitter and here’s a huge collection of the most active tweeting airlines. Next time you travel, use a Twitter-friendly service as they seem to care more. Any other fun tips on how Twitter can help you traveling? Please share them in the comments! Image Credit: gettyicons Hey Facebookers, make sure to join MakeUseOf on Facebook and get access to some exclusve stuff. Over 105,000 fans already! How To Find Travel Inspiration With Various Twitter Accounts is a post from: MakeUseOf More articles about: discover, recommendations, search, travel, travel tips, Twitter, twitter search, twitter tipsSimilar articles:
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| Google Music Puts All Your Tunes Online [Currently US Only] Posted: 25 Jun 2011 12:31 PM PDT
Cloud-based music is nothing new; we’ve discussed alternative cloud-based music in the past. But Google being known for their massive data centers and, well Google being Google, means there is considerable excitement around their music project. It’s warranted. Uploading your music to Google is a bit of pain, but Google Music is useful as soon as your songs are there. Even the uploading process is relatively painless thanks to a well thought out uploading tool. But the real highlight here is the web-based interface. Web Based PlaybackFirst of all, this service is invite-only right now. You can sign up at Google Music but the invite took a couple of weeks to get to me. It seems to be US only right now, but I’m sure this will change. Open Google Music for the first time and you’ll be offered a bit of free music. There are some cool songs here. If you’re the sort of person who like entire albums, not individual songs, I’d suggest you say no. After that you’ll have access to the music player. The first thing you’ll see is the latest songs you’ve added to the service:
This can be fun during the uploading process; you’ll see which of your albums made it up most recently. If you want an overview of your entire collection however, I suggest browsing by artist:
As you can see, covers from every album you have from a particular artist show up. This makes visual browsing easy. Click on an artist and you’ll see the albums, as a playlist:
Click a song to start playing. It’s worth pointing out that you can also browse your entire library in one list if you like, and you can create custom playlists. Everything runs so smoothly you’ll forget the service is in a browser. Another highlight is the Android app for the service: As you can see, it’s well integrated. Sadly there’s no iOS app yet, but hopefully this is coming. Uploading ToolOkay, so the service is good once your songs are uploaded. How is uploading the songs? Relatively painless. You simply install a piece of software, and tell Google how you want your music synced. Users of iTunes and Windows Media Player can sync with those programs. Alternatively, Google can scan a particular folder. I’m getting a lot of songs that fail to upload however, most of which seem to be OGG files. This is odd, because Google Music does support OGG files in theory, but there you have it. I’m sure more of these bugs will be worked out as the service continues to grow. One nice feature – any new music you add to your library or folder will automatically go to Google as well. This means your music collection stays up to date when you make new purchases. Pros & Cons
The cloud is getting bigger every day, and Google’s at the forefront. When the search company offered a gigabyte of storage with Gmail for free in 2004, it was unheard of. Now they’re letting people upload 20,000 songs to their server and stream them from anywhere. But Gmail didn’t just change email forever because of the storage offered. They made a few changes to how email works, and consequently made email better. Quick search for all messages and labels are just a few early innovations. Google Music doesn’t offer anything revolutionary from an interface perspective. It’s very clean and lets you find what you’re looking for quickly. Music on the web hasn’t been done better, but Google Music can also compete head-on with any music player. I’ll say this – Google Music is better than any of the alternatives I’ve looked into, but only time will tell if people like it better than Apple or Amazon’s offerings in the same realm. Have you tried Google Music yet? Let us know in the comments below. Also feel free to discuss whether the future of music will be in the cloud or not. Hey Facebookers, make sure to join MakeUseOf on Facebook and get access to some exclusve stuff. Over 105,000 fans already! Google Music Puts All Your Tunes Online [Currently US Only] is a post from: MakeUseOf More articles about: cloud, Google, music, music player, online storage, streaming, streaming music, uploadSimilar articles:
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| Giver – Still The Best Way to Send Files Across A Network [Linux] Posted: 25 Jun 2011 10:31 AM PDT
Giver, which has already been reviewed back in early 2009, still belongs to the list of top-notch programs. This is even more surprising considering that the last release came out in 2007. Although the program itself hasn’t changed, the distributions themselves have changed dramatically, and yet the program still works. Giver does file sharing a little differently. Instead of sharing a folder to the network, you can simply choose a file or folder to send to a certain computer. In other words, this is a one-time transaction, like sending an email with an attachment. That’s all Giver does while barely having any options to configure in order to keep the experience as simple and flawless as possible. InstallationIn my own experience all distributions simply name the package “giver”, but if you use a distribution with a small user base, you may want to double check. Procedure
As soon as Giver is installed on the two computers you would like to send files to and from, open up Giver on each computer. It magically detects the instances of Giver running on your own computer and any other computer on the network. From there, you can either left click, choose the option you want, and choose the file/folder to send, or you can drag and drop a file or folder onto a computer in the list to do the same.
A notification should then appear on the computer that is receiving the file or folder, where you must click Accept in order to start the process. It should go relatively quickly (it’s using your full LAN or WiFi speed, after all), and it will be stored in whatever folder you have set.
Options
Speaking of options, I’m going to mention them really quick. Like I said, there aren’t very many at all, as you can probably determine from the screenshot. Again, this was meant for easy and flawless operation with no configuration needed out-of-the-box. There are only three possible things you can configure. You can change your name if you would like (which it originally takes from whatever you have set for your system account for “Full Name”), what kind of icon appears whenever people see your computer on their list, and where to save files that were given to you. ConsiderationsLinux distributions have changed quite a bit, considering the arrival of GNOME 3 and the general advancement of software stacks. No worries though, Giver runs perfectly fine alongside newer software stacks, and doesn’t give you any problems. However, it would be helpful to note that Giver directly uses ports. Therefore, if a port is not open thanks to your system firewall, nothing will get through, even if your computer appears on the other person’s list. Normally, setting a port exception would do the trick (the list even says what port it’s using!), but because Giver randomizes the port each time you start it up, that may not be a viable solution for you. I would think that the developers were fine with it being this way because it is meant to be used over a network anyway, which should be appropriately configured and protected. Therefore, for easy operation you should disable your firewall, but to protect yourself, make sure that your network has a firewall itself and that it works well. Also, if you’re using this on a mobile computer, I highly recommend that you immediately turn on your firewall again before leaving your protected network. Linux may not be affected by any viruses (at least there’s nothing common out there), but direct attacks from hackers are still a possibility. ConclusionFor networks, Giver is almost a must, especially in larger environments such as workplaces. Despite its age, it is very stable and works as great as it should. Maybe someday a group can come back and enhance Giver even more by adding new features, such as GTK3 support. However, as long as it runs, everything is in order. How often do you share files and folders? Do you often find yourself only doing this for some individual files? Would you use Giver, and how would you maybe improve it? Let us know in the comments! Image Credit: Shutterstock Hey Facebookers, make sure to join MakeUseOf on Facebook and get access to some exclusve stuff. Over 105,000 fans already! Giver – Still The Best Way to Send Files Across A Network [Linux] is a post from: MakeUseOf More articles about: file sharing, files, networkSimilar articles:
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| Tales Of Monkey Island Comes To iPad, First Episode Is Free! [News] Posted: 25 Jun 2011 09:31 AM PDT
Tales of Monkey Island is a remake of the incredibly popular Monkey Island adventure games, a series that debuted in 1990 with the release of The Secret of Monkey Island. Developed by LucasArts, the original titles were loved by critics and fans for their humorous storytelling, securing them cult-classic status in gaming culture. The new series replicates the original’s wit but adds a modern 3D game engine.
The remake, which is broken up into 5 episodes, was originally released for the PC in 2009 and received much praise from critics and fans, with most of the episodes receiving a score of 80 or higher on Metacritic. Although Launch of the Screaming Narwhal is the only episode available for free, all five episodes have been released simultaneously for $6.99 each, bringing the total cost of the series to $27.96. That's rather expensive by iPad standards, but it’s good compared to other platforms. The collection is currently priced at $34.99 on Steam, for example. Source: GamePro Tales Of Monkey Island Comes To iPad, First Episode Is Free! [News] is a post from: MakeUseOf More articles about: games, ipad games, newsSimilar articles:
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