Latest Tips from MakeUseOf.com |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [November 13]
- Safely Restrict Your Kids’ Computer Access With Parental Controls [Mac]
- How To Use iGoogle To Get Ahead In Your Job Searches
- Get Social Network Data In Your Google Results With Social Search
- CosmoLearning – A Free Education Experience For Teachers & Students
- 2 Blogs To See Examples Of Bad Photoshop Images
- Hide Running Programs On Your Windows System With OuttaSight
- Play An Awesome Asteroids Arcade Game Clone In your Browser!
| Cool Websites and Tools [November 13] Posted: 13 Nov 2009 05:01 PM PST
(1) Connectify – Desktop tool that turn your pc/laptop into a wireless access point. Working essentially as a front end for Window 7's "virtual wi-fi" feature, Connectify allows you to share the internet connection of your laptop with other users. It is also handy for keeping all your mobile devices connected from one internet source without having to rely on wireless routers. Read more: Connectify – Turn your PC Into a Wireless Access Point
(2) Obama-Weather – New and fun online weather forecast application. When you visit the site it automatically detects your location and gives 5 day weather report with President Obama demonstrating to you what you need to wear. If you do not like the Obama character, the site lets you switch it to Angelina Jolie, Dr. Gregory House or Bender Bending Rodríguez. Read more: Obama-Weather – Fun Weather Forecast Application (3) GuideToOnlineSchool – Web directory of online schools that has thousands of reviews and profiles of schools over the world which teach online. On the homepage they have a search function pictured above where you can find a college that caters to a course you want to do. Read more: GuideToOnlineSchool – Directory of Online Schools & Courses (4) WhatTheMovie – If you ever wanted to test your movie knowledge, head straight to WhatTheMovie.com. It is an innovative and addicting movie quiz site where you guess the movie title by the snapshot, and collect points for the Hall of Fame. The site also provides movie ratings and reviews. Read more: WhatTheMovie – Addictive Movie Quiz Site (5) iBible – Web app that lets you read entire Bible online. It has the entire bible (both testaments) translated into several languages including French, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Polish. It's very simple to use and it has no requirement to set anything up. Read more: iBible- Read Entire Bible Online
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. Related posts
        | ||
| Safely Restrict Your Kids’ Computer Access With Parental Controls [Mac] Posted: 13 Nov 2009 02:01 PM PST
Guy was nice enough for forward the comment to me and here’s the answer: There’s no need. It’s built right into Mac OS X! It’s called Parental Controls and it’s located in System Preferences. You may not have noticed it if you’re the sole user of your Mac but if you have children, Parental Controls can be a huge help. I’ll show you what it can do and how to set it up exactly. Let’s dive right in! Launch System Preferences but before you can actually start to use Parental Controls, there needs to be a separate account to control. If your kid already has his or her own account on your Mac, perfect. Just select that account in Parental Controls to manage it. If not, then you’ll have to create a new account. Head over to Accounts Settings and click on the plus button to add a new account. In the window that appears, select “Managed with Parental Controls“, fill in the appropriate fields and click “Create Account“. Right, the account has been created and is set to be managed by Parental Controls. Now head over to Parental Controls (System Preferences -> Parental Controls) and select the account to configure its settings. To enable Parental Controls for existing accounts, simply click on “Enable Parental Controls” and the settings will appear.
In the Content tab, you’re provided the option to filter profanity from the Dictionary and to restrict access to certain websites. If you’d like to give your children some room to play, you could use Apple’s filter to automatically limit access to adult websites. In addition to that, you can also add specific sites to the white- or blacklist. Personally, I find that option to have the best balance of leniency and compromise. In the next tab, Mail and iChat, the idea is really simple: the applications will only allow communication between people on the whitelist. The thought of unsupervised children chatting online is definitely one of a parent’s worst nightmares. Who are they chatting with? Now you can safely control their communication without being overly intrusive. The next tab is something we’re very interested in. Time Limits is very easy to use and when put into action, it is simply the best way to get your child to bed on time! You can set daily weekday and weekend time limits as well as bedtime restrictions! Your child is logged off automatically as soon as it’s time for bed! Sure, there could be times when your kids have a project due and could use a couple more hours on the computer – that’s something very easy to overcome, I’ll show you how it’s done in a while. But now, let’s log in to an account managed by Parental Controls to see how it will look like, shall we? As you can instantly recognize, the Finder is simplified to show only the allowed applications. Navigation is crippled so your children can’t delete or modify any of your precious files. If you’d like to change any of the Parental Controls settings, there’s no need to log off and log into your account. Say, your child wants to access his favorite website, which you had unfortunately overlooked when modifying the whitelist, no worries. You can add it instantly by entering your password (if you have an administrator’s account). If you’ve set time limits, the remaining time is visible within a drop down menu once you click on the clock. Your children will receive an alert 15 minutes before the time runs out completely and they are able to save their work or ask your permission for more time to play. Parental Controls is really awesome and extremely useful if you’re a parent. It will allow you to monitor and restrict your kids’ computer activity without being too intrusive. Settings which you’re able to control i.e. communication, apps, navigation; are really flexible and can be changed on the fly. Your child will always go to bed on time, and you can sleep soundly knowing that they’re safe from online intruders. If there are any other apps that operate better than Parental Controls, I’ll be glad to hear about them. Leave your suggestions in the comments. Related posts
     | ||
| How To Use iGoogle To Get Ahead In Your Job Searches Posted: 13 Nov 2009 12:01 PM PST
You have to remember that hundreds of thousands of people who have given up their job search in the depths of the recession are all going to pile back onto the job market quicker than you can say 'credit crunch'. So I thought I’d share with you a tip I use when I’m looking for more blogging jobs. This tip can be applied for when you’re looking for work, a new house, great deals and other thing that are hard to come by. I simply set up iGoogle to perform how I want it to so it can become my Mission HQ. Firstly, go to Google (if you don’t already have an account, create one). In the top right-hand corner click iGoogle. Then, from the tabs located to the left of the screen click ‘Add a tab‘ and give it an appropriate name in the box which appears. Now that your new tab is created we have to add some gadgets which will help you in your job search. Our main tool here will be the RSS gadget so I need you to do the following.
Visit sites specific to your job search. Craigslist will cover pretty much everything from jobs to houses to items for sale. Most other jobs search websites also offer RSS feeds as a way of bringing you back to the site with the promise of alerts. Right-click on the feed’s icon and copy the address. Then go back to iGoogle.
The RSS feed should now appear in iGoogle like my example at the bottom of this post. Keep repeating this procedure for all the job searches (or any other search) you like. Here are some popular websites which offer RSS feeds and jobs, apartments and more are frequently posted.
For more job search websites, click here. Finally, click on ‘Change Theme from Classic‘ and select one of the cool themes they have there. This doesn’t really improve your iGoogle HQ but you don’t want to turn on your computer every day and see the same generic theme, do you? Now all you have to do is check back daily and follow up on anything promising. Without a doubt you’re ahead of the competition by making iGoogle your search HQ because while you’re giving the advertisers a call they’re still rummaging through search results. Photo Credit: Danard Vincente Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/ Related posts
     | ||
| Get Social Network Data In Your Google Results With Social Search Posted: 13 Nov 2009 11:01 AM PST
Read on to learn how doing a social network search with Google Social Search works and how to use it. Content from your social circleGoogle Social Search adds content that is linked from your friend’s Google profiles to the search results. This content includes websites, blogs, public status updates (like Twitter and FriendFeed), other Google profiles and items from your feeds on Google Reader. It is an opt-in experiment, so you have to turn it on to make it part of your search results. Enable social searchHere is how to enable Google Social Search:
From now on when you search Google it will also do a social network search and integrate results form your social circle at the bottom of the results page (from my experience that only happens when Google is set to display 10 results per page). Get only social resultsAlternatively, you can get only results from your social circle. Once you’ve enabled social search, it becomes one of the search filters available as part of Google's New Search Features. In the results page, click 'show options‘ under the Google logo and in the sidebar that opens click ‘Social‘. See an example of the results in the image below. Asking help from friendsThere are two advantages to getting these social results. First, it is somewhat more likely that they would be more relevant, at least in certain topics. For example, if you’re looking for something related to your field of expertise, your friends and people they know might have more relevant information. Second, you do not only have access to the information you find, but possibly to the KNOWLEDGE the people who created it possess. Since the results include information about your relationship to the person who published the content, it might be easier to contact this person since you know him/her or know someone else who does. Who’s in your social circle?Your social circle is made up of your connections in various Google services. First, there are your social network connections, such as Twitter and FriendFeed. You have to list these social networks in your Google Profile for the people in them to be part of your social circle. Next, your circle includes people from your Gmail chat list and some of your Gmail contact groups. Finally, second level relations (friends of friends) are a part of your social circle – providing these relationships are public. Note that if you do not list your social networks in your Google profile, or if you don’t have a lot of connections in them, you will probably not get too many social results. On the other side, if you want your content (blog, videos and the like) to show up in your friends’ social search, you should list it in your profile as well. Have you had the chance to try Google Social network search? Was it useful for you or just too much noise? Tell us in the comments! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Related posts
     | ||
| CosmoLearning – A Free Education Experience For Teachers & Students Posted: 13 Nov 2009 10:01 AM PST
Education has never been as accessible as in our present times. Disregarding the high tuition fees of some, I would say it has also never been as much a bang for each buck as now. And there are places you can educate yourself without spending a penny. For example – The World Wide Web. The web is not only about movies, music, tweets and the unmentionable word. It is also perhaps the greatest learning miracle after the innovation of printing. Information cannot replace education but it can certainly drive it. That's what some of the online educational websites are doing. Or looking at the variety of knowledge they make us open up to, let's call them educational portals. An Online Center of Learning…
The First Day at School…It's neither as nerve wracking nor as expectantly exciting as the one we once faced in the real world. The reason is that online education is not new fangled as a concept these days. The novelty quotient would lie in the treatment given to an age old process. Enrollment is not through the headmaster's office and the cashier, but through a simple registration form and it's free. The Subjects in the Syllabus…All learning at CosmoLearning is through the courses on various subjects and there is a huge list of them…29 in all. The Academic Subjects are arranged alphabetically on a left panel. From basic sciences to new age ones like entrepreneurship are given a class (old 'age' ones like Religion and Mythology too find their space). Let's not forget the extra-curricular subjects…often neglected, but many go on to careers in them. Look at the subject choices below. The Teaching Aids…This is the age of convergence and education is all the better because of it. Supporting the courses are Video Lectures, Image Files and Documentaries. Each gets a large chunk of server space. There are 6184 video lectures as of now arranged around Video Type (Animation, Guest Lecture, Interview etc), Topics, Contributors, Alphabetically, Most Viewed, Top Rated et.al. Just let me say, that you won't get lost searching for a specific video. The Documentary list is on the same rich vein – 389 in all. I took a look at some truly good ones – Stephen Hawking's speech in honor of NASA’s 50th Anniversary really perked my interest. After these two, mentioning the bank of 733 images seems almost like an anti-climax. But it's a small but focused collection. Similarly tiny but open to growth is the small library of books. For now, it's poetry centric. All the content on CosmoLearning is arranged for easy navigation on subject specific panels. You can go to your favorite subjects or jump into the Top 10 Lists or the latest that has come in (via the News feed or the Recently Added lists). Where does all this content come from?No, it's not 'manufactured' by the brother sister team behind the site. All of it comes from contributions from some of the most well known names and independent contributors. You can check them out on any of the pages for Courses, Videos, Images or Documentaries. You have Harvard University rubbing shoulders with Golf Tips Magazine. All content is free and the site exhorts contributors to pitch in whole-heartedly. School ‘Report Card’…A young site but a blossoming one. Some subjects could do with more content as time goes by. Inspite of an impressive lineup of contributors and contributions, CosmoLearning also suffers from a basic weak spot. I believe that for a learner it's very important to have a roadmap for his learning…that's defined by curricula. The path from the first lesson to the last, to gain some mastery in a specific study is what's missing. But CosmoLearning is an impressive attempt to gather together a horn of plenty of educational resources. The site is well structured and a breeze to go through. It is definitely not a last stop for your educational needs but it does deserve a stop on your learning curve. How do you use educational websites? As a launching pad or as support material? Let us know… Image Credit: Avolore Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Related posts
     | ||
| 2 Blogs To See Examples Of Bad Photoshop Images Posted: 13 Nov 2009 08:01 AM PST
If we make a grave error at MakeUseOf, we can post an update or correct ourselves in the comments section. When you’re working with print the problem isn’t that easily solved. Those mistakes cannot be erased. Written errors aren’t the worst of it – they are glanced at and forgotten. Bad photoshop mistakes are the absolute worst-case scenario – photo editing gone very wrong. We all suspect most glamor magazines touch up their pictures. That suspicion becomes very real if the model suddenly misses her leg or belly button. It’s even worse when we’re not talking about modelling. How about an ad for children’s toys or – if worse comes to worst – a charity campaign. It’s ridiculous if you know how much has been paid for these ads. Although these errors are usually due to lazy and inattentive designers, everyone should have noticed these errs in passing – and stopped them. There are blogs that gather these Photoshop mistakes – often dubbed Photoshop disasters by the 2.0 point-and-laugh blogs. Read on if you would like to have a laugh at what gets past the print editors these days.
Photoshop DisastersPsD, short for Photoshop Disasters, is the leading blog in Photoshop errors. Since print is one of the only ways to make sure it really is an accidental occurring, they specialize in print covers, ads and overall article pictures. Ads make up the big majority of them – which is one of the only sectors where image editing is actually accepted. You can expect uploading periods with relatively frequent updates, interchanged with some more quiet periods. But highly laughable quality material is always at hand. Browse the ‘Photoshop disasters’ chronically and dig into the not inconsiderable archive, or use the tags to browse similar errs. If you’re a frequent magazine or newspaper reader and have encountered a Photoshop mistake in the past – or if you ever do in the future – you can send them into these sites. They’ll more than appreciate the extra content. Photoshop MistakesPhotoshop Mistakes makes for a decent second place. It isn’t as popular as the previously mentioned Photoshop Disasters, but does provide quality and a little change in content. The content of the two sites is very similar and often recurring. After all, printed photo editing disasters don’t occur that often. Like the former blog, you can browse the site chronologically, or by using the tags. Alternatively, they also offer a Twitter feed. If you’re an avid Twitter user, you can follow them to stay on top of any future updates. You certainly won’t be the only one. What do you think of these image editing mistakes? A sad mistake or an opportunity for a good laugh? If you know any other sites, or twitter and meme feeds to keep an eye on future Photoshop disasters, drop a comment below. Want to avoid disasters like these? You can start out by reading our Idiot’s Guide to Photoshop! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/ Related posts
     | ||
| Hide Running Programs On Your Windows System With OuttaSight Posted: 13 Nov 2009 06:01 AM PST
Personally, I find that hiding the more distracting windows actually increases my efficiency while I use my computer. In fact, having less on the screen at one time means no more absent minded glances at the taskbar, no getting lost on facebook, and a whole lot more concentration. OuttaSight is an excellent free solution to the common time management or privacy problems that computer users face today. This lightweight application allows users to hide active windows either by the push of a button, or automatically when they are run. While it is only stated as supporting up through Windows 2000, it works perfectly fine on XP and Vista.
Features
Using OuttaSightThe first thing you’ll notice when you download and run OuttaSight is that it’s very simple looking. This is one of my favorite aspects of the software – it’s very clear, lightweight, and efficient. First, it is important to personalize the utility. Go to “Hot Keys” and decide what you want your shortcuts for different actions to be. My personal set up used F10 as the hide window hotkey, CTRL+F11 to hide all windows, and CTRL+F12 to show them all. While you are setting things up, keep in mind the reasons you got OuttaSight in the first place. Do you want it to be very easy and intuitive to show and hide windows, or would you like to be the only person that knows how to do it? Second, you’re going to want to decide how you want programs to hide. Would you like them to disappear altogether (for secrecy) or minimize to the tray instead? If you are tired of your taskbar being cluttered, but do not mind people seeing that the programs are running, you may want to tell OuttaSight to minimize them to the tray as shown below.
Next, you’ll need to decide if there are some programs you would like to automatically hide whenever they start. These programs could consist of automatic virus scans, annoying startup messages, or other things of that nature. If for some reason you like to start up applications with the intention of not viewing them at all, you can do that too To set up a list of programs that will hide when they run, simply navigate to the “Auto-Hide” tab and start adding programs. Note that you can specify whether you would like the program to hide completely, or run in the tray instead. To view a window that has minimized to the tray, simply double click it. Finally, analyze things with your privacy in mind. You have the option to password protect OuttaSight. That means that even if someone knows it is running, they can’t use it without entering your password. That also means that your hidden programs remain hidden no matter what. To prevent others from seeing OuttaSight you have the option of hiding it from appearing even in the taskbar. If you do this, make sure you remember the hotkey to pull up OuttaSight – otherwise you’ll have to reboot your computer to access it again. Hopefully this article was informative. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to post your comments and let me know if you found a better free alternative. Overall I’d like to hear what you have to say about this concept in general – do you use software like this and why? Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Related posts
     | ||
| Play An Awesome Asteroids Arcade Game Clone In your Browser! Posted: 13 Nov 2009 04:01 AM PST
I hope I am not alone in reminiscing about these games but this is what I grew up on! Now when you have some time to kill you can browse on over to the authors home page here or his software company’s webpage here and play a similar Asteroids arcade game called Luminara. Luminara plays in your browser using flash 10. All you have to do is go to their website and start playing! When you arrive at their site you will see this:
The premise is the same as the asteroids arcade game – you shoot using your mouse button and spin using your mouse. You break or destroy the asteroids that are coming at you. But the twist is addictive music, colors and awesome looking icons. There are 50 waves of colorful enemies and explosions ready to draw you in… But as they always say it is better to show you then explain it to you. How do you explain pretty colors other than slipping someone a hit of acid? Well without further ado here is a 6 minute video walk through that will get you amped for this game: So now that you see a little bit of what I am talking about, let’s see what the game has to offer. As you play you will be offered different power-ups like lasers and companion players. Those friendly assistants help you clear out those hard boards. Use your up and down arrows to guide your ship around the screen and collect those power-ups. Here I am after grabbing my first companion ship. They sure help! And the author named the companion players after the regulars in his forums! That sure is funny. I bet they love playing this game. Hit the P key on your keyboard to pause the game and bring up your options as you can see below: You bounce off the sides instead of going through and out on the other side like the classic game. Your bullets also bounce off the walls and can continue killing after they bounce. My day is seriously screwed as I tried to get this game in between doing my duties! I am addicted. We would love to hear about your high scores and your other favorite (FREE!) games. Leave them in the comments so all of our MakeUseOf readers can benefit. Do you have a game you cannot get through the day without playing? Then hook us up, put us on and we might just do a full review of it here. Remember we are writing for you, the readers, so let us know what you want to see more of (or less of!) Ok that's enough for today boys and girls I umm have to…you know…get back to work. No really I have stuff to do Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/ Related posts
     |
Recently, one of our staff writers, Guy, published a very useful article featuring several applications used to 
So technically the recession has lifted in the US which means there should be some more jobs created in the US of A. Correct? Yes. At least there will be soon. But how prepared are you to start finding these new jobs?
Click on the ‘Add Stuff‘ link at the top right of the screen. Along the left-hand side in the sidebar you’ll see an Add Feed or Gadget link. Click on that and paste in the link address you copied from the RSS link on the job site and click ‘Add‘.
Google has recently added a new experimental feature that can make search results much more personal and relevant. The new feature called Google Social Search integrates results from your social circle based on your connections, as Google sees them.
I read this up on Wikipedia – Abraham Lincoln's formal education was for a mere 18 months. The lawyer, legislator and later the builder of a nation, was by and large a self educated man. For the sake of a debate, would Abe have been as great a man if he had been born in the 20th or 21st century; with our many educational opportunities and the World Wide Web? I always believe that a great of one era can become a great of another.
We all make mistakes, but some mistakes have far bigger consequences than others.
Whether you’re playing flash games at work, dealing with too many open windows, or simply looking for computer privacy, at some point you’ve probably thought about how useful it would be to hide running Windows programs with the push of a button.
To do this, navigate to the Options tab and check off “Hide windows to system tray“. If this is not checked, the default behavior is to completely hide windows.
.
I know it is NOT 1982 all over again. I know you haven't even thought of asteroids in all of its time wasting glory. I grew up with titles like this on my Atari 2600. Asteroids, adventure and the very strange game rendition of E.T.
| You are subscribed to email updates from MakeUseOf.com To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment