Latest Tips from MakeUseOf.com |  |
- Testing The New MakeUseOf Site Theme
- Cool Websites and Tools [December 13th]
- Geeky Fun: Latest Hilarious Picks
- Fun Tools to Translate Your Name into Japanese Calligraphy
- How To Create a Google Talk Chatroom with Partychapp
- How To Make A Portable Version Of Winamp For Your USB Drive
- Netvibes Wasabi – A Blow Your Socks Off Feed Reader!
| Testing The New MakeUseOf Site Theme Posted: 14 Dec 2009 03:50 AM PST As you will have seen by now, we have activated a new site theme which we are currently testing for bugs and other such critters. Please help us out by letting us know in the comments if you find anything not working and we’ll get our bug squashers right onto it! Stay tuned for a more detailed post, letting you know all about the new site features! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Become a MakeUseOf fan on Facebook? – Our photos, MakeUseOf specials and more. Related posts
        | ||
| Cool Websites and Tools [December 13th] Posted: 13 Dec 2009 05:30 PM PST
(1) David Rumsey Map Collection – Are you interested in old cartography? Then you should visit David Rumsey's Map Collection. This website is a gallery of online historical maps for Google Earth and Google Maps. Using the collaborative power of Google Map applications, this website showcases more than 120 historical maps online. Read more: David Rumsey Map Collection: View Historical Maps Online
(2) AppMobilize – This site is an online resource for smartphone apps which features apps for the iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Android, Symbian based phones, Palm OS and other cellphone apps. It also features latest apps, wallpapers, news related to different mobile phones, details about various phones like technical specifications, video reviews, games and much more. Read more: AppMobilize: An Online Directory Of Mobile Phone Apps (3) Incredibox – Beatboxing is a musical art that a lot of people appreciate but only a special few can do. Fortunately, there is a fun online beatbox machine called Incredibox. It lets you compose your own human beatbox arrangements online, and share them with others Read more: Incredibox: Human Beatbox Machine Online (4) LinkLeecher – LinkLeecher is a free online utility that will allow you to validate and download all the links on any given web page. You can use this service to either validate all of your own links on your website or to "leech" all the links from another site. Read more: LinkLeecher: Validate & Download Links From Web Page (5) CoinTossr – Tossing a coin is probably the most common way when it comes to deciding on something between two individuals. But what if you don't have a coin handy? With Cointossr, you don't need a physical coin. It is a simple but pretty interesting site that lets you toss a coin with a friend simultaneously in the browser. Read more: Cointossr: Toss A Coin 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. 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
     | ||
| Geeky Fun: Latest Hilarious Picks Posted: 13 Dec 2009 04:30 PM PST
Check out the top picks from MakeUseOf Geeky Fun during the last week.
If you would like to keep up with all latest Geeky Fun additions, please subscribe to the Geeky Fun feed here. You can also subscribe and get the latest additions via email.
Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Become a MakeUseOf fan on Facebook? – Our photos, MakeUseOf specials and more. Related posts
     | ||
| Fun Tools to Translate Your Name into Japanese Calligraphy Posted: 13 Dec 2009 03:30 PM PST
For Westerners, calligraphy is forever fascinating. However, it takes years to learn how to properly draw the signs. Two basic principles must be known to understand Japanese writing: there are different writing styles and different alphabets. Kaisho for example, is a writing style most commonly used in print media. Tensho on the other hand is used in signatures. Other writing styles are Reisho, Gyosho and Sousho. The alphabets include Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana. Katakana is used for writing foreign words. It can also serve to highlight words, in analogy to capital letters as we know them from the Roman / Latin alphabet (Romaji in Japanese). Each Kanji character has a meaning of its own, while Hiragana or Katakana characters merely represent syllables. Alphabets are commonly mixed within the same text. For example Hiragana is used with Kanji to conjugate verbs or create adjectives. So now that you know the basics, let’s look at some online resources to transform your name into beautiful Japanese calligraphy.
Takase.com
From left to right the table shows the Western Name, Romaji, which shows how the name is pronounced in Japanese, the name written using the Katakana alphabet, the Kanji, which represents the literal translation or meaning of the name, and finally the meaning and how it is read in brackets. Japanese Translator
You can select between several different font types, including traditional, calligraphy, quirky, sans-serif, antique, manga, and modern. The resulting images can be downloaded (right-click on it and select “Save Image As…”) and are free for personal use. Kanji Style
The Kanjis were created by a professional Japanese calligrapher. The images can be downloaded free of charge for personal use. Clicking on an image from the table will give you a short summary, including image size, resolution, and the name’s meaning. Unfortunately, the list of names is rather short. But maybe you’re lucky and yours will be included. If you would like to learn more about Japanese calligraphy, its historical and cultural background, and how it is used today, then please refer to this Introduction to the Japanese language. Japanese calligraphy is unique and beautiful. In case you’re still lacking ideas for Christmas presents, why not create something special yet simple with the pages listed above. You could print a cup with the person’s name and a well wishing or a small poster. Did you ever consider getting a Japanese or Chinese Kanji tattoo? And in case you already have one, what does it say? Image credits: happe 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
     | ||
| How To Create a Google Talk Chatroom with Partychapp Posted: 13 Dec 2009 01:30 PM PST
Partychapp is a bot that relays a conversation to all of those that are connected to it. In addition to relaying the chat to all of your friends, it has some fun features built into it as well. There are two ways to set up your own Google Talk chat room with Partychapp.
Set Up a Chatroom with Your Web BrowserYou can set up a chatroom directly from your browser if you log into Partychapp with your Google Account. Once you log in with your account, you’ll be taken back to the Partychapp web page, but you’ll see a button that says Create a new room. Click on the button, and you’ll get a simple form to create your new chat room. The form is self-explanatory. Just pick the name for your chat room, decide whether or not you want it to be public or private, enter the email address of anyone you would like to invite to the room, and click Create! When you sign into Google Talk, you will receive a chat request from the bot (it will be yourchatroomname@partychapp.appspotchat.com, where yourchatroomname is the name of your chat room). Accept the chat request, and start chatting away with the bot. As others accept the request from the bot, they will say everything you say to the bot. Set Up a Chatroom By Chatting With The BotIf you don’t feel like logging into Partychapp with your Google Account and creating the channel through the web form, you can set up a new chat room by just chatting directly with the bot. Just add yourchatroomname@partychapp.appspotchat.com to your buddy list and start chatting with the bot. Simple enough. You can invite others by sending the command /invite yourfriendsemail@gmail.com. Here’s what Partychapp looks like in action: Fun with the Partychapp BotNot only does Partychapp provide you with a chat bot, but the bot has many commands that provide some additional functionality. To see a list of all the commands, just type /help and you’ll get a list of commands. The output from /help looks like this:
If you’re wondering what’s up with the slashes in the commands, it’s borrowed from the command syntax for IRC. IRC is an old-school Internet chat system that has been around since 1988. Even today, IRC remains a popular form of instant communication online. Probably the first command you’ll want to use is /alias. Just type /alias YourAlias to change your name as others will see it. You can use the /invite command I mentioned earlier to invite your buddies into the chatroom. The /inviteonly command toggles the chat room from invite-only to public. If you’re wondering what plusplusbot is, works very much the same as plusplusbot on Twitter. If you like something, you add a ++ after it and if you dislike something, you add a −− after it. For example, if you type Partychapp++, the bot responds with [YourAlias] Partychapp++ [woot! now at 1]. If you type Partychapp++, the bot responds with [YourAlias] Partychapp−− [ouch! now at 0]. You can see the score for any word with the /score command. In this case, /score Partychapp, you get Partychapp: 0. You can also provide reasons along with your ++/−− commands. For example, if you type [YourAlias] Partychapp++ because it’s cool, you get [YourAlias] Partychapp++[woot! now at 1] because it’s cool. You can then list all the reasons for scores if you type /reasons Partychapp++. In this case, the output looks like:
Another cool feature the bot has is search and replace. To search and replace, you type s/foo/bar to replace foo with bar. For instance, if you type on one line Partychatt and the next line you type s/tt/pp the bot responds YourAlias meant Partychapp. What’s really cool (if you’re a geek like me) is that the search/replace uses regular expressions. Regular expressions, although cryptic and difficult to master, provide an extremely powerful mechanism for the programmatic processing and manipulation of text. There are several unix utilities that make use of regular expressions, as well as many programming and scripting languages (Perl, PHP, Java, JavaScript, PCRE, Python, and Ruby to name a few). Partychapp is a great way to set up chat rooms with your friends. If you want to try it out, I’ve set one up called makeuseof. Just add makeuseof@partychapp.appspotchat.com to your Google Talk buddy list and start chatting away. If I’m logged into Google Talk, you just might run into me there. Note: If you’re concerned about sharing your Gmail address with those that are already in the MakeUseOf chat room I’ve set up, do not use the bot. Your Gmail address will be announced when you enter the bot. So what do you think of Partychapp in lieu of Google Talk’s missing chat rooms? Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Become a MakeUseOf fan on Facebook? – Our photos, MakeUseOf specials and more. Related posts
     | ||
| How To Make A Portable Version Of Winamp For Your USB Drive Posted: 13 Dec 2009 11:30 AM PST
With the lack of headphone support, you won’t be able to use it on the bus, or in the queue at the supermarket, but if you often use different computers – at home, at work, at school and at a friend’s place – it really pays to carry your collection with you. By loading the Winamp portable media playing software on a USB stick, as well as your music library, you can listen to your tunes everywhere, as if you were at home.
WinampThe Winamp music player is still something of a phenomenon. It eats memory like a vegan (which is: nearly nothing) but can play almost any type of file. Even a lot of ‘newer’ media players are based on Winamp. This all comes to show how powerful and influential Winamp really is. Best yet, we can easily take a regular Winamp install and adapt it to our portable drive. Start out by downloading and running the Winamp Setup. Install to a subfolder of your portable drive, or simply copy the Winamp application folder from Program Files to your USB stick afterwards. Next, create a winamp.cmd file in the Winamp folder of your portable drive. You can do this by creating a new text document, and adding
Then either save the file, and change the extension from .txt to .cmd, or (in Notepad) use File -> Save As… -> All Files and save it manually as winamp.cmd If all went well, you should have a strange new file there, one that you can’t open with a text editor anymore. Double-click the file to execute it. This will launch the Winamp configuration wizard. Make sure that all file associations are unchecked in step 2. Otherwise, your computer will try to use your Winamp portable drive whenever you prompt to open a file – even when your USB stick isn’t inserted. In the third and final step of the configuration wizard, make sure to uncheck the anonymous usage statistics. If you don’t, Winamp will send periodical reports of the application. Albeit anonymous, a lot of computers won’t like a portable application that tries to connect to the internet. That’s it, you’ve now got an installation of Winamp that’s fully portable. You can use it not only to play back your files, but to build and manage a portable music library, just like in iTunes, err, Winamp. If you want Winamp to run whenever you insert your USB stick into a computer, you must create an autorun.inf file. This is the same kind of file that’s present on most software installation CDs. Simply create a new text documents and insert the following lines:
Next, go to File -> Save As… -> All Files and save it as autorun.inf, or just edit the file extension manually. If it doesn’t work, make sure that the specified directory path is correct, and that autorun is enabled on your computer. Which media player do you most enjoy using? Do you use another portable player? Tell us about it in the comments section! Related posts
     | ||
| Netvibes Wasabi – A Blow Your Socks Off Feed Reader! Posted: 13 Dec 2009 09:30 AM PST
For the longest time I have been using Google Reader and I have enjoyed the flexibility and usability of it. Recently though, I have been growing in love with the old start page tool Netvibes as my feed reader. Let me give you the rundown as to why Netvibes could be the next best feed reader out there.
First of all, the fact that it is a start page tool makes it more useful than just any old feed reader. Having a start page makes it easier because if you utilize a lot of websites for different things like weather, IM, news, and to-do lists, then an all-in-one start page makes it so you don’t have to constantly switch between websites. The fact that Netvibes also acts as a feed reader is a major perk! Some of the views that Netvibes offers for its feed reader really make it easy to suite many different people’s tastes while making it easy to manage many feeds. First of all you’ve got the infamous “widgets view.” In my opinion (take it or leave it) the “widgets view” gives a good overview of what each feed has going on. Next there’s the “reader view” which is where the typical feed reader-type view comes in. As you’ll soon see, there are some features that actually make it a bit less typical. You can see that the feeds are grouped by topics and those feeds are listed in the same manner that Google Reader does, in chronological order. If, instead of clicking the link, you hover over the link, you’re offered several options: share this article, mark as ‘read later’, or actually open the website. Very sleek and easy to use! Moving on from there, in the “reader view” you have several more viewing options starting with the list view as pictured above. You can also choose the expanded view, which shows the whole articles all listed in order: Or the ultra cool but slightly less useful “mosaic” view which shows a mosaic of the post titles with their included pictures: One of the features of Netvibes that makes it a viable runner in the Feed reader race is the fact that you can read posts without actually leaving the page. This makes it easier than constantly switching back and forth and opening and closing new windows or tabs. There are some other cool aspects of Netvibes that gives them a bit of an edge. Their newest release, named Wasabi, has some nifties under the hood that I think would make anyone take a second look. First there is the idea that readers should not wait for updates to feeds. They shouldn’t have to wait a day or even a few minutes for the new update to appear! Some readers even have the option to MANUALLY refresh the feed! Well, Netvibes with its new “Instant Update Technology” now gives NEAR real time updating! Now waiting, no fuss. Also, with the new Wasabi edition, Netvibes offeres the ability to create more than one page. You used to only have the ability to use multiple tabs (and you still do) but now you can have multiple pages on top of that! My first question was whether or not there was a point to pages, you know, with tabs already available. Pages give you an extra degree of separation. For instance, you may want to keep your work and personal life separate. Now you can have a work page and a personal page so you are no longer distracted when you are “working.” If you haven’t yet, give Netvibes another try! I think you may like some of the changes! What feed reader do you use and why? Related posts
     |
Japanese calligraphy is an artistic writing style of the Japanese language. Its Chinese origins can be traced back to the twenty-eighth century BCE. Calligraphy found its way into Japanese culture in 600 CE and is known as the karayo tradition.
This page has an archive with over nine thousand names. They are conveniently provided in small tables.
The following page translates your name into Japanese using the Katakana alphabet. The dictionary contains around 3700 Western names. A few notes explain how names are commonly pronounced in Japanese.
The last page provides a long list of words sorted into different categories. You can look for business- or society-related Kanjis and also names.
A lot of people use USB 
If you have ever been into reading 
| 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