MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [February 23rd]” plus 18 more

---

• Cool Websites and Tools [February 23rd]
• 5 Tips To Create The Perfect How-To For Your Site
• A Quick Guide To Get Started With Microsoft Access 2007
• 5 MORE Free Microsoft Products & Why They Are The Best
• Nuance PDF Reader – Read and Convert Your PDF Docs with This Cool Free App
• 5 Awesome Tips To Improve Your Google Buzz Experience
• How To Quickly Improve The Quality of MP3s With GarageBand [Mac]
• Play and Re-Discover Music You Like with Mufin Player
• What Is The Difference Between 32-bit & 64-bit Windows?
• Cool Websites and Tools [February 22nd]
• Movers & Shakers : Top Windows Downloads
• How To Download Google Books As A PDF File [Mac]
• 4 Effective Tips To Ask a Girl Out On Facebook
• How Does Google Maps Work? [Technology Explained]
• Get Your IRS Tax Questions Answered at H&R Block For Free
• gleeBox– Browse The Web Faster & Save Lots of Mouse Clicks
• 5 Bizarre Underground Websites That’ll Make You Go Hmmm
• What is Digital Photography? [Technology Explained]
• Get A FREE Copy of Windows® 7 Plain & Simple From O’Reilly [MakeUseOf Giveaway]

Cool Websites and Tools [February 23rd] Posted: 23 Feb 2010 07:31 PM PST Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. All listed websites are FREE (or come with a decent free account option). No trials or buy-to-use craplets. For more cool websites and web app reviews subscribe to MakeUseOf Directory. Submit Your Web App   Zentation – Powerpoint has changed public speaking, in that those listening to a presentation have visual cues and point forms to glance at. These cues and points often give context to a speaker. Zentation aims to bring the advantages of a PowerPoint presentation to the web, by combining and syncing slides of Presentation with video. Read more: Zentation: Combine & Sync Presentation With Video.   Kobo – E-book readers are the hottest items in recent consumer electronics shows and we expect that more e-book related hardware and software will shape the market. One free app that positions itself as a top ebook reader for smartphone is Kobo. This free app lets you buy, select, and read e-books from your iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Palm Pre mobile handsets. Read more: Kobo: A Free E-Book Reader For Smartphones.     Sketchpad – Photoshop and Fireworks are awesome pieces of software, but they are not worth the hassle if all you want to do is create a quick graphic. SketchPad is an online drawing software that lets you do a lot of things you can do in Photoshop. You can create drawings from scratch and save them on your computer. Read more: SketchPad: Light-Weight Online Drawing Software.     WordItOut – Tag clouds or word clouds are a really nice way to summarize the important things in any piece of text. Trying to create a fancy word cloud manually would take hours. However, there is a word cloud creator that lets you achieve this in seconds. WordItOut takes any piece of text and then creates a colorful word cloud from it. Read more: WordItOut: Free Word Cloud Creator.     Droolr – Tagging themselves as "the wishlist for geeks," Droolr is a wacky website for discovering and sharing latest high tech computer gadgets with an online community of technophiles and gadget lovers. This website allows you to submit and vote for new items and even lets you create shopping and wishlists. Read more: Droolr: Discover & Share Latest High Tech Computer Gadgets.   Submit Your Web App 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! Related posts (171)makeuseof extra #27 (107)Finally Stick To Your Resolutions With StickK (51)Cool Websites and Tools [September 9] (62)Cool Websites and Tools [September 7] (72)Cool Websites and Tools [September 6]

5 Tips To Create The Perfect How-To For Your Site Posted: 23 Feb 2010 05:30 PM PST The number of How-To’s we write here at MakeUuseOf is simply staggering. Each of them requires a huge amount of research before it is ready for publication. It’s quite a challenge to break down the information and present it to our readers in a clear, lucid manner. And we understand that many fellow bloggers face the same problem everyday. So we decided that we’ll let you in on the secret to our prowess with creating how to guides. Once you’ve decided what to write about, you need to make sure that you use the correct set of tools to express your idea to the readers. This includes tools to research the topic, to take screenshots, record screencasts, etc. You also need to make sure that your how-to is valid and doesn’t contain any mistakes. You can use the following set of awesome tools to get all those aspects in order. Research Tools to Create a How To Guide Google: The Grand-daddy of Research You may have the best idea, but there’s really no point to create a how to guide unless you can back it up with material that is accurate, simple to understand and something that doesn’t intimidate the reader. You can use Google (or for that matter any good search engine) to learn about the subject. If you are an expert on the subject, you may only need to look up a couple of definitions. In case you are a novice, you can head over to other blogs/websites to learn more about the subject that you want to teach your readers. Be innovative with your searches. Use the following strategies: Type exact phrases (e.g. How to delete the Recycle Bin from the Desktop): More often than not, such searches return very accurate results from reputable websites. Use quotation marks to narrow down your search further. See the screenshot below to understand how this helps. Use the define keyword: Every now and then, you will come across a term that’s frequently used in your how-to, but you can’t stitch together the perfect definition for it. Sometimes you may also be looking for a definition to kick-off your How-To. In such cases, you could use the define keyword in Google. Look deep: Sometimes, the resource you are looking for may be buried tens of thousands of links deep. All you need to do is make sure that you don’t get discouraged after the first three or four pages of results. If you don’t want to troll through tons of pages, you could even try your luck and click a result page randomly. Organizing The Research It’s one thing getting hold of all that you need to make your how-to rock. It’s quite another to organize and sort through the tons and tons of information that you now have at your disposal. We recommend that you use the following two tools to organize your research. Evernote: Evernote comes in a free as well as a paid avatar. The free version is generally enough to serve anyone’s research appetite. It installs really quickly and provides you with a place to clip your research and organize it into different notebooks. You can set up a capture hot-key or use the button that is installed into your toolbar to invoke Evernote. All your notes are automatically synced to the Evernote servers so your research is with you wherever you are.In the screenshot below, look at how Evernote has helped to organize research about stock trading. Furthermore, each individual note can be assigned Tags, and notes can then be searched by using these tags. Zotero: Zotero is a more Firefox-specific solution to research. Once you’ve installed Zotero into Firefox, you can go crazy with your research. Amongst other features, it lets you automatically capture citations, remotely sync your research, organize the research using collections and tags, and import/export to almost any application that can process text/images.Make sure you read our Zotero tutorial. You can also check out a video demonstrating Zotero on their website. The screenshots below show the Zotero library view, the center pane, and the Zotero editor for your notes. Make It Interactive Videos Nobody wants to read boring, text-only accounts of how you used a small sheet of cardboard to forge a wallet for yourself. They would be more likely to watch a video of what you did. If you decide to include a video, make sure that it looks professional. Here are a few guidelines to go about the process: Use a camcorder. No, your iPhone’s camera doesn’t count Try to reach a balance between casual and formal. The video should feature language casual enough to keep the reader interested, yet retain the touch of professionalism that a hit video requires. Don’t use a million angles. Decide on a couple and stick to them. Zoom in on the subject. That’s your project we are referring to, not you! Care about the poor people who can’t afford expensive bandwidth. Make sure you have multiple editions of the video. You could have one at a low resolution, and another in higher quality. Below, you see a couple of stills from how-to videos. No prizes for guessing which one is considered good, and which one is considered bad. Make sure to check our list of 18 Online Tools To Mix, Edit, and Enhance Your Videos. You should also check out our Essential Video Tutorials for Shooting and Editing Video. Screenshots If the how-to is about something on your computer, it’s imperative that you provide an adequate number of screenshots. Remember that the entire world wasn’t blessed with your geekiness when they descended upon Earth. A screenshot here and there can go a long way to help your readers understand what you mean. A few guidelines to help you get started: Use proper, clear screenshots. Decide on a uniform width x height for your screenshots, and try your best to restrict your screenshots to those figures. Too many screenshots can be overkill too. Instead of providing a screenshot for every step (such as clicking on the start button), try covering only the most important steps in your screenshots. If it is impossible to eliminate any intermediate steps, try using a smaller screenshot, or use a screencast (more on this below). Learn from other websites. You can do so by simply paying attention to their screenshots. Start with how we provide screenshots on MakeUseOf — like in this article, for instance. Below, you can see a few examples of screenshots. One is what’s considered a good screenshot, and the other is what would generally be regarded as poor. Let us assume that the how-to is about a feature within the Firefox menu. Notice how the good screenshot is very, very specific in nature, while the bad one tends to distract the user a lot. Now that you know the ins and outs of creating screenshots, you can use our tried and tested applications for creating screenshots. Check out one of our articles here. Screencasts Screencasts are even better than screenshots. They basically combine the best advantages of videos and screenshots. You can literally walk your readers through the entire process by using a screencast. To get a better idea about what a screencast should look like, check out the video below. Read up our article about 5 Free Screencasting Apps for Creating Video Tutorials to get going with screencasts. Writing a How-To guide can be a major pain if you don’t have the correct tools at your disposal. However, with just a little bit of systematic organization, and a pinch of imagination, you can make your how-to really stand out and make a mark. Image Credit: stock:xchng 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 (6)Top 5 Free Ways To Get a Guestbook For Your Website (26)The 5 Free Wordpress Templates To Dress Up Your Blog (9)Start Your Own Personal Photo Blog The Dead Simple Way With Posterous (8)Set Up A Voicemail For Your Blog with VoiceMeMe (24)Save $87 By Making A Free ‘Thesis’ Wordpress Theme Clone This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

A Quick Guide To Get Started With Microsoft Access 2007 Posted: 23 Feb 2010 03:30 PM PST There are conflicting ideas about how hard it is to make use of Microsoft Access. One school of thought suggests that it's difficult, complex, and beyond normal folk. The other is that it's just as easy to use as Excel. I'm here to tell you the truth. And it sits somewhere between the two. Access takes more effort to become familiar with than a spreadsheet, but it's not difficult, and it's very powerful. You can start right here. After this introductory Microsoft Access tutorial, I'll follow up with posts on the various parts that make up Access, and show you how to save time and effort. A Microsoft Access Tutorial: Starting at the beginning First up, a little boring theory. I'll make it as fast as I can, and hopefully it won't hurt too much. Microsoft Access is an RDBMS (Relational Database Management System). It's often called a database, that that term actually refers to the information you keep in it. It's like the difference between a particular spreadsheet and Excel itself. As an RDBMS goes, Access is decidedly at the smaller end of the scale. It's not ideal for databases bigger than about 2GB, and doesn't cope terribly well with a simultaneous user base of more than around half a dozen. But within these confines, it's difficult to find something more comprehensive for the price, and many people already have the product, if they have an applicable version of Microsoft Office. For those of you who have used Excel, or pretty much any other spreadsheet, there are some fundamental differences to understand, and then take advantage of. Firstly, data and display are separate in Access. That is, you don't format the data to look nice, or to be easy to input. Instead, you structure it to make sense, and then design separate forms and reports to output the data. Secondly, you don't (generally) store calculations. You store raw data, and perform calculations when you need them. Third and last for now. It's very easy in Excel to deal with an exception. For instance, if you have a column that is full of numeric values, it's quite simple on a single row, to decide that putting the word 'Jim' in the cell instead makes more sense. You can't do that in any sensibly designed Access database, so planning is more important. To get your head around this, some brief summaries of the various parts of Access. It doesn't all need to make sense the first time through. I'll cover each of these in depth with separate posts soon. There's an assumption all the way through this series of posts that you have some familiarity with Excel or something similar. If you've spent the last few decades under a rock, spend some time getting comfortable with Excel first. You'll thank me later. I'm also going to assume that you want to create a local database for Windows users, even though Access can also build web databases. We've written some helpful Excel articles before, so feel free to take a wander through them. We can help you with calendars, budgets, charts and printing. I even wrote a short piece on using the fill handle to save time. Tables These are the basic building blocks of an Access application, and the part that works the most like a spreadsheet. Planning is required though, because you need to decide how all of the columns are going to work before you start. Here's something to work through in your mind before we come back to this in detail later in this Microsoft Access tutorial. Mostly, with Excel, you're dealing with a single spreadsheet. In Access, you generally involve a number of tables. Sometimes a significant number. The tables in Access can be linked together, in ways that make sense in terms of the way the information is related. That's where the 'R' in RDBMS comes from, and that's the power behind Access. Queries This is the way you ask questions of Access. You can design them on the fly, and save them for later use. In a general sense, the answers are not saved. Just the queries that will provide the answers. That's great, because the next time you ask the question, if the data has been updated, you'll get a different answer. Forms These are the visual components that make inputting and viewing data on-screen easy. Not everyone is going to be comfortable inputting data straight to the tables you create, and you might want more control over how that input works. Forms are the answer. You can also set these up for more practical viewing of the data from tables or queries on-screen. Reports Sometimes you don't want to see things on-screen. you want to print them, or email them to your boss. You might want to pass information to someone who cannot use Access themselves. You can easily design and build suitable reports for most situations. Macros and modules This is where things get a little more complex. It's best to have a good understanding of all the components above before you spend any time with these. Both options are ways to automate tasks in Access, with macros being the easier choice, and VBA modules being the more capable. Both have their uses, and we will come back to them later. Summary Access is complex, but it's not difficult. From an Excel perspective, Access tables are like spreadsheets, but more structured. Everything else is about manipulating those tables to question, view, report and automate. The complexity is worth it, because of the power Access gives you to achieve more. I'll be back soon with a post all about tables. In the meantime, find a spreadsheet you might like to replace with a database. Take a look at the sheets, and see if you can find any inconsistencies. You need to tidy those up to use the data in Access. Do you use Access at all? Have you struggled? What sorts of problems do you have? let me know in the comments. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Related posts (11)Wrike – Project Collaboration Tool (6)Top 6 Online Powerpoint Moguls Compared (13)Top 3 FREE web-based Office Suites (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) (5)Online Calendars Head to Head (13)Google Docs and Spreadsheets

5 MORE Free Microsoft Products & Why They Are The Best Posted: 23 Feb 2010 01:30 PM PST Although there are plenty of free software floating around on the web, not all freeware are created equal. There is such a large disparity in quality between freeware from different companies that sometimes we must turn towards established, trusted companies, if just to make sure the software comes from a credible source. Although Microsoft isn’t a company that people would usually associate with freeware, there are a surprisingly robust selection of free Microsoft products. The following list covers the cream of the crop products that truly stand out among their free and paid counterparts. This is part two to Mahendra’s part one  on free Microsoft products, which you can read here. 1. Microsoft Security Essentials I work for a technology center that routinely diagnoses and removes viruses from its customers’ computers. While we use a hoard of different antivirus and malware scanners to eradicate viruses, none has been as surprisingly effective as Microsoft Security Essentials. One particular day in our office, Microsoft Security Essentials picked up sixteen entries that neither Panda Activescan nor AVG antivirus had found. In fact, it was so popular in our office that it became the default antivirus that we install on reformatted computers before they go back to their clients. 2. Bing Maps Bing Maps is Microsoft’s version of the popular Google Maps. While the latter remains an integral part of many people’s lives, Bing Maps is an alternative that is, perhaps even more efficient. The first great thing about Bing Maps is that the front page of the website features both a To and From box. I typed in two places of interest (just to test how well Bing Maps was able to pin down their addresses) and surprisingly, Bing Maps loaded both these places immediately, and accurately. On the other hand, when I tried the same search on Google Maps, not only did the search take longer, but the addresses that Google picked were wrong! Some additional features of Bing Maps that may prove useful are: the option to pick a route by the least amount of traffic, and the ability to send your directions to either an email, a mobile phone, or to your GPS. While I wasn’t able to test whether I could actually put my directions into a GPS system, seeing as I don’t own one, just the fact that this option exists makes Bing a viable alternative to Google Maps in my mind. 3. Windows Live Photo Gallery Windows Live Photo Gallery is a free Microsoft product that can definitely give Picasa a run for its money. Although I prefer Picasa’s interface and organization a bit more, Windows Live Photo Gallery has the same basic features like cropping, people tagging, and simple editing. WL Photo Gallery’s exposure and color adjusting features are a bit more comprehensive than that of Picasa, but it lacks Picasa’s host of filters. As far as plug-ins go, WL Photo Gallery supports much of the same functionality that Picasa does, such as Facebook, youTube, and Flickr upload. The main reason I love WL Photo Gallery is for its Facebook Upload plug-in. Whereas Picasa’s Facebook plug-in simply puts your photos and the associated captions in an album, WL Photo Gallery uploads your tags as well, which means that you can kill two birds with one stone! Upon upload, WL Photo Gallery pulls out the names you’ve tagged your pictures with, and compares them to the names of your friends, and automatically uploads these tags to Facebook. For those names that WL Photo Gallery can’t match up, it lets you select the friend that goes with each tag. In the end, if you like having your pictures on your computer tagged, you won’t have to redo all of your hard work when you have to upload your pictures. 4. Process Explorer To put it simply, Process Monitor is a bit like Task Monitor on steroids. If you ever feel the need to know exactly what is running on your computer, down to the last thread, then Process Monitor is your program. You can trace each program down to the individual processes and files that the program is using. You can also monitor your CPU usage, as well as the CPU usage history. Process Monitor tracks every last minute detail about the memory usage and running operations on your computer, so if you ever feel like learning a bit more about how the programs on your computer works, consider trying Process Explorer. 5. Paint.NET Although Paint.NET isn’t technically a Microsoft program, it was originally mentored by Microsoft, and intended to replace Microsoft Paint. Now, Paint.NET is still maintained by some of the alumni, and has flourished into a commendable program that rivals Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro. It was designed with speed in mind, so users tired of Photoshop’s laggy rendering and slow startup, or looking for a image editor for their netbook, may find Paint.NET the alternative they have been looking for. Like for Photoshop, Paint.NET also has an extensive list of plug-ins available to further add on to its capabilities. Although many people seem to think that Microsoft only develops paid products, it is quite the contrary. There is a hoard of free Microsoft products for the public that not only bolster Windows’s features, but also act as viable competitors to many popular programs such as Picasa and Google Maps. Now that we’ve introduced you to a few of these products, try them out, and let us know how they compare! 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 (50)The Top 5 Free Microsoft Products & Why They Are The Best (46)Windows Live Skydrive & 3 Alternative Online Storage Services (149)We Have 3 Copies Of McAfee Total Protection 2010 [MakeUseOf Giveaway] (67)The Top 5 Free WORST Microsoft Products & Why They Suck (1)Reminder: We’re giving away 3 x McAfee Total Protection 2010 [ends Feb 5th]

Nuance PDF Reader – Read and Convert Your PDF Docs with This Cool Free App Posted: 23 Feb 2010 11:30 AM PST A few PDF tools have succeeded in carving out some space from Adobe's omnipresent software – the Adobe Reader. Is Adobe rueing the fact that they made the PDF document format open? We wouldn't know, but the openness has brought popularity and made the PDF format the de facto way to exchange files across all operating systems. Adobe has been the standard bearer and many have come in its broad wake. The battle between free software is very like a 'Battle for A Free World'. How many features can you pack into a free software and make it a preferred download? This is where the Adobe Reader alternatives are packing it in. Nuance PDF Reader (ver. 6.0) is the new guy in the challenger's corner. At first glance, it seems like a very serious contender as it packs a lot of nifty features into a free PDF Reader download. These are the same guys who were featured in the recent Dragon: Two Free Voice Recognition Software For The iPhone post. Nuance PDF Reader sits somewhere in between the lighter (and very popular) Foxit and the heftier Adobe Reader. The download is 18.1MB and the installed size takes up just 44MB of your hard disk space. That's more than the 16MB for Foxit, but it's far lesser than the 200MB for Adobe's Reader. I can easily give up the space if the features and performance add up to that. Do they? Let's find out… The Nuances That Catch the Eye The free PDF Reader download loads up relatively fast and reveals a stylish interface. Right across the screen the toolbars don't take up much screen space and can be hidden from view. The View Bar at the foot have all the page viewing aids like rotating the views, full screen and page fit controls. Nuance has a Loupe tool in the Zoom toolbar, which is like a magnifier for any part of the page. From first appearances, it looks like it will be smooth reading. Navigating through a PDF Document Reading a long PDF eBook can be an exercise in frustration if you can't glide through it. Nuance PDF Reader has a prominently marked out Navigation Panel that brings all the controls under it. Checking out all comments made or the bookmarks placed is just within a dropdown and a click. All the views open up in zippy panels. Commenting – Just a Choice of Three It's a reader… so commenting (or annotation) options are limited to Highlight, Cross-out and Underline. All marked out content appears under comments with the name and date. There is no option that allows us to insert text comments in a PDF document. Searching – through a haystack of PDF The Find tool can search for a query through a number of PDF files in a folder or in a PDF Portfolio (i.e. multiple types of files assembled into a mixed PDF unit). Nuance PDF Reader includes full fledged support for PDF Portfolios. Individual files can be opened using the default applications from within the reader. Playing Movies and Sounds Nuance PDF Reader can play embedded sounds and movies using the system's default media player. Usually, a control icon within the PDF can be clicked to start the playback. Filling PDF Forms Nuance can handle all sorts of form fields. The Highlight Form Fields and the Reset Form Fields menu commands make filling up forms easy. Forms can be completed, saved to the disk or emailed by starting up the mail client at the touch of a button. Forms which have a Submit button can be processed if Javascript is enabled in Nuance during installation. The option to enable or disable Javascript is given during installation itself. Disabling Javascript can be an added security feature for those fearing exploit attacks. Combining with SharePoint Nuance supports SharePoint collaboration. You can open files located in a SharePoint server and save files back to it. Converting to Word, Excel or Rich Text This is where Nuance can come handy with its online conversion service that's made available for the free edition too. If a lot of us do switch over, it could be for this ability. Using the online OCR and converter, PDF documents can be securely uploaded and converted to Word, Excel or RTF (Rich Text). Advanced options also let us do some language translations and specify the image quality in the converted document. The converted document is securely sent over with an email. Trying it out with a PDF document that had tabular content yielded an accurate Word conversion. Wishing for some features Purely as an average user, I miss having a custom bookmark feature. Adding your own bookmarks is very useful, when you need to come back to the right place in the document. Nuance might not take up too much space with its toolbars, but it does on the Taskbar as each instance of a PDF document opens in a separate window (that amounts to more RAM usage). Tabs are definitely on my wish list. The reader from Foxit features the ability to save PDF files as plain text. Vis-à-vis, Nuance PDF Reader wins out in this department with its conversion options. Foxit though, is lighter than Nuance. Nuance PDF Reader (Windows only) does have a lot going for it as another entrant in the free PDF Reader market. Question is will you make the switch? Let us know about your reading of Nuance PDF Reader's feature set. How does it stack up against a reader you are using? Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Related posts (10)The 3 Useful Office Apps To Reduce Your Paperwork (9)Overcome Online Forms With Formulatepro [Mac only] (14)Mobipocket – An Awesome ebook Reader Which is Free (11)How To Convert Scanned Pages Into eReader eBook Format (22)Easily Split And Merge PDF Files With This Easy Tool

5 Awesome Tips To Improve Your Google Buzz Experience Posted: 23 Feb 2010 10:30 AM PST Google Buzz has had a while to settle in now, and it got greeted surprisingly well. Aside from the usual negative commentary, most prominent blogs now flaunt a Google Buzz button, and the updates still visit my inbox in a steady stream. Google Buzz is still a far way off from the popularity of Facebook and Twitter, and only time will truly show what becomes of it. But for now, if you decide to have fun with Google Buzz, you certainly won’t be playing alone. Like you, I’m still discovering the possibilities of Google Buzz, and every day brings something new. Below are some of the coolest tips to boost your Google Buzz experience. 1. Disable Google Buzz So how will turning it off improve your Google Buzz experience? It won’t, really, if you enjoy using it. But the truth is that a lot of people are not waiting for something like Google Buzz. For them, it’s an unwanted feature that has forced itself into their comfort zone. These actually make up the biggest part of the Google Buzz haters. So here’s how to shut it off. It used to be a lot harder, but you can now just scroll down from your Gmail inbox or Google Buzz overview, and click on ‘turn off buzz’. Be careful what you do next. Selecting ‘Do not show Google Buzz in Gmail‘ will eliminate the unwanted intrusion, and you can still check Buzz on your cellphone. ‘Disable Google Buzz’ will delete everything connected to Google Buzz, including your Google profile! 2. Filter Buzz From Your Mail Some Google Buzz messages will end up in your inbox, right between your other correspondence. Although this could be useful to some, a lot of us have bulking inboxes already, and like to keep these things separated. If you want to keep using Buzz, but just not through your inbox, there’s an easy fix. Create a new filter, and in the ‘Has the words:’ field, add label:buzz. Gmail will warn you that label filters don’t usually work, but rest assured, it does here. On the following screen, check ‘Skip the Inbox (Archive it)’. Et voila! 3. Format a Buzz At first, Google Buzz doesn’t seem to allow any formatting. But even though the buttons are missing, you can bold, italicise and underline text using formatting tags. Just like in Gmail. Enclose your text in asterisks to make it *bold*, surround it with underscores or hyphens to make it respectively _italic_ or - striked through -. 4. Send a Buzz Straight To Someone’s Inbox Want to make sure a certain someone reads your Buzz? That’s easy, assumed they have not appled tip number 2. In your message, simply use an @reply. Type the at sign (@) and the first letters of their name, and select the email address of your recipient. Your friend will receive the Buzz directly in their inbox. 5. Edit an Active Buzz (With Replies!) This one passed around the internet in a webcomic by DogHouseDiaries. And sadly (but hilariously) enough, it’s actually true. Even after replies have been left by other people, you can still edit your Buzz messages. Talk about taking something out of its context. As you can imagine, this can lead to some hilarious situations. But it’s also worrisome. Your reply, presumably in response, certainly will take on a whole other meaning. Apparently, this hasn’t been thought through by the Google guys. Do you know any other cool Google Buzz tips? Let us know in the comments section below! em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers! Related posts (28)The 6 Best Tools To Schedule Twitter Updates (6)Scrapboy- Desktop Client for Facebook, Myspace & Orkut (Win) (9)Make Use Of Podcast #4: Making Vista Faster & Better Commenting (5)How To Monitor What Is Being Said About You Online (9)How To Maintain a Professional Reputation Online

How To Quickly Improve The Quality of MP3s With GarageBand [Mac] Posted: 23 Feb 2010 09:30 AM PST Not all MP3s are created equal. The quality of some MP3s are good, others are barely audible. Among the thousands of songs on your hard drive, I’m sure that there are several that fall into the category of “should be better” — the ones with low volume settings, the ones with weak vocals, the one with too much bass, and other various imperfect conditions. The quick fix is adjusting the equalizer. But there are situations where repeated re-adjusting is annoying. You need a permanent fix. The tools in the garage I also have quite a few imperfect songs. Having just finished the eBook “Recording Your Next Hit With GarageBand“, most of GarageBand’s tricks and tools are still fresh in my head. They are more than qualified to enhance and improve the quality of MP3s. Please note that even the best audio tools out there have their limitations. Nobody can enhance Bon Jovi’s song and turn it into Celine Dion’s. With that in mind, let’s get started. Open GarageBand and start a new project. Basically, you can choose any of the templates, but it’s preferable to use the ones that comes with the least tracks like “Voice” and “Loops”. We are going to delete all the tracks anyway. You can give the project any name that you want, but for easier exporting in the future it’s advisable to use the song title that you want to enhance as the project name. Delete any pre-set tracks that GarageBand gives you using the “Track > Delete Track” menu item or use the “Command + Delete” keys combination. Then open the media browser by clicking its button at the bottom right corner of GarageBand. Browse for the song that you want to edit. Or for faster results, use the search feature. Then drag and drop the song to the main pane of GarageBand window. The song will be imported into GarageBand. Please notice “Importing File(s)“. It means that you can import more than one song and mix them if you wanted to. You can also cut, edit and join songs together to create new songs. But that is beyond our scope here. Start fixin’! The most basic editing that you can do is manipulating the song’s volume. You can decrease the volume if the song’s too loud or the other way around. Always look at the peak meter for guidance. Keep the lights below the red zone. Then open the automation pane. You have two basic control here: Volume and Pan. You can adjust these components in any specific part of the song. For example, if you want to increase the volume only between the first and second minutes of the song, you can. Click “Add Automation” to get more controls to adjust. There are several elements that you can add, grouped into two: Visual EQ and Echo & Reverb. Check to the box(es) that you need. The ones that you need will appear in the automation list. Choose one of them to start adjusting. Click on the control line to create a starting point and another one for the end point. You can adjust the position of the points at the levels that you need. You can achieve many stunning results by combining several controls. Just as a rough guide, human vocals are somewhere in the mid-range frequency. You would want to meddle with mid level gain to increase the singer’s volume. Going a little bit further There’s another cool effect that you can try — “Fade Out“. It’s available through the “Track” menu. This effect will lower the level of the Master Volume at the end of the song. Should you want to add your own voice to the song, maybe as the background vocal or as the duet partner, you can easily add a “New Track“. Pick “Real Instrument” from the options and click “Create” Choose “Vocals” from the Real Instrument pane and continue with the one that fits you. Send it back home After the editing process is done – even if it’s only increasing or decreasing the volume, you can export the result back to iTunes. Go to the “Share > Send Song to iTunes” menu. A Song Info window will pop out with fields to be filled. The one that you should pay attention to is the “Compress Using” and “Audio Settings” options. To get the most compatible format in the best quality possible, choose “MP3” and “Higher Quality” settings. The song will be converted and added to iTunes with the project name as the title. Then it will appear in iTunes and is ready to be played. Rinse and repeat to improve the quality of MP3s. If you want to know more about GarageBand, check out our other articles: How to Create & Broadcast a Podcast with Garageband [Mac] and How To Create Your Own Unique iPhone Ringtones Using Garageband. Also, don’t forget to download the ultimate guide to GarageBand with tips on song writing and publishing by yours truly, “Recording Your Next Hit With GarageBand” Do you have other ideas to make use of GarageBand? Share by using the comments section below. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Related posts (11)Normalize MP3 Volume Levels with MP3Gain (30)Top 10 Websites For Free & Legal MP3 Music Downloads (5)The Top 3 Sites To Find Free MP3 Music Downloads For European Artists (21)The 3 Best MP3 Players For Portable USB Drives (13)Technology Explained: What Is MP3 Format & What Is Its Origins?

Play and Re-Discover Music You Like with Mufin Player Posted: 23 Feb 2010 08:30 AM PST How many gigabytes of music do you have on your computer? Or are you already counting it in terabytes? My own collection of merely 18,000+ files is safely stored on an external hard drive. Due to size limitations, I only store on my laptop what I recently downloaded. That way, I hardly ever listen to the rest of my huge collection. And how would I? It takes too much time to create elaborate playlists and listening to single artists or albums can be tiring. Does that sound familiar? Mufin player may be our remedy. Mufin stands for music finder. By its own description, its the first music player to know the sound of your music collection. The music discovery engine analyzes your collection, so that you can sort your music by sound and find similar tracks faster and maybe rediscover music all over again. My article will quickly walk you through all of its basic functions. Import After a successful installation, the first step is to import your music. Go through > File and either import a folder, CD, music from your MP3 player, or existing playlists. Analyze To recommend music based on similarity, Mufin must first analyze your collection. This process is initiated automatically. Simply wait until you see the rating bar under in the similarity category. Starting Track Once your collection has been analyzed, you can rank and play songs by what you like. When you hover over the similarity ranking bar, you’ll see an option called > Select track. Simply pick a song you love and everything in your collection will be ranked based on that track. Alternatively, you can make any currently selected song the starting track by clicking the respective button on the top left. Recommendations Furthermore, if you select an analyzed song, you’ll see recommendations of similar songs. They are drawn from your music collection or mufin.com and displayed in the bar below your tracks. You can play a 30-second preview of songs recommended from mufin.com. When I searched for recommendations based on “Hands Clean” by Alanis Morissette, the number one recommendation was another recording of “Hands Clean” within my collection. That’s a hit. Interestingly, however, the matching rate was only 83%. The recordings are identical, except for the MP3 quality. Now how does that make sense? Search & Filter Mufin comes with a search and a filter option. Through Search, you can find music based on artist, song name, album name, or genre. With the filter, you can select by genre, artist, and album. Get Audio IDs If the ID tags of your collection are incomplete, you may be able to complete the information with the help of Mufin player. The tool does an awesome job completing the tags. Manage Categories Mufin comes with a number of categories based on which you can sort your music. They are name, duration, artist, album, genre, and favorite songs. You can add more optional categories, for example rating, comment, counter, tempo, or year. To add a category > right-click on the category bar, a menu will come up and you can now edit the checkmarks as you please. You can also drag and drop categories in the bar to change the order in which they appear. More You can sync Mufin player with your MP3 player or cell phone, including the iPhone and iPod. Mufin can import your iTunes library and sync playlists made with Mufin with iTunes. Mufin also integrates with Last.fm and Facebook. You can display the tracks your currently playing on Facebook or scrobble to Last.fm. In the album art view mode, missing album art can be added by drag and drop. By the way, Mufin also has an online music discovery service to discover and rediscover music. Mufin Player works on Windows only. Did you already discovered new and cool tunes in the depths of your music collection with the help of Mufin? Let us know! 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 (5)How To Sync iTunes Library With Your Music Folders (80)Top 10 Free Ways To Discover New Music Online (63)The BIG Book of iTunes [Free PDF Download] (21)The 3 Best MP3 Players For Portable USB Drives (0)Synchronize MP3s To Non-Apple Devices with doubleTwist [Mac]

What Is The Difference Between 32-bit & 64-bit Windows? Posted: 23 Feb 2010 07:30 AM PST People ask me on a daily basis, “What is the difference between a 32-bit and 64-bit Windows operating system?” Most of you are running Windows XP or Vista in its 32-bit iteration. But as hardware gets cheaper, people are curious as to what the 64-bit operating system has to offer. First let's see if we can grasp the difference between 32- and 64-bit. Think of your computer as a series of tubes that can either be 32 or 64 bits wide. When you have the smaller 32-bit size, there is more potential for bottlenecks to occur. Bottlenecks slow down your system because one process has to wait for another to finish before it can begin. But if you want to have 64-bit wide tubes, your computer needs to be thinking in 64-bit so your software and hardware all need to support 64-bit. If you do not know the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit, I would have told you in the past that you are running a 32-bit version of Windows. But now with Windows 7 I am seeing more and more 64-bit operating systems shipped by default without the end users knowledge. Don't get me wrong, a 64-bit system is better but you also need to be running 64-bit programs and have a 64-bit processor or else all the trouble of setting up the 64-bit operating system would be worthless. On a 32-bit operating system, you are restricted to a maximum of 4 gigabytes of RAM. On a 64-bit operating system, you really do not have a limit. Let's look at Wikipedia and find out the maximum amount of RAM for a 64-bit operating system: 264 addresses, equivalent to approximately 17.2 billion gigabytes, 16.3 million terabytes, or 16 exabytes of RAM. That is a huge amount of RAM! Normally when you exhaust your physical RAM on a 32-bit system, it has to use virtual memory or hard disk space to pick up the slack. On a 64-bit system, you can install as much RAM as you can to cover your overhead. From here on, 32-bit operating systems will be referred to as x86 and 64 bit operating systems as x64. You can tell what you are running by right clicking on My Computer and choosing Properties.  Below is a shot of a 64-bit machine using 12GB of memory. And in this shot, we see a 32-bit machine trying to use 7GB of RAM.. Not going to happen! If you are running 3D modeling systems or AutoCAD systems, you can benefit from a x64 bit architecture but remember, you need to be running ALL x64 applications, print drivers and anything else you are setting up on your system to realize its full potential. Not all programs have been created for x64 yet and you will find yourself installing applications to your Program Files x86 directory. On a x64 machine, you will have two Program File directories — one for 32-bit and one for 64-bit applications. So after reading through that and you still want to run a x64 operating system, you will need to make sure your processor supports x64. Most new servers and new computers bought this year or beyond will support x64 but you will still need to check. Here are some facts you should know (taken from ZDNet): Almost all new servers sold within the last two years from AMD or Intel will have x64 capability. Most mid- to high-end desktop processors from AMD or Intel within the last year have x64 capability. Some higher-end Semprons have x64; lower-end Semprons do not. No AMD Durons have x64. All AMD Opteron processors have x64. All AMD X2, FX, and Athlon64 chips have x64. All Intel Pentium D and Celeron D chips have x64. All AMD Turion notebook processors have x64. All Intel Core 2 processors (mobile, desktop, and server) have x64. No Intel Core Duo notebook processors have x64 No Intel Pentium M notebook processors have x64. If you are still not sure if your processor can support x64 check out GRC’s SecurAble and let them help you figure it out! You might also want to check out Mahendra’s post How To Choose Between 32-bit & 64-bit Windows 7 Operating Systems. If you are running a server that has all its hardware and software certified for x64, then you should install the 64-bit version but beware of device drivers and any 32-bit environments because if I used the word difficult, it would be an understatement! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Related posts (9)How To Install The Recovery Console in Windows XP (22)WinHack – Speed Up Your Windows XP Computer (Part 1) (8)Upgrade To Windows 7: Requirements & Installation Tips (20)Tweak Your Windows OS With Portable Ultimate Windows Tweaker (7)Three Windows 7 Upgrade Issues & How To Avoid Them

Cool Websites and Tools [February 22nd] Posted: 22 Feb 2010 07:31 PM PST Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. All listed websites are FREE (or come with a decent free account option). No trials or buy-to-use craplets. For more cool websites and web app reviews subscribe to MakeUseOf Directory. Submit Your Web App   Kaleidocycle – If you are looking for a whole new different way to show off your pictures, then you should bookmark Kaleidocycle. This online tool generates ready-to-fold pictures and provides a quick three-step instruction for making kaleidocycles. Read more: Kaleidocycle: Make and Print Cool Photo Kaleidocycles.   OverMyMinutes – Do you worry about how many minutes you have left on your cell phone plan? After all, all it takes is one huge phone bill to make you nervous and not want to go over. Some carriers send alerts via SMS to your device but now there is a service to monitor accounts and avoid extra charges on a cell phone bill. Read more: OverMyMinutes: Avoid Extra Charges on Cell Phone Bill.     miniStatus – Wondering what your website is worth? miniStatus will give you a number, though I'm not sure how accurate it is. Still, this is not a site to overlook: it will show you a number of very relevant statistics pertaining to your website such as its Google PageRank. Read more: miniStatus: Shows Website Value and Key Information.     Tweetlator – If you want to communicate sensibly with your Twitter followers in another language, then Tweetlator is the perfect app for you. Tweetlator is a Twitter-based application that translates your tweets written in your own language into English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, French, Japanese, and Chinese. Read more: Tweetlator: Instantly Translate Tweets Into Another Language.     ReminderFox – There are a lot of things that are happening when we surf the web and sometimes we forget to get things done because of the distractions that our browsers bring. Thus, having a reminder tool within your browser can help out a lot. Enter ReminderFox a browser based to-do list & reminder add-on for Firefox. Read more: ReminderFox: Browser based To-Do List & Reminder Addon.   Submit Your Web App 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 (171)makeuseof extra #27 (107)Finally Stick To Your Resolutions With StickK (51)Cool Websites and Tools [September 9] (62)Cool Websites and Tools [September 7] (72)Cool Websites and Tools [September 6]

Movers & Shakers : Top Windows Downloads Posted: 22 Feb 2010 06:30 PM PST     Two weeks ago we featured a new section called Movers & Shakers where we show you the top ten downloads from CNET. This will be a bi-weekly post and here are today’s Movers and Shakers. In first place with 259,675,081 total downloads is still AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition. I guess they are doing something right! They have a whopping 1,758,099 downloads in the last week! In second place, another Antivirus application Avast which has total of 74,453,348 downloads and an impressive 1,242,981 downloads this last week! Not quite as popular as AVG but it is moving on up! And here is the full top 10 list of most popular downloads in the last week: AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition Protect your computer from viruses and malicious programs. Avast Free Antivirus Protect your PC against the latest viruses and spyware. Avira AntiVir Personal – Free Antivirus Detect and eliminate viruses, free protection for home users. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Detect and quickly remove malicious threats to your computer. LimeWire Download files shared by millions on people. Share your files with others. YouTube Downloader Download YouTube videos and convert them to various formats to play them on Windows and portable devices. Ad-Aware Free Anti-Malware Protect your personal home computer from malware attacks. WinRAR (32-bit) Take full control over RAR and ZIP archives along with unpacking a dozen other archives. TeamViewer  Share your desktop screen with another person via internet, easily share files, and collaborate on something in real time. Orbit Downloader Free download manager for easier downloading of videos and music. The only big change was #9 which was FreeZ Online TV place two weeks ago but TeamViewer is a powerful application for screen sharing and fits much better in this list. Some people said they prefer 7Zip to WinRar as it is free – we are not judging the downloads but just reporting the facts as to what is actually more popular. And a lot of people continue using the demo version of WinRar indefinitely so to them it is free! You can check out the whole list of 20 from CNet. If you have any suggestions for this column, please post them in the comments! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Related posts (4)Movers & Shakers – Top Free Downloads (15)Use SkipScreen To Bypass Rapidshare Advertising Waiting Screens (17)Use Rapidstack To Find Favorite Rapidshare Download Links (20)Two Simple Yet Useful Firefox Add-Ons You Should Have (31)Top 5 Sites For Free Sound Effects Downloads

How To Download Google Books As A PDF File [Mac] Posted: 22 Feb 2010 05:30 PM PST Google comes up with the coolest services. Every time I look at the diversity of the things it can do, my jaw drops in awe. If you don’t agree with me, well — just think back. This little company began amazing us by providing the largest email inbox in history. Email! And now? We can’t live without Google’s services. Google Books is one of the offerings that completely blows my mind. The fact that I can now read magazines that was published way back before I was even born is absolutely astounding. The only teensy-weensy flaw that makes me cringe is the lack of offline support. If the magazine or classic that I’m reading is free, then it should be made freely available — even offline. That’s where Google Book Downloader comes in. Apparently Varun wrote about a similar application for Windows a while back. Just to clear any confusion, that app was called Melon Google Books Downloader and weirdly, it seems to have disappeared. This nifty Mac application allows you to download Google Books as PDF files and read them offline just like any other ebook you download. You can then sync those files to your iPhone, Android or any other mobile device which supports PDF. It’s very simple to use and quick too. Let’s run through it once, shall we? Download the application from the developer’s site hac the planet. As you can plainly see from the site, Google Book Downloader was designed to run with Leopard. However, I’m running Snow Leopard and the application works without a glitch. Perform the usual ritual of mounting the DMG and dragging the app to your Applications folder. Then there’s nothing left for you to do but run it. Basically, the app is a downloader and compiler. So don’t expect a juicy graphical user interface. All you get is an input field and a big Download button. Let me first point out that not all ebooks can be downloaded from Google Books. If you’re thinking that you will be able to download complete copies of ebooks with limited preview, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Again, only free ebooks will be available for download. In order to make any free ebook from Google Books into a PDF, copy the URL and paste it into the input field in Google Book Downloader. Hit Download and watch the magic happen. Google Book Downloader will retrieve the title of the ebook along with the contents and compile them into a nice little PDF. Now you will be able to read the ebook offline or on the go with your mobile device. As with every application, we have to discover the options Google Book Downloader allows. The only notable preference here is the width of the resulting document. Google Books Downloader will let you customise the width of the output PDF file. Why is this cool? Well because if the ebook is mainly text, then you can select to have the width equal the original document. However, if the ebook is mainly images, you can save some space by downsizing it — making it easier to copy over to and view from your mobile device. Google Book Downloader works only on Mac OS X 10.5 and above. Download it here. Do you prefer reading ebooks online or offline? Do you prefer having your ebook with you on the go? Are you familiar with any other tool that lets download Google Books ebooks as PDF files. Let us know your thoughts in the comments. Related posts (25)Use doPDF To Convert Documents To PDF (Windows) (175)The Best 6 Sites to Get Free Ebooks (4)Offer Your Readers A RSS To PDF Option With Feedbooks (14)Mobipocket – An Awesome ebook Reader Which is Free (10)How To Make Your Own Books From Wikipedia

4 Effective Tips To Ask a Girl Out On Facebook Posted: 22 Feb 2010 03:30 PM PST What I have to tell you could very well change your life. Was that too dramatic? Sorry about that. Anyway, you're probably here because you want advice on how to ask your dream girl out. Well, I believe I have some tips that can help you out. Now I'm no Erik von Markovik, but maybe I can give you a few creative ideas. As they say, there are plenty of fish in the sea. In this case, for all intents and purposes, Facebook is our sea. That's right, Facebook. We're on it every day anyway. Social networking has changed the way we do everything, so why wouldn't it change how we pursue the opposite sex? Why not do things where we're most comfortable? Let's face it; if you are reading this there is a decent chance you are a geek. Now that isn't a bad thing by any means, but what it also signifies is that if you are a guy geek, then statistically you are probably not so smooth with the ladies (stereotypically). That's okay, because geeky men are good at analytical thinking, in fact, so much so that we have broken down the art of 'picking up women' into an exact science…but that's another matter entirely. In this article, I'm going to offer up a few creative ideas for how to ask a girl out on Facebook, along with some general rules of thumb and occasionally a few satirical remarks (bare with me). I am going to do this very carefully as I do not want to be known as the "stalkerbook guy". How to Ask a Girl Out on Facebook – Introducing Yourself Let's start simple—introductions. You ask, "How should I introduce myself to this girl?" and like most good advice, the answer is, "That depends." Depending on whether or not you already know the person there are different ways to approach this. If you are already 'Facebook friends' with this person then you are off to a good start. We'll come back to you. If you are not Facebook friends with this person, then do you at least have any mutual friends? Or is it just somebody you've never met but are attracted to? In either case the first step is for you to 'friend' them. 99% of the time people will accept your friend request. If they don't, there is probably an underlying reason why they didn't and maybe you should just move on. Once accepted, there is a small chance you will get a message asking something along the lines of "I don't mean to be rude, but do I know you?" This is okay, just be honest. If you have mutual friends just explain to her that you know [insert name(s)] and wanted to get to know her as well. If there are no mutual friends just tell her that you saw her picture, liked what you saw, and that you thought she would be a nice person to get to know. Breaking the Ice Whether or not you followed the above advice and "friended" her, the next step is to strike up a conversation. You want to get to know the girl at least a little bit before asking her out. Remember, we're on Facebook. You are more of a stranger than if you were doing this in person. Here's where we start to get creative. Using Facebook chat, send the girl an "accidental" message. Sure, you could just say "Hi", but where's the fun in that? Besides, you risk looking like a stalker if you do it that way. She will be wondering why a person she doesn't know wants to talk to her. You'll have no chance. Anyway, to make it look authentic just type a random character like "L" or "o". Then, after a second or two, type "oops, sorry about that." She will respond with something along the lines of "that's okay". Congratulations boys, you're in. Feel free to be creative here. I would follow up with a question: "Do I know you?" or "How are you?" Ask anything, just get her to answer. If you followed step one you should already be past this point. Note: As you gals reading this may know (I realize there are a few of you), men are generally maniacal (pun intended). This means that while sometimes we come off as genuinely accidental, we are devious enough to have devised clever ways to talk to you. It's the way we are, sorry. Keep the Conversation Going After getting past the awkward 'who are you' phase, start talking to her about her hobbies, interests, work status, relationship status, etc. Can't think of anything else to talk about? Aw, if only you were on Facebook. Oh yeah, you are on Facebook. Study up! On the Info page of her profile, you'll find her activities, interests, favorite music, TV shows, books, movies, where she's from, what groups shes's in, etc.—tons of chances for you to have something in common or that you can talk about. There is no reason you can't use the information in her profile to keep the conversation going. After all, she scoped out your profile the second you started talking to her. Note: Girls, grab control of your Facebook privacy! If you make it so your personal information can only be viewed by your Facebook friends, you can control who sees your information by whose friend requests you approve. Mahendra has 8 steps for you to follow here, and 8 MORE steps here. Rinse & Repeat If she's really cool and you end up having a long conversation with her, feel free to ask her out. Say, "Hey we should meet up some time" or "What are you doing this weekend? Wanna hang out?" If she says "No" (she won't, an excuse is more likely) don't sound too dejected. Just follow up with "No problem! Maybe another time." If you aren't "feeling it" don't worry. Just tell her you’ll talk to her later and make an attempt to talk to her again some time. Really try to get to know her before you ask a girl out. Allow Me to Explain Upon reading this article, you may have thought to yourself, "Where's the romance?" Truth be told, that doesn't work all that well in this situation. Sure, I could have suggested you send her an electronic Facebook gift or leave nice comments on her Wall (feel free to try), but let's get practical here. Those types of actions are best suited for those who are already dating. Doing romantic things for someone you barely know, in my opinion, makes you look weak and it opens the door for rejection (unless she thinks you're cute, in which case you're fine). All girls love a good Cinderella story guys, but they also know a fairy tale when they see one. It's best to just talk to her and build some chemistry. The goal here is a high conversion rate, right? I hope you'll appreciate how difficult an article like this was to write. Although social networking is being widely accepted and growing rapidly, there are few rules (except the obvious ones) of how we should engage one another in these spaces. Follow your instincts and use all the Facebook tools at your disposal. Good luck! Leave your thoughts, ideas, and comments below, and please be gentle. Like I said before, I’m no expert. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Related posts (11)Top 5 Facebook Applications That Don’t Suck (32)Threadsy – Integrates Your Email and Social Networks (+Invites) (28)The Top 4 Risks You Face When You Use Facebook (13)The FarmVille Facebook Game Craze – Easy & Fun (19)Stay Socially Connected Online With Yoono

How Does Google Maps Work? [Technology Explained] Posted: 22 Feb 2010 01:30 PM PST Last week, we took a look at one of Google's flagship apps, Google Earth. Today I want to see how does Google Maps work? Undoubtedly, you've used this once or twice. I tend to use it for planning out jogging routes and printing off maps when taking a journey so I don't get lost. It's easy to navigate, has many easy options to print out or save your maps as well as place-marks for everyone else to view, such as those for businesses and landmarks. Google Maps is the most well-known map service on the net offering basic street maps, terrain maps, satellite images and hybrid view which is a combination of the street maps and satellite images. Setting up such a service and keeping it running as well as making it better constantly is a tough job, so let's take a look at how Google maps works. Source Of Information The map data you see in Google Maps is compiled by a private company with whom Google have a partnership. This company is called Tele Atlas and they are a world leader in navigation and location-based services. The maps are highly accurate and have been hailed for recording extremely rural areas and mapping the terrain correctly. Google Maps also coordinates with several other in-house application currently run by Google. The most obvious of these is Google Earth. The two services use each other’s data for coordinating satellite imagery and in updating newly-developed areas which have yet to be updated on both databases. Business and premises which are place-marked on maps have been supplied by directory listings. In the US, Google say that they use Yellow Pages directories but also mentions, "We aren’t currently able to share our full list of U.S. Yellow Pages sources." All other premises and place-marks are shared by users — which we will take a look at next. User Place Marks and Information You and I can also add place-marks of our own to Google maps under 'My Maps'. With this feature, we can highlight our own places of interest, local businesses or just post the areas where photos or videos were taken. These will be made available to everyone you invite to share the map with. This can be very useful when collaborating on large projects or just mapping out your family tree. For example, take a look at MakeUseOf writers’ map. Any company or business can also add place-marks and information to Google Apps by using Mapplets. Mapplets is a service, similar to Maps API which allows you to either add new features to Google Maps or to overlay information. An example of this would be a real estate company overlaying the location of all their properties for sale. These Mapplets are quite easy to create and can be created in around ten minutes for basic services. While Mapplets are similar to using Maps API, the two are different. The API can be used by developers to create their own maps for their own purposes. When you use Mapplets, you’re merely building on top of the existing product. Mobile Apps All of this has been a huge success on the web. However, Google have also rolled out numerous mobile apps so we can never get lost when we're on the go. The most well known would the the iPhone/iPod app. However, there are also versions for different smart phone operating systems and a Java version which works on basic cell phones which I covered here. These are all free but do have crippled functionality. All versions allow you to view map and satellite images and have the basic place-marks. But that's about as far as it goes. These were intended to be used on the go, not as the primary source of maps which should be left up to the Google Maps website. What do you use Google Maps for? em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers! Related posts (3)VR Google – The Panoramio Virtual Reality Tool That’ll Blow Your Socks Off (29)The Five Best Things About Google Maps (18)Take Google Maps Offline & Get Maps You Can Print using Google Maps Buddy (19)How To Use Google Maps On Your Basic Mobile Phone (5)How To Create Shared Collaborative Google Maps

Get Your IRS Tax Questions Answered at H&R Block For Free Posted: 22 Feb 2010 11:30 AM PST Here in the U.S., the deadline for filing our tax returns is a little less than two months away (April 15th, for those of you don't know.) And the folks at H&R Block have set up a website and produced a free iPhone app to answer IRS tax questions. It's similar to our own MakeUseOf Answers service where you get answers to tech related questions. Sure, the H&R Block answer service is a marketing tool to advertise their services. However, browsing the web and iPhone app, you can quickly see how useful the service is, whether you need the company's tax preparation services or not. Both the website and iPhone app formats for the Q&A service work in similar ways, but I prefer the iPhone app as the easier and less cluttered of the two formats. One of the features of the iPhone app is the 30-second quizzes about tax issues and common IRS tax questions. Here, try this sample quiz: Can your business deduct the cost of gifts to your clients? Yes/No You don't have to live in your home when it's sold to qualify for the capital gains exclusion? True/False Capital gains tax is on the appreciated value of an asset such as stock. True/False You can deduct the mortgage interest for 2 residents at a time. True/False As a volunteer, is the value of your time or service deductible? Yes/No (See correct answers at the end of this article.) The main part of the app of course is the Q&A, which consist of three parts: Recent and Popular IRS tax questions, and questions and answers broken down into categories. The last section is for you to ask your own questions, which requires a sign-up and log-in. Many of the questions I read were very typical and practical for most tax payers. Questions range from, "How do I fill out my taxes if my spouse passed away in 2009?" to, "I am currently buying a home. I am a first time homebuyer. Can I get the homebuyer tax credit for my 2009 taxes if I'm buying the home in 2010?” All IRS tax questions are answered by H&R Block experts, and each answer is typically no longer than a paragraph or two. And the answers don't end in a sales pitches to have H&R Block do you taxes for you. Questions and answers are also broken down into categories which include: Deductions & Credits, Work, Education, Real Estate & Rentals, Small Business, Retirement, Product, Investments, and Miscellaneous. Finally, there's a Glossary section that defines tax terms such as Accounting Period, Annuity, Casualty Loss, Child Tax Credit, Dividend, Hardship Withdrawal, etc. Of course, the app also includes information for contacting local H&R Block offices, including locations and maps, and the tax preparation products the company sells. In addition to Q&A's, the web format includes Tax Tips & Calculations, and a few blog posts which seem pretty new to the site. There are no blog archives for years prior to 2010. Unless you're a business or have complicated tax return issues, most tax returns can be completed without hiring someone to do the job for you. H&R Block's Q&A iPhone app and website might well be adequate for your needs. So do you complete and file your own tax returns or do you hire someone? What resources do you use to get taxes done? Answers to quiz: 1) Yes 2) True 3) True 4)True 5) No 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 (9)Learn How to File Bankruptcy In The United States Online (23)Never Forget To Pay Another Bill Again With Bills ~ On Your Table + Giveaway (30)Use BudgetSketch To Make A Household Budget That Works (22)TAS – Free Easy To Use Financial Accounting Software (6)Pocket Lint – A Money Management App For Paupers [Mac]

gleeBox– Browse The Web Faster & Save Lots of Mouse Clicks Posted: 22 Feb 2010 10:30 AM PST Douglas Engelbart did all of us a huge favor. He is the guy who invented the first mouse. Although it was way back in the sixties when even computers weren't common stuff, his device influenced the ones that came after it. And of course, till this day, it's influencing the way we work with the computer. Most of us would be hogtied around a computer without the mouse. It's not that modern computing is impossible without the mouse, but it asks for a huge change in behavior. Even then, as anyone can experience, in the race between keyboard shortcuts and mouse clicks, the keyboard usually wins out. That's why learning keyboard shortcuts is an oft preached (but seldom followed) skill to perform functions and navigate with your keyboard. Of course, there's no need to retire your trusty mouse. When you’re all alone with the keyboard, think of the commands you have to learn and master. That's just too much work. The second best solution is to use certain software which speeds up our work with the keyboard and save us from the toil of learning commands. We are already skipping that job by using application launchers. gleeBox is for the guy who loves typing on the keyboard more than clicking with the mouse. Specifically – gleeBox is a browser add-on that lets you navigate the web with your keyboard. Not the full range of controls, but a lot of it. In the end, with a bit of practice, going back, forth, and across a webpage gets considerably speedier. gleeBox comes in two avatars. It can be installed as an experimental add-on for Firefox and as a Google Chrome extension. The developer website has an introductory video which goes into the working of gleeBox. Saving extra mouse-clicks with gleeBox gleeBox defines some keyboard commands which help us move around the web. Starting from the basic 'g' which launches the application, the commands help us to launch a search, find links in the webpage and follow the link with an enter. For instance, I can type in a few letters for a link and gleeBox immediately highlights the link on the page. Pressing Enter, takes me to the URL. I can also press SHIFT+ENTER to open the page in a new tab. A search is as simple as entering a keyword and pressing Enter. gleeBox defines different types of commands. Scrapper commands start with a '?' and they help to select particular types of elements on the page like titles, linked images, form input fields and all links. Highlighted elements can be hopped using the Tab key. Some of the most useful commands can be executed with what gleeBox calls the Page Commands. A complete list of all commands is provided in the user manual. But without going into the specific command syntax here are just some of the things you can do with gleeBox. Direct the page to Readability and have a better reading experience. Readability makes web reading more focused by removing the clutter on the page. Use bit.ly to create a short URL for the page. Tweet the page with a short URL. Subscribe to the RSS feed in Google Reader. Share the page on social sites like Digg, Facebook, Twitter and StumbleUpon. Also, one can email the page using Gmail. gleeBox is also tied-in with YubNub.org which is a command line tool for the web. A previous post on YubNub will help you appreciate it better. Select your favorite commands from the thousands that are available with YubNub and zip across the web. gleeBox has some advanced features too which let you customize commands for a particular webpages. Called the ESP Mode, it allows you to keep a bank of ready to use shortcuts for the websites you visit most often. Definitely not the least, the Options under gleeBox let you customize the look and the feel of the default grey colored box. After all, if you take the pains to use it regularly, you would want to tweak it a bit. As the developers have pointed out, gleeBox speeds up a few things that we traditionally do with a mouse. Of course, some things will remain the domain of the mouse. But it's quite handy to have gleeBox on the side. Two tools are always better than one. Does the little add-on put the glee in your browsing? Or will you remain a lifelong mouse fancier? Let us know if gleeBox (ver.1.1) does something for you. em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers! Related posts (5)How To Master The Power of Mac Shortcut Keys (17)Enso Launcher: It Will Make You Feel Like a Hacker (17)Abandon Your Mouse & Click On Links With Your Keyboard (16)Windows System Tools at your Fingertips with FastKake (14)Welcome to My Firefox: Extensions, Themes, Setup

5 Bizarre Underground Websites That’ll Make You Go Hmmm Posted: 22 Feb 2010 09:30 AM PST I enjoy the bizarre. It’s no mistake that I’m interested in topics like ghosts, UFOs and other paranormal subjects. I enjoy walking the edge of the line that separates reality from fiction – those surreal moments when something that’s happening to you is way to strange to be true. In the spirit of the bizarre, I’d like to share a few websites I found that are very surreal – but they are also bizarre underground websites that are real. These are sites you can check out yourself. I call them “underground” sites because they are sort of tucked away into the dark recesses of the net, and remain sort of like unnoticed secrets to the select few who have found them. This is with the exception of a few that were noticed by sites like Mashable and CNet. But the “underground” aspect of them comes from the fact that the people who take part in these sites are clearly not mainstream – they exist in underground communities and they are connected to each other, in their common bizarre interests, through the magic of the Internet. LifeGem – Created from the Carbon of Your Loved One If you’re looking for a bizarre, underground website, this one absolutely takes the cake. At LifeGem, you can have carbon extracted from the cremated remains (or a lock of hair) of your loved one who recently passed away. They take this carbon and, after heating it, they place it in a “diamond press” and under extreme pressure and temperature, create a diamond out of that carbon. Now, I’ve heard of people doing some interesting things with the remains of their pets, but this is the first I’ve ever heard of turning a piece of a loved one into a piece of jewelry! It’s only the carbon of your loved one, extracted from the remains, but still…Ew? Poorly Dressed People PoorlyDressed is a fairly simple blog with a basic theme, but oh my, the content is both bizarre and funny at the same time. Have you ever been in a public place like a grocery store or a restaurant, and there’s one person who you just can’t stop looking at because their outfit is just so atrocious? Well, this website gives you a daily glimpse of these people from all around the world. Now, given there may be some places in the world where wearing a cartoon outfit and blue and purple mop hair is culturally accepted and considered cool, but when you see most of these outfits you’ll see that they go way beyond just odd or strange, they’re just plain wrong. Weird Vegas – I Guess it Doesn’t Stay in Vegas You know how the saying goes – “What goes on in Vegas, stays in Vegas?” Well, apparently, thanks to the Internet, the strangest and most bizarre things that go on in Vegas now get posted to WeirdVegas for your review. Check out the video game called “Urine,” a homeless man walking the streets with a giant pet rabbit, or check out the Stripper-Mobile – a glass-sided truck featuring a stripper pole-dancing as it roams down the strip (how does she DO that?) If you want to get an insider’s peak of what really goes on down in the streets and alleyways of Vegas before your next Vegas trip, this is the site to check out. Putting Weird Things in Coffee Now, there’s something kinda desperate about doing something weird on a blog simply to attract attention – but I have to admit, this one caught my attention. I love coffee, and I pride myself on having tried almost every coffee flavor out there – or so I thought. Putting Weird Things in Coffee changed all of that. Have you ever considered having an “Eggspresso” – complete with the whole egg, shell included? How about curried coffee…or better yet, smoked salmon cream cheese spread as a creamer? Yum – why don’t they sell these flavors at Starbucks? Please Rob Me I have to say, I don’t really enjoy websites that encourage negative or hurtful acts against other people, but Please Rob Me is a little bit different. While, on the surface, it appears to offer a service to potential robbers by letting them know about individuals who are traveling and not at home. It’s actually a creative aggregate of public Twitter posts where people blatantly provide a “check-in” – letting the whole world know where they are, and in the process letting the whole world know that they aren’t home. Please Rob Me serves as a tongue-in-cheek mockery of people who use Twitter in such an unsafe way – and as a warning to those people (are you one of them?) that posting these sort of updates to Twitter is a huge security risk, similar to letting your mail pile up outside your door, or leaving your doors unlocked and a sign on the door reading “gone on vacation,” – so don’t do it! Have you ever stumbled any really bizarre underground websites, or strange and surreal sites that just made you blink and go, “Hmmm?” Share your own online discoveries in the comment section below – the weirder the better! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Related posts (17)Turn Your Android Phone Into A Real Star Trek Tricorder (5)Top 5 Spooky Websites That Will Keep You Awake At Night (48)Top 10 Conspiracy Web Sites (49)The Seven Wonders of The World (Wide Web) (16)The 13 Sites to Understand and Analyze Your Dreams

What is Digital Photography? [Technology Explained] Posted: 22 Feb 2010 08:30 AM PST It has always been the desire of humans to be able to capture a moment and then perhaps re-live it sometime down the line. Up until a few years ago, photography used to be limited to a select few professionals or people willing to own and maintain a camera, film and then develop them into photographs. It won’t be far fetched to say that digital photography has revolutionized photography and brought it mainstream into the hands of common people. With mobile phones, cheap cameras and computers in homes, capturing memories is no big deal anymore. Let’s have a look at what is digital photography and how it works. So what is so revolutionary about digital photography? For starters, you need not know anything about aperture, shutter speed, white balance and jargon like that. Point the camera at the subject, press the button and you are done. While ease of this kind started with the film cameras as well, it was the digital camera that hit the nail on the head and made it real easy to take and view photos. In short, if your camera uses digital technology to create images, then it is digital photography. Generally (not always), this is the case if your camera doesn’t require adding a special photographic film to record images, you are most likely using a digital camera. How Does Digital Photography Work? To gain an understanding of how things work with regards to digital photography you should know a thing or two about how photos are taken in a film-based cameras. As is the case with our eyes, same with the camera. A camera sees an object because of the light which is reflected off it and into the camera’s lens. The lens of the camera is used to channel this light onto a plane, where it can be recorded and a photo created by one way or the other. This is the basic principle of photography. With time, the lens got better, the technology got better and the “plane” used to record the photos evolved as well. In a traditional film-based camera, this plane surface is a photographic film. The photographic film is nothing but a film coated with light sensitive material. So when the light from an object is directed onto this surface, it leaves an impression in the form of a photo. In digital photography, the photographic film is replaced by a silicon chip which is often called a sensor. While the film is limited in the sense that every exposure results in a photograph and each barrel of film can only produce 36 images; the silicon chip sensor can be used again and again — thereby giving you the ability to experiment with your photos in a way which was never possible with the film camera. So now most of the processing is electronic in the form of 0s and 1s as opposed to the mechanical and chemical operation in the traditional cameras. The cameras that operate based on this principle are known as digital cameras and the art of making digital images is called digital photography. The Megapixel Myth If you have been in the market to buy a digital camera, surely you have heard a thing or two about pixels or more commonly referred to as megapixels. Let’s try and demystify this. A digital image is made up of small dots known as pixels. Each pixel represents the tiny-iest unit of the photograph. The pixels combine and form the entire image. At this point if you are thinking that more pixels results in a sharper image, I don’t blame you — that is the general misinterpretation. The amount of pixels in a photograph only determines the maximum output size of the resulting image in print. A higher pixel count does not represent higher quality images. Read about David Pogue’s experiment and findings over at NYT about the Megapixel Myth for more. via Wikimedia Commons What is good digital camera then? Answering this question will require a separate article. That said, the one bit of advice that can’t be stressed upon enough is “Don’t fall prey to the Megapixel Myth”. You really don’t need all those extra pixels if you are viewing the photos on your computer or taking a medium-sized print of the odd photo. Instead, look for features like image stabilization, auto focus, face recognition, file format support and other favourable features. These would have a greater impact on your photos, especially if you are just starting out. Do you own a digital camera? We would be pleased if you shared your experience and tips with the world. em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers! Related posts (34)Technology Explained: How Does A Digital Camera Work? (0)How To Properly Use The Image Playback Feature On Your Digital Camera (19)12 Ideas On How To Take Better Photographs (31)Tips For Taking Digital Photography Using Live View (6)Start The New Year With A Flickr Self-Portrait Project

Get A FREE Copy of Windows® 7 Plain & Simple From O’Reilly [MakeUseOf Giveaway] Posted: 22 Feb 2010 07:30 AM PST Recently switched to Windows 7 and find yourself lost in the transition? Are you just starting to use a PC and consider Windows 7 too advanced or complicated? Don’t be too hard on yourself — there are others just like you. That’s why we’re giving away 15 copies of Windows® 7 Plain & Simple from O’Reilly Media. The authors, Jerry Joyce and Marianne Moon break down the latest operating system from Microsoft and make learning really simple. Find out how to grab a copy after the jump. What we’re giving away are 15 copies of the electronic version of this book (worth $17.99 each) which you will be able to download directly from O’Reilly.com to enjoy on your PC, Kindle, Android or iPhone. Here’s a quick quote from O’Reilly about Windows® 7 Plain & Simple: Get fast facts that make learning Windows 7 plain and simple! This no-nonsense guide uses easy, numbered steps and concise, straightforward language to show the most expedient way to perform tasks and solve problems in Windows 7. Convinced that this is what you need? How do you win one? It’s really easy! All you need to do is; Join our Facebook page by clicking on the image below. Then another click on the “Become a fan” button (illustrated by the arrow) and you’re almost done! To seal the deal, come back here and click on the Facebook Share button below the article to spread the news with your friends. The same applies if you’re already a following us on Facebook: as long as you’re a fan and shared this with your friends, you’re in the running! You can also write on our wall to share your excitement, if you want. This giveaway ends at 5:30pm PST on Friday, 26 Feb 2010. Between now and then, you can share this post or write on our wall as many times as you want! The more you interact, the higher your chances of winning. Fifteen winners will be randomly selected from our fan pool and notified via Facebook message. An announcement post will follow the next day. Let the giveaway begin! Have fun! Interesting in sponsoring a giveaway? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! Related posts (23)Your Easy Guide to Windows 7 Themes (94)Windows 7 Libraries Explained – And Why You Want Them (14)Vista Switcher – Replace Windows’ Alt-Tab With Something Cooler (8)Upgrade To Windows 7: Requirements & Installation Tips (16)Tweak Windows XP/Vista/7 to Your Taste with XdN Tweaker

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