Thursday, February 25, 2010

MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [February 24th]” plus 8 more

MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [February 24th]” plus 8 more

Link to MakeUseOf.com

Cool Websites and Tools [February 24th]

Posted: 24 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.

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Assemble – Meeting out with your friends? Why not let your iPhone send the location of your meeting place to them? Assemble is an iPhone app that lets you easily map meeting point and send it to your contacts with a personalized message. It sends a map to help your friends get to a particular location so that you can meet them easily. Read more: Assemble: Easily Map Meeting Point & Share (iPhone).

 

MeetOrDie – is a fun little meeting cost calculator that tells you how much money has been squandered by your company for a meeting. You start by entering a few details about your company along with information on meeting attendees and meeting length. MEETorDIE's script than collects information from various online sources. Read more: MEETorDIE: Meeting Cost Calculator.

 

 

CarryOutText – Not a huge fan of reading? Try converting the articles into an audio file so you can listen to them on your iPod or mobile phone. CarryOutText is a dead simple tool that lets you convert text into MP3 audio in 2 simple steps. Read more: CarryOutText: Convert Text Into MP3 Audio.

 

 

BreezyFAQ – One of the first links that I looks for when I visit a website is an FAQ, especially if it's a service that I'm about to sign up for. An FAQ, short for Frequently Asked Questions, is a compilation of questions that the site's owners get frequently asked. BreezyFAQ is a hosted solution for managing and adding searchable FAQs to any website. Read more: BreezyFAQ: Makes Adding Searchable FAQs To Your Site A Breeze.

 

 

BgRepeat – Tiled wallpaper, simple patterns that fit together when placed side-by-side, was the primary wallpaper back in the age of Windows 3.1. While that era of computing is generally not revered for its aesthetics, tiled patterns can look really cool when used properly. Enter Bgrepeat, a modern-day repository of minimalist tile-style backgrounds. Read more: Bgrepeat: Cool Patterns For Desktop, Blog Or Twitter Page.

 

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These are just half of the websites that we discovered in the last couple of days. If you want us to send you daily round-ups of all cool websites we come across, leave your email here. Or follow us via RSS feed.

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Make Classes Fun By Teaching History CSI Style

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 05:30 PM PST

Is History Dead???As a kid, I shuddered when history teachers tried to make memorizing dates and facts fun. Generally, dressing up and acting out the part of Susan B. Anthony had something to do with my personal distrust of 80s-style active learning techniques.

Fortunately for kids today, times have changed, and the Information Super Highway plowed over the Brady-Bunch approach to teaching and learning.

How do history teacher’s make learning fun these days? Some use programs like Teen Second Life or materials from the National Archives, but the teacher still has to create his or her own lesson plans for those tools to work.


Once the hunt starts, teachers become overwhelmed by the volume of materials available, and return to the textbook in an effort to stay sane. Lesson plan sites often charge teachers for sub-standard lessons that do not tie into government educational mandates.

My hope was to find a lesson plan site for history that was both free and fun. I wanted to find something that would engage the students and foster a love of learning while relying on ethical use of internet content.

In hunting around for a best practice site, I stumbled on a nugget of gold: HSI: Historical Scene Investigation.

Solving History, CSI Style

Like a CSI, kids solve “crimes” using evidence (historical documents). Although the site is simplistic in style, the creators of the site, Dr. Kathleen Owings Swan, Assistant Professor of Social Studies Education at the University of Kentucky and Dr. Mark Hofer, Assistant Professor of Educational Technology at the College of William and Mary, did their homework in creating these historical investigation lesson plans.

The site is easy to use, and students and teacher’s have no problem accessing the links. While the graphics could be a little flashier, the ease of use is most important, and students with dial up (ye gads, they still exist?) can access the materials from home as well as students with speedier networks.

Students Crack the Case!

Students with alternate abilities will be able to use screen readers, and homeschoolers or people interested in learning a bit about history can dive right in!

While the site appears to be geared toward a younger audience (K-8), the primary documents used in the cases are excellent starting points for teachers or parents in advanced grades who want to buff up the assessment or challenge.

The historical investigation lesson plans cover 14 cases, and all of them include a student and teacher view. Readers are encouraged to submit ideas, as well. Each case comes with links to primary documents and offers up a challenge for students to investigate.

One investigation, “The Case of Sam Smiley,” asks students to create a timeline, build a personality profile of him, and then generate a hypothesis for his cause of death. This is the only case that is not historical, but it teaches students the tools historians use to crack cases.

All of the historical cases offer accurate documentation and prompt students to rely on their analytical abilities in determining an outcome.

My favorite, “I Smelt a Rat! Constitution Controversy” asks students to look at the men who did not sign the Declaration of Independence.

After reading an excellent selection of primary documents, students must determine why men like Patrick Henry and George Mason did not support the signing of the Constitution. Truly, I never really thought about the guys that stormed out the door and ran home to complain to their wives.

HSI: Historical Scene Investigation is a rock-star educational site that engages students and helps them think beyond dates and times. Students become stakeholders in the learning process without having to dress up like Benjamin Franklin. Truly, the digital age is good.

Are there any teachers out there who source the Internet for cool teaching tools and lesson plans? Share them with us in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Test Landscaping Ideas For Your House With Showoff The Visualizer

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 03:30 PM PST

backyardEvery spring, I start getting the landscaping bug. As the snow slowly melts, revealing the brown grass and limp leaves that I never got around to raking in the fall, my mind starts running through all sorts of landscaping ideas. Would a stone walkway look good in the front of the house? Would a pool take away from the outdoorsy feel of my back yard?

If you’ve had similar landscaping ideas, then you know that it’s very hard to gauge whether a project will end up looking good or not until you’re halfway through it. For projects that can cost upwards of a few thousand dollars or more to complete, finishing such a landscaping idea and realizing that it looks horrid is not a very good feeling.

In the spirit of spring and for all of you homeowners (and even renters with a backyard) I would like to present a very cool, new online tool called Showoff the Visualizer.

Test Indoor Decorating Ideas as well as Landscaping Ideas

Showoff the Visualizer is a photo editing tool that lets you take images of the inside or outside of your home, and then overlay your home decorating or landscaping ideas on top of the actual image. It’s a brilliant concept, because unlike Project Dragonfly, reviewed on the MUO directory or unlike  Floorplanner, which I reviewed earlier, Showoff the Visualizer allows you to immediately start testing your ideas without the need to build a 3D model of your home or backyard from scratch.

landscaping ideas

After you register (all you need is an email address), you’ll be greeted with the main menu, where you can either upload your own photos, test drive the app with sample photos, browse through the Visualizer’s showroom of available design and landscaping products, and also view images of some of the landscaping ideas other users have submitted – a great way to find landscaping ideas for your own house when you’re stumped.

There are a few minor details I noticed about the site right off the bat. While the overall design is fairly professional, there are a few minor mistakes that give it that “fresh and untested” feel. For example, the links on the main menu are bolded black, so you don’t really know they’re links unless you place your mouse cursor over them. Another thing is that many of the showcase products don’t have any vendors yet. Finally, I noticed a few misspelled words around the site, like the main menu link offers “Real Estate Listinings.” Still, due to the functionality and usefulness of the site (and the fact that it’s free) – it’s easy to overlook these minor flaws.

Backyard Landscaping Ideas

If you do use your own photos, make sure to set your digital camera on one of it’s highest resolution settings, because the Showoff Visualizer really lets you zoom in on the photo so that you can add very small details, like flowers (which I’ll show you further down).

landscaping ideas

The online app works perfect if you’ve taken a very nice, crisp and clear photo of your yard with your digital camera. Don’t forget to take different areas of your yard so you can plan out your landscaping ideas and make sure they really look the way you imagine.

landscaping ideas

Choosing an item from the catalog is so easy – and unlike so many other online applications like this, your selection isn’t limited to just a few items. Browsing through the catalog items is a lot of fun – and in all honesty, that’s the brilliance of this marketing scheme. You see, this entire application is free because it’s a way to market landscaping and home decorating products to you. By providing a useful service for free to you, the Internet user, the makers of this application have a captive audience. Then they turn to vendors of these products and let them advertise as a integrated part of the tool.

free landscaping design program

When you select the product to use as part of your landscaping (here I chose poppies), a box of vendors where you can buy those items shows up in a place that isn’t really in the way of your main window. The one thing that’s still a little bit “off” is that when you rotate the smaller image to make it look right, the perspective is a bit off – try rotating the pool and you’ll see what I mean. The rotation takes place in 2D, looks rather silly with some objects.

Like how the item looks? Click the “Buy” button on the item you’re placing and you can purchase it immediately. It’s an excellent marketing approach using free software offered to the potential customer – I only wish I’d thought of it first!

Interior Decorating Ideas

In addition to testing out your landscaping ideas on images of your back yard, you can also play around with different decorating ideas using photo snapshots you’ve taken inside your house.

free landscaping design program

In the photo above, I’m trying to see how a candle holder will look on the kitchen counter. If you don’t have a photo of the inside of your house, or you’re moving to a new place that’s going to be empty and you just want to play around with rearranging furniture, then just select one of the empty room templates.

free landscaping design program

The, just start placing furniture and playing around. By the way, rotating objects like chairs or sofas is a joke – unless you want a chair hanging upside down from the ceiling!

Overall, this free online application is very fresh and very new – so expect that things may not work perfectly. However,the fact that you can overlay pre-made objects onto photos of your actual house rather than a fabricated 3D replica makes it very useful to getting a much better idea of how something may look. In fact, doing this, you may realize that your landscaping idea would be a total flop, and you could avoid some pretty costly mistakes.

So give it a try and leave your experiences and feedback on the ShowOff Visualizer in the comments section below.

em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!

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Xoom – An Alternative Method To Withdraw Funds From PayPal To A Local Bank

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 01:30 PM PST

PayPal recently caused a lot of furore and confusion when they announced “temporary halting” of payments to India. Every other person was left outraged and stranded with no means to withdraw funds from PayPal to a local bank. Xoom is a service that aims to solve such a crisis from affecting PayPal users. Apart from allowing you to withdraw from PayPal to a local bank, Xoom also lets you send money globally at really reasonable rates.

Here’s how you can use Xoom to move your PayPal money to a local bank account.

Sign up for the service

Head over to the Xoom website, and sign-up for their service. The website automatically detects your country and shows you the exchange rate that you can get for your precious dollars. Once you sign-up, you need to verify your email address. Head over to your inbox and click the validation link there.

Transferring Money

After completing the verification process, use your credentials to sign-in to the Xoom website. Click on the Send Money link at the top of the page. You will land at the page shown below.

Xoom_Send_Money

Select Send Money To A New Recipient and select a country from the drop-down list. Enter the amount to send in the text box to the right side of the screen. Then click on the Calculate Fee button to calculate the fees that you will be charged for the transaction. Although the transaction fees appear steep, many-a-time you can evade those by using a coupon code that you can find by performing a search online. I managed to find a few but they expire pretty quickly.

Now you’ll be presented three options for your transaction. Select the one that suits you best. Let’s select bank deposit for this example.

Xoom_Options

Now, you’ll be redirected to a page where you need to enter recipient information. Simply enter all the details of your (or anyone else’s) bank account. This is the bank account where you want to receive the money. Make sure you enter accurate details as these will be verified with the bank once you authorize the transaction. After entering the details, click Next at the bottom of the page.

Xoom_ReciInfo

Once you click Next, you’ll be taken to a Payment Information page. Under Service Type, select Pay With Your Debit Card, Credit Card, or PayPal Account. Under Select a Payment Method, select PayPal. Now comes the good part. If you’ve got a coupon code, enter it in the text box under Coupon Code (optional), and click Apply.

Thereafter, click Next.

Xoom_PayInfo

Finally, you will be taken to a Review Your Transaction page. Here, you will be provided a summary of your transaction. Make sure all the details are correct (it is after all, your hard earned money!). If there are any changes to be made, hit Back and make them, else click on Authorize.

On clicking Authorize, you’ll be taken to a PayPal authorization page where you need to put in your PayPal credentials. Once you do that, you need to authorize the payment from your within your PayPal. Thereafter, you’ll be taken back to the Xoom website and a summary for your transaction will be shown to you. A link to the transaction summary will also be automatically be emailed to you.

Xoom_PayPal

Lastly, heave a contented sign of relief as your PayPal money is transferred to your local account (especially if you are an Indian).

Xoom_Summary

If you are one of the many plagued by India’s PayPal blackout, give Xoom a try. If you aren’t, you’ll still love the convenience it offers for transferring funds all over the world.

Let us know about your experience (or any alternatives) in the comments.

Image Credit: stock:xchng

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Design Your Own Wordpress Theme Easily With Constructor

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 11:30 AM PST

The broad choices of themes is one of the major factors that make Wordpress so great. There are literally thousands of themes out there for you to choose from. Whatever your taste and needs, chances are, there are themes that will suit you.

But this factor is also one of Wordpress’ drawbacks. As Seth Godin put it in his book, too many choices will make people panic. They lose the ability to choose the best and might end up not choosing any of the available choices. And unless you design your own Wordpress theme (or pay somebody to do it), there will be no perfect theme for you.


While hiring a theme designer would be too much of a burden for an ordinary blogger, you can easily design your own Wordpress themes with the help of a particular Wordpress theme called Constructor.

Constructing Your Own Wordpress Theme

Recently, as part of my just-published MakeUseOf ebook: “Recording Your Next Hit With GarageBand“, I needed to quickly create a website. The choices were: build my own design with iWeb, or accept whatever theme that I could find for Wordpress for the sake of richer functionality.

Constructor came to save my day. By using the features of this highly tweakable theme, I can have the best of both worlds.

You can find and install Constructor directly from your Wordpress’ theme admin page.

01 Search and Install Themes.jpg

Then after the installation and activation, click on the Customize link on the Appearance tab in the left sidebar.

02a Customize Theme.jpg

The Constructor customization area will be displayed. There are so many elements that you can adjust there, and the combination of different settings of every element will design your own unique Wordpress theme.

Let’s start with Theme tab. Constructor comes with several mini themes that you can choose as the base of the theme that you are going to build. Pick one and save your choice.

02b Customize Theme - themes.jpg

Then comes the Layout tab. Here is the place to choose what kind of layout that you want to use for your group of pages like homepage and archive page.

02c Customize Theme - Layout.jpg

The next element that you can tweak is the Sidebar. You can decide the number and the positions of the sidebars. You can also set the width of the sidebar, extra bars and the containers.

02c Customize Theme - Sidebar.jpg

The Header tab deals with all the elements of the header like the header height, font color of the title, those kinds of things.

02d Customize Theme - Header.jpg

The Content tab deals with elements of the blog posts, such as: hiding/displaying the author’s link, auto-generating thumbnails and creating an additional widget area under the post.

02e Customize Theme - Content.jpg

There’s nothing much going on in the Comments tab other than adjusting the size of commenter’s avatar.

02f Customize Theme - Comments.jpg

As the name suggests, the Font tab will let you choose which combination of fonts to use. But I personally think that the number of available choices is too little.

02g Customize Theme - fonts.jpg

The Color tab lets you choose colors and transparency of the theme.

02h Customize Theme - Colors.jpg

The Design tab deals with borders and shadow.

02i Customize Theme - Design.jpg

Constructor also comes with an option for users to include their own CSS style.

02j Customize Theme - CSS.jpg

If you want to use your own graphics for the site, you can manually upload them via the Images tab.

02k1 Customize Theme - Images.jpg

And for those who feel confused about which one is which in the image, you can click the question mark to get help.

02k2 Customize Theme - Image Help.jpg

The last function tab is Slideshow tab. The function is to allow users to display slideshows of images from the existing articles. Just check the box “Enable”.

02l Customize Theme - Slideshow.jpg

The Help tab contains link to Constructor-related websites and donation request. If you like the theme, you may donate the author some money via PayPal.

02m Customize Theme - Help.jpg

And this might be the most important ab of all: the Save tab. After making changes here and there, you might want to save your creation as a new sub theme under Constructor. Write down the necessary information and then click the “Save Theme” button.

02m Customize Theme - save theme as-1

Enjoy your creation

To get the best result, you have to experiment with each and every element one by one. Do a couple of small changes, save, and preview the result. Continue doing it until you are satisfied.

Just to give you an idea of how far the theme customization can go, here’s the result of my creation that I use for my website dia.lo.gues. I use iWeb to create the design for the main page, then replicated the look using Constructor in Wordpress.

03 [ dia.lo.gues ].jpg

The customization process is rather long and will require you to go back and forth between the admin area and your blog’s main page. So, some of you with active blog(s) with tons of visitors might want to experiment with this theme safely behind the curtain.

There are other highly customizable themes available for Wordpress. You can perform a search in the Wordpress Free Themes Directory using the word “customizable” as the search string.

Do you customize your Wordpress theme or you just use one without modifications? Do you know other good alternatives to customizable Wordpress themes? Share using the comment below.

em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!

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How To Build a Mind Map In Microsoft Word

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 10:30 AM PST

MindmapIt is said that an average person has 12,000 to 50,000 thoughts in a day. Of course, a genius might have more than you and I, but the figure mentioned was the hypothetical traffic that goes on in our brain. Our thoughts rarely go from Point A to Point B in a straight line. More likely, they flit about like a firefly caught in a jar.

This is where a tool like a Mind Map comes in use. A mind map is not a case sheet for a psychologist but simply a diagram that helps to connect related ideas or concepts around a central thought.

Try it out if you haven't before…it is a great idea-capturing device to bring some order to the chaos that's our brain.


By putting down ideas or thoughts on a mind map, the brain is encouraged to think from every aspect. A mind map also encourages brainstorming. It forces the brain to think in terms of relationships between ideas rather than forcing everything into hierarchies or lists. The bottom line about mindmapping is that it's all about 'visuals' — words connected to graphical elements that makes it easy for us to take in large amount of data.

There are specialized applications for creating mind maps. But the simplest tool could be a paper and some pens. The second simplest when you don't have software installed could be to create a mind map in MS Word. But first…

Simple Rules For Effective Mind Maps

  • Think of the central idea and write it down in the middle.
  • Think of related ideas and place them radially around the central idea. Connect all ideas with meaningful relationships. Use lines, colored lines, shapes, pictures, etc. to graphically describe ideas and relationships.
  • Leave lots of space between ideas because new filler ideas and relationships will come in as the mind map grows.
  • Go with the flow.

Simple Mind Maps in MS Word Using Illustration Tools

Creating a mind map in Word is easy with basic shapes and flowcharts. Extended by other illustration tools like Callouts, Lines and Clip Art and a pinch of creativity; MS Word can effectively become a mind mapping tool. Let's look at the tools we can use to construct a mind map.

The landscape mode gives the most horizontal area to work with. In a New Word Document, select Page Layout – Orientation – Landscape. If you want to finally print it, select the right Size in the Page Setup group.

mind map in word

Most of the tools we can use lie in the Illustrations group on the Insert tab.

Click on Shapes which has all basic building blocks for a mind map. Simple shapes like ovals or rounded rectangles can be used to represent the central ideas. All shapes can be easily labeled with Text Box. Lines and arrows can be stretched out and connected to represent relationships. Shapes as all other elements can be copied and pasted, thus helping to put down the main ideas rapidly as nodes and sub-nodes.

mind map in word

All elements can of course, be elaborated using the full range of the Drawing Tools. Drawing the first shape brings up the contextual Drawing Tools tab. The best thing is that a mouse-over on any tool gives us a live preview of how the diagram is turning out.

mind map in word

To change the properties of the shape, right click on the selected shape and select Format AutoShape from the context menu.

MS-Word-DrawingTools2

Any options for Lines connects all the nodes and sub-nodes. Lines are also AutoShapes and their look or angles of rotation can be similarly changed from Format AutoShape or from the Ribbon (double click on the shape to bring up the Format tab).

MS-Word-DrawingTools3

Shapes and lines can be labeled with text to define the relationships. However, MS Word limits text orientation to vertical or horizontal. Text cannot be rotated to an angle as in PowerPoint, just yet. (Though, in MS Word 2010, one can). Callouts can be used to mark out extra data.

Mind maps can be illustrated with images from the Clip Art gallery or from an image on the hard drive. While inserting images, use the corner handles to define the size of the image.

MS-Word-DrawingTools4

Creating a mind map in Word can be extended by adding hyperlinks to external sources. Though, a workaround to add notes or attachments within the MS Word file is not there.

Here is a mind map that explains the various elements of what else, but a…mind map!

MindMap01

The Last Word on MS Word as a Mind Mapping Tool

MS Word (and even MS PowerPoint) is useful as a rapid tool for building a mind map. It's better than a pen and paper, because you can easily update it by adding or rearranging the topics. You can copy it to the other Office programs and if need be, even print it out. Presenting it with PowerPoint or email sharing are added options.

MS Word is not a dedicated tool for mind maps. Tools like FreeMind have greater flexibility. Just to cite one feature, it's not possible to collapse and open the branch nodes in MS Word.

But MS Word can make mind maps. Are you open to the idea? Let us know.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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iFlipr: A Free Tool to Make Flash Cards Online

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 09:30 AM PST

flash card programIn my college days, using flash cards to prepare for foreign language and other related exams were essential to my memorization process. In my day, you bought a pack of 3×5 cards and performed the labor of writing a question on one side of the card and the answer on the other side. Today, this process can be done faster because now you can make flash cards online. There are several flashcard sites that share cards and provide you a way to quickly create your own.

We at MakeUseOf have pointed out 3 Sites to Make Flash Cards for Your Kids. This how-to article focuses on another site called iFlipr.com, which has a very simple and direct setup, but its features are not quite as obvious as you might expect, especially for young users.

Using iFlipr.com

After signing up and logging in, you have options for searching or browsing existing flashcard decks or make your own flash cards online. The several dozens of featured and popular decks include topics like Spanish, French, and Greek languages; the U.S. States/Capitals; 2 letter scrapple words; Human Anatomy Images; and MCAT Organic Chemistry. To discover less popular cards, you need to conduct a search term or keywords provided by other users.

make flash cards online

To use and study a set of cards is a little complicated for young or first time users. Once you locate a deck, you click the word Practice. Next, it's is a good idea to click Settings and do the following.

  1. Click Reset Mastery Levels to start a new study of the cards. This is reset all your previous answers you've made to a deck of cards.
  2. Select the Study Mode: Flashcards, for the traditional front question and the answer on the back; or Multiple Choice, in which the system randomly provides answers listed below question. Depending on how the cards were created, the study mode you select may be a little confusing.
  3. Select the Card Order: Front to Back, which presents the cards in the order they were created. The default “Leitner” order is based on a flashcard system that basically groups cards based on your previous use and success with knowing or not knowing the correct answer. So after you've practiced with a deck of cards a few times, then try the Leitner system for a different arrangement.
  4. Select the deck order: front to last or last to first.
  5. Click Keep Practicing to start from the beginning or Done to exit the deck.

Practicing and studying with a deck is pretty simple. In the traditional back and front study mode, you see the question and say to yourself what should be the answer on the back of the card. When you hit the green arrow button, it will take you to the answer. From there, you click the red cross if you got it wrong or the green tick if you got it right.

make flash cards online

In the multiple choice study mode, the top selection is the question and the options below are the possible answers. Click on one, and if you get a smiley face, it's of course correct; a sad face indicates a wrong choice.

make flash cards online

Creating a Deck

If you can't find a deck created for your needs, you can use the simple what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) deck editor. It's fairly simple. After clicking on the Create button, do the following in the editor:

flash card program

  1. Select the front box on the right of the editor.
  2. Write your question in the top left box.
  3. Go back and select the "back" box on the far right.
  4. Optional: If you want, you can add a small image.
  5. Write the answer to the question in the box below.
  6. Click Save to create the next card.

Be sure to give your deck a name, description and some keywords so that it can be searched and used by others. The deck will be saved to your account and you can choose to share it or make it private for your own personal use.

The developers of iFlipr.com have also created a $4.99 iPhone app that can be used independently or with the web application.

So do you or your kids use flashcards for studying? What options have you found useful?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Why I Decided To Make Google My Home Page and Never Looked Back

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 08:30 AM PST

google as home pageHome pages have perhaps never been less relevant than now, the age of tabbed browsing and browsers capable of restoring previous sessions. Since I decided to make Google my home page in 2003, I’ve never really thought of switching.

There are some good reasons for my decision to make Google my home page. Google’s home page is clean, loads quickly and allows me to perform a search instantly if I so choose. Combine this with links to services I use constantly including Google News and Gmail and I’ve got a solid place to start my browsing. Maybe someday I’ll find a better alternative, but for now there’s nothing that suits me quite like Google’s ultra-clean home page.


But the main reason I decided to make and keep Google as my home page is that I’ve never found anything I liked better. Let’s discuss a few of the alternatives out there, and then give you guys a chance to offer a better way.

Portals suck

Technology is hard to keep up with, let alone predict. Although pundits who claimed web portals would be the media empires of the future were laughably wrong, they really can’t be blamed for that.

Web portals were supposedly going to be everyone’s homepage of choice. If you’re not sure what a web portal is, check out AOL or MSN. These sites offer not only a search bar, but a variety of headlines and links to other online services.

Compare this to Google and the difference as clear as night and day: Google is a search engine, first and foremost. Besides the Google logo and a few small links to other services, Google.com is clean.

This cleanliness is the main reason I made Google my home page. When I start my browser, I don’t want distractions in the form of news headlines or gadgets. I want at most to search for something, and I want whatever my home page is to load quickly so I can get to it right away. That means I like Google, and hate portals.

To point out what I mean, here’s Google:

make google my home page

And here’s MSN:

make google my home page

Google is clean, doesn’t present anything I don’t need — allowing me to quickly start a search if I want to.

But of course, portals aren’t the only alternative to Google. Let’s explore some other alternatives and see why Google comes out on top.

Bing’s alright, but not perfect

There’s actually a lot to love about Bing as a home page. It’s free of clutter and, unlike Google, features amazing photography every single day. Check it out:

make google my home page

Seeing how clean this is, why wouldn’t I use it as my home page? And no, it’s not depression about the USA defeating my home and native Canada. The problem is that those photos do take some time to load, and I’m looking for an instant home page. Picky, I know, but those are my rules and I’m sticking too them.

The other reason is that, while Bing’s search is improving every day, I still prefer Google’s search result to that for Bing’s.

Is this just my opinion? Absolutely. Is my opinion correct? In my humble opinion, yes: my opinion is always objectively correct. Feel free to tell me I’m wrong in the comments below.

Nope, no iGoogle

So if portals are out, and Bing’s elminated, why not go with Google’s own custom home-page service, iGoogle?

First of all, because it’s a portal. Yes, it’s different from most other portals in that I can customize it however I like, but that doesn’t change the fact that it takes longer than a second to load and features widgets I’m not really interested in.

Additionally, iGoogle has a habit of preventing me from seeing Google’s famous doodles. For a couple week’s now I’ve been enjoying artistic renderings of Olympic athletes. I know it’s silly, but I don’t want to miss those.

Fav4.org is a close second

google as home page

I have to admit, if there’s a site close to replacing Google as my home page it’s fav4. This site features nothing but four icons that link directly to prominent web sites around the net. Best of all, pressing the numbers one through four on your keyboard loads a site accordingly.

This site meets all my qualifiations: it’s clean, loads quickly and serves as a launching point to my browsing without feeding me useless information.

Unfortunately, I can’t find four sites amongst the options listed that I want quick access to. I’ll be keeping an eye on this one, though.

Conclusion

I’ve yet to find a home page better than Google. It’s clean, it links to service I use constantly and–last but not least–allows me to launch a search as soon as my browser opens.

What about you guys? Do you have a favorite home page? What is it? Help me replace Google by informing me in the comments below!

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4 Common Windows 7 Problems And How To Fix Them

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 07:30 AM PST

microsoft windows 7 Most Windows 7 problems are related to the upgrade process. Do a clean install if and when you can. You can also refer to my previous article on how to resolve 3 upgrading issues with Windows 7 here. If you are still having issues, hopefully we cover them below. If not, hit us up in the comments or ask it over at MakeUseOf Answers.

We are going to run through 4 Windows 7 problems or issues that you can have on your new Windows 7 machine regardless of the version.

Hopefully these answers will help you out and make Windows 7 the best operating system yet.


There are certain things I do right away when getting a new machine. One of the things I do is disable hibernation as I do not want a huge hiberfil.sys file on my hard drive. But how do I disable it?

I could not find an option anywhere but I went looking online and found a registry option that will permanently disable hibernation and return my precious space back to me. Now I do not like recommending registry modifications when I do not have to, so I found a little command line magic from the HowToGeek. You will need to right click on the command prompt from your start menu and choose “Run as administrator”. Then you can type this command:

powercfg /hibernate off

windows 7 problems

You will need to manually remove the hiberfil.sys and you are good to go.

The next issue we will discuss is the lack of Windows Mail, Movie Maker and Photo Gallery. Windows 7 is a beast and they trimmed the fat, so to speak a little. The installation of your operating system no longer contains a bunch of items. If you find yourself missing one of these items you can quickly download the ones you want from the Windows live Essentials site.

windows 7 problems

Click download, start the installer, choose what you want and you are on your way to emailing, messaging, making movies and more. I like this simply because it reduces the bulk of your operating system.

Our next issue with Windows 7 is a problem I have always had on all my Windows Operating systems since Windows 2000. This is the hiding of known file extensions. This is a great way to be attacked by a virus. If a file is titled Innocent.Doc.VBS, you will only see the icon for a Word Document, making it easier to click on. Hopefully your antivirus software will not let you shoot yourself in the foot. Let’s fix this issue by going to Explorer and clicking Tools > Folder Options > View.

windows 7 problems

Simply uncheck the box next to ”Hide extensions for known file types” to show file extensions and you are good to go.

The last Windows 7 problem we will look at is issues with HP All-in-one printers. If you upgraded to Windows 7 and you have one of these multifunction printers, chances are good that it just stopped working. There are files and registry keys that get removed during the upgrade. If you uninstall and reinstall the drivers directly from Hewlett Packard it will not help. So don't bother.

microsoft windows 7

What we need to do is visit this Hewlett Packard page and download the correct HP Solution Center for your device. We will be looking to install a version that is 13.00 or higher (If not skip to the next paragraph). If this is available for your product download and install it. And it will fix you up.

If version 13.00 or higher is not available for your product, download this patch for the HP Solution Center [direct download link]. That should solve your problem. You will be able to print, scan or copy anything else you need to again!

I hope these tips helped you! Good luck with all your Windows 7 endeavors!

Still find Windows 7 too confabulating? We may have the solution right here: Get A FREE Copy of Windows® 7 Plain & Simple From O'Reilly [MakeUseOf Giveaway]

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