MakeUseOf.com: “Latest Hilarious Picks [MakeUseOf Geeky Fun]” plus 10 more |
- Latest Hilarious Picks [MakeUseOf Geeky Fun]
- Cool Websites and Tools [February 9th]
- The 6 Best Websites To Track Current Top 40 Music Hits
- mflow – Stream Music In Your Browser For Free, Without Adverts Or Interruption
- Zimbra – A Faster & Easier Way To Download Email To Your Desktop
- Hot Tech Deals [Feb 9th]
- 7 Sites To Find Great Valentine Poems For Your Date
- imo.im – Quite Possibly The Multi-Network Instant Messenger Of Your Dreams
- 4 Interactive Ways To Compare Your Country With Others
- Support Queensland, Get SafeWallet and novaPDF Professional Desktop v7 for $17
- HighNote – Send Group Messages With Rich Multimedia On Your Phone
Latest Hilarious Picks [MakeUseOf Geeky Fun] Posted: 09 Feb 2011 09:44 PM PST
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Cool Websites and Tools [February 9th] Posted: 09 Feb 2011 07:31 PM PST
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. Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers!
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The 6 Best Websites To Track Current Top 40 Music Hits Posted: 09 Feb 2011 05:31 PM PST For more weekly mainstream goodies, you can’t go wrong with top 40 music hit countdown charts. You may have your own top 10 songs, but charts like these may help you find that song you recently heard and liked on the radio, or just plain expose to new, catchy tunes. Hit the jump for some of the more popular sources to check the latest hits. Billboard’s Mainstream Top 40 Music HitsThe Billboard magazine tracks the top songs in terms of airplay and sales (according to the Nielsen SoundScan system, which tracks products and registers music sales from stores), and presents this information for people not only residing in the US, but also in Europe. The site is also loaded with other goodies, including charts to specific criteria, such as only airplay (Hot 100 chart), genre, album sales (Billboard 200 chart), etc. The design of the website has improved a lot over the years, thus making navigation easier and more enjoyable, as the site now offers song preview, charts archives, and even statistics on how much time a specific song has been on a chart. iTunes Store Top 10 SongsYou’ve perhaps noticed that almost all official celebrity music videos on YouTube are inundated with iTunes links so users can purchase the MP3s on Apple’s heavily trafficked digital media store. As users actually click on those and build the charts, the iTunes Charts get a pretty accurate picture as to which songs are doing extremely well in terms of sales. In order to keep up with the latest top 25 songs, grabbing the RSS feeds for the top 25 songs (instead of manually tracking the hits) can be a good idea. American Top 40 [US]This chart uses a different data provider (MediaBase) to determine the hottest and most played songs on radio stations. While this is actually a 4-hour-long countdown radio program, you can catch the summary of the songs on the official AT40 website. You can also grab the RSS feed here to simplify your life. BBC’s Official Top 40 [UK]This neat-looking BBC Top 40 chart with the UK’s hottest mainstream songs contains useful song preview functions, as well as information on each’s song duration on the chart. Like Billboard’s site, it also has handy links to top-selling albums, but unlike it, it has fewer genre charts. Last.FM’s Weekly Top Tracks (By User Count) & Amazon’s Best-selling MP3 (Updated Hourly)If you’re interested in checking out more songs, do find the Sound Sunday article with links to free and legal MP3 albums every Sunday. You may definitely find something you like, and you don’t have to hunt for free songs. Where do you usually go to find songs, free or paid? There’s bound to be plenty of regional countdown websites we missed, but are there any that you feel strongly about? If so, please share them in the comments! Photo credit: vagawi Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers!
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mflow – Stream Music In Your Browser For Free, Without Adverts Or Interruption Posted: 09 Feb 2011 03:31 PM PST Enter mflow, the music streaming service that puts the music before the marketing. At the moment it’s still in beta and sometimes acts accordingly. Still, that’s never put us off before! Beta BewareDespite the lure of free music without adverts, you should probably be aware that whilst using the beta I encountered a few issues. I first found out about mflow via the Chrome Web Store, where I saw it promoted as a free Web App. I clicked install, loaded the rather fancy looking interface and… waited. And waited. Not only did I get no adverts, but no music. I then tried it in Firefox and everything worked a treat. For the record I used the latest stable Chromium and Firefox builds for Ubuntu 10.10 x64. Using mflowThe development team have done a worthwhile job of designing an easy to use, clean and fairly well-behaved interface from which to do your streaming. You don’t need to sign up for an account, although if you want to take advantage of the full set of features then you can choose to link your Facebook, Google or OpenID accounts for a quick sign up. You can also just register an mflow account with an email address and username, if that’s your style. If you already know what you’re looking for then you can jump right in and search. You can filter search results by tracks, artists, albums, people (profiles that directly relate to your search) and tags. If mflow has it in the database then it won’t take long to find, and once found you can simply click on the small play icon next to the track of your choosing. Once your song has finished mflow will simply move on to the next track in line, be it from search results, an album or an individual’s recommendations. Once you’ve clicked play, your song will open in the mflow player. The player is always visible on your screen and remembers what you’re listening to regardless of what else you’re doing on the site. Despite the issues I encountered in Chromium, I was really impressed with the player and the approach taken by the mflow team. Unfortunately there is no way at present to use mflow to create a playlist, or indeed queue a track from a different artist/collection/search without ending the one you’re currently listening to. I’m going to put this down to the early development stage, and cross my fingers, arms and toes that the feature will be added at a later date. At the time of writing (and hopefully for a good while yet) there are literally no adverts to interrupt your listening experience. Whilst users of Grooveshark and Spotify will probably find the interface (and lack of playlists) a little lacklustre, there’s no arguing that listening for free without interruption is hard to beat. Instead of adverts you’ll find a quick-and-easy way to buy any tracks you especially like via a “Buy” button next to the song. Downloads generally range from 256-320kbps MP3 files that are completely DRM-free, allowing you to do what you like with the music you’ve bought. Next to the “Buy” button there’s another button, labeled “Flow“. What Is A Flow?A flow is essentially a musical tweet, that is shared across the mflow network. You can use the flow button to recommend a track to your profile, social networks (Twitter, Facebook and Buzz) or via email. You’ll need to connect any services you wish to announce to, and once done you can turn them on or off in the flow box. Hashtags are used to add a genre, so users who enjoy similar music can find your recommendations easily. This is all part of mflow’s plan to marry social networking and music. What makes it really special is that unlike Spotify (for example), your Facebook or Twitter friends won’t need to register or download a client to listen. At present mflow are offering your first 5 flows as free MP3 downloads, although you have to use them within your first week. If you find any users who regularly share the kind of music you’re interested in then you can choose to follow them and any subsequent shares. Simply visit your profile page to check up on the latest flows, who you’re following, your followers and stats. Similarly you can also follow tags, which will aggregate all relevant flows featuring that tag. ConclusionDespite the obvious problems with the beta, despite the lack of playlists and despite the fact that I already use Grooveshark (and Spotify when I’m near a Windows PC) I was very impressed with mflow. So impressed that I’ll be using it again. Whilst it may need some tweaks and fixes before it’s completely ready, I’d still recommend mflow to anyone looking for a quick way to discover, share and listen to music. Did I mention there’s no adverts? What do you think of mflow? How does it stack up against Spotify, Pandora, Grooveshark and others? Any bugs or problems? Let us know in the comments. Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us.
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Zimbra – A Faster & Easier Way To Download Email To Your Desktop Posted: 09 Feb 2011 01:31 PM PST What exactly is Zimbra, you ask? Let’s just say that Zimbra is one of the few email clients that can comfortably claim that it connects to any email account.
Recently, I gave the Zimbra desktop a test drive and finally discovered an email client that can do it all – Gmail, POP and Yahoo mail all from one central spot. I’m in love. The Zimbra Desktop Email ClientI believe the reason Zimbra is one of the few desktop email clients that can easily integrate with a free Yahoo account is because Yahoo bought Zimbra in 2007. So now it’s the client of choice if you have a Yahoo account that you’d like to access from your desktop. When you first download and launch Zimbra, the first step is adding your email accounts. As you can see, Zimbra has the bases covered with Yahoo, Gmail, IMAP and POP accounts. As you can see below, I’ve got five email accounts configured to pull all new email down into Zimbra – one Yahoo account, three Google accounts, and one POP email account. You can click on any one account to see all of the emails for that account alone, and you can click on any individual email to view the contents of the email in the right panel. You can also reconfigure the display so the preview panel is at the bottom rather than at the side. I love the way Zimbra organizes each email account in the left navigational panel, and you can dropdown each account to view all of the folders. Zimbra is able to bring in all of your folders/labels from both your Yahoo accounts and your Gmail accounts. It really is remarkable how easily Zimbra plugs in. Additionally, even though you’re doing everything from a central client, Zimbra gives you the flexibility to customize certain elements for each account. For example, if you’re responding to someone using one of your work Gmail accounts, you may want one signature appended at the end of the email. If you’re responding to someone with your home Yahoo email account, you may want a different signature. Zimbra lets you customize distinct signatures, personas and filters for each individual account. Going Beyond Mail With ZimbraI only really need Zimbra desktop as an email client, but if you want one desktop app where you can plug into your other online accounts like Facebook or Twitter, Zimbra will do that too. However, it’s only good for checking basic updates and quickly updating your own status. I find the friend feeds to be not quite as versatile as other desktop social networking clients, but the social tab is there if you want to use it. It does make it fairly quick and easy to view Facebook and Twitter updates at the same time you’re checking your mail. In addition to social networking features, Yahoo is clearly attempting to compete with Google when it comes to the Briefcase tab. Here, you’ll find a section that’ll remind you of Google Docs. You can create a document, spreadsheet or even a slideshow presentation all from within the application. You can create simple slideshows that include text and images, and you can play the slideshow from inside Zimbra, but you can’t save it as an external file. The closest to getting files out of Zimbra is the ability to print the documents that you create. Otherwise, all documents, spreadsheets or slideshows are contained within the app. Another area where Zimbra desktop falls slightly short (at least with the free version) is the Calendar. The calendar and task feature within Zimbra is well done and useful, however if you’re like me and you’re already an active Google Calendar user, it would be really nice to be able to sync up the two calendar systems. As far as I can tell, Yahoo is trying to avoid syncing anything from Google to Zimbra. While I can understand the competition, Zimbra would be much more useful to Google users if that syncing was possible. Another nice feature about the free version of Zimbra is that there is a nice collection of add-ons available at the Zimbra gallery. I discovered and downloaded an add-on called Inbox Zero that completely helped me manage my many inboxes and finally empty them out. If you’ve struggled for a long time, bouncing from one desktop email client to another because they couldn’t access all of your email accounts, you’ll want to give Zimbra desktop a try. It’s flexible, functional, and it’ll finally let you view and manage every last email account you have from one, well-organized interface. Give Zimbra a try and let us know what you think. What’s your favorite feature? Do you like other desktop clients better? Share your opinion in the comments section below. Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us.
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Posted: 09 Feb 2011 12:30 PM PST For more fresh hot deals, visit our Hot Tech Deals page, which is constantly updated.
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7 Sites To Find Great Valentine Poems For Your Date Posted: 09 Feb 2011 11:31 AM PST Thanks to marketing blitzkriegs and numerous card companies, there's no shortage of ways to do it on Valentine's Day. Though a platinum ring may take you a long way; going for the simple touch could just blind side your date. One of the simplest approaches since love was born has been through love poems.
The Poetry FoundationThe Poetry Foundation is an independent literary organization that aims to promote poetry. They are also the publishers of Poetry magazine. The site is beautifully organized and finding the right poem for Valentine's Day is a breeze with the site's Poetry Tool. Use the dropdown for filtering by occasion and choose Valentine's Day. The Poetry Tool gives you 142 Valentine poems from a host of known, unknown, and contemporary poets. You can also use the big red graphic on the right side that says – Find The Perfect Poem for Valentine's Day. Poets.orgThe Academy of American Poets' flagship site is beautifully done. If you appreciate fine contemporary poetry, then this site demands a bookmark. There are many ways to get to the Valentine poems on the site. Use the Advanced Search and filter with options like keywords and theme (Love, Lust, Friendship, Romance etc). You can also use the Celebrate the Season with Poetry link on the homepage and choose Love. Black Cat PoemsIf you aren't too superstitious about cats, dive straight into the site and browse through their collection of love poems. A scroll down the webpage reveals over 300 love poems…a lot of them by legends of verse like Yeats and Tennyson. Some also have been submitted by enthusiastic poets and you can also submit your own. Not all love poems will be apt for a cheery Valentine Day, but you can pick one to send across to your beloved. Poetry AmericaThe site features a lot of poems from amateur poets. There's a whole series of Love Poems and one of the lists within it collates Valentine poems. The 100 Best Love Poems could be a list worth going through to find some hidden gems. If you are feeling poetic, why not contribute your own? Poem LoversThe site's tagline puts it best as a site for those who love poetry and love poems. There is no separate section on Valentine's Day poetry but you can pick the love poems from the general listing and pass it off on the day. The Love Quotes EncyclopediaYou get a fresh dose of romance a day thanks to the site's daily stream of love quotes, Tucked away amidst the quotes is a small collection of love poems penned by soma famous names. You are sure to impress your date if you play it right. Loving YouThe site comes packed with a collection of love, romance and relationships resources including advice, poetry, quotes, dedications, chat, horoscopes, romantic ideas, and message boards. If you are interested to pick a love poem for Valentine's Day, head to the Love Poems page and browse through the categories or narrow it down by occasion or season. The fourteenth of February is significant not only for lovers but also for potential lovers. If you belong to either species and are looking to embellish your feelings with a touch of love poetry, then the web is an ally. A Valentine's Day poem is only the message. You have to pick the medium, the place, and the time to deliver it to your date. Have a great day, spread the love, and also tell us about your favorite web resource when it comes to this occasion. Image credit: Shutterstock Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter. Includes cool extras.
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imo.im – Quite Possibly The Multi-Network Instant Messenger Of Your Dreams Posted: 09 Feb 2011 10:31 AM PST How can a great service be unheard of? Even though there have been a few mentions about the service on MakeUseOf here and here, the developer has kept a low profile and quietly put the project below the radar for the past two years. After three years in alpha stage, this solid app has finally shown itself (with a new look) to the public.
Connect To Multi-NetworkWhen you visit imo.im for the first time, you’ll notice how clean the interface is: a lot of white space and the login window in the middle. If the look reminds you of Google, it’s because one of the co-founders is also one of Google’s first ten employees – Georges Harik. To start using imo.im, just log in with one of your IM accounts. You can add (and link) more accounts to imo.im later. After logging in, you’ll see another vast white space with small columns of menus on the left and right of the page. Use “Add Account” from the “Accounts” menu on the left to link your other IM accounts. Basic information about an account will pop out if you hover your mouse over that account. You can quickly change your status by using the drop down menu at the top of the page. You can also add/change your profile photo by clicking on the profile box above the “Accounts” menu. On the right side of the screen, there’s the “Buddies” menu. Similar to the “Account” menu, you can view more information about one of your buddies by hovering your mouse above his/her profile box. Your buddies are automatically grouped based on groups that you have on your IM accounts. But you can easily create a new group by clicking on the “Create a new group” button. Adding a new buddy is also that simple. You can move your buddies between groups by dragging and dropping them. Any friend request from one of your IM accounts will pop out on imo.im, and you can choose to Deny, Block, or Add the person. Clicking on any of your friends in the list will open up an individual chat window, which – if you are really fussy – could quickly fill up the entire screen. You can make your screen tidier by choosing the tab view from the button on the left of the “Buddies” menu. Notifications pop up in a small yellow window inside the imo.im environment. You can choose to enable desktop notifications if your browser supports the feature. To Go Beyond The TextThe ability to easily connect to multiple chat platforms is not the only thing that imo.im has to offer. The small microphone icon in the text field of a chat window tells us that imo.im also support voice messages. This feature allows users to send up to 30 second voice messages to their chat partners. To enable this feature, you have to give permission to imo.im to access your computer’s camera and microphone. Then to send a voice message, all you have to do is hold the green “Hold to talk” button while you speak with the microphone. The voice messages will automatically be sent every time you release the green button. Sending voice messages might mean nothing if you use the browser-based chat client from your computer. But if you use the phone version, the feature means free calls. You can use your phone as a long distance walkie-talkie (sort of) over an Internet connection and do voice chat with your friends without the phone charges. On a good and stable Internet connection, you can also call your buddies and have continuous audio and/or video chat between computers and phones. If you have a file or two to share with your chat buddy, click on the “Send File” tab, choose the file, and click the “Send file” button. You can only send one file at a time, though. The FootnotesThere are some things that you might not notice at the bottom of the imo.im screen. The first one is the “Sessions” link. Clicking on it will open the “Active Sessions” window with information on devices that you currently use to open imo.im. The next one is the “Preferences“. You can enable desktop notifications from here (if your browser supports it). You can also prevent individuals who are not in your buddy list from contacting you. In my opinion, imo.im is a great chat service. Maybe the greatest advantage that this service has over its competitors is its seamless integration between the web, iOS, and Android clients. Along with its support for multiple chat networks, and the combination of all the features, imo.im might be the instant messenger of your dreams. What do you think of imo.im? Share your thoughts and opinions using the comments below. Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us.
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4 Interactive Ways To Compare Your Country With Others Posted: 09 Feb 2011 08:31 AM PST We live in a large, increasingly interdependent world. For example: MakeUseOf is brought to you by a team that spreads from Europe to Australia to North America to North Africa. It’s never been more important than right now to grasp what’s going on around the world. The Internet means you’re more connected to other countries than ever before. Numbers give you a great way to get an overview of a country, so it’s nice to be able to find international statistics quickly. But interactive charts can make finding such numbers a lot of fun.
If It Were My HomeDo you ever wonder what life would be like if you lived in another country? If It Were My Home might not answer all of your questions, but it gives a nice overview: These stats are supplemented by a collection of reading about the given country as well as a map, comparing the size of your country to any other one: If you want a quick way to compare life in your country with another, this is a fantastic place to start. Economist Daily ChartEvery day British news magazine “The Economist” shares a fascinating chart with the planet. Some are interactive, some are graphical but all help to shed light on the way our planet works. Check out their Daily Chart blog here. Recently they featured an interactive map comparing the population and GDP of individual American states to countries around the world: Who would have thought Texas’ GDP matches that of the entire nation of Russia, or New Jersey that of Switzerland? Explore the above chart here. Carbon Footprint Of NationsCarbon usage is an increasingly hot-button issue, particularly once you start crossing international borders. Most governments acknowledge the need to reduce output but few are taking concrete steps toward doing so. If you want to see how your country compares to other nations when it comes to carbon output check out Carbon Footprint Of Nations. This site, provided by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, gives an overview of any nation’s carbon output: Explore this site to learn all about where carbon is coming from on a global scale. Wolfram AlphaHave a specific question in mind? Ask Wolfram Alpha. This knowledge engine can calculate almost anything if you ask it correctly. For example, you could compare the population of China with the population of America: This is a great way to quickly compare one country with another when it comes to a variety of issues, from land mass to GDP. Know of More?I love finding fun and fascinating charts like this, so please share any you know of. We have comments below for just this reason. Also feel free to discuss any interesting stats you stumbled upon with the above tools, or rant about how carbon output monitoring is a global conspiracy against whatever country you happen to be from. Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us.
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Support Queensland, Get SafeWallet and novaPDF Professional Desktop v7 for $17 Posted: 09 Feb 2011 07:52 AM PST Buy now from bundlelytic: fire sale. This mini bundle, along with the bundlelytic charity bundle was initiated by MakeUseOf in an effort to raise funds and awareness towards the victims of the recent natural disasters in Queensland, Australia. 50% of the proceeds will be donated to the Queensland Disaster Relief fund. Although no longer featured, you may still purchase previous fire sale bundles: NEW: Download MakeUseOf iPhone App. FREE!
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HighNote – Send Group Messages With Rich Multimedia On Your Phone Posted: 09 Feb 2011 07:31 AM PST I recently came across another group messaging app, HighNote, that takes this concept and adds one key component to it – multimedia. HighNote is a unique service currently available for the iPhone/iTouch, iPad, and Android devices that allows you to share music, video, pictures, voice recordings, and whatever else you can find on your phone. What Is HighNote?
HighNote seeks to fix the problem with SMS, which is that even though it’s extremely popular, it’s not really flexible when it comes to social interactions. Social networks, on the other hand, lack some of the immediacy desired when connecting with friends, which could only be accomplished with a tool like SMS. HighNote was created to fill that gap. It is designed for social communications among your close circles of friends, like the ones you might find on your phone’s contact list. You would ideally use HighNote when you require more richness than SMS can offer without foregoing the immediacy and intimacy that social networks struggle with. What do the social communications you have with your close friends revolve around? The ability to share and rate music, videos, and pictures, organize meetups, send greeting cards, and share locations. HighNote’s goal is to make your social life easier to manage. Here’s a video demo that further illustrates what HighNote is and who it’s for: What Are Some Of HighNote’s features?HighNote lets you send free media-enhanced messages to other HighNote users around the world. You can add personality to your messages with video, music, audio, pics, maps, custom buttons, and iTunes. HighNotes can be sent to any of your friends, even if they don’t have the app installed. They will simply receive an SMS or email with a web link to view your message. There are over 20 customizable greetings like "Check this out" or "Congrats", and you have the ability to change the alignment, color, style, and size of your text. And don’t worry, there are lots of emoticons for you to make use of, too. The app also has a comprehensive Quick Reply section and a feature called Pulse, that lets users opt into quizzes and such. ConclusionAs of now, HighNote is available on iOS and Android devices, with plans to support Symbian, BlackBerry, and Windows 7 phones in the near future. If you’re looking to get HighNote for your iPhone, iTouch, or iPad, you can pick it up at the App Store. Android device users can go to HighNote’s homepage to download the app. From looking at this group messaging app, it is clearly geared at the teen audience, but the capabilities it has are quite amazing. I’m really interested in seeing how companies like this will continue to try to increase the capabilities of messaging on our phones, as well as what will become popular and what won’t. It’s pretty difficult to break the texting habits of a young adult, which I’m sure is partially why HighNote is trying to get in the hands of the young crowd who are just learning the joys of SMS. What do you think of HighNote? Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us.
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