Hamster is available as an applet for the Gnome desktop environment and you can install it using your distributions package manager. It is most likely in there (or else you can install from source). Ubuntu users may sudo apt-get install hamster-applet. Once installed, you can add it to any of your panels by right-clicking on the panel choosing Add to Panel and then look for Time Tracker (not Hamster).

Hamster will appear as “No Activity 00:00″ in your panel. Click on it, key in what you are doing and it gets down to the mundane work of counting how much time you spent in that activity. It also displays how much time you have spent in the current activity in the current session while inconspicuously adding them all together in the background to create reports for you.

Hamster lets you categorize and add description to your activities. This is especially useful if for instance, you want to view how much time you are spending on a “Complete Project” which itself is made up of sub-tasks or sub-projects. You just have to include @ when letting Hamster know what you are doing and it will automatically create a category and file your task under it!

Letting a program know what you are doing every time you are about to switch an activity might seem like too much burden if you are not into time tracking. So Hamster provides you a leeway, allowing you to enter activities that you’ve done in the past. Why would you want to do that? You will realize in a minute when we move to the reports.

Click on the applet, expand “Today” and you will see what you have been up to on that day. Click on Show Overview and you will be greeted by pretty graphs and detailed statistics of what you have been doing this week, this month or this day. You can then click the “Generate Report” button and up pops your browser with a detailed report of your activities for the said period.

Overall, Hamster is an easy-to-use and intuitive time tracking application. Everything is just in place in the interface just as you might expect it to be. It is all the more useful if you are disciplined in its use or else, you can always go back in time and make entries (for a change). Did I mention the “Stop Tracking” button, just in case you feel the need!

If you’re new on MakeUseOf, make sure to download our hugely popular productivity manual. Nothing comlicated, only the simple tips that are easy to follow and actually work.

Do you use any time tracking applications? Which software or web applications do you prefer?

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

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This was one of the reasons why I procrastinated so much - I am not much of a technical whiz and I was nervous that I would well and truly cack it up.  Then I would have to go through the embarrassment of asking someone to look at my mess and clean up after me.    Meanwhile, all my incoming emails would be disappearing into a black hole never to be seen again.

But it turned out to be a cinch.   I had the whole thing up and running in 30 minutes and the emails flowed in without a hitch (after being briefly slow at the beginning - but I put that down to the email servers being transferred over and my new Google Apps account being processed.  After a while, email service went back to the normal speed).

In case you have ever wanted to move over to Google Apps but you’ve been nervous about the set-up, I would like to help you end your apprehension and get you started.  Kudos to Google for making it so easy.

Fill Out The Online Application

If you are a family, private user or non-profit organisation, Google Apps is free to use (businesses can have a trial period and then $50 per year per person).   But for me and probably for most of you, the free “standard edition” is the one to go for.   Go here and fill out the application.

The first step of the application is to enter your domain name (or you can buy a new domain name though Google which automatically sets everything up for you).   You also need to verify that you own the domain or if you are a member of the domain.

Then click “get started” and a standard application form pops up.   Fill it out.

Assuming all of the information is acceptable to Google and you are authorized to set the domain up on Google Apps, you will then be taken to your new dashboard.

The first thing to do is activate your email. You need to specify whether you like the URL Google automatically makes for you. So for example it may have made :

http://mail.googleapps.yourdomain.com

But if you don’t like that URL, you can easily change it to something secret such as :

http://mysecretmailbox.yourdomain.com

Now to activate the email.   Go to the email settings page and there are two options - “create user accounts” and “change MX records”.   OK, no need to get nervous.   Let’s do them one at a time :

Create user accounts

You may have a lot of email addresses for your domain such as info, contact, your name, webmaster and so on.   You need to now input all those email addresses into Google Apps.    Or if you don’t feel like typing them all in, you can upload an Excel CSV file with the addresses already in it.   Google Apps will then insert the email addresses into your email settings.

Change MX Records

OK, now the biggie.   The MX records shows which company handles and delivers your emails.   You need to change the records from your old email provider to Google so your emails can be sent to your Apps account.

It’s not a problem as Google provides step-by-step instructions for whoever your old email provider is.   Just choose your hosting service from the drop-down list and you will get instant specific instructions on where to go and what to do.

It basically involves locating the MX Records list in your hosting account (Google tells you where it is) and deleting them all (you may want to take a screenshot first in case you need to revert back).   Then in their place, enter the following :

Then save the whole lot. And that’s it - email set up!

As I said, it may be a little sluggish at first with emails trickling in slowly but once your Apps account is processed and set up by Google and your MX records get transitioned over, the email will start to come in a lot faster. Just be patient.

If you had your Apps email address already previously set up to forward everything to your old Gmail address, you need to go to the old Gmail address and cancel the forwarding rule.   Otherwise you will end up with two copies of the same email - one in your Gmail account and one in your Apps account.

Next, you can decide if you want to change the destination links for your calendar, Talk app, Documents and Sites (just like you may have changed the URL for your email inbox).   Then activate each service in the settings.

The last thing to do is go to the CNAME settings in your hosting account (again, Google points the way) and you need to enter each URL along with ghs.google.com .  That points everything to the Google servers.   Save everything and you-are-done!   Finito, The End.

All that remains to be done is browse through the settings and customise everything to your liking (for example, you can replace the Google logo witb your own customised logo).

I highly recommend moving over to Google Apps.   It’s a nice all-in-one online email, calendar and documents application.  The only grumble I have about it is that you can’t import your emails over from a normal Gmail account.  Google doesn’t provide any email exporting function so your emails are stuck in the other account - unless you go the long tedious way of downloading the emails to Outlook or Thunderbird and then using an import tool to re-upload them.  We covered one of these tools in the past.    But it is very easy to import your filters and contact book over and I had the email purring along in no time.

Do you have any experience of moving your online presence over to Google Apps?   If so, how did it go for you?   Please do let us know.   If you haven’t moved over yet, has this guide persuaded you to give it a go?   Feel free to leave all your questions and comments below.

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

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(1) DocShare - Document sharing community that enables everyone to easily find and share documents online. It’s pretty much like YouTube for documents, you can search the documents by entering the title or browse through the categories. You can also go for the most popular, most viewed and the most discussed ones. Read more: DocShare: Find And Share Documents Easily

(2) IconFinder - Great resource for finding icons online. It lets you search over 90,000 web icons by keywords or browse them by icon sets, tags and filter results by icon size and  background color. Download any icon with one click in PNG or ICO format.  Read more: IconFinder: Great Resource For Finding Icons

(3) Mookal - Online calculator which lets you quickly calculate your monthly mortgage or refinance payments. The calculator has a clean design, user friendly interface and results are presented in easy-to-understand format along with detailed graphs and tables. Read more: Mookal: Best Refinance & Mortgage Calculator So Far

(4) NutritionToolbox - Comprehensive food nutritional information database where you can look up information (e.g. calories, vitamins, minerals) on more than 40,000 foods including brand name grocery items and fast food products. Read more: NutritionToolbox: Food Nutritional Information Database

(5) TwitLogo - Free logo generator that lets you create custom Twitter-like logos for use on your website or online profiles. Simply type in the text and click make to preview your logo. You can also customize logo size, logo text and background color. Read more: TwitLogo: Twitter Logo Generator

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.

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Sound hard to believe?

While here at MakeUseOf, you’ll always find lots of great advice about cool websites, such as Aibek’s list of 40 unusual websites you should bookmark or his other article on 5 cool websites to procrastinate at work, in this article, we’re going to take a stroll down a few dark alleyways of the Internet; and carefully take a glimpse at the seedy underworld that exists there - like a growing, cancerous lump that you didn’t realize was there until it was too late. These are a list of 4 websites that you shouldn’t ever bookmark.

Taking Pot Shots at Rotten Websites

Revealing the slimy side of the Internet is dangerous business. Many people reading this may actually secretly hold some of the views or beliefs expressed on some of these websites. In the end, whenever you label anything as “rotten” - you’re going to tick certain people off. With that said, it’s also critically important in the world we live in to acknowledge and accept that hate exists in many forms all around us. And yes, some of us (myself included) have, at one time or another, allowed hatred toward a group of people to exist inside of us. Then, a day comes when you meet one person who falls within that category of people that you’ve built stereotypes in your mind about. That one person blows all of those stereotypes away - and suddenly you realize that the hatred you’d formed for that group is baseless and without any real foundation.

Here at MakeUseOf, writers are from a very wide range of nationalities, religions and other groups. Every day, we collaborate and work together to present readers and the Internet community with unique ways they can “make use of” the Internet. In the spirit of that borderless cooperation, it’s time to break down a few more walls and expose some of the hate-filled or fanatical content that exists on the Internet today.

Jew Watch - A Zionist Conspiracy or Anti-Semitism?

One thing I’ve noticed about most “hater” websites is that they try their hardest to come across as educated, professional and scholarly. It’s sort of like they think if they throw enough sugar on the whole mix, people won’t realize the level of rotten website they’ve just landed on. Jew Watch was founded by James Stenzel, and is touted by the site’s “librarian” Frank Weltner of St. Louis, Missouri, as an “oasis of news for Americans who presently endure the hateful censorship of zionist occupation.”

In reality, this is one of the worst rotten websites on the web, not so much a “news” site, as it is a conspiracy theory site filled with empty propaganda and some of the most shoddy research in history. While the primary publicist and author at the site, Frank Weltner, points out that he doesn’t believe “all jews” are bad -  Jew Watch is built around the strange theory that there is a well-organized, elite wealthy group of Jews trying to take over the world. This paranoid conspiracy theory mirrors other common ones such as MJ-12, the Illuminati, and many others. In the end, this fear-mongering does nothing more than encourage hatred toward an entire population based on nothing more than their heritage.

Hatebook - Like There Isn’t Already Enough Hate in The World?

We live in a world where there are shootings, domestic violence, child abuse and so many other atrocities, it seems inconceivable that someone would come up with the idea that what the world needs is a social network based on “hate.”  That’s exactly what HateBook is all about.

HateBook is a Facebook copycat social network where anti-social folks can join together and celebrate their hateful behaviors. On HateBook, they can either tell secrets (or even lies) about someone. The concept of this particular rotten website is that the “enemies of your enemies are your friends.” In other words, if you’re able to find out who else hates the person that you hate, you can essentially team up against them. They even have a label for such groups called “hate-clans.”  How lovely.

ChildCare Action Project - A Cover for Orwellian Style Censorship

As a writer and an avid reader, I have an especially strong aversion to censorship. I am, in fact, a religious person - but I also abhor zealous religious fanatics who turn spirituality into a badge of righteous indignation toward all things they deem “improper”. What is improper, exactly? By whose terms and by whose culture should those limits be drawn from? Certainly what’s considered moral in the U.S. may not be so in India or China - and vice versa. So, who gets to decide?  Apparently, the founders of the CAP Project have given themselves that honor regarding the movies that people watch.

This fanatically religious organization wouldn’t have made the list of rotten websites if it simply provided full reviews of the parts of movies that some parents may consider “objectionable” for their children to watch. However, this organization takes it a step further and also offers W.I.S.D.O.M. rankings. These are rankings on whether the film has wanton violence, impudence or hate, sexual immorality, drugs or alcohol, offense to God, or murder or suicide.  While these rankings sound semi-reasonable, the reasons they offer for degrading a film are ludicrous and a bit disturbing. For example, the site degraded the children’s film “Narnia” for attempted murder and planning of murder, a tame scene of childbirth, lying, and “unholy” mythical beasts and magical themes. Say what?  Look, when I was a kid, I stood up with all of the other children and clapped for Tinkerbell to magically come back to life, and I turned out okay! Sort of…

88Tube - Just Innocent White Pride or Tasteless Hate?

As usual, I saved the best (or I guess I should say “the worst”) for last. For those who don’t know about it, 88Tube is a white supremacy website where proud white dudes can express pride in their heritage by sitting in front of their computer watching such enlightening and uplifting videos as “Adolf Hitler talking to German Youth”, “The Revival of the Klu Klux Klan”, and “All Heil to the Great Nazi Power!!” Oh yeah - those sure make me proud to be white… Ugh.

Reviewing these rotten websites filled with either religious or racial fanaticism sure makes it apparent that we live in a very disturbing world, filled with people who are disillusioned - or maybe just delusional. In either case, the ease with which such ideologies can proliferate throughout the Internet is something every honorable citizen of the world should be concerned about.

Have you ever come across fanatical websites on the Internet? What were they and how did you feel about them? Share your own opinions in the comment section below.

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

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The last time I was in France, I had an approximate conversion rate in my head for French Francs to the United States Dollar. When I got back to the office and handed in my expense reports, I realized I was very wrong about my conversions. It turned out the rate I was using was wrong. So, every calculation I did was also wrong.

To make a long story short, I wound up spending more than I was supposed. I won’t say how much but someone was not happy writing that cheque! If I had this fancy smancy currency converter called CurrencyConv installed, I would have known that the cab driver was charging me way more than he should have!

If you have a Windows Mobile phone, you can download the application using the link above. It works on Windows Mobile 6, 6.1 and 6.5. The best part about the application is that it retrieves the rate information when you start the program! It also has what looks like every currency imaginable. So, the next time you are in Sri Lanka or Nicaragua, CurrencyConv will have you covered!

The small 38.4KB cab file needs to be downloaded to or copied to your Windows Mobile device. Then, you install it by clicking on the installer file like so:

It will ask you if you want to install the application on your device’s memory or on your storage card. The choice is yours and it really does not matter. Once the application is installed, you will find a new icon on your Start Menu like so:

Click on it to get started. By default, there are some wacky currencies that I have never encountered before. But don’t let that discourage you – it only means that the program has every possible option you will ever need! And it converts 3 currencies at at time!

Simply pull down the drop down menus to select 3 currencies. Next, enter a value in any one of the three fields at the top. The program will then automatically convert that into the other two currencies. I was VERY impressed!

So now, I know 1000 French Francs is about $225, not $125 Maybe this will help some one (or lots of people) out there have a much better trip!

If you are on your computer, XE.com is the leading currency converter. Aibek wrote about it a long time ago, you should check it out.

Do you have a similar app you are using on your mobile device? Well if you are you should definitely share with us in the comments!

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What characterizes a strong password? First of all, its length. The longer the password, the stronger it is and the longer it takes to be cracked. Secondly, the entropy or randomness of the generation process. If the attacker can make some statistical assumptions based on the method of generation, even a alphanumerical 8 character password can be cracked within hours. The third characteristic of password generator is trust. Do you trust that the password generator does not keep logs, do you trust that it doesn’t have a backdoor? Lastly, do you have a secure communication channel between the generator and the receiver? Most of the online password generators fail one or more of these guidelines, and even software solutions have problems.

The only completely secure method to generate passwords is to use an open-source generator stored on your computer, preferably running Linux. But even one of the website generated passwords is considerably more secure than any password you can come up with.

Perfect Passwords

Steve Gibson’s Perfect Passwords generator deserves the highest praise of all the solutions tested for this article. Besides the fact that Steve Gibson is a world renowned programmer, the algorithm used ensures a high level of entropy, and although there is no source code available to corroborate tech specs with the notes on the website, I personally trust it. The connection between the GRC server and your computer is secured by a SSL connection and the generator produces three strings at once: 64 random hexadecimal characters (0-9 and A-F), 63 random printable ASCII characters, 63 random alpha-numeric characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9). The most secure of all is the ASCII string which contains numbers, letters and special characters. You can use any part, the complete string or even mix them to create an unique password. Your password will look something like:

“4q){4′{y]SWt]796Ay|9=

While such a password will work for a web-based service or email account, you aren’t expected to remember it for your Windows account, it’s simply too complicated. I personally use a 12 character hexadecimal string for my user account password, which I can remember without having to write it down, like

FBA4F22489116F11F

This too, can be cracked with Rainbow tables, but it will deter most guys without NSA-level knowledge and processing power.

If you’re asking yourself,”How I can use 12 random ASCII characters for every password I have?” Here’s my system.

1. I have an IronKey, a secure USB thumb drive that itself is protected by a 12 character hexadecimal string. All the data on the drive is hardware-encrypted. It will automatically self-destruct if physically tampered or if the password is entered 10 times wrong.
2. The IronKey has an integrated password manager and a hardened mobile version of Firefox 3. The passwords never pass through the computer’s keyboard or compromised applications.
3. When using my own hardware, which I can vouch is secure, for performance reasons I will use an Excel document which contains a list of services and their assigned passwords, stored on Google Docs. I will never save any passwords into the Firefox password manager. The only way this system can be compromised is by first cracking the computer user account password and hoping that the cookie session is still active.

Editor’s note: IronKey is not free. It starts at $79. If you think that it’s worth the money to protect your privacy and security, then check it out.
The other services I tested were:

PCTools

PCTools – which provides different options for generating passwords: length, punctuation, numbers, letters etc. as well as a SSL secured connection. They also have a freeware, offline version of the generator. It’s not open-source and the technical details are not available for inspection.

GoodPassword

GoodPassword – offers both a random password generator with some customization options and a “Leet” generator that “Leet Passwords are easy to remember acronym passwords generated by combining the first letter of each word, randomly changing the case, and replacing alphanumeric characters with their Leet (1337) equivalents, that is characters that look and/or sound the same”.

Multicians

Multicians – generates ten “pronounceable” passwords using a Java applet. It’s not open-source but the source code is available for inspection. No SSL connection.

For Linux

Linux users can use this command to quickly create a strong password:

% dd if=/dev/urandom count=1 2> /dev/null | uuencode -m - | sed -ne 2p | cut -c-8v1/oVN+S

You might want to read on through How To Create Strong Passwords That You Can Remember Easily, Securely Synchronize Your Browser Passwords With LastPass or maybe How To Password Protect GRUB Entries (Linux).

Photo credit: Jelmer.

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Slideshare is a good place to see some really cool works of PowerPoint ‘art’. Check under your favorite category and you will feel genuinely inspired to do things with the graphics, fonts, bullets, sounds and audio/video clips on the canvas of a PowerPoint slide.

Whether you are on your first presentation or on your umpteenth, it’s always better to be prepared with the right resources to back up your ideas for the PowerPoint slides. So here’s looking at 10 websites for free supplies of media clips for PowerPoint.

Sound Clips

Wave Central

I wanted to end one of my presentations with a ‘Beam me Up, Scotty’ sound clip from Star Trek. I got the 11KB file from here. The site is not much to look at but it is a rich dump of sound clips from movies, TV, commercials and some special effects types too. The site has a search page, so it is easy to get to your sound clip if you know exactly what you are searching for. If you are searching for a ‘something like this’ kind of a sound, then it’s a chore as all files are listed by name only.

CCMixter

This is a community music site featuring remixes and samples licensed under Creative Commons licenses. It includes many tracks with non-commercial sharing licenses and some under sampling licenses. Users can of course submit their own music and remixes. The site has very good organization with a bunch of categories and filters. Also, the “Download this page” feature allows you to download your preferred collection all at once. Overall, this website has a very selective bunch of MP3s. It’s not for the run-of-the-mill presenter but more for the guy who knows what he is doing with his music.

Sound Bible

From prankish sounds (give the farts a miss in your PPTs) to cool sound effects, this site has a good collection. With the tiny sound clips you can add sound effects to your buttons or transitions. Sound clips fall under royalty-free and free sounds. A ‘pleasing to the eye’ look makes browsing complain-free. If you are looking for a specific sound and can’t find it here, there’s a simple request form for help.

The Open Directory Project

The DMOZ page on music and audio loops is worth a look. Though some of the websites mentioned there might not be free.

Movie Clips

YouTube

The ultimate reservoir of videos will hopefully not be short of the perfect clip you are looking for. With a large user base YouTube is the perfect place to find a video corresponding to the idea you want to project. For instance, a visual demo can help make your “How To” presentations to be more effective.

Also read - 18 Free Ways To Download Any Video off the Internet

Internet Archive

The Internet Archive’s Moving Images library contains thousands of digital movies uploaded by Archive users which ranges from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts. Many of these videos are available for free download. The videos are grouped under sub-collections like computers, sports, youth media, independent news, spirituality etc. If the video falls under Creative Commons, the logo will appear on the left hand side of the movie’s detail page.

Channel Federator

Nothing breaks monotony like humor; and cartoons are the best agents for it. Channel Federator is like the Cartoon Network for the web. It is a community-driven website of independent animators. From hand drawn sketches to slick Flash based ones; the uniqueness is that none of the cartoon podcasts are longer than 5 minutes. The short clips are perfect for presentations.

Atom

This is the human equivalent of the above animated one. From spoofs to extreme humor, the independent bunch of video creators takes a saucy look at everything. Right now, I am looking at a video on teamwork… Could be useful for the next HR meeting. The clips are brief and embeddable.

One Web Resource for Comics Strips

- Fresher Image

This is not a top to bottom PowerPoint website, simply because clip arts and other graphics such as banners, bullets and buttons find other uses. But undoubtedly, this is a treasure trove. I find this website an invaluable source of free single panel comic strips.

One Web Resource for Animations

- Animation Library

The site features about 13,748 free animations grouped in 18 categories for use in presentations or other web media. The site also has a little one-page section on animation tutorials. The one negative was the non-functioning search bar.

The internet is chock a bloc with freebies. The human problem is laying our hands on the right one at the right time. And with the boss breathing down your neck for the Monday morning presentation, speed becomes a vital though an inhibiting factor towards creating a great presentation. Let’s hope these ready at hand resources give that bit of breathing space to let your inspired mind flow… and kickass.

Which free websites do you use to extend your PowerPoint presentation’s capabilities? Present us with your options.

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

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One group of games that is still missing from our passive sportive arsenal here are pro billiards and snooker games.

And that is a real shame because those sports might just be some the geekiest sports known to man. Every single shot in those games is based on an insight or ‘feeling’ for the fundamentals of geometry and physics. Ergo, not to be discluded on a site like this.

Today, we try to make it up to you. Reader, meet Cue Online. I’m sure you’ll get along really well.

Cue Online

Cue Online was released earlier this year by GameCampus.com, the guys behind soul mate MMORPG Asda Story, and is without any doubt, one of the best pool games out there. Since then, it has received several nominations — amongst which, one for “Best Game of the Month” by the Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Cue Online allows you to enjoy games of eightball, nineball and snooker, accompanied by astonishing 3D graphics — but great graphics isn’t even the trump card of Cue Online. The game is based on one of the most realistic engines on the market, the physics of which allows you to manipulate every detail of the game, even pull off pro billiards trick shots.

Ultimate Pro Billiards Realism and Manipulation

As would be expected, the player can control aim and power but in Cue Online, you can also adjust the angle of your shots and the exact place to hit the ball, to give it a spin or to make it jump.

Apart from how the shot is exercised, the movement of the ball gets influenced by a few other factors like the realistic cloth friction. Make the sum of all this, and you’ve got a first class realistic pool game that will satisfy even the most critical of minds.

Playing Skills

During gameplay, the player can improve upon five different skills; power, spin, push, pull and masse. Unlike most skill-based games (mostly MMORPGs), you don’t get better only by using them often, but also by really learning how to use them well.

It is to be expected that skill would play a major role in a precision pro billiards sports game like Cue Online, but the game’s system provides various possibilities of gameplay. You’ll notice that each player is unique, with different strengths, weaknesses and a defining playing style, just like in real life.

If you’re up for a great game of eightball, nineball, or snooker, you must download this game. Let us know what you think about it, or which of the 3 games you enjoy playing. Also, let us know about the other sources of billiard games. Don’t be shy, the comments section is below.

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(1) Collecta - Unlike Google, Bing or any other traditional search engine, Collecta searches what’s happening right now. When you enter a search term, it looks through social media content like blog posts, comments, news articles, Twitter updates, Flickr photos etc, and only shows results that have been posted after you started your search. Read more: Collecta: Find Out What’s Happening Right Now

(2) EventBrite - Web service that helps you organize ticketed events, promote them and sell tickets online. It makes it easy to publish your event on the web by creating a customized event web page and maximize attendance by promoting it online via its free online tools. Service is free if your event is free, and if you sell tickets for a price, Eventbrite collects a small fee on each ticket sold. Read more: EventBrite: Organize Ticketed Events & Sell Tickets Online

(3) LifeTango - Goal-sharing and tracking website where you can set goals and monitor progress. You may set others’ goals as yours if it inspires you. Also share your goals with family and friends for encouragement and support. Search the Tango community and find others who either have already or are trying to do the same things you’re trying to do and share advice, encourage each other, and more. Read more: LifeTango: Goal Sharing & Tracking Tool

(4) PicFog - This site provides a real-time search for images shared on Twitter. Using it, you will be able to search and browse latest images on any topic. The relevance of image results are based on how frequently they have been shared and discussed on Twitter. Search results are automatically updated with the newest images as they posted on Twitter. You can always pause the auto-refreshing by clicking the “pause” button or view image results in a slideshow.  Read more: PicFog: Search For Images Shared On Twitter

(5) ReSubj -  Simple group discussion application accessible from both browser and email. Simply create an inbox with a message, add recipients and start your discussion. Participants may post or reply to a message in the inbox using browser or email. No sign up, only emails required. It has got some cool options, like threaded comments and private inboxes. Read more: ReSubj – Easy Online Group Discussion Tool

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!

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But a good media center not only plays your files or lets you watch television, it also gives you the opportunity to stay connected over the web, to stream content, or grab subtitles and movie reviews.

The reason so many people are still hooked to their VHS/DVD/VCR boxes, lies in relation to the vast size and complexity of the media center market. Acting as your guide in this realm, MakeUseOf proudly presents its latest PDF release - How To Build a Great Media Center.

In this free PDF, active MakeUseOf contributor and eBook writer Stefan Neagu from tuxgeek.me, will walk you through all the steps of understanding and creating your own media center.

Read all about the different hardware components, software candidates and media extenders, in this manual for geek to techno-deprived.

Download this free PDF now, and get started! Using this illutrated guide, we’re confident that you too will be able to grasp and get started on the road to your very own media center.

If you enjoyed this ebook, be sure to check out the other available MakeUseOf manuals.

• Using Your Linux Computer As A Media Center (Part 1) (55)
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• Using Your Linux Computer As A Media Server (Part 2) (13)
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Double Vision is one of the best web browsers for this kind of thing - it lets you view and interact with two applications at the same time, without having to switch windows again and again. So, you could be working on your presentation and watching your favorite video or even better - a related tutorial at the same time. Technically, Double Vision is browser, however it has certain features that distinguish it from other browsers and make it perfect for these kinds of situation.

Browse to the website of your choice as you would do with any normal browser. Once there, click on the enter “Double Vision Mode”, the browser will turn translucent and here is the best part - you will be able to click through the browser’s window and interact with any other application underneath. Thus, you can continue working while you watch a video on YouTube, or you can follow along video tutorials and carry out the actions at the same time.

You do realise that you can use this to sneak a peak at YouTube while at work? So, what happens when someone comes to your computer? Well, hit Ctrl + Esc and the browser turns off the sound and disappears as though it was never there in the first place. Hit Ctrl + Esc again and it resurfaces.

Being able to click through the browser window doesn’t take away your ability to control it. While in “Double Vision Mode”, Double Vision displays a tiny control Window that lets you play with transparency, move the window around etc. You can also press and hold the Ctrl + Alt key to restore the window to 100% opaqueness temporarily, interact and let them go to return back to the previous “Double Vision Mode” settings.

You can also watch videos stored locally using all the above features. Local videos are supported in Double Vision 2.0 which is a beta product, but you can try (remember to register or you will be denied access) to see if it works for you.

Do you know of similar applications that will let you overlay stuff on top of each other? Let us hear about them in the comments.

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Even though most Mac apps are stand-alone software (the files required for them to work are compiled into the app itself), some of them do leave a few preferences and configuration files behind after dragging the app to Trash. These files won’t affect the operation of the system and most of them are small in size. However, you can sometimes find a large unused chunks of files (such as saved data files from games) that will occupy a huge portion of your hard drive space.

To really swipe everything clean, you’ll need the help of an uninstaller. Here are three free alternatives for Mac.

AppCleaner

AppCleaner is an uninstaller for Mac which will allow users to thoroughly uninstall unwanted apps. It will search your Mac for every file distributed by other applications.

To use it, just drop an application onto the AppCleaner window. It will find the related files, list everything down and let the user delete them. Users can also choose applications, widgets and other items (mostly plugins) to uninstall.

AppCleaner has the ability to prevent certain important apps from being deleted accidentally. Users can add any application to the list of their favorite apps in the Preferences.There’s also SmartDelete - the option to delete an app properly when it’s moved it to trash.

Jackson also listed AppCleaner in his list of Free Alternatives to 10 Popular Commercial Mac Apps.

AppTrap

AppTrap is like a watchdog for the Trash. It will wait until the user deletes an app, then it will pop a dialogue up, asking if all associated files should be trashed together with the application, allowing for a more complete clean-up of the system.

This uninstaller resides in System Preferences as a preference pane.It’s inactive by default. Upon installation, the user needs to activate it. There’s also an option to automatically start this app on login.

AppTrap is no longer being maintained or developed but still works fine under Leopard.

DesInstaller

DesInstaller is a simple tool that reads the receipts generated when you install a “.pkg” file with Apple’s Installer. User can opt to remove every file installed by a package, even if it has been modified, and/or archived.

Caution!
No matter which uninstaller you use, please always double-check the list of associated files to be deleted. Sometimes the app will make mistakenly include unrelated file(s) to the list.

To be sure, you can also confirm the files you’re about to delete by looking inside the Trash before emptying it.

Do you use uninstallers for Mac or you only depend on Trash? Do you have other alternatives? Share using the comments section below.

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Here we go.

eBay Desktop

The official eBay Desktop is an Adobe AIR app which mirrors all the searching, tracking, and bidding functionality of the site, plus filtering features, search history, and my favorite part, real-time updates. It’s refreshing to no longer need refreshing. Enter a keyword and watch the search results update by themselves.

Lastminute Auction

One of my favorite eBay tools is the Lastminute Auction search. Auctions featured here all have current prices under $1 (not including shipping), and all have less than an hour to go. Register to keep favorite categories handy, and you’ve got a good chance here to snatch up a great deal.

Typo Buddy

My new favorite eBay search tool, however, is Typo Buddy. From this site, you can take advantage of human error and hopefully find yourself a steal. When you do an eBay smart search for “Nintendo”, you get all the results with that keyword. What you don’t get are “Nintedno”, “Nintenro”, “Nihtendo”, or many other misspellings. Typo Buddy will find all of them, with the idea that the auctions’ low profile will let you swoop in and pay a lower price for the items.

Unwired Buyer

One more site to mention, not because it’s a search but because it’s a unique tool, is Unwired Buyer, which keeps an eye on your watch list and lets you place bids by phone in the closing minutes.

Not forgetting Nabit, an application which Mark reviewed a couple years back. Follow this link to read all about it. Unfortunately, the developers of Nabit has discontinued its distribution. You might still be able to get a copy of it online.

What’s your favorite way to search eBay? Give us some ideas in the comments.

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

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Simon Slangen is our PDF Manual Editor, so if there are any subjects you would like to see turned into a downloadable PDF manual, put your ideas in the comments below or send him an email at simon@makeuseof.com. You may also find the past manuals here.

So, what has MakeUseOf served you in the month of June? Read on to find out.

Karl - Ask The Admin

Watch Hulu & Flash Videos On Your WM Device With Skyfire
Do you Doodle? Share your doodles with the world!
Compare Bing’s search results with Google’s using Bing vs. Google
Watch YouTube Videos on Your Large Screen TV
Restore Your Desktop Icons’ Position With Desktop OK [Windows]
How To Run Windows Mobile 6.5 On Your PC Desktop
How To Remove Duplicate Contacts on Windows Mobile
How To Submit Your Website To Bing & Google For More Traffic
How To Find and Remove Broken Shortcuts Automatically
Use Webslug To See How Fast Your Site Loads
How To Read Scratched CDs or DVDs In Windows
2 Websites to Verify Urban Legends and Email Scams
How To Control Your PC from Windows Mobile Cell Phone
Best Sites to Download Very High Resolution Wallpapers
3 Useful Websites for Free Downloadable Resume Templates
Find Great High Definition Movie Trailers Online
SmarterFox Makes You More Productive in FireFox
How To Become a Better Writer with VocabGrabber
How to Convert PDF to an Editable Word Document [Windows]
Portable, Multiple-Layered Image Editor — Fotographix

Varun - Tech Crazy

Enhance Windows Explorer’s Context Menu With Shell Tools
Check Your Website Design In Different Browsers With Adobe BrowserLab
10 Windows Command Line Tips You Should Check Out
Identify Unknown Files with TrID [Windows/Linux]
How To Tweet In Linux Using Pidgin
5 Little Desktop Apps You Should Check If You Mutlitask
How to Get Detailed Information & Benchmark Linux System
How to Put Home, Computer, Trash icons on Ubuntu Desktop
FARR - Launch Your Apps & Find Your Files Quickly [Windows]
Backup Program Data & Personal Settings with FBackup
Meiga - One of The Best Linux File Sharing Programs
10 Great Apps to Convert Audio & Video Files in Linux

Saikat - The Things I Do

How to Remove Microsoft Groove Synchronization
How To Change Default Webpage Source Editor Of Browsers
Use A Definition To Find The Word With OneLook’s Reverse Dictionary
How To Turn MS Word 2007 Into A Minimalist Text Editor
Top 6 Firefox Add-ons For The Movie Freak
How to Freeze a Part of a Word Document for Easy Reference
The Wordnik- Cool Online Dictionary with Sentences & Images
How to Email Smarter With Buit-In Time Zone Converters
10 Tips to Have Fun Using Advanced Google Search for Images
How To Twitter Quickly from Firefox, IE, Opera and Chrome
Gmail Tips: Four Degrees Towards Becoming A Gmail Ninja
How To Send Personalized Mass Emails in Outlook
How to Set Up Mozilla Thunderbird to Send Mass Emails

Simon - Wombat Labs

The Top 3 File Compression & Extraction Softwares
Fun Online Multiplayer Golf Gaming with PangYa
3 Ultra Cheap Alternatives To iTunes Store
La Tale - A 2D MMORPG Sidescrolling Action Game
How To Remove DRM from MOBI and PRC eBooks
Football Superstars - Live The Life Of Famous Football Players!
Runes of Magic - The Best Free Internet Multiplayer Game
Hacking Tips: Download Free Games for Your iPod
Audition - Groovalicious MMO Dancing Game
BOTS!! - Awesome Robot Battle Online Multiplayer Game
The 6 Cutest Sites with Silly Pet Pics and LOL Pets

Guy - Extreme IT

4 Very Light Alternatives to Adobe Reader
How To Set Up A Podcast On TalkShoe - The Forgotten Guide
How To Restrict Access to Websites with Privoxy [Part 1]
How To Restrict Access to Websites with Privoxy [Part 2]
3 Sites To Help You Change Your Life
How Do I Download Songs onto iTunes - A Tutorial
How To Download Streaming Video with DownloadHelper
3 Fun Programs For Free Fortune And Tarot Readings
Find Totally Free Unlimited Internet Access Almost Anywhere
3 Beginner Computer Tips That Are Often Neglected
Roblox - A Cool Lego-Based Free Virtual World for Kids

Ryan - BetterContent

4 Really Popular Prank Call Websites & How They Work
The Top 10 Grocery Coupon Websites for Cheapskates
The Best Free Websites To Find Foreclosed Houses
Top 10 Sites To Find The Hot Selling Items On eBay
Top 4 Web Tools to Create Free Websites Instantly
Top 10 Most Effective Job Search Websites
Top 10 Free Genealogy Websites to Find Ancestors
Find a Teenage Pen Pal Anywhere in the World With ePaLs
How To Deal with Spam and Report Email Scams in The U.S.
Customize Your Internet Search Results with Google SearchWiki
5 Geeky Ways To Ask Someone To Marry You On The Internet
How To Make A Budget And Wipe Out Debt With Quicken Online
How To Write A Movie Review Online and Earn Money Doing It

Tina

5 More Excellent Ways to Waste Time Online
5 Tools to Harvest the Potential of Your Firefox Bookmarks
Normalize MP3 Volume Levels with MP3Gain
5 Quick Steps to Manage Software Updates with SUMo
How to Send Big Files & Auto-open mailto Links in Gmail / Yahoo
Use Doodle to Make an Online Poll When Planning Group Events
Create A Free Travel Packing Checklist With Packwhiz
How To Read and Interpret Body Language
5 Cool Free Internet Games for Kids That’ll Make them Love Math

Damien - Make Tech Easier

Bing: The Next Big Thing From Microsoft
4 Great Alternative Clipboard Managers For Windows
Add Email Client to Your Website with RoundCube Webmail
Testing Google Chrome Alpha: Test #1 - Linux
5 Little Useful Sticky Notes For Linux
AcetoneISO - Easy ISO Manager for Linux
How To Pin Any Application Window To The Top
Su.pr - An Extraordinary URL Shortener from StumbleUpon

David - The 2.0 Life
Make Your Speeches Shine with Acrobat Presentations
3 Web Apps For Staying On Top Of The Music Scene
Sync and Share All Your Online Notes with 3Banana
Clicky - A Great Alternative To Google Analytics
Find Out Where Your Favorite Artists Are Playing With Jambase
ScribbleLive- No Hassle Blog For Live Blogging
Recover Hard Drive Space with TreeSize [Windows]
3 Really Cool Adobe AIR Apps for Movies and Music
The Best Windows 7 Feature: The Taskbar
Scoopler - Cool Real Time Search Tool for Twitter

Tim - Twenty Ounce

How To Turn Your Gaming Console Into A Media Center
Google Squared! - Google Search to the Next Power
Get Updates From All Your Social Networks With OrSiSo
How To Set Up Your Own Secured Wi-Fi Hotspot
How To Auto Backup Computer Files with CrashPlan
How To Get A Skype-In Phone Number For Free
How to Stop Annoying “Restart” Prompt after Windows Updates

Jeffry - Super Subconscious

8 Free FTP Clients For Mac
How To Place Your Widgets On The Desktop [Mac]
10 Really Fun Dashboard Widget Games For Mac
How To Run iLife From An External Hard Disk [Mac only]
Testing Google Chrome Alpha: Test #2 - Mac
How To Save & Share Software Updates on Mac
MindMapping: 3 Simple Idea Mapping Software for Mac
4 Easy Ways to Burn CDs and DVDs for Free on Mac

Stefan - The Tux Geek

Recommendations On Movies, Music, Books From Glue [Firefox]
Create Windows System Restore Point with 1-Click using SCRP
Pure Sync: Free Backup and File Synchronization Tool
Sync All of Your Media Files in One Place with doubleTwist
Hulu Desktop: Instant TV Shows and Movies on Large Screen
The 8 Best Book Review Sites
Safari 4: Is It Time To Switch From Firefox?

Jim Henderson - Different Perspective

5 Websites to Learn a LOT More About Photography & DigiCams
The Ultimate ‘Upgrade To Windows 7′ Guide – Part 2
How To Remove Clutter From Google Reader with Helvetireader
2 Great Ways To Automate Set Management In Flickr
Windows 7 Libraries Explained – And Why You Want Them

Mahendra Palsule - An Unquiet Mind

5 Tips to Maximize Your Windows Live Experience
Translation For MSN: Auto Translates Messages While Chatting
The Best Sites to Understand and Share Your Strange Dreams

Leon

Liberkey: 200+ Portable Apps Wherever You Go [Windows]
Orisinal.com - Cute Flash Games For All

Michael - Doodler Blog

Photoshop Pathing: How To Use Photoshop Pen Tool

Jason K - Third Error

How To Download and Play Kongregate Games Offline

Shannon - Shannon Rist

5 Free Twitter Tools For Smarter Tweeting

Grant - The GrantBlog

10 Really Cool Free Blackberry Applications

Will Mueller - Will M

5 More Greasemonkey Scripts To Make Browsing Easier

Brad - OwensDomain

The Top 5 Sites to Find Song Lyrics Online

TanaG - Information Technology Writer

7 Common Reasons Why Windows Can Get Unresponsive

Gary - Reichel Graphic Design

SparkPeople - Free Online Health & Weight-loss Community

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

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• September Roundup : Make Use Of Authors (0)
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If you have downloaded a bunch of them, now would be a great time to try out Wallpapa.

And try out Wallpapa is what I did. I downloaded the small installer from here: http://www.phoeniixz.net/software.html. Then, I installed it. Once it was installed, I saw this screen:

At the top, you’ll find folder list where you can add or remove folders. When you click the “Add or remove” button you will see a file browser that will let you choose the folders on your computer which contain backgrounds. You can also use a mapped drive to point to server files.

After adding a folder, you can browse through the containing image files in the bottom portion of the program’s window.

Simply by scrolling down and selecting a background image, you can make it your desktop background afer hitting the “Set as Wallpaper” button. Next, we will look at how the program can shuffle through your images in the selected folder.

Hit the Shuffle button and Wallpapa will do its thing, randomly select and change your background image! Very cool, especially for someone like me who has a million pictures of my beautiful daughter. Next up, we will look at the Find feature. You can type in a query and hit enter or click on the magnifying glass. This will narrow down your search in your selected folders.

You can see it in action here:

And of course, what is an application if we don’t check out the Preferences! By hitting the Preferences button, you can toggle the Preferences sidebar which is shown by default on the right-hand side of the program.

The choices are simple enough. You may choose how often to swap backgrounds and how to display your images: Cover, Tile, Stretch or Scale. You can also set how it deals with small images and the default background color behind items.

This is a nifty application to set up active desktop wallpaper and that needs to stay running for it to work and uses very little memory. Give it a shot and let us know how you like it!

Also, check out other popular posts to pimp out your desktop:

Use Videos As A Screensaver Or Wallpaper [Windows]
8 Apps Which Will Definitely Spice Up Your Desktop [Mac Only]
5 Wallpaper Changer Apps For Linux
The Best Resources to Pimp Your Wallpaper

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

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MakeUseOf has always offered solutions to financially savvy geeks, such as the article I wrote earlier on 3 blogs to get you out of debt, or Kaly’s 15 cool tools to track expenses and budget, but if you have a financial blog or website of your own, now you can embed free website stock tickers into your site with very little effort.

Thanks to the wonderful Web 2.0 world of widgets, there are a number of quick and easy tools to integrate real-time stock information on your site. If you can copy and paste, then you can have updated stock information on your website.

How to Use Free Website Stock Tickers

When selecting the best stock ticker widgets, I searched for those that are versatile enough to work on any blog platform or website. The stock widgets listed below are not only universal (most of them utilize Javascript), but they’re easy to customize for the exact stocks that you want to display on your website. These particular widgets aren’t just a standard stock ticker with just scrolling text, these all display stock data in a more graphical real-time format.  Just review the following list, select your favorite and embed it on your own site!

FreeStockCharts are Interactive and Free - It Doesn’t Get Much Better Than That

One of the best free stock charting widgets comes from FreeStockCharts, which actually lets you choose between one of two formats. You can either use the standard graphical chart that streams the data for the stocks that you specify, or you can use the “Hover Chart,” which automatically locates the ticker symbols in your content and provides your visitors with the ability to hover the mouse over those symbols and see a real-time chart of that stock. That’s a very cool feature to have on any financial website.

Once you choose whichever chart you want, you can customize it to suit your needs. Customizing only requires filling out a very simple one-page form where you can select the ticker symbol, update time, colors and other features for the chart.

Once you’ve finished customizing all of the chart features, all you have to do is copy the code that’s automatically generated at the bottom of the screen and paste it into your website or blog platform where appropriate. For my example, I’m going to embed the chart into my Wordpress blog FreeWritingCenter, which is just a matter of pasting the code into the Wordpress widgets section. After you’re done, the finished real-time chart will appear on your blog or website as shown below.

The NASDAQ Market Ticker

No list of free website stock tickers would be complete without an honorary mention of the one offered by NASDAQ. This graphical ticker will actually work either on your computer desktop or on your web page. Once you click the “copy me” button on the widget page, you can choose from a list of services where you want to embed the widget. This lets the application customize the code to work best on your Blogger account, Facebook page or anywhere else. In my case, I just want the straight HTML embed code.

Once you have copied and pasted the code into your blog - you’re good to go. Unlike FreeStockCharts, you don’t have to sign up with your email address before you can use the ticker. Personally, I like the look and feel of the NASDAQ ticker better than most of the others.

With this ticker, your visitors can actually customize it to their own liking. If they click on “ADD,” they can enter their preferred ticker symbol and that stock will show up under the “My Stocks” tab. Now that’s coolness.

The Yahoo Stock Ticker - For Financial Yahooligans

Yahoo Finance is one of the most popular online financial resources on the net today, so it stands to reason that Yahoo would offer their own free stock ticker. Yahoo lets you choose from three types of modules for your site - large (quotes, charts and news), medium (quotes and charts), or small (quotes). You can customize the data with up to 10 ticker symbols, adjusting the width of the display, and choosing the color scheme.

Just like the NASDAQ ticker, you don’t have to enter your email, you only have to accept the terms and conditions to get access to the code. Usually I don’t really like Yahoo products because they’re typically kind of “plain vanilla,” with very few features. However, in the case of this stock module, the ability to customize it with up to 10 ticker symbols and choose from a variety of color schemes is very cool.

SaneBull Displays Data From Global Markets

SaneBull, briefly reviewed before by Makeuseof, offers a whole range of awesome plugins for Facebook, iPhone, Mac and many other platforms. One of the best ones is the “World Market Watch” widget, where you can display stocks from markets all over the globe on your website.  Like the NASDAQ widget, there are automatic installers for platforms like Blogger, Facebook and a variety of others.

If you do use any of these social networks, I highly suggest using this tool, especially if you’re not the type that likes to play around with adding the code yourself. However, I’m old fashioned - so I always go for the copy and paste approach. I’m weird like that.

I like the look and feel of the Sanebull stock widget - however if you don’t, then you’re out of luck because there’s no way to customize the widget. You get what you get. The extent to customization is that you can select only American, Asian or European markets instead of displaying them all at once.

Using StockTwits for Stock Tips

While not technically a stock ticker widget, StockTwits is a very useful stock widget for financial bloggers. Want to give your readers access to the latest stock tips? The StockTwits widget is a direct plugin to Twitter feeds of market investors. As investors “twit” personal stock tips, the StockTwits widget automatically updates the feed on your web page.

The major drawback with this particular stock widget is that you can’t customize it - not only in terms of its appearance, but also what information comes through. The feed is basically about any stock tip whatsoever, so expect to get a stream of random tips on any stock imaginable. Of course, for day traders or other folks who are always on the lookout for hot stock tips, that’s a great thing.

Do you use any stock widgets on your own website or blog? What are your favorites? Share them in the comments section below.

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• UpDown Online Stock Market Trading Simulator Lets You Play Without Losing Money (6)
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(1) FollowThatPage - Handy web-based program for monitoring web pages. It keeps an eye on the given webpages and sends alerts when they change. The report will indicate what has been added or removed from the page. Read more: FollowThatPage: Online Program To Monitor Web Pages For Changes

(2) CheckMyColours - Online tool for web developers which can be used to check color contrast of websites. It analyzes the foreground and background colors of a website and reports errors and other problems in contrast, brightness and the colors. It also checks if the site provides sufficient contrast when viewed by someone with color deficits. Read more: CheckMyColours: Check Color Contrast Of Your Site

(3) Homethinking - Website that lets you compare neighborhoods in several major cities within United States. The site can come in very useful if you’re moving to a different city and not sure which neighborhood to choose. Bascially, enter the names of your current city and the one you’re planning to move to and get a list of similar neighborhoods. Read more: Homethinking: Compare Neighborhoods in Different Cities

(4) Hunch - Personal decision making application that helps people make a decision by asking the relevant questions related to their problem. Enter your query and then, in ten questions or less, it offers a solution to your problem. You can also skip a question if you want to. Hunch’s answers are based on the collective knowledge of the entire Hunch community. Read more: Hunch: Online Personal Decision Making Tool

(5) WhatsOnMyFood - Web resource where you can find out more about pesticides in your food and their side effects. The site provides you with a searchable database where you can search by product or pesticide name. Each food listing comes with clear information about the number of pesticides used, their types, health effects and toxicity legends. Read more: WhatsOnMyFood: See What Pesticides are Used in Your Food

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!

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Yet at the same time, we as a public feel the need to fuel these fires by constantly promoting such things. Just like with the buying and selling of stocks, if you mis-time your information, you might have just let the jackpot go.

Feel like you’re lagging behind lately in the viral video scene? Feel like everyone’s talking about some new video posted on Youtube that you missed out on? Feel like you’re missing out on the next Susan Boyle? If you feel that you haven’t getting your latest dose of “viral-ness” lately, here are some sites to check out.

Buzzfeed

The name says it all. It’s what the web is abuzz about, with a slight twist on things. Buzzfeed, the so-called “viral web in real-time,” incorporates something of a badge system in which people can tag certain issues, whether it be news articles, viral videos, or images and the such with exclamations that capture the essence of the viral issue.

Let’s take a look at an example.

These are the top viral issues over a certain period of time, as voted on by people who visit the site. In response to certain posts, users can also follow up with their own “badge” emoticons and tag their comments with other related images or videos. In a sense, it is a forum of weird and interesting things that are currently going on all around the web.

Just like any other blog, there’s archives, different categories (ranging from geeky to lol to omfg to cute), and a social network in which you can build a widget and request to link your site to Buzzfeed. Then again, if you’re really lazy (or you don’t know how to read), here’s another one:

Viral Video Chart

The concept behind Viral Video Chart is rather simple. Aggregate search or viewing data over a certain period of time and compile which videos garnered the most page views. In short, they count the number of times each video is linked to and the number of times each video is embedded, and make lists of the top videos over various periods of time.

So, whether you want to see the top videos of the past year, month, or week, Unruly Media’s Viral Video chart will most definitely satisfy your need of figuring out what exactly everyone is watching.

Remember, these sites are for your time wasting viewing pleasure only. If you’re interested in a more consolidated database of what’s hot on the web, check out these sites:

popurls.com - Lists the current popular headlines circulating around the internet on one single page.  Sites are sorted according to original medium (Youtube, Digg, Yahoo).

alltop.com -  Updates popular headlines every hour and sorts them based on categories (fashion, technology, gaming).

Wikirage.com - Displays which Wikipedia webpages were updated or edited over a certain span of time. Most likely, if the page was edited multiple times within a time period, something’s up!

Still not satisfied? Then check out our article on 21 sites to find out what’s hot online.

What do you think? Have any better sites than the ones I listed above to get your daily dose of what’s hot online? Shout it out in the comments!

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But sometimes, a review doesn’t need to be long-winded or full of adjectives and summaries. All you want to know is this: what is it? Is it worth my time? For such things, check out Blippr.

Blippr is essentially reviews in Twitter-style; short reviews of apps (software and Web), books, games, movies, and music in less than 160 characters. Other than the name that doesn’t make any sense, or the crazy noun (”blips”) that’ll never catch on, it’s a great application that will save you loads of time when searching for product reviews.

Blippr is quickly becoming a popular destination for people looking to read and write simple, quick reviews on all kinds of products. If I’m going to see a movie, I frankly don’t really care what critics say – they don’t appreciate the wonder that is childish humor. What I want to know is simple: do people like me enjoy this? Twitter’s great at this (and Blippr plays really well with Twitter), but Blippr’s a more robust and more put-together version. You won’t get New York Times-caliber reviews, but most of the time you don’t need them anyway. If all you want to know is “should I check this out?” then Blippr’s got you covered.

You can sign in to Blippr with Friendfeed, Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku, Facebook, Google, Yahoo and OpenID. The advantage here is two-fold: you don’t need a new set of credentials, and most of the linked networks allow you to choose to publish your blips every time you review an item. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Blippr’s integration with other services is one of the best parts of the site, and isn’t just limited to the login screen. One of the best, and smartest thing about Blippr is that it integrates with other media-related services. Blippr can add your Netflix movies to your “Stuff,” see what you’re reading on GoodReads, and pull your listening habits in from Last.fm. Once you link these accounts to Blippr, it will automatically create a library for you.

Once you’re logged in and set up, start poking through the site’s categories – movies, books, music, games, and apps. Each of these categories has sections for reviews, “recommended” (based on your reviews, and what similar people are reviewing — something like Last.FM’s artist recommendations), and several other sections that let you look through and add to the database on Blippr. You can search through the site’s coffers to see what people are watching, reading, listening to and playing with. For each item you come across, you’ll see a series of short, 160-or-fewer-character reviews along with the users’ overall opinions of Blippr.

If you bump into something you’ve seen, read, heard or tried; posting a review is easy. You get four options: “I love it!” “I like it,” “I dislike it,” or “I hate it!”. Then, you have 160 characters to explain yourself. This makes the reviews short, easy to read, and easy to sort by people’s opinions – sort of an “out-of-5″ review but with a better set of choices.

The brevity of the reviews is the best part of Blippr – you can figure out what hundreds of people think in the time it would take to read only a few on a site like Amazon or Newegg. Blippr’s like Twitter in that aspect – nothing in-depth, but perfect for figuring out what’s on the tip of everyone’s tongues. If you’re trying to figure out which movie’s perfect for you this Friday, or which album you should buy from the Beastie Boys, Blippr’s a quick and easy way to take the pulse of a product, without tons of leg work on your part.

Every product, book, movie, or whatever has links to buy it and be saved it to “My Stuff”, which will then helps Blippr figure out what you like and tailor recommendations suited to your taste, or look through similar products to the one you’re looking at. It’s a great way to find new products, and to figure out what other people like you are enjoying.

The more you add to your “Stuff” and the more items you review, the recommendations will automatically get better and you’ll have a great organizer of all your media on Blippr. Knowing what you’ve seen, what you’ve read, and what else you might like is a great tool. With these integrations, Blippr works even faster to bring you suitable recommendations closer to your choice in movies, books and lots more stuff!

Where do you go to figure out what to read, watch, hear or use? We’d love to know where you get your recommendations and reviews from. Share them with us in the comments — 160 characters or less!

Like to shop online? Find out how you can save money with 5 saver shopping sites.

Photo: Andrei Z

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With the list of free players growing all the time (iffy companies are cropping up all over the web like raging teen acne - awful to behold and tough to stamp out) it’s time to narrow your choice down to the best available players.

I’ve listed 3 radio players for Windows, Mac and Linux.

For PC

Screamer Radio

This free radio phenomenon is described in detail here. Screamer is simple to use and can handle just about any streaming format.

• Shoutcast and Icecast MP3 Streaming
• Icecast OGG Vorbis Streaming
• WMA Streaming
• AAC Streaming

Best of all, it’s ad free and virtually indetectable (sound aside, of course). Your computer won’t even feel it, and the player window itself is teeny tiny.

By searching the Screamer radio directory, you can build a presets list - this is the collection of stations the app has collected for you. You can search by genre, language, network or region. The selection of genres is very broad and gets quite exotic, from Anime Music to something called ‘Reggaeton’. There’s also a section called ‘Salsa, Bachata, Merengue’ and a category of Nerd Music. Nerd Music!

The sheer extent of the radio database is the best thing about Screamer. But if that doesn’t impress you, maybe you’ll be moved by its handy< a href=”http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/record-streaming-audio-with-screamer-radio/”>extra functions. Screamer doubles as a recorder and encoder!

Features include:

• Recording buffer: start recording in the middle and still save the entire song!
• Direct MP3 Audio stream saving, no loss of quality.
• Direct OGG Vorbis stream saving, no loss of quality.
• Or encode OGG Vorbis as MP3 using Lame
• Encode WMA or AAC to MP3 using Lame

Lame has an awful name. It’s anything but! This is considered one of the best mp3 encoders at mid to high bitrates.

To select the destination folder for your recorded tracks, go to the Screamer Preferences window and select the Recording tab. You can also define file name patterns and buffer sizes here.

In the General Preferences window, you can set Display and Startup options. For example, hide Screamer Startup if it annoys you and make this little player as inconspicuous as possible.

For Windows or Mac

Musicovery. This one is highly interactive and customisable - very easy to use. It was good enough for our editor Aibek, who mentioned it as one of his favorite online music services! Commentators gush that Musicovery is great for discovering new music because of the plethora of ways you can define your tastes, do searches and get recommendations.

Most famously… it’s mood-searchable!

What you do is define the mood you want on the north-south-east-west compass, which reminds me those political compasses where you answer some questions about your social attitudes and get placed on a spectrum: welfare state proponent vs. free market capitalist (up and down scale) AND socially liberal vs. socially conservative (left and right scale).

Musicovery does the same with mood by getting you to place yourself between Dark and Positive, and Energetic and Calm.

Once you’ve clicked somewhere on this 2D chart, you must limit yourself to an era and a genre.

This is what you see when you ask for dark, energetic electro!

For Mac users: Musicovery has a plugin that lets you listen via iTunes. A simple .dmg download will let you use this incredible popular streamer.

For Linux

Rhythmbox

Originally inspired by Apple’s iTunes, Rhythmbox is based on the powerful GStreamer open source framework.  Linux users will get:

1. An easy to use browser

The Rhythmbox tab list (on the far left) allows you to view your Play Queue, Library, Podcasts, Radio preferences and Last.fm streams. So, you get a lot more than radio streaming. And people whinge about the poor player options on Linux!

2. Comprehensive audio format support through GStreamer

GStreamer is a multimedia framework written in C which allows the programmer to create media-handling components like audio and video playback , recording, streaming and editing. The popular Entertainer media center for Linux (mentioned in this article) uses this technology. It’s tops.

3. Options to transfer music to and from iPod, MTP, and USB Mass Storage music players

The iPod tab will appear on the left when you connect your device, just like on iTunes.

4. Direct access to Jamendo

Jamendo is marketed as a ‘new model for artists to promote, publish and get paid for their music’, and Simon previously covered it in his article about the best sites to download music.

With Rhythmbox, you get access to the immense range of Jamendo downloads. These are free and legal music downloads shared under Creative Commons licenses.

5. Last.fm streaming

Find the Last.fm plugin here and import a lot of the things that  made that player great. Build a Last.fm station straight from Rhythmbox!

6. Plugins

There is an impressive list of third party plugins available on the Rhythmbox Developer page. You’ll also find desktop art, ripping/recording devices and a plugin called Remuco that lets you control Rhythmbox remotely from your cell phone!

Besides Rhythmbox, you can also find a bunch of alternative here, as Damien has listed out.

What are you favourite desktop radio players? Do you use an app that wasn’t listed here? Do share them with us in the comments!

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If someone has already asked you this question before, you probably would have drawn a map by hand and just marked the access points, but it is much easier and more accurate to do it with professional software such as Ekahau HeatMapper.

Just download, install, run and you’ll be up and running in no time ready to map the wifi signal of your area. Even if people don’t ask you this question but you have a laptop and move around the workplace a lot, it is always useful to know where you can receive the best wifi coverage, and where you can’t. Heatmapper also gives you real-time information about access points. So if you’re a network manager, this will help you troubleshoot access points with a wi-fi signal strength problem and show where improvements can be done for better coverage.

If you have Windows XP or 32-bit Windows Vista, just download and install the 52MB executable file on a wifi-compatible laptop and install.

Every time you run HeatMapper, you will be asked whether you want to use a map of the location that you are about to survey or a plain grid. It is recommended that you have a floor plan to get best results. If you are using a grid, make sure that you keep your measuring accurate on the grid to what you actually walk to get best results.

If you don’t have a map or floor plan of what you are surveying and you want one, there are numerous sites that you can quickly draw one up. I made a basic floor design of my house using FloorPlanner. It is quite simple to use, but I won’t go in to details about how to draw your floor plan. If you want to save your floor plan or edit it later, you can create an account, or just take a screen shot of your floor plan. If you don’t know how to take a screen shot, you can read this tutorial then take a look at some screenshot tools that MakeUseOf has written about before.

Now, that you’re set up to map your wifi signal strength, walk around your house and every time you want to take a survey of the signal strength, left-click on the interface. To get best results, make sure that you walk behind walls and in all corners of the room and click often. Once you are done taking signal samples from around your house, right-click and a map will appear to show you where the best wifi signal is as well as where you may have a wi-fi signal strength problem.

Once you right-click, you will see the wireless coverage, and if you move your cursor over an access point, you will be presented with detailed information such as the signal strength, channel and MAC address.

Below is the screenshot of the wifi signal in my home. (This is only a basic drawing of my house). As you can see, those green lines represent my path.

Once you are done, you can click the ‘Take screenshot’ button on HeatMapper to save your map.

The only downside to HeatMapper is that you cannot zoom on your map and save your mapping progress. So once you close HeatMapper, you lose your information, so make sure you have enough time to survey the whole area.

Visit Ekahau homepage or the HeatMapper page to download.

So what do you think? What that a useful app to help you visualize your home’s wifi signal strength? Now do you know why your connection keeps dropping when you’re hiding out in your study? Let us your experiences, in the comments!

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I find myself transferring huge amounts of data to and from my data center over the weekend. I need to transfer files on a schedule because there is no way in hell I am going to be logging onto a computer and manually setting up backups or transfers on my days off. Because bandwidth is a commodity these days, I find myself needing to know how long a transfer will take. This way, I can schedule all of my transfers and not worry about them until I verify them on Monday.

I might be a network engineer and I might be the guy who you ask what to do when your computer starts acting strange. However, I do not know how long a transfer is going to take before it starts. I don’t know how to figure it out… But now, I don’t have to!

Enter Transfer Time Calculator. Such a simple application and yet so powerful! This is a 44KB file that is fully portable. You simply download it and then run it.

You will see a screen that looks like this:

By filling in the speed of your line and the size of the file, Transfer Time Calculator will do all the math for you and show you how long it will take. Remember, this is an approximation because your line speed or the speed of the line on the other end can fluctuate. With that being said, let’s give her a try!

I simply filled in the speed of my line by typing in 100 and then selecting Megabit/Sec because my line’s speed is classified as a 100 Mbit/second line. Next, I entered 100 for the file size and then choose Giga Bytes. This will represent a 100GB file being transferred over a 100Mbit line.

Then, I hit the Calculate button near the bottom of the application and…

My results then showed that it would take approximately 2 hours and 37 minutes to transfer this 100GB file over a 100MBit line. The other side of my line is also a 100Mbits/sec private line, so this should be close to accurate if not right on point. If you are going to be using this for calculating your files being uploaded to a website or something like that, your times will be higher that reported.

You can figure out your actual upload speed by using a website such as www.dslreports.com/speedtest. We would love to hear what you think about this application and if it helps you with your daily computing activities. Do you use something similar? Maybe you have a simple formula to share with the rest of us? Either way, leave your thoughts in the comments. We won’t byte

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(1) Foozya - Web application which lets you add a “Feedback” button to any of your web pages and easily gather feedback from visitors. By default, the button will appear at the bottom of your webpage, you can customize its orientation, size and color any way you want. Read more: Foozya: Add Feedback Tab To Your Site

(2) IRS Withholding Calculator - This application lets you calculate your income taxes and find out your net take-home pay after all the income taxes are withheld by IRS (Internal Revenue Service). All the entered information is fully anonymous. No personal data is stored and is discarded after you exit the program. Read more: IRS Withholding Calculator: Calculate Your Income Taxes

(3) Meuzer - Music service for listening to free music online without downloading. It has a cool interface and easy navigation features. When you type in the name of the song or the artist, Meuzer looks it up on YouTube, Imeem, etc. and plays the song in its embedded media player. You can also, rate, share or add songs to your playlists. Read more: Meuzer: Listen To Free Music Online Without Downloading

(4) Parkr - Amusement park finder that lets you locate amusement and theme parks around the world. You can search for parks by location or zoom in to view parks on the map. All parks are marked as icons and clicking any one will show the park’s address and a link to a page with more detail such as images, user ratings and contact details.  Read more: Parkr: Amusement Park Finder

(5) PigSpigot - User generated greeting card site with an integrated greeting card designer which allows customers to create and send both eCards (free) and snail-mail (paid) cards to friends and family. The cool thing about this site is that it can convert user generated art into an online greeting card. Choose a card, personalize it with text, send it and done. Read more: PigSpigot: Online Greeting Card Designer

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.

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Luckily for me, OpenTable’s got my back. OpenTable is a massive (and still growing) system of restaurants, foodies and tools for helping you find the right restaurant as well as always getting a table.

First, you’ll see this screen below (which looks an awful lot like a parking screen for an ad company, but really isn’t). Pick your locale – most major American cities are well-represented by OpenTable, as are a number of international cities. Then, you can refine your search even more: by a more narrow location, by type of food, or even by date and time (eliminating any restaurant that might be closed when you want to eat).

If you still can’t decide, let the users of OpenTable help. Every restaurant you’ll see has reviews from OpenTable users who have been there, and the site even aggregates some of the most popular and best-reviewed restaurants in a variety of categories, from “Good for Groups” to “Best Ambience.” Of course, there are also tons of “Best ____ Food” lists as well, for every locale you choose.

To further aid you in finding the right restaurant, every listing comes with useful information: price range, accepted cards, whether there’s a bar or not, where to park, and lots more, all based on giving you as much information as possible to make your food run even better.

Once you’ve narrowed it down to the perfect spot, you choose your date, time, and size of party that you want a table for. OpenTable then does a search, and looks for the best available reservation times, and comes back to you with some options. I tried a place for Sunday brunch at 12pm, and got three reservation possibilities back in only a few seconds.

Choose your reservation time, log in (you can create a temporary account, or create a free account on OpenTable for this part), and you’re done! OpenTable sends you an email confirming your reservation, and you’re all set. Cancelling or changing your reservation is easy, as is exporting the event to your Outlook calendar.

OpenTable also lets you publish your reservation information to Facebook, or send invitations by email to your event – this makes OpenTable into a one-stop event planner, at least for the basics.

The reason OpenTable’s so great, as I see it, is that it’s better than you at knowing what’s going on. It’s connected directly to all the restaurants, so its information is as up-to-date as the restaurant itself, and reservations are made internally and easily, rather than OpenTable just acting as a middleman. Your reservation is always certain, and always correct.

OpenTable makes a once-annoying and complicated process extremely simple. Just log in, click, and you’re set – no phone calls, no guessing game about when to arrive; OpenTable does the work for you, and you just show up when you’re supposed to. That’s my kind of dining experience.

Are there other great apps that making eating even better? If you know any, please share them with us in the comments.

Other foodie articles on MakeUseOf are:
3 Recipe Sites For The Post Fast Food Era
Desktop Dining - The Best Places To Order Pizza Online
FOOD Love: Top 5 Recipe Websites

Photo: wallyg

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1. NoScript

Many browser security issues stem from exploits of JavaScript code. NoScript prevents that code from executing, and then notifies you of what code is blocked. You may then add the page to your white-list with a few clicks. That way, you’re protected when browsing unfamiliar sites, but can still check your Gmail and surf Digg.

2. Ad-Block Plus (ABP)

According to Mozilla, this is the #2 favorite add-on (next to FlashGot), and it is for good reason. Ad-Block Plus improves on its predecessor, allowing you to subscribe to a list of advertising codes to block, just like one might subscribe to antivirus updates. Advertisers can potentially track user behavior across the Web, and it’s no surprise that many users don’t like that. Like NoScript, ABP can be disabled for specific sites and pages. ABP will block 99% of the ads out there. And as a bonus, pages should render much faster.

3. Web of Trust (WOT)

My new favorite! WOT adds an extra layer of protection to your browser, utilizing users ratings to show you, at a glance, which sites are OK and which ones should be left unclicked. WOT can enhance search results and links on AOL, Ask, Bing, Delicious, Digg, Dogpile, Google, Gmail, Mahalo, Wikipedia, Hotmail, Yahoo, DMOZ and Reddit, among others.

Above is the first screen you’ll see after installing WOT. WOT can be as intrusive as you wish, and also be used to block kids’ access to unsafe sites.

Above is an example of Firefox viewing a site which has been rated poorly by WOT users. You can still go to the site, but I wouldn’t recommend doing so.

NoScript, Ad-Block Plus, and Web of Trust take only moments to install, but will help keep their users safe from many of the Web’s seedier elements. We welcome any suggestions you may have of additions to this list are welcome, in the comments below.

For more posts on security and privacy online, do read:

10+ Best Firefox Security and Privacy Addons
7 Essential Security Downloads You MUST Have Installed
Detect Fake Antivirus software & Spyware Removal programs
Things To Know When Using a WiFi Hotspot Or a Public PC

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Won’t it be great if you can listen to the whole songs (or CD) before you buy? iTunes store and Amazon has the preview feature, but they only come with a 30-second preview, which is not enough to sample a song.

We need some alternatives, great alternatives. So, here are my favorite websites where users can listen to CDs before buying them.

1. AOL music

AOL music is one of the best place in the Web that offers free full length songs and music for listening. It has a huge database of songs. You simply pick the songs you want. If the song is not available, AOL will search for it in the web and playback (from the remote location) the song on the fly.

In addition, AOL music always have a “New music releases” section where you can listen to new CD releases for free in their entirety every week.

This is not only a good way to sample the CD before you buy, it is also a good way to discover new CDs in the market.

2. Youtube

At Youtube, you won’t be able to sample the whole CD at one go, but surely you will be able to find most of the tracks (in music video and other forms) in its database. When you search for the songs/artists/albums in the search bar, there is a high chance that you will find what you want in the search result.

Furthermore, with all the YouTube and other video conversion tools previously highlighted by MakeUseOf, you can also convert and download the music video to your desktop, even though the music quality differs a great deal from those in the music store.

5. Rhapsody

With Rhapsody, you never have to worry about a lack of songs. They have more than a million songs in their database and there is a very high chance you will find what you want. Rhapsody operates on a subscription model (only available in US), that is to say, you pay a subscription fee every month ($12.99) and you have access to all the songs in their database and you can listen to them again and again, unlimited times.

With the subscription account, you can also download the software and access to your favorite songs from your desktop.

If you are not willing to pay the subscription fee, Rhapsody also allows its users to listen to 25 songs for free. That should be enough for you to sample two and a half CD of songs before you make your purchase decision.

4. Imeem

Imeem is a social network that enables its users to share media, including music, video and photos with each other.  In here, you are likely to find the songs/CDs that you want. Some of the music are restricted by the label/artists and features only a 30-second preview, but there are still a great deal of them that are full length and you are able to listen to the full CD.

5. Baidu MP3

This may not be suitable for everyone, but if you are a Chinese song lover, like I am, then this is the place to listen to free songs.

All you need to do is to perform a search with the search bar and it will fetch the required songs from the artists. You can then scroll to find his/her current album or previous albums. You can click on the link beside the song to hear the full song.

Other alternatives that did not make the list

MySpace

I am sure some of you will swear by MySpace. I am not an active user of MySpace and I don’t have much love for it. Personally, I find the layout very messy and it crashes my browser (and computer) very often.

Last.fm

While there are plenty of songs and information in Last.fm, you seldom have the chance to sample the full CD of your favorite artists. I do use it for occasional listening, but when it comes to CD sampling, I guess there are better sites out there.

If you are interested in purchasing music online, Simon listed out 3 Ultra Cheap Alternatives to the iTunes Store. Check it out.

What other websites do you go to listen CD before buying? Do you prefer digital copies or physical CDs? Comment away!

Image credit: SChristineBrink

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Even the most dull and serious people can’t escape a laugh when they see a lemur getting tickled, silly pet pics, or browse lol pets pictures.

We’ve gathered the all-time cutest websites on the internet. Hakuna Matata - read on, forget about your worries and relax.

Cute Overload

Cute-hunters out there most probably know all about Cute Overload, and for those who don’t - the name says it all.

Cute Overload brings daily new cutie pictures, ranging from ninja hamsters to fat immobile cats. All pictures are based on reader suggestions, so they’ve got cuteporters all over the world, ready to make your day.

If you want to have a dose of funny cute, Cute Overload is the place to go.

FurryTalk.com

Tell me, what’s cuter than furry animals? Furry Talk is a blog, focused on the cutest and furriest animals in the world. Multiple pictures are posted weekly, accompanied by a witty comment, Q&A, jokes, or inspirational motto.

Walk your way through the site, and take some time to relax and smile. You can browse the site chronologically, or view pictures of the most popular animals by category.

Today’s Big Thing - Cute Animals

You might already know Today’s Big Thing from another perspective - presenting the awesomest video on the internet, every day. They’ve now opened a new subsection, entirely dedicated to cute animals.

Watch video of ninja cats, puppies learning to howl, or monkeys being tickled. On Today’s Big Thing, you can be sure to find the ever cutest animal videos, every day.

Lolcats & Loldogs

This list would not be complete without including I Can Has Cheezburger, especially being hosted on a geeky site.

This site, for those of you who don’t know it, is filled with thousands and thousands of cat and dog pictures, with hilarious captions printed over them. Where other sites might bring a tender smile on your lips, lolcats and loldogs will give you a good laugh and a tear in each eye.

If you’re into the LOL pets craze, browse the lolcats or loldogs section, or manufacture your own silly pet pics using the Lol Builder. I Can Has Cheezburger has a fanbase in the millions, both for the cuteness as for the lolness.

Daily Puppy

The old newspaper layout of The Daily Puppy should be enough to make your day. If not, maybe the daily added puppy pictures will hit it out of the park for you.

Each day, the site produces another Daily Puppy, a cute little dog with its own background and story. In the other sections of the site, The Daily Puppy gives the same treatment to grown-up puppies, and hosts a comprehensive database of dog-related articles.

For any dog lovers out there who like to have a little more than a cute picture, this one is a must-try.

ZooBorns

Contrary to the other cute-sites, you won’t see any cats or dogs on ZooBorns. This site only shows the very cutest exotic animal babies, be it seals, lions, or zebras. It’s Cute Overload all over again, jungle edition.

Each picture comes with a story; a story about the animals, about what happened in the pictures, about the exotic little lives of the ZooBorns.

If you like ‘cute’, but prefer lions over cats, and zebras over ponies, ZooBorns is the place to go.

Where do you get your fix of cuteness? Tell us about it in the comments section below.

How about playing some of the cutest games? Check out Leon’s post on Orisinal - Cute Flash Games For All.

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I expected this question after my previous post - How to Send Personalized Mass Emails in Outlook. So, let me continue where I left off and do a bit of Mozilla Thunderbird add-on hunting. After all, Mozilla’s rich add-on universe has a cure for every conceivable ‘problem’ except world hunger.

Yes, I found the answer in Mozdev.org. It’s the Mozilla developers’ community dedicated to open and free, quality applications and extensions - a perfect place to check out when you want to know how to set up Mozilla Thunderbird for anything.

Mail Tweak is a Thunderbird extension for Thunderbird ver. 2.0+. It’s a collection of enhancements and workarounds for the email client. The enhancements total around 36 (113KB) and one of them is called Personalize messages.

This ‘productivity’ tweak sends each recipient an individual message using fields from the address book or a CSV (comma separated values) file.

1. Go to the installation page of Mail Tweak at Mozdev.org. Download the mailtweak-0.16.xpi file to your computer.
2. Open Thunderbird. Select Tools – Add-ons – Extensions. Browse to the location of your downloaded file and install. Restart the Thunderbird client to complete.
3. Open the Add-on window (from Tools – Add-on) and select the Mail Tweak extension. Click on Options.
4. Scroll down the entries in the Tweaks section and select Personalize messages. Click OK.
5. You can now compose a message by selecting Message – Personalize message from the menu toolbar.

   Add your recipients (or a recipients list) as you normally do. You can include the contacts in other ways, of course.

   • Click on Address Book on the menu. Select the bunch of names - right click and choose Personalize from the context menu.
   • Open a new message window from Message – Personalize. Select the Personalize button on the menu and pick up the mail addresses from a CSV file.
6. To send the messages, click on File – Personalize (or click the Personalize button on the toolbar). An alert pops up with the option of ‘Send now’ or ‘Leave unsent’. With the latter option, Mail Tweak saves the messages (as individual emails) in the Unsent folder. After reviewing them you can email them from File – Send Unsent Messages.

Further personalize your email using Mail Tweak…

To include other fields like address, city, work phone etc. from the address book, specify field attributes in the emails. For example, to include the first name of each individual recipient – place a %%firstName%% where needed.
(All available address book field names are the properties as given in the nsIAbCard file. This is where all address fields of a particular contact are stored as attributes. Check out all the attributes here.)

Here’s an example to illustrate – to include the home address and the city of the contacts, include %% homeAddress%% and %%homeCity%% in the appropriate place. Similarly, it can be worked out for the other fields.

Without turning this into a soup of geeky codes and syntax, let me direct you to the Mail Tweaks Personal Messages section for some more help.

Although, Mail Tweak is built for the latest version, it can also be installed in Thunderbird 1.5 and in Shredder (pre-release versions of Thunderbird 3) with limited functionality.

MozDev.org does put out this caution - Performance may be poor if you use this feature for large messages or many recipients, and you might see warning messages from Thunderbird. For bulk mailing, it is better to use a specialized bulk mailing program.

That’s a good advice but for a home user’s run-of-the-mill mass mailing needs using the Thunderbird client, Mail Tweaks is a good enough productivity solution.

So, how often do you use bulk mailing? Do you think this solution is workable for you? Let us know if you have any other freeware to lessen the load.

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(1) LinkUp - Job aggregator that lets you find hidden jobs listed on company websites. These jobs listings are generally unadvertised to the outside world and can be difficult to find if you don’t know where to look. The site currently lists data from over 21,000 company websites. You can search by keyword, job title or location. Advanced and more refined search options are also supported. Read more: LinkUp: Find Hidden Jobs

(2) Corkboard -This site lets you easily save things you want to remember and organize them in one place online. It can be a recipe from some website, an upcoming event in your city, an upcoming movie, a phone number, a newly discovered food joint, a website, a new bestseller that you saw in the bookstore, basically anything that you might want to refer to some time later. Read more: Corkboard: Quickly Save Things You Want to Remember and Setup Reminders

(3) HotelWorldOnline - Hotel search and price comparison site that lets you quickly and easily compare hotel prices from top hotel reservation sites such as ActiveHotels.com, AsiaRooms.com, Booking.com, Cheaptickets.com, Gtahotels.com, HotelClub.com, Hotwire.com and more. Enter the name of the city and it will display a list of hotels available along with the prices offered. Read more: HotelWorldOnline: Compare Hotel Prices From Top Hotel Reservation Sites

(4) ToneMatrix - Free music synthesizer and an entertaining time waster that lets you create your own audio sequences online by selecting steps on a 16×16 matrix. Simply select steps with your mouse across the whole matrix. The sound plays from left to right, based on your selected sequence of steps. Read more: ToneMatrix: Free Music Synthesizer

(5) WebElements - Online copy of the periodic table of elements, useful tool to anyone majoring in Chemistry or almost every high school student. It allows users to get more information about any element on the table, view its pictures, crystal structure, atom sizes, isotopes and other properties. Read more: WebElements: Online Copy Of The Periodic Table Of Elements

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.

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In any event, I did check out Roblox. Not only is it fun, it has some great features. It’s a cool, free virtual world for kids where you get to create your own character, much as you would for SecondLife or any number of other virtual world games.

In this one, the characters are blocky, and reminiscent of those little yellow Lego fellows. It’s kind of like Sims, where you get to build your own buildings and towns. Sort of like Webkinz in that you can earn points (known as tickets or Robux in Robloxian) so that you can do different things like buy user-created online goods for your Roblox character.

What really sets it apart is that kids playing on Roblox can create their own games and put them out there for the world to use.

Parent’s - take note of this site. Here are some of the uber cool tools you can use to keep your wee ones safe:

• All in-game chat is filtered for coarse language. As the parent, you can control whether they can chat or use something called menu chat. It’s a list of pre-written questions and responses. The kid’s just choose them and that’s all the communication they are allowed.
• You can control something called SuperSafe Privacy mode for the kids too. What that does is block ALL text fields from accepting any input. So your precious one cannot put any personal information out there.
• As the parent, you login for them using your email account. That keeps you in control of their playing time AND adds another layer of security from weirdos.
• Most importantly, Roblox has a team of paid and volunteer monitors who pore over all chat logs and forum discussions. There is zero tolerance for course or violent language.
• The Roblox team provides tips for online security and recommends other resources to help you have a fun, safe time online.

As a Dad, I’m very pleased to see this. But as a grown-up kid, I want the games! There are a lot of games on this site, many of them user-built. As a result, some of them are not so good and some are way cool. Area 51 was pretty cool but I’m not sure exactly what the objective of it was. I found a flying saucer and got in it, but I couldn’t go anywhere. Then,I got infected with some sort of alien virus and that’s how you die, I guess. You don’t really die, you just regenerate.

The Roblox-created game, Crossroads, was really fun, too! It’s a good starting ground to learn how to use your tools (which are really weapons) with a bunch of other players. Some of them hang out there regularly and talk to each other and team up. That was so much fun, my wonderful one had to tell me to get back to writing. I wish she wouldn’t use the cattle prod, though.

Sure, the game play seems juvenile, but guess what? It’s supposed to be. The point is that this is an online gaming community that the kids themselves can create. They can do that through the Roblox Studio. It strongly resembles the Visual Basic Studio and allows you to design your own spaces and games. Unfortunately, it’s not terribly intuitive to me, but they do have great documentation over at the Roblox Wiki.

To really get the full effect of building your own games and items in Roblox, you would need a Builder’s Club account, which does cost. Maybe give your kids a couple months of using the site in general, before commiting to that.

With the ability to build games, sell items that they make and interact with other games, kids are learning priciples of programming, design, marketing, business and Math skills. I fail to see the downside to Roblox.

Are you a Robloxian? Or maybe your kids are? What do you like best or least about Roblox? Is this your first time hearing of Roblox and you want to thank me with gratuitous praise? Are you aware of any other free virtual world for kids? Well, my fellow Robloxians, that’s what the comments below are for.

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