As Evertale works automatically, once you sign up there’s nothing for you to do except live your life. When you want to relive or share your memories they are all collected for you and ready to view in a way that really makes sense.

How Evertale Works

All you need to do is log into Evertale with Facebook, download the mobile application, enter the account connection code given to you by the website into the mobile application and you’re set. It needs to be done in this order so that your account is linked correctly. If you lose your code you can get access through the Evertale website under “settings”.

Evertale aims to map your life’s journey using automatically collected data from your phone, such as photos, location and music. It is the self-writing scrapbook of your real life. It doesn’t back-date information, so you will only build your scrapbook starting from when you signed up for the Evertale service.

You choose how much information to give Evertale, including call details and text messages. They also claim to have decent route tracking without the use of GPS, so this application will not need to access your phone’s GPS all the time. All information collected by Evertale is kept in a private scrapbook just for you.

You can also set in the Android application whether to limit uploads while on 3G service or roaming internationally. By default, you won’t upload while using international roaming.

As the Evertale application works seamlessly in the background, there’s nothing more you need to do there. From now on, you just leave the application on your phone and access Evertale via the website.

To get a better idea of how Evertale works, take a look at their promo video:

What You Can See In Evertale Online

When you revisit Evertale in the future, you have a private collection of your activities to view. You can look at your travels via the map or click on a day and see what you were doing.

Evertale automatically notes when you go somewhere interesting and out of the ordinary and marks the event with a yellow bar on the calendar for you for easy access. You can also mark dates in the calendar yourself.

When you click on a day, you can see the highlights of the day, a map of your day, add a note anywhere on your day’s route, and easily share the day’s map and highlights with your friends. If your friends also use Evertale it will automatically note when you spend time with each other. When sharing your day’s highlights, you can choose to omit any part of it from the record, such as phone calls, messages, who you met, notes and photos.

Get The Evertale Android Beta App

The folks at Evertale are keen to give MakeUseOf readers an early look at the beta version of their Android application, so we have a limited number of invites to share with you today. Use this link to sign up and get an access code to the Evertale Android Beta App. They are looking for feedback from several different countries. Once you’ve signed up you can invite your friends, too.

Don’t forget that this is a beta testing and that there will be quirks. Please be kind and report your feedback to Evertale – That is why they’re letting you take a look! What do you like so far about Evertale?

For some musicians, the process of recording yourself is a learning exercise, designed to let you know precisely what you sound like so you can improve your performance. But whatever your reason for recording yourself, it’s good to know a handful of decent techniques for the best free software available – and that software is Audacity.

Get Audacity

Before you start recording, make sure you get the latest version of Audacity. Currently, it’s version 2.0.0 released in March 2012.

Prepare Your Recording Equipment

Before you make an audio recording, make sure you have researched a little about the best methods to record your instruments, including microphone placement and the best microphones to use. You may also wish to upgrade your sound card before you start recording. Finally, check your preferences in Audacity to ensure you are recording with the best quality possible.

Recording Basics

In Audacity, recording voice or another instrument with a microphone is as simple as ensuring the microphone input is correct, pressing record and later pressing stop. This will record a single channel which shows as a wave form and can be edited individually.

Previously recorded backing instrumentation in most file formats can also be imported to Audacity (although you may wish to check the legalities of using them). The imported track will also have its own individual channel within Audacity.

Multi-Track Recording In Audacity

It is possible to record multiple channels at once in Audacity if you have the right gear and software to do so. For most amateurs though, this is just not feasible. Therefore, the simplest way to record multiple tracks is to do so one by one.

Start by importing a previously recorded track (or recording the whole band playing at once) which can be used to keep you all in time. Then record each instrument individually, ensuring the person playing has headphones, so they can hear the original track, but that it is not picked up by the microphones. In Audacity, ensure the “Overdub” selection is checked so that new tracks are generated.

If a section of the recording is not quite right, it can be deleted from the track by highlighting and choosing Remove Audio > Silence Audio or Clip Boundaries > Split New. Don’t delete it or cut it as that will join the sections either side together and make the music out of time. A new track can be recorded to replace that section, starting just before the deleted part by clicking on the timeline bar.

When all the individual channels are recorded you can mute the original scratch recording (but don’t delete it – just in case). Play the rest of the channels together and move them around a tiny bit if there is any lag. Do this by clicking and holding, then moving left and right in the timeline.

Basic Music Production Effects In Audacity

To use sound production effects in Audacity, simply highlight the section of the channel in which you want the effect, then go to the effects menu and apply it. If you’re new to using effects, make back-ups of your Audacity file before applying them so that you can compare the sound and revert easily if need be. Also, duplicate channels or section of channels before applying effects, so that you always have your original sound.

Use the Amplify effect to adjust the volume of a section of a channel. For instance, to make the vocals louder against the instruments. You can also use the Fade In/Out effect to create smooth transitions. Normalizing the sound will make it as loud as possible without distorting it.

Pitch can be changed without affecting the tempo. However, most people would advise using this feature sparingly.

Effects such as Reverb, Phase, Wahwah and filters are best tried and tested by you, as it’s difficult to imagine how it will sound before you try it. Just remember to keep your original channels as you can use them to apply different volume levels to the original and the effect.

Equalization is more difficult to apply as when you click on the line you will see a node which can be pulled in many directions to reduce the bass frequency and increase the high frequencies. What this does is adjust the tone and make the sound clearer, however when it comes to actually applying the effect you will just have to try it and see how it sounds.

Use Panning to move the audio from one speaker to another. You’ll find the Panning slider next to the volume for each channel.

When your sound production is sounding complete, you can add a final compression effect to your music in order to lessen the volume difference in your music.

Using Extensions

Audacity has many available plug-ins to achieve specific effects, like reverb and auto-tuning. To install plug-ins or work with other tools, install the Audacity VST Enabler first.

Saving Your Music

When saving, you save the Audacity file itself, with all of the multiple channels represented for tweaking later. If you want to give the music to someone else or to upload it, you’ll need to export the Audacity file as another format, such as MP3.

More Audacity Tips

MakeUseOf has previously covered Audacity for many different sorts of uses. These articles might also be useful to you:

• How To Remove Ambient Noise From Your Audio Files Using Audacity
• 3 Audacity Tips To Enhance Your Recorded Interviews

What’s your best tip for recording and producing vocals using Audacity?

It’s possible to sync Google Docs to Dropbox, automatically send Gmail attachments to Dropbox, play music in a browser from your Dropbox music files, encrypt your Dropbox, easily host a website or blog in Dropbox, collect URLs and web clippings to Dropbox and to automate file syncs between all of your social networks and Dropbox. You can even view all of your Dropbox files alongside your Google Docs, Box files and FTP files in the one web interface. If you want to know the best apps to do all of these things, then read on.

1. Let People Drop Stuff In Your Dropbox

DropItToMe is a service which allows you to set up a URL specifically for your friends and clients to use for uploading things to your Dropbox. You can set a password which allows them uploading access via the URL.

JotForm lets you create an online form for people to fill out, which then gets saved to your Dropbox. The JotForm forms can be hosted anywhere and you don’t need to know much about web design to use the service.

2. Connect Dropbox With Other Cloud Documents

Many people use services like InSync to perform a Dropbox-like sync for Google Docs to their home computer. But most don’t realise how easy it is to sync those files back to your Dropbox. All you have to do is change the local folder for InSync to be your Dropbox folder.

Another great tool is Otixo, which allows you to use one web interface to access all of your cloud documents, such as Dropbox, Box, Google Docs and FTP servers. We’ve written an article about Otixo before if you want to know more.

3. Add URLs to Dropbox

There is one neat little app called URL Droplet which allows you to save a URL to your Dropbox for later. It could be useful for saving all those links you don’t have time to view at work.

4. Email Attachments To Dropbox

To get email attachments into Dropbox easily, there are two really good methods. One is to set up SendToDropbox and get a unique email address for your Dropbox which you can forward emails to if you want the attachment saved. The other option is the attachments.me browser extension and website, which lets you save Gmail attachments to Dropbox from within Gmail easily, including the ability to set rules for incoming attachments.

5. Encrypt Your Dropbox

Those of us who are using the cloud heavily realise the importance of encrypting that information, as a security breach could otherwise be a disaster. There are several great tools to encrypt your Dropbox, such as BoxCryptor, DataLocker and SafeBox. MakeUseOf has a great article on how to use BoxCryptor here.

6. Edit Files From Within Dropbox

There are many reasons you might want to edit a document from within Dropbox. Using an app like TextDropApp might be a great way for you to keep notes in sync across devices and edit via a browser. WriteBox does much the same thing, although it’s designed to be a minimalist interface for writers to use.

7. Play Music From Dropbox

DropTun.es is a way to listen to your music hosted on Dropbox via a web browser. The music is streamed using either flash or HTML5 and makes for a simple, private alternative to other cloud music streaming.

8. Host A Website From Dropbox

There are a number of great apps designed to make it easy to host a website from within Dropbox. Obviously, you could do this yourself with public files and your own domain mapping. To do it more easily, there are services like DropPages, Pancake.io and ScriptoGr.am to help you. Scriptogr.am even makes it easy to create a blog using Dropbox!

9. Collect Web Clippings In Dropbox

GimmeBar is an app which lets you collect various web clippings for later use. You save them directly to your Dropbox, where they can be accessed from all of your devices. You could use it to create all sorts of things, like a private wishlist or a public story board.

10. Automate Everything Dropbox

Here at MakeUseOf, we love ITFFF because it can do some awesome syncing between your favourite social networks and online data (see our previous IFTTT articles here). It allows you to do some great automation with Dropbox, without needing to know anything about coding.

Dropbox Automator by Wappwolf is another way to automate with IFTTT-style rules, but specifically for your online storage. It supports Dropbox and Google Drive (with Skydrive and Box coming). They recommend using attachments.me with Wappwolf to sync your Gmail attachments.

More Links

We’re always writing about cool DropBox tricks. Read more here:

• The First Unofficial Guide To Dropbox
• 4 Unique and Cool Ways To Use Dropbox
• How To Run Multiple Dropbox Accounts Simultaneously [Mac]
• New Dropbox Update Lets You Easily Share Files & Folders With Anyone [Updates]

Of course, there are many more Dropbox applications out there, including a number of apps specifically for use on mobile devices. Where there were a number of great apps to choose from we’ve listed the applications with the best free service, but that’s not to say there aren’t other great options out there. What are your favourite Dropbox apps?

Because of Dominion’s card-based simplicity, it is relatively easy to create computerised versions of the game. This is fantastic for fans who just can’t get enough of the game – and especially for those of us trying to decide which expansion packs to buy next. It’s nice to be able to try before you buy!

The expansion collection includes Intrigue, Seaside Cornucopia, Hinterlands, Prosperity and Alchemy. Each deck has over 30 different cards, so sometimes it does take rather a long time to even decide which cards to play with, let alone set up a game. This is where apps can really help!

Android Dominion Apps

Dominion Shuffle is the most sophisticated Android Dominion application for deciding which cards to play with. It allows you to choose which decks to work with, set minimum and maximum values for certain types of cards (for instance, attack cards, defence cards, treasure cards or cards costing 3 coin), keep certain cards in or out as you wish and to keep the set-up ready for the next time you want to shuffle.

There are many other Dominion shuffling applications for Android (see more Dominion shuffle apps here), but Dominion Shuffle is the only one which also hooks into Androminion. This is a huge plus! Once you’ve shuffled and worked out the perfect playing deck for your mood, enter your “Menu” and choose “Launch Androminion”. Now you’re ready to play!

Androminion, as you may have guessed, is a fully functional Android version of Dominion, featuring all expansion packs. It’s open-source and up for criticism, but generally it works really well, repetitive things can be automated a little and the AIs are pretty decent. It looks a little small and confusing, but you can press and hold on any card to get a description.

Play Online Dominion

If you want to play Dominion against real-life players in real-time then check out the online version of Dominion. You can play against anyone in the Great Hall or you can set up a Secret Chamber to play against your friends. You can choose your preferred decks, preferred cards, hated cards and more.

Dominion for iPhone & iPad

Dominion is also available on iPhone and iPad unofficially in the iTunes store. Rio Grande have apparently got their own version of the game for iOS in the works, but this one will do until then.

There’s also an iOS shuffler application called Dominion Agent to help you with your real Dominion game set up.

More Games

Also check out other games we’ve written about - board games; online games; Android games; and iPad games.

Which Dominion apps do you use? Which expansion packs do you love best? Is there a particular card you hate? Let us know in the comments!

Thankfully, we live in an era where the basics of anything worth learning can be found online of you know where to look. So, here’s a handful of great resources for you to use in order to learn more about how to make great music recordings and how to tweak them afterwards to make them just right. Once you’ve learned the basics of home audio engineering from these sites, you’ll be ready to make that demo CD!

Home Recording Forum

Home Recording Forum is a useful forum of musicians who are all trying to make great home recordings. The forum has sub-sections for a wide variety of topics, like recording techniques, mixing techniques, digital recording, vocals, mastering, building a studio and a whole area just for newbies. The users take regular polls on software and equipment people are using for various tasks, so you’ll be able to quickly gauge the best tools for your needs. There’s also a newsletter to keep you in the loop!

Apogee’s Recording Blog

Apogee’s Recording Blog is run by Apogee Electronics and seems to only recently have been revived after a long break. Despite the hiatus, the blog is worth a look as you will learn a lot about sound engineering and recording techniques. It’s full of video posts including discussions with Berklee college music professors, and professional engineers and producers like the sound engineer from Pantera. These guys really know their sound equipment and have some great contacts!

The Daily Adventures Of MixerMan & Womb Forums

Learning from MixerMan is the slow, fun way to become a master audio engineer. His diaries and radio show tell you anecdotes about gigs he’s mixed for and what went right or wrong. It’s full of laughs and insight on being a live sound engineer that you’ll love. Plus, it’s intertwined with the Womb forums, which will let you ask questions about your sound recording set-up.

Studio Central Forums

Studio Central Forums is a community for recording studio professionals and apprentices. They have sections for newbies, setting up your rig, choosing your hardware mixing console, deciding which microphones you need to buy and more. There’s even sub-forums dedicated to vocal preamplifiers and effects – it’s got everything!

Home Recording For Musicians For Dummies

Here’s a cheat sheet from the “Home Recording For Musicians For Dummies” book by Jeff Strong. It’s simple and straight to the point, explaining what all the sound production terminology means. It even notes words that supposed professionals use which are good signs you need to talk to someone else! This is well worth reading and bookmarking before you get stuck into the more difficult information.

Inside Home Recording

Inside Home Recording is a blog and podcast about anything and everything musicians need to know about the art of making sound recordings at home and basic music production. The host, Dave Chick, is a composer, songwriter, producer and mixer who’s got a lot of great tips to share.

The Pro Audio Blog

The Pro Audio Blog will teach you about anything and everything to do with audio engineering, audio technology and small-scale sound production. Sometimes they discuss how to or make use various pieces of technology, while other posts get into serious technical issues like phases, vocal sibilance and sound synthesis.

So, you’re now well on your way to becoming your own home recording engineer. But this is just a small selection of what’s out there. What are your favorite blogs for sound and basic recording techniques?

If you have no idea what the words geocache, waymark or confluence mean, take a read of this article on 10 Fun Outdoor Games To Play Using GPS Enabled Smartphones, before you read this article. It will explain these things to you clearly, so you can make sense of these date suggestions.

1. Set Up Romantic Geocaches

A romantic geocache can easily focus on what is hidden in the cache. If you’re hiding things for your date deliberately, don’t use publicly known caches. Make your own caches and note the locations in your favourite application (e.g. Treasure hunt). Maybe confuse your date by searching for a combination of public geocaches and your own prepared caches.

Hide memorable trinkets, quotes, poetry, photographs, music, a massage voucher (given by you, of course!), flowers, candles, etc. Make sure you hide things your date will want to keep or that you will both make use of during your date, like a disposable camera or tickets to a play. And don’t hide anything too costly as someone else might find it first!

2. Plan A Romantic GPS Treasure Hunt

Use something like Locomatrix’s Treasure Hunt application to create the perfect GPS-based day out. Also check out Waymarking, Google Maps or Localscope to find the co-ordinates of some interesting things in your area.

For a romantic treasure hunt, it’s all about where you go, what you can see and what you can do there. If you’ve been together a while, you can use shared memories as both clues or part of the prize.

Consider these ideas – the beach, a secluded garden, fruit picking, fancy restaurant, boat rides, hiking, view points, volunteering, planetarium, festivals, lectures, dancing, zoo, bowling, open house inspection, feeding ducks, laser tag, wine tasting, flea market, art gallery, aquarium, library, watch a band, camping, forest, mini golf, rivers, ice cream parlour, waterfalls, luxury bar, bike riding etc.

Consider mixing in some difficulty and give only vague clues to the next point you need to find. And don’t forget to end your treasure hunt with a prize! (hint – the prize could be you!)

3. Go Geohashing Or Confluence Hunting With A Picnic

Here’s an idea for the truly adventurous. Plan to have a picnic as close to a nearby confluence or the day’s local Geohashing point as possible. You could end up anywhere, so make sure the fun is in the adventure and not the end location. Bring along some cards, balls or a frisbee to play with just to keep it interesting – and plan something in a location you know is great for later that day in case things go awry.

4. Mix It Up!

You’re in charge here. You can plan your date to involve a little adventure, some romantic locations, a fabulous meal, a few romantic geocaches and some pre-planned thing to do which you will find along the way. The more variety the better!

Why not plan a treasure hunt with a picnic, or hide a picnic basket as your geocache? Perhaps a kite could be hidden in a geocache nearby to your picnic? Or maybe hide a small present for your date in a geocache after your treasure hunt has led you out to lunch at a nice restaurant?

Try to find ways to do things you both love while you’re out. For instance, if you both love photography, why not try to ensure your date takes you to as many great views or interesting natural features as possible? Or if you’re both into books and literature, print out some romantic poetry and read it to each other while sitting in a boat or on the side of a hill? It’s the little things that make the date!

If you’re looking for more romantic date ideas (or people to have the perfect date with), check out HowAboutWe. It’s a great source of date inspiration, whether you’re looking for someone to date or not.

What will you be doing for your next date?

Image Credits: ShutterStock, ShutterStock, ShutterStock, ShutterStock, ShutterStock

This scientific leaning is an exciting new direction for worldwide science funding to take. It could open up doors for researchers and developers while finding solutions to environmental problems. It can help aid workers to invent and create tools to assist needy people in third world countries or disaster areas.

How Does RocketHub Work?

RocketHub gets “Creatives” to list their projects in the database, whether they be artistic, scientific or some other venture. As long as it’s legal and in good taste, the campaign is welcome on RocketHub. Everyday venture capitalists can then help to “Fuel” the campaigns by donating money.

What Projects Can You Fund?

What if there were scientists who thought they could do something to help the sufferers of a rare disease? Maybe governments would overlook funding them if they weren’t going to help enough people in their country, but worldwide individual funding might manage to raise enough money for them to complete their work.

RocketHub organises projects into primary tags and categories to cover all types of campaigns. For instance, check out the “Selfless” tag if you want to donate to a humanitarian or environmental project. Sadly, the RocketHub interface makes the esoteric tagging system more prominent in the sidebar than the more functional categories listings which are seen only in a drop-down menu.

Another RocketHub initiative is to partner with other organisations who will match donations for particular campaigns. One of these is the eMusic partner who helps to fund independent musicians to release music and go on tours. Another is the #SciFund venture to promote science research and development. Take a look at the RocketHub #SciFund campaigns, or learn more about the SciFund Challenge on their website or by watching this introductory video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efQeEo_uMCg

Not all science-related ventures are listed in the #SciFund Challenge though, so do check the Science category if you want to view more science projects. Category listings will also lead you to find things like films, events and software campaigns.

What Does It Cost?

There’s no initial fee to set up a project. RocketHub charges a 4% fee on projects which reach their target, while charging an 8% fee to projects which fail to meet their targets. This encourages campaigners to set reasonable goals and to promote their projects well. There’s also a 4% charge for credit card processing.

More Science News & Projects

If you love being involved in current science projects and keeping up-to-date with new developments, check out these articles:

• 9 Live Citizen Science Projects You Can Participate In To Learn More About Our Planet & Space
• Stay Up To Date With Science News With These Sites
• Foldit – Solve Puzzles For Science

What sort of campaigns are you tempted to fund on RocketHub? What do you think about crowdsourcing scientific research? Will it work in the long run?

After checking many reputable websites for printable camping checklists (and finding many high quality lists) the site which stood out the most was ScoutLists as it has an excellent system in place to give you the most appropriate checklists for your needs. ScoutLists gets you to tell it the activity you plan to do, the season and the terrain type before identifying the best checklists for you.

Use Printable Camping Checklists to Be Prepared!

Scouts kind of have a thing for getting prepared before their travel adventures. And camping is not only the start of many great adventures, but something worth preparing for properly. It should come as no surprise then, that someone with a scout mindset has put together this site full of great printable checklists for camping.

The site has been created by a former Eagle Scout and Scoutmaster who got sick of telling parents the same things each year. Instead, they found a neat way to make it easy for parents to find the information they needed themselves. The checklists have been created by compiling checklists created by a number of different scout leaders, so they’re pretty comprehensive.

Accuracy & Submissions

The creators of this site try to give accurate information about packing requirements for specific activities. However they do recommend that you also get a list from the site you intend to visit and that the site’s list is the definitive list you refer to. If you notice differences and want to suggest changes, they welcome you to contact them.

Also, if you have your own camping checklist you think would be useful then talk to them about getting it added.

Get The Best Camping Checklists

ScoutLists has a three-step process to determine which camping checklists are for you and it doesn’t matter which order you do the steps in. Choose your climate, terrain and activity from the icons shown and ScoutLists will refer you to the most appropriate lists for you. For instance, backpacking inland in Spring.

The lists are shown in HTML and link to more detail for the specific gear noted. This makes it easier to understand precisely what it is they’re suggesting you take with you. If required, you can also choose to make the list specific to male or female camping needs.

Each list can be emailed or made into a printable list with a click of a button. The printable lists are neat and well organised, but the FAQ has a few tips for how Firefox users might make them look a little better.

If you want to check all the lists ScoutLists have on offer, see their “All Packing Lists” page. The list of checklists is neatly organised so that you can see at a glance which lists you should check out.

The ScoutLists site is free to use and is a great resource for all campers. I have a lot of respect for people who are both this organised and this helpful. I hope their hard work can help you all in your planning.

If you’ve appreciated this article, you might also like to read about 10 Informative & Useful Websites For Planning Fun Road Trips.

What are your favourite printable camping checklists? Let us know in the comments!

To use Hangouts On Air you set up a Hangout as per normal, add up to 9 friends to the hangout and check the “Enable Hangouts On Air” button to go live with your hangout. All users in the Hangout will see the “On Air” banner so that they know it is public.

Your live broadcast Hangout On Air can be shared via your Google+ stream, your YouTube channel or your website. While you’re broadcasting, you’ll be able to see how many viewers you have watching. Check out this video on Google+ Hangouts On Air to see how it works.

As well as being able to share your Hangout live on air, the new features allow you to save the Hangout to YouTube for sharing with an even wider audience. Here’s a video example of a Google+ Hangout in progress.

Users of the service so far have used Hangouts On Air to conduct cooking shows, game shows, concerts, live chats with celebrities, family chats and more. As you can see, this will herald the beginning of many live Hangout stations by professionals, semi-professionals, amateurs and groups. Families will be able to record Hangouts to share with other family members who weren’t able to be there.

What will you use Hangouts On Air for?

Source: Google Blog

Airtasker is an Australian site designed to put willing workers in touch with people who need a small job done. It’s intended to be for one-off, fairly simple tasks – many of which can be fulfilled online. In some ways, it could be considered a market for ad-hoc virtual assistants, except that it extends into the real world too. There’s plenty of people who are asking for help with plumbing, gardening and poster distribution. You could too!

How Does Airtasker Work?

Airtasker works by allowing people to post and complete small jobs either locally or online. Senders post a task with an appropriate wage listed and Runners will offer to do the work for them, similar to the way Fiverr works but the other way around. Senders view Runner profiles and choose which Runner will complete the job. Once a Runner is selected the Sender can’t back out of the transaction and will pay the Runner either by PayPal or Cash On Delivery (COD), although a Sender can opt to choose no-one for the job.

Posting A Job

For starters, your task needs to be legal and not of a sexual nature. There’s a list of marketplace rules you should read before you post anything. But within these limits you’re able to be as inventive as you like. What work do you need done that someone else can conceivably help you with? Okay, maybe don’t get as weird as the people on Fiverr!

As described above, the basic process of posting a job on Airtasker is fairly straight-forward. It’s also free! Once your job is in the system, the main thing for you to do is to check the Runner profiles to ensure you’re getting the right person. Runner profiles will show reviews from previous jobs they’ve completed so that you can see they are reliable.

Local work can only be posted for Australian cities at this stage. However, if you have an online job you need done, you can list it in Australian dollars.

Senders can also browse the Runners and decide to hire someone directly. This will ensure that the Runners get notified directly when you post a job and are therefore more likely to apply for it.

Become A Runner

If you want to earn a little bit of extra money, sign up to be a Runner. You can specify your city (which is currently just Australian cities), but there’s no need to. International users are accepted and can easily work on the online tasks. Just remember that the site is still in the early stages and will be discussing payment in Australian dollars for now.

If you like the sound of a job but you think the price is too low, you can always make an offer. If the Sender doesn’t get a lot of interest in their posting they might consider your offer seriously.

Runners pay a fee to Airtasker on completion of the task of $2 + 5% of the fee. To collect fees, Airtasker obtain credit card details or bank details when you bid on a task. However, they won’t take funds until you win the bid.

Trust

Airtasker have a number of tools to establish trust between Senders and Runners. Reviews and references are the start, but they also check PayPal details are exact and ensure phone numbers are correct with SMS verification.

Meanwhile, social connections to Facebook and Twitter help to establish a person’s real-life identity. A user who has completed these checks is given a verification badge to make it easier to spot them.

Give It A Go!

Airtasker have a free iPhone application available for both Runner and Senders to make use of. It looks as though Airtasker intend to become more international in the future, but as you can see there is still room for a global market within the current framework. Sign up and let them know via feedback where you’d like to see Airtasker appear locally next!

I’ve known for a while that it’s really the compulsory Google, HTC and Orange apps that were really eating into my space, so I thought I’d make a spreadsheet to work out where all the space goes. Out of my supposed 120MB remaining after Android OS is installed, this is what I’ve got:

• 17MB which has to be kept free (Otherwise nothing works – data syncs etc)
• 17.75MB for basic data: Basic Contacts, Calendar, Settings, etc.
• 33MB for Google Apps I can’t remove
• 13.4MB for Orange Apps I can’t remove
• 9.2MB for HTC Apps I can’t remove
• 28.5MB is used very quickly if I enable any of the Social Networking features HTC are so proud of (like Facebook and Flickr contacts sync, showing a friend stream of Flickr, Twitter, Facebook contacts, enabling Twitter notifications, etc)
• 1.5MB is left free for new apps (WTF?)

Obviously, I’ve worked out a few tricks. Uninstalling Adobe Flash updates scores you 10MB space. Disabling all the social networking features gets you nearly 30MB back. All in all, I can wrangle about 40MB for new apps that can’t be put on the SD card. But that’s a compromise – I’d really LOVE to be able to use those social networking features. That’s one of the bonuses of having a smartphone!

So, this explains why HTC Desire users bitch and moan when your app is bigger than 200kb and doesn’t have App2SD.

Anyway, after calculating which compulsory apps I used and which I just wish I could get rid of, I was left with these figures:

• 24.25MB Compulsory apps I find useful (Or at least, would find useful If I were using the social networking features)
• 31.35MB Compulsory apps I don’t use and can’t remove (without rooting).

In these compulsory apps, there’s gems from Orange like a Monopoly game demo using 3MB of space which won’t even let me play an entire game all the way through. Also, there’s an Orange app store and Orange Maps – as If the Google versions weren’t enough.  In fact, I don’t use any of the Orange apps. Add to this that Orange kindly got me a Froyo update 6 months after everyone else in the world, it leaves me feeling somewhat miffed at Orange for wasting my time and phone space.

From HTC and Google, there’s a 2MB Youtube app (which pre-Froyo was unnecessary since the Youtube Mobile site is so good – why do we need it now?), a 1MB flashlight, a 1MB calculator. All of these have better, smaller alternatives available, but I can’t get rid of the stock versions.

I’m constantly removing apps so I can try new ones. I search for smaller apps and apps with App2SD. I clear my caches and user data regularly. But to think that over 30MB of space is used with apps I just don’t even want is ridiculous. Plus, out of the remaining 25MB of compulsory apps I do use (even if they’re not all essential to me) – not one of them can be moved to the SD card. Why? Oh, they’re probably worried I’ll remove it. Guys, I’ll put it on the SD card if I have a choice. But if I have no choice I might find myself rooting my phone and removing it.

So, Android. A couple of requests:

• Stop letting phone providers add bloatware which can’t be removed.
• Make your own essential apps App2SD!

So, after that rant and a realisation that my idea fix is not likely any time soon, I’m just one step closer to rooting my phone.

What could you do?

Types of work for expats could include:

• Freelancing Online (piece work or ongoing tasks for regular clients)
• Starting a Business
• Freelancing with Local Businesses
• Full/Part Time Work Locally

Specific ideas could include:

• Writing Online
• Website Design
• Teaching First Language to Locals
• Teaching Music, Computing or other Non-Language-Based Skill
• Assisting in a Help-Line in your First Language for an industry you are familiar with (eg. Banking)
• The list goes on forever..

Tell us what you think in the expat job ideas poll and feel free to add your expat job ideas in the comments!

Need a Job Now?

For those of us living and working abroad who are always looking for freelance contracts and piece work, you know all too well how annoying it is to trawl the same websites for the new jobs or to see a pile of RSS jobs that are so old that there’s no point applying. To get around this, I created a few websites that pull in the RSS feeds for the best jobs. This way, you can just check out the new work and ignore the older stuff.

Best Web-Worker Jobs
Best Expat Jobs in France

For writers and web designers, I’ve put together a page of the Best Web-Worker Jobs.

For the Expats in France, I made a job board for the Best Expat Jobs in France. It pulls in both the web-worker jobs and jobs for English-speakers in France (this includes translation and jobs to teach English in France). Hope it can be of use to you!

If you’re still confused and could use a bit of motivation in regards to getting a new career, check out some of my other posts (from Bootstrap Your Life) on careers and work.

What are you working on?

If someone asks you that, are you excited to tell them the answer?

I hope so. If not, you’re wasting away.

No matter what your job is, no matter where you work, there’s a way to create a project (on your own, on weekends if necessary), where the excitement is palpable, where something that might make a difference is right around the corner.

Hurry, go do that.

Are you rusting away at work doing a job you hate? Do you work from home, but always seem to be working on the stuff you don’t like? Well this post is for you.

Make time for the things that get you excited. That’s the good bit. :)

Sure, do the less-exciting work too (keep your job!) but make sure there’s always something to look forward to which gets your brain ticking. If there’s nothing in your life which you’d happily jump out of bed for, then there’s something missing. Go find it!

The French Facebook Privacy Manual is available care of Flavien Chantrel, Anne-Laure Raffestin and Le Blog du Modérateur on Scribd.

Many thanks to Anne-Laure for co-ordinating this translation and doing such a fantastic job!

We bought plane tickets online from an Australian airline, QANTAS. The prices listed on the website, in our confirmation and receipts were in Australian dollars. We paid with an Australian credit card. You’d think that would be fairly straight forward. But, no.

QANTAS in its infinite wisdom had decided that since we were in Europe it would change the price it charged into Euros for us. QANTAS didn’t ask us or even tell us it was converting the price to Euros. So, naturally our Australian bank charged us a fee of AU$150 for converting the cost of the payment from Euros back to Australian Dollars. We had no idea QANTAS had converted the currency until this fee turned up in our account.

Excuse me QANTAS, but that’s bloody ridiculous.

(It’s also possibly illegal, since all my receipts say AU$ I should fully expect to be charged in AU$).

I appreciate that for many customers this would be helpful. However, if you’re going to be smart and work out where people are, why don’t you be a little smarter and ASK what they want. A little pop-up saying “We’ve noticed you’re European, would you like to convert this payment into Euros?” would have been sensible. We could have said no – others could say yes. But at least QANTAS would be keeping everyone happy. ASK. Just because you know where we are doesn’t mean you know what we want.

Anyway, I realised this might not be a problem with just QANTAS so I thought I’d share the story as a warning to expats, tourism operators and web designers everywhere.

Recently I also had a similar rant about how annoying it is when websites change the language settings according to where you are. As a traveller in Europe, a resident in a multi-language country or an expat who’s still learning the new language, this is especially annoying. Note to web designers: ASK.

Image Credit: Simon Sees

Something which has slowly grown to annoy me is the number of websites which will change my language settings simply because they have managed to work out where I am sitting right now. In short, what I’d like to say to all webmasters who do this is “STOP IT!”

For me, I’ve noticed this problem because I’m primarily an English speaker who happens to be in France. Yes, I make good use of my sudden French settings and get some instant French practise, but by and large I just wish websites and mobile apps would leave language settings be.

For instance, I searched for something on Google using English keywords. I found a site in English which fit the bill. When I clicked on that link it decided I’d prefer the French version of the site. Surely, if I’d wanted the French version, I’d have searched using French keywords and found the French version of the site? I don’t even know if Google or the website is responsible for the switch. What made this even more annoying is that it was a site which I have an account with – and I was logged in! Hello, you guys KNOW my language preferences. What are you doing? I fully expect my personal settings to override your guesses while I’m logged in, thanks.

In fact, many sites I use will override my regular language settings with a location-based language setting. It’s usually the big ones, too: Google & Facebook spring to mind (although with Facebook it’s just the login screen, which is reasonable). Google language settings are seriously annoying: Just when you think the language setting is set for every single Google service (oh yes, different settings for each service – thanks Google), you accidentally click something which changes things back to wherever you are again. What’s really annoying is that these sites which automagically decide on a language for you think they’re so right in their language choice that they go and hide the language settings from you and make it difficult to change it back to what you want.

I used the IMDB movie app on my phone to check out popular movies. It had settings to be able to pick which database the info came from, yet despite my choices of imdb.com and amazon.co.uk it insisted on providing me with the French versions of the movie titles. Movie titles are obscure, you know? They’re translated to be catchy in that language. So, even if you translate them back to English, you’ll have more luck working out which movie it is by recognising the poster. Either way, after deliberately setting these database choices, the app had overridden my choices simply because of where I happened to be. Turns out that they do this on the main site too, and for any app which access the IMDB database. Annoying!

Automatically changing the language is ridiculous! Leave it be and ASK people which language they’d prefer.

I think web-developers in English-speaking countries probably don’t think about this location thing very much. Their language settings stay the same as they travel around the country. In their heads, they’re probably doing everyone in foreign countries a favour – and I can see how they might think that.

Consider the average traveller in Europe. Every day they travel around, crossing arbitrary lines which for some reason change the language of all the big sites they use every day. While they might know how to order a meal and book into a hotel in that language, you can hardly expect everyone to be proficient in all of them.

Think about people in multi-language countries. You are driving them crazy.

Now, here’s a thought: When using a phone or laptop, normally the users have already chosen the language they prefer to use. Now developers, do you think it would be possible to work with that language choice? Thanks.

Here’s another similar complaint: Paypal seem to have divided their customer service by country. So, in France I’m told I can’t access the Paypal help menu in English. Seriously. Not to mention that I only wanted to send a quick email to ask a simple question. I clicked “Contact us” and got this:

I’m not sure why an international company based in an English-speaking country wants me to try and navigate their help system in French just so I can send an email in awful French to some poor sod who will have trouble understanding my awful French and who most likely doesn’t speak English and will pass my email around the office stressing out until they find an English speaker to help answer my very simple question. This makes no sense.

My language settings are in English. Let me access a help system and a “Contact Us” web-form in English. I’ll most likely get all the information I need without bothering you. If not, an English person would be able to answer my question quickly. If it so happens that my question is specific to something in France, I’m sure my query can be forwarded internally to a bilingual helpdesk person in France. In the meantime, monolingual French-speaking customers are able to be attended by the French staff. What a thought!

Seriously web developers, quit making language settings automatic according to country. ASK.

Image Credit: RockCohen

Download “The (Very) Unofficial Facebook Privacy Manual” from MakeUseOf for free.

Or if you’re a Scribd user, have a read of “The (Very) Unofficial Facebook Privacy Manual” on Scribd.

“This handy guide outlines everything you could ever want to know about locking down your privacy on Facebook, and a few things you probably didn’t even know you wanted to know.” – Justin Pot of MakeUseOf.com

First basic step to dinner party planning: Have a clean house. Not fastidiously clean to the point of obsessive compulsive disorder. Just clean. Actually clean. You don’t want to have to do dishes before your guest can have a drink. That can be kind of uncomfortable for the guest and annoying for you. But, moving a newspaper from the table after they turn up is alright, you know? You still have to live in the house.

Now, you need to be able to offer your guests nice things to break the ice. Tea, coffee, fizzy drinks, juice, cordial, wine, beer or something even more interesting. Your call – just have something available. The more choice the better. And be generous! If they drink all your wine they’ll probably bring a bottle to share next time if they’re nice. Same goes for nibblies: Cheese and crackers, olives, bread, chocolate biscuits. Offer whatever you have and put it on the table. You can always put it away later if it’s not eaten. Relax. The magic trick with drinks and nibblies is to prepare early. Buy things well before you think anyone will be dropping in and don’t eat them in the meantime! The next magic trick is to make everyone feel at ease by ensuring it looks like no effort at all to put on a nice snack and drink for everyone. The only thing I can say there is if you are prepared it will feel easier. So, just be prepared. Easy!

Right, well now we’ve got your guests onto nibbles and drinks it’s worth thinking about a meal. Again, preparation is the most important thing. If they turned up spontaneously then they’ll be less trouble than if you invited them deliberately, since spontaneous guests don’t really expect to be fed a real meal. So, you’re doing great if you can offer a meal.

For all meals though, consider any dietary requirements. Have you got any vegetarians? Any wheat intolerant people? Diabetics? Chilli intolerant? Get the details before you start cooking. If they are unable to eat something in particular they may offer to help you to come up with something they can eat. Something vegetarian or very light on meat could work especially well if you are on a budget. If they turned up unannounced it is perfectly reasonable to say “I have nothing to eat. Let’s order pizza”. They’ll get over it. They’re your friends.

While you’re cooking, make sure that there’s ample nibbles on the table, drinks are topped up and some appropriate music is on in the background. In fact, continue topping up drinks, replacing nibbles and ensuring the music is appropriate until the night is over. Music is something you’ll have to adapt to the crowd, but generally put on something quiet that the people there like. If you have no idea what people will like then something quiet and hopefully without lyrics is probably best. So, jazz or lounge music (fairly quietly) is great. Because, unless you want this to turn into a raging, drunken party it’s probably best to avoid your favourite 80s collection of stuff people want to sing along to. No, really it is.

So, we have the basics covered. People are eating and drinking and having a good time at your place. But what if you have the chance to plan who is coming? Who do you invite? Well, start by deciding who the important people are. Who have you been meaning to see for ages? Start with them. Do they have a partner? Add the partner. Right, what does the partner do? Hobbies? Work? Whatever? Who out of your friends (or your partner’s friends) might get along with them? Invite them and their partner. What do they and their partner do? What do they like? Who might get along with them? Etc. Etc. Now, which of your friends are good at getting along with just about anyone? Maybe invite them too. And add a partner. Get it? Easy!

You might want to mix it up a little more by having a part of the evening dedicated to a particular activity and invite anyone interested in that, ie games night, wine and cheese night or a cocktail party. Invite anyone interested in said activity and ensure a few of your “social glue” socialite friends are definitely coming. Put less thought into the people and more though into the activity if this is what you’re doing.

So, now we get to the end of the night. Is anyone unable to get home? If you have people staying there are a few nice things you can remember to do. This could be the unplanned “too drunk to drive” stay or it could be (in another style of scenario entirely) having rellies over for a week. And again, it all comes down to planning things that can be ready long before you even know there’s someone coming over. This is far easier with a guest room. If you are without a guest room then at least make sure you have a space with some blankets or a sleeping bag for each of your guests. Not many people mind being left fending for themselves in the morning as long as they can easily get a shower, breakfast and leave if they require. So, put a list of things people might need to know on the side of the fridge and/or in the guest room. Let them know where the towels are. List any quirks of the house that might hinder them from flushing the toilet or getting out the front door, etc. Make sure they know if any of the clocks in the house are wrong. Let them know how to use your washing machine. Let them know where to find breakfast food and bowls. Make sure your phone numbers are listed so they can write it down and call if they forget to take something home.

The rest of this is really dependent on how long they are staying and how well they already know your area. If they’re staying a while, then give them a key to the house! Your phone numbers are even more important for longer term guests – just in case they get lost or want some advice. Let them know a little about the local area too, like where to find the bus stop and shops. If you’re really good, you might get a copy of the bus timetable for them or info on where to hire a car. If you’re an angel then you might lend a car or a bike. But no-one expects you to be that good. Other info people might want if they’re staying a while could be on the location of parks, swimming pools, beaches, dry cleaners, takeaway places, pubs, libraries, theatres, movie hire places, cafes and night clubs etc. If they’re from far away they might even want some info about sightseeing in the wider surrounding area. Oh, and if they’re even the teensiest bit geeky they’ll love to know passwords and details for your wireless network or computer so they can get online. Handy hint: If you’re renting a house out it’s a good idea to write a similar list for your tenants too!

Having guests over regularly is a great way to avoid the TV, generally slow your life down and stay in touch with your favourite people, so being ready and willing to host small dinner parties is a talent that goes a long way towards a great life.

Basically, if your guests are self sufficient they will feel more comfortable and won’t be relying on you to entertain them and look after them all the time. You will be more relaxed and reassured that they are happy and entertained. It’s not rocket science. It’s just a teensy bit of planning. Get organised!

Image Credit: Bob Walker

He’s also made nifty wallpaper for all sorts of devices of his “8 to be great” cycle.

Every year in August, Belgium puts on an awesome music festival – Pukkelpop. If you visit Belgium in late August, you’ll find this massive open-air event hiding in Kiewit, near Hasselt. Since it began in 1985, Pukkelpop has been home to an alternative music scene, beginning with just seven relatively unknown bands and building up to the huge names it attracts today. The 2010 line-up includes The Kooks, We Are Scientists, Iron Maiden, Goldfrapp, Mint, Groove Armada, Placebo, Prodigy, Eels, Gogol Bordello, Kate Nash and the Flaming Lips. Sadly, this has become quite a popular festival: this year’s tickets sold out five weeks before the gates are due to open. But, keep an eye out for next year and get your tickets before July!

News and stuff about artists in the lineup is collected for fans of the festival in the Pukkelpop Facebook Page and @Pukkelpop Twitter. Those of us who can’t get tickets can listen to the sounds of this year’s Pukkelpop line-up on Last.fm.

Image Credit: Belle & Sebastian @ Pukkelpop 2006 – Photo by Dani Luri.

After a little ranting about the state of the internet in France, it occurred to me that English-speakers online need to try just a little bit harder to make life easier for non-English speakers.

I came up with a short list of ideas for things we can all do to help non-English speakers online:

• Get more non-English people to create stuff online.
• Try to convince more people to add translations (or at least translator buttons) to their sites.
• Teach more non-English speakers generally about Google Translate, so they can use the English pages they find.
• Teach SEO skills to more non-English speakers so that things can be found!
• Make websites more intuitive and less dependent on text found in pictures (which don’t get translated).
• Ensure kids get computer training, either at school, in clubs or at home.

The website design is easy: add translation and try not to use images where text would be best. The basic computer education of kids has to fall with people locally. So, the question then becomes how to teach SEO to non-English people?

How do you teach someone who doesn’t necessarily understand the concept of SEO (let alone understand the acronym) that it’s something they should think of? At least in the basic sense of ensuring the keywords that people search for appear in the documents they want those people to find. Should we try to convince bilingual people to write basic SEO guides? Probably. And we should probably also encourage those writers to use a keyphrase of the local words for “Why doesn’t anyone find my website?” so that the right people find it.

Seriously, if you’re bilingual give it a go. It could really help non-English speakers a lot. And the more the better!

Image Credit: Pedro Ribeiro Simoes