So you have the last episode of the Sopranos to watch and no way to get it to play on your DVD player?  I will help you learn how to burn mkv files to DVD with a free application!

The application is called E.M. Free MKV Video2Dvd V3.10 (Freeware). It can be downloaded from here. Once you download and install it you will be ready to convert and burn your MKV files to a DVD directly or to an ISO file to burn later on. Either which way you will be on your way to watching your video file in no time.

You will then choose between Easy Mode and Advanced Mode. The easy mode is well um….easy! So that is the way we went. If you need to modify the menus, chapters, subtitles or other good stuff choose the advanced mode option.

Hit OK and you will see the program’s main interface. This is where you will drag and drop your MKV file (or files) to be converted to a DVD. It look like this:

Locate your MKV file in Windows Explorer and drag and drop the file in the white portion of the window above. Repeat the process for any other files you want in the same compilation. Could it be any easier? Yeah well they could do it for you right! But this is pretty damn easy.

Once you get your files in there can you guess what we do next??

If you said hit the Burn Now button – shame on you Make Use of reader!  We should look at the settings before burning! If you don’t want to hit Burn Now choose your output files as ISO or burn to DVD and you are done.

You will see choices for NTSC and PAL on the TV system pull down menu on the left hand side. And then on the right you will see the display aspect ratio. You can drop that down to choose widescreen or normal old TV options on the aspect ratio. 4:3 is normal for those of you who don’t know. You can also hit the change profile button to see the pre-configured profiles for quality. I left mine on the Automatic adjustment setting. You can choose the best setting for yourself and obviously the worse the quality the more you can fit on the disk.

Now you are ready to burn. Hit OK on the settings screen and Burn Now on the main interface. From there you will see your two options. One for a DVD disk burn and another for a straight ISO image. You can burn the ISO later.

Once you select your burn now preference you will see the progress of the burn. My video was just a sample 5 minute clip and it finished almost instantly.

I saw this and knew I was done. I now had a ISO I could burn. If I had a DVD burner in this machine I would have burned directly.

How do you deal with MKV files? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!

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One of the coolest memories I have as a kid is when my brother and I would copy BASIC programs from the computer magazines of the day (1980’s) into the old Franklin 64 desktop computer with one floppy drive and a whopping 64k of RAM. I’ll never forget when we finished typing the last line of that first program and then entered the command to RUN – how the screen started flashing characters and the miniature speaker beeped through a pathetic rendition of “Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy.”  Pure magic.  I was only 9 years old, but at that moment I was hooked on computers for life.

For anyone who has never created an application, it’s hard to describe the feeling of creating something from nothing. Programming is a lot like any other form of art in that way, except instead of the canvas we’ve got the computer screen, and instead of the paint brushes we have the various programming platforms.

Here at MakeUseOf, we believe in the importance of simple learning tools that can teach complex skills, such as computer programming. For example, Guy covered how you can learn to write a program with SmallBasic, and he also covered a cool application called Scratch that can teach kids how to program. Today, I’d like to cover another innovative software application called Alice that can teach kids how to program in object oriented languages.

Alice 3D Programming – What It Is & What It Isn’t

Alice 3D is a programming environment offered by Carnegie Mellon University. It’s provided for free as a public service, through the funding of various programming  and computer giants, such as Electronic Arts, Sun Microsystems, the National Science Foundation and other major organizations.

Alice is not a scripting tutorial where students will learn about the correct syntax used in various programming languages. It isn’t about developing the best structured For Loop. Instead, Alice provides students with a virtual world – a 3D modeling environment where students can learn how putting together various components, which each individually have their own properties, can create a larger, working project. The 3D environment is meant to show students, in a simple way, how the concept of object-oriented programming works.

The software itself has a built in tutorial, which makes sense because it’s main purpose is to serve as a teaching tool. The first screen allows students to choose from one of the tutorials, open a recent world they created, see examples or open a world they’ve saved on the computer. The option I want to show today is how a student can start from one of the available templates and create their own 3D animation. For this example I’ll go with the space scene.

If you’re a programmer, the first thing you’ll notice are the panes on the left side of the screen where all of the objects and the associated properties, methods and functions are listed. The interface is so intuitive that students don’t even need to understand what objects and methods are, just by adding objects and using the interface to manipulate them, they’ll be slowly learning the concept of object oriented programming. Adding an object to the screen is as simple as pressing the green “Add Objects” button.

In the object gallery, students have dozens of very fun “objects” to choose from. These include characters, machines, vehicles and even special effects like fire and thunderstorms.

In this scene, I’ve added the moon surface, a lunar lander and an astronaut. As you can see in the upper left window, every object is made up of many components, each individual objects with their own properties, methods and functions. You can control any one of these by dragging and dropping the component into the programming area at the bottom of the programming interface.

When you do drag the object in, a pop-up screen shows you all of the available methods and functions you can use to program the behavior of that particular object. This is similar to how, in most object oriented programming languages, the programming platform typically offers this same feature. Once you drill down through the available functions and select the one you want, it gets inserted into the program.

The program itself can be as simple or as complex as you like. As you can see here, it’s possible to create intricate and highly functional programs by using If/Else statements, While loops and other standard conditional statements that are a part of most programming languages today. Within a few minutes of playing around with this addictive learning program, I created a 3D animation where the astronaut moved closer to his lunar lander and waves “goodbye.”  The camera pans in closer, and then as the lunar lander launches without him on board, he says, “Uh-oh.”

The exciting thing about this fantastic free learning tool from Carnegie Mellon University is the fact that it can be a very simple learning tool for very young kids to learn basic programming skills, or it can be a useful tool for even high school kids to generate very intricate and ingenious programmed 3D worlds.

In either case, this is one of the best programs that teach computer programming to kids that encourages children to engage with their computers in ways that they may never have considered – with a depth of understanding kids just never really achieve when all they do is chat on IM and update their status on Twitter and Facebook. Alice helps kids understand the heart and soul of what makes computer technology and programming so cool.

Would you ever consider using Alice in your own school or as part of your curriculum? Is this a learning tool you would consider sharing with your own kids? Share your insight and experiences in the comments section below.

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In this article, we’ll see how you can add free animation for your PowerPoint 2007 presentations.

PowerPoint Animation Basics

It is useful to understand the four basic types of free animations for PowerPoint:

• Entry: used to introduce animated objects on a slide
• Emphasis: used for emphasizing elements already present on a slide
• Exit: how objects move off the slide
• Motion Path: move objects in a specified path on the slide

Now let us see some simple ways you can add animation to your presentation.

Use Preset Animation for Text or Objects

To animate any object (text, shape, etc.), do the following:

1. Select the object you wish to animate

2. On the ribbon, select the Animations tab.

3. Choose an animation effect from the Animation drop-down.

Use Custom Animation for Text or Objects

For fine-grained control, click the Custom Animation button to bring up a task pane on the right.

Clicking the Add Effect button brings up a menu with four types of animations from which you can select the one you like. You can also add multiple animation effects, and see them added to a numbered list in the task pane. To remove any of them, select the animation from the list and click Remove. As you add animation effects, you will see numbered tags added beside the object you have selected.

You can further customize each animation effect using the three drop-downs. Start specifies whether the effect starts upon a mouse-click, starts simultaneously with the previous one, or starts after the previous one. The second drop-down depends on the effect and is used for customizing direction or other properties specific to that effect. The Speed drop-down selects the speed with which the effect is applied.

For advanced customization, right-click an effect in the list to bring up the context menu. Select Effect Options from the context menu to bring up a dialog box with more options to customize the effect.

You can reorder effects within the list using the Re-Order arrows at the bottom, and click Play to preview your animation.

Add Transitions Between Slides

Animations between two slides are called Transitions. To add Transitions, do the following:

1. In the left pane where all slides are shown in a vertical row, select the Slides tab.
2. Select one or more slides in the pane for which you want the desired transition.
3. On the Animations tab in the ribbon, choose a transition effect from the Transition to This Slide group.

You can optionally add Sound and change the speed of the transition using the drop-downs in the ribbon to the right as shown above. If you want to remove the transitions you have added, just select the slides and choose No Transition (first one) from the list.

Add Motion Path Animation

To make a graphic object move in a certain path on the slide, use Motion Path animation. This works best for graphic images with transparent backgrounds, as the graphic moves across other elements on the slide. To add Motion Path animation to an object, do the following:

1. Drag the object you wish to animate to its starting position.
2. Click to select the object.
3. Open the Animation task pane, as described earlier.
4. Select Add Effect > Motion Paths > Draw Custom Path > Scribble. The mouse pointer becomes like a pen.
5. Draw the desired animation path, starting at the object, and click where it should stop moving.

You can also check out a gallery of preset motion paths by selecting the More Motion Paths… menu item.

Add Animated Clip Art

You can also check out free animated clip art graphics on the web. The Clip Art section on Office Online has a huge library of clip art, including animations. You can filter your search at the bottom to find only animations related to your search term. In this way, you can get some cool free animations that are ready to be added to your presentations. Another website to check out animation clip art is Animation Library.

Do your presentations come alive after adding animation? Tell us in the comments!

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

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I used to draw them when I was at school a few years ago. Mostly just little characters with funny expressions when I should have been doing physics or French or something.

So the other day I had an idea for my new blog; I’d start a weekly web comic. Why not? People like them, they’re fun to make, more memorable than an average post and they keep people coming back when you post them on a regular basis.

But there were a couple of obstacles in my path when I considered how to make a web comic. The first one was that I hadn’t picked up a pencil in almost five years. The second one (and perhaps the bigger problem of the two) was that my scanner is currently out of operation. And what I mean by that is I lost the power cable and the adapter.  However, there really is no extreme need for a scanner if you’re only making a basic web comic.

So my first task. Draw my cartoon. I decided that I’d make my first strip a quick one using the same image three times. The joy of drawing cartoons is that they don’t have to be good. Just draw it big. Really big. An A4 page will make up one panel. Then, when you shrink it down and edit it a little your mistakes will become so miniscule they won’t matter. In fact, blemishes and bad effects add character to a drawing.

So I drew out my basic shapes and added some features to make a fat, round man sitting at a computer. It’s not perfect. His hands can even touch the keyboard for God’s sake but that’s what makes it a cartoon. Then I took a snap of it with my mobile phone and sent it to my PC via Bluetooth. This is what I got on my screen: not exactly the makings of a great cartoon (like if I’d had a scanner) but fully workable.

This is where technology works its magic. Send the drawing to a Photoshop program. I used Gimp because it’s free but you could also use Adobe or another program similar to that. If you need to brush up on your Photoshop skills I suggest reading MUO’s Idiot’s Guide to Photoshop.

The first thing we want to do in Photoshop is blow the picture up to 200%. This is normally found under the ‘Image‘ tab along the top of Photoshop programs. This is so the editing tools used later on will be more accurate. Then we want to highlight the different areas and separate the lines from the open spaces. To do this, lower the level of brightness and up the contrast like in the screenshot below.

This will give you red areas with deep black lines like they’ve been inked beforehand. Now it’s time to clean it all up. Using the eraser tool (on its largest setting) clean up all the spotty and blotchy areas from when I altered the brightness and contrast. Don’t try to be too perfect as you’ll be there for hours. Just get the big areas and the blemishes in noticeable places. All the bad areas will be further cleaned up as you go along and then made smaller when downsizing the image.Your image should look like this when you’re erasing all the blemishes.

Now that you’ve got all the main blemishes and marks removed, fill in the large areas with the colours and textures that you want. I chose to go with the simple ‘fill with colour‘ tool but you can use different brush styles and patterns to replicate hair, leaves, sky etc. It all depends on what style you want your drawing to be. Since I’ll be posting mine weekly to my blog I want to keep it simple so it won’t take up too much of my time.

When all of your main areas are coloured there will still be marks and the image won’t look good at all. No really I mean it, it won’t. Click ‘Save‘ and then open the file with MS Paint. The reason I’m using Paint to finish off the editing is because it has some good ‘line tools’ to make the objects look better and it’s easier to work with.

Your image should look much bigger in Paint. Use this opportunity to go around with the paint brush and fill in any missing details and white areas. Use the colour matching tool highlighted in the screenshot to the right to match the colour exactly.

Then use the line tools and the box tools to make regularly shaped objects look better. You can see how I made the table appear better by using the deep, bold lines but I’ve still left in some blemishes and crooked lines because that’s the style of my drawing.

If you’re going to use the same drawing in multiple panels like I did then select it with the cropping tool. When you have it selected, right-click on it and click ‘Copy’ and right click on the page and paste the drawing in again. Then move it into the next panel area.

Use the shape tools to add panels (don’t be afraid to experiment with different style panels – when they’re all the same it can get boring. It’s not a spreadsheet!). Finally, resize your image to a good size for your blog. Six hundred pixels wide is about the max you can hope for on the web.

The final task is to add captions and speech bubbles. You do this last because resizing text ruins it completely. Enter in the text where you want it to go in the panel. Then surround it with a shape which will form the basis of a speech bubble. Erase one of the corners, and by using two lines make a little point towards your character. You can used curved lines for this if you wish.

Here is my finished comic strip. Nothing fancy as it was largely just a test to see if I could do it.

It took me about 45 minutes from start to finish. It would have taken less if I had a scanner – that would have meant less cleaning up in the beginning.

Here are some tips for how to make a web comic on your PC:

• Make lines/shading bolder where there will be less light. I’ve done this on his back as the light from the computer screen doesn’t reach there. Do the opposite for where there is light – such as on Harold’s face in my cartoon.
• Be sure to blow your image up big in the beginning to make your tools more accurate.
• Always leave text until last.
• Experiment with different panel styles.
• Use textures in Photoshop to replicate water, sky, sand, wood etc…
• It’s okay to crop the one image and simply reuse it if you’re feeling lazy like I was.
• Make your character simple – you’ll have to draw him/her again and again – remember that!

Of course, if you have a drawing tablet you can simply draw it directly onto your PC and forget about all that cleaning up!

How do you manage to draw and produce your web comics?   Any tips you’d like to pass on?

Thumbnail Image Credit: atibens

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A war cry that wouldn’t need much urging, because gamers have a clannish streak in them. You will find them in dedicated groups in every online game community worth its name. You come across a name like League of Shadows or Terran Warrior, and you know that there’s a hardcore gamer hiding behind it.

Gamers are a large community and they tend to find their own, especially with the rise of multiplayer games. The seriousness with which people pursue this hobbyhorse has given birth to the term Electronic Sports or eSports. You have amateurs and professional pitting themselves against each other.

An amateur, I wouldn’t bracket myself with the term “addicted”, though once upon a time I came pretty close. Occasionally, I do try to clear the dust and answer The Call of Duty. But gamers who are still in the thick of things now have a new hangout.

Playfire is one of the coolest free online game communities exclusively for the gamer. The online social networking application is still in beta, but by the sleek looks of it, can soon jump out.

Playfire – What’s it all about?

As all free online game communities on the web go, Playfire is also about networking with the likeminded. Only in this case, the banter is about games. The homepage says that the site is home to 245,000+ gamers. It also boasts of being a talking point for 40,000 game titles on every conceivable gaming platform. If you are feeling left out then it’s time to signup.

The First Level – A Signup and a Profile

Signup is simple and the profile setup is also easy but with a twist. In three steps, you let the site know your gaming platforms, what games you have played and then a bit about you – your level of gaming interest. But that’s just for starters. To complete your profile, you have to furnish a few more details like your profile pic, describe your gaming rig, choose your gaming genres etc.

After doing the basics, go into your profile page and deck it up. You can select Themes, showcase your game collection on a visual bookshelf, do a bit of microblogging, add videos and also connect through Meebo with your online friends.

Climbing To the Next Levels

The site is designed like a video game. To rise up, you have to complete certain activities. The completion stages help you garner points and the points in turn, help you rise up. The formula is, the more you participate socially, the higher you rise up with your points.

Your Activity Feed page is the dashboard of all your activities (or lack of it). The highest points are reserved for bringing others into the Playfire fold by sending out invites. Submitting games, rating them and volunteering answers to game related queries also make you a popular member of your clan.

The best way to get a bunch of points and shoot up the charts is to get a Playfire award or two. Answer 100 quiz questions correctly and you become a ‘Smartypants’. Answer 1000 and you are a ‘Gaming Genius’.

The Gaming Communities

Playing is never fun alone, is it? So you have Playfire Groups, gamers who share a common passion, like a particular genre of games. Like The Final Fantasy group with nearly 1,175 members. There’s also Girl Gamerz Rawk! (it’s written that 40% of all gamers are female – I believe it!). Each group has a page of its own. Request membership by clicking on a blue button and then you can take part in the forum discussions.

Clans are the other more narrowed down social circle. Clans on Playfire are group of players who play together regularly on multi-player games. You can search for a clan and join it or start one of your own. Clans again have their discussion boards and a request membership link.

The community is a continuous gaming talkfest with Events thrown in. Events are gaming sessions between members…create one and announce it to your friends. You have Game Planners to co-ordinate all your online meet-ups.

Discussions are all about shooting from your mouth but if you really want to walk that talk as a serious gamer, then take the Quiz and see how you fare against your pals.

There’s a lot to do on Playfire. For a diehard gamer it can be a port of call after playing a few rounds. In the few days spent there, Playfire felt like a complete gaming community. Some pages I think are still being worked out as told by a few broken links. That’s like a single frame’s glitch in an otherwise slam bang effort.

Join up, and let us know your shout’s worth on Playfire.

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(1) Connectify – Desktop tool that turn your pc/laptop into a wireless access point. Working essentially as a front end for Window 7’s “virtual wi-fi” feature, Connectify allows you to share the internet connection of your laptop with other users. It is also handy for keeping all your mobile devices connected from one internet source without having to rely on wireless routers. Read more: Connectify – Turn your PC Into a Wireless Access Point

(2) Obama-Weather – New and fun online weather forecast application. When you visit the site it automatically detects your location and gives 5 day weather report with President Obama demonstrating to you what you need to wear. If you do not like the Obama character, the site lets you switch it to Angelina Jolie, Dr. Gregory House or Bender Bending Rodríguez. Read more: Obama-Weather – Fun Weather Forecast Application

(3) GuideToOnlineSchool – Web directory of online schools that has thousands of reviews and profiles of schools over the world which teach online. On the homepage they have a search function pictured above where you can find a college that caters to a course you want to do. Read more: GuideToOnlineSchool – Directory of Online Schools & Courses

(4) WhatTheMovie – If you ever wanted to test your movie knowledge, head straight to WhatTheMovie.com. It is an innovative and addicting movie quiz site where you guess the movie title by the snapshot, and collect points for the Hall of Fame. The site also provides movie ratings and reviews. Read more: WhatTheMovie – Addictive Movie Quiz Site

(5) iBible – Web app that lets you read entire Bible online. It has the entire bible (both testaments) translated into several languages including French, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Polish. It’s very simple to use and it has no requirement to set anything up. Read more: iBible- Read Entire Bible Online

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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Guy was nice enough for forward the comment to me and here’s the answer: There’s no need. It’s built right into Mac OS X!

It’s called Parental Controls and it’s located in System Preferences. You may not have noticed it if you’re the sole user of your Mac but if you have children, Parental Controls can be a huge help. I’ll show you what it can do and how to set it up exactly.

Let’s dive right in! Launch System Preferences but before you can actually start to use Parental Controls, there needs to be a separate account to control. If your kid already has his or her own account on your Mac, perfect. Just select that account in Parental Controls to manage it. If not, then you’ll have to create a new account.

Head over to Accounts Settings and click on the plus button to add a new account. In the window that appears, select “Managed with Parental Controls“, fill in the appropriate fields and click “Create Account“. Right, the account has been created and is set to be managed by Parental Controls.

Now head over to Parental Controls (System Preferences -> Parental Controls) and select the account to configure its settings. To enable Parental Controls for existing accounts, simply click on “Enable Parental Controls” and the settings will appear.

Under the System tab, there are options to use a Simple Finder. This is basically a simplified Finder window. There is no sidebar and no navigation to system folders allowed. There is also an option to select applications you want to be made available to your child. It’s useful if you want to prevent your children from meddling with important apps or perhaps if you want to cut off their MSN privileges temporarily. If you check this box, the list below will unbrick and you are able to select exactly what you want your child to play with.

In the Content tab, you’re provided the option to filter profanity from the Dictionary and to restrict access to certain websites. If you’d like to give your children some room to play, you could use Apple’s filter to automatically limit access to adult websites. In addition to that, you can also add specific sites to the white- or blacklist. Personally, I find that option to have the best balance of leniency and compromise.

In the next tab, Mail and iChat, the idea is really simple: the applications will only allow communication between people on the whitelist. The thought of unsupervised children chatting online is definitely one of a parent’s worst nightmares. Who are they chatting with? Now you can safely control their communication without being overly intrusive.

The next tab is something we’re very interested in. Time Limits is very easy to use and when put into action, it is simply the best way to get your child to bed on time! You can set daily weekday and weekend time limits as well as bedtime restrictions! Your child is logged off automatically as soon as it’s time for bed! Sure, there could be times when your kids have a project due and could use a couple more hours on the computer – that’s something very easy to overcome, I’ll show you how it’s done in a while. But now, let’s log in to an account managed by Parental Controls to see how it will look like, shall we?

As you can instantly recognize, the Finder is simplified to show only the allowed applications. Navigation is crippled so your children can’t delete or modify any of your precious files.

If you’d like to change any of the Parental Controls settings, there’s no need to log off and log into your account. Say, your child wants to access his favorite website, which you had unfortunately overlooked when modifying the whitelist, no worries. You can add it instantly by entering your password (if you have an administrator’s account).

If you’ve set time limits, the remaining time is visible within a drop down menu once you click on the clock. Your children will receive an alert 15 minutes before the time runs out completely and they are able to save their work or ask your permission for more time to play.

Parental Controls is really awesome and extremely useful if you’re a parent. It will allow you to monitor and restrict your kids’ computer activity without being too intrusive. Settings which you’re able to control i.e. communication, apps, navigation; are really flexible and can be changed on the fly. Your child will always go to bed on time, and you can sleep soundly knowing that they’re safe from online intruders.

If there are any other apps that operate better than Parental Controls, I’ll be glad to hear about them. Leave your suggestions in the comments.

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You have to remember that hundreds of thousands of people who have given up their job search in the depths of the recession are all going to pile back onto the job market quicker than you can say ‘credit crunch’.

So I thought I’d share with you a tip I use when I’m looking for more blogging jobs. This tip can be applied for when you’re looking for work, a new house, great deals and other thing that are hard to come by. I simply set up iGoogle to perform how I want it to so it can become my Mission HQ.

Firstly, go to Google (if you don’t already have an account, create one). In the top right-hand corner click iGoogle. Then, from the tabs located to the left of the screen click ‘Add a tab‘ and give it an appropriate name in the box which appears.

Now that your new tab is created we have to add some gadgets which will help you in your job search. Our main tool here will be the RSS gadget so I need you to do the following.

Visit sites specific to your job search. Craigslist will cover pretty much everything from jobs to houses to items for sale. Most other jobs search websites also offer RSS feeds as a way of bringing you back to the site with the promise of alerts. Right-click on the feed’s icon and copy the address. Then go back to iGoogle.

Click on the ‘Add Stuff‘ link at the top right of the screen. Along the left-hand side in the sidebar you’ll see an Add Feed or Gadget link. Click on that and paste in the link address you copied from the RSS link on the job site and click ‘Add‘.

The RSS feed should now appear in iGoogle like my example at the bottom of this post. Keep repeating this procedure for all the job searches (or any other search) you like. Here are some popular websites which offer RSS feeds and jobs, apartments and more are frequently posted.

• Craigslist
• Twitter (perform a search and then use the RSS feed for that search)
• Indeed
• Yahoo HotJobs
• Monster

For more job search websites, click here.

Finally, click on ‘Change Theme from Classic‘ and select one of the cool themes they have there. This doesn’t really improve your iGoogle HQ but you don’t want to turn on your computer every day and see the same generic theme, do you?

Now all you have to do is check back daily and follow up on anything promising. Without a doubt you’re ahead of the competition by making iGoogle your search HQ because while you’re giving the advertisers a call they’re still rummaging through search results.

Photo Credit: Danard Vincente

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Read on to learn how doing a social network search with Google Social Search works and how to use it.

Content from your social circle

Google Social Search adds content that is linked from your friend’s Google profiles to the search results. This content includes websites, blogs, public status updates (like Twitter and FriendFeed), other Google profiles and items from your feeds on Google Reader.

It is an opt-in experiment, so you have to turn it on to make it part of your search results.

Enable social search

Here is how to enable Google Social Search:

• Log in to your Google account (you always have to be logged in for social search to work).
• Go to Google Experimental.
• Click ‘Join this experiment‘ next to ‘Google Social Search‘.

From now on when you search Google it will also do a social network search and integrate results form your social circle at the bottom of the results page (from my experience that only happens when Google is set to display 10 results per page).

Get only social results

Alternatively, you can get only results from your social circle. Once you’ve enabled social search, it becomes one of the search filters available as part of Google’s New Search Features. In the results page, click ‘show options‘ under the Google logo and in the sidebar that opens click ‘Social‘. See an example of the results in the image below.

Asking help from friends

There are two advantages to getting these social results. First, it is somewhat more likely that they would be more relevant, at least in certain topics. For example, if you’re looking for something related to your field of expertise, your friends and people they know might have more relevant information.

Second, you do not only have access to the information you find, but possibly to the KNOWLEDGE the people who created it possess. Since the results include information about your relationship to the person who published the content, it might be easier to contact this person since you know him/her or know someone else who does.

Who’s in your social circle?

Your social circle is made up of your connections in various Google services. First, there are your social network connections, such as Twitter and FriendFeed. You have to list these social networks in your Google Profile for the people in them to be part of your social circle. Next, your circle includes people from your Gmail chat list and some of your Gmail contact groups. Finally, second level relations (friends of friends) are a part of your social circle – providing these relationships are public.

Note that if you do not list your social networks in your Google profile, or if you don’t have a lot of connections in them, you will probably not get too many social results.

On the other side, if you want your content (blog, videos and the like) to show up in your friends’ social search, you should list it in your profile as well.

Have you had the chance to try Google Social network search? Was it useful for you or just too much noise? Tell us in the comments!

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Education has never been as accessible as in our present times. Disregarding the high tuition fees of some, I would say it has also never been as much a bang for each buck as now. And there are places you can educate yourself without spending a penny. For example – The World Wide Web.

The web is not only about movies, music, tweets and the unmentionable word. It is also perhaps the greatest learning miracle after the innovation of printing. Information cannot replace education but it can certainly drive it. That’s what some of the online educational websites are doing. Or looking at the variety of knowledge they make us open up to, let’s call them educational portals.

An Online Center of Learning…

• CosmoLearning is an educational website built around the thought that if education has to be free and accessible – the web is the way to do it.
• CosmoLearning is a free online school with video lectures, courses, documentaries, books, quizzes, lecture notes and more in a variety of media formats.
• CosmoLearning has been designed according to traditional curriculum standards, but with an added intent to bring them all together on the web.
• CosmoLearning is an educational website both for the teacher and the pupil alike. Anyone, who has a passion for learning anywhere and anytime.
• CosmoLearning is a creation of two teenaged siblings. Look them up on the About page or say hello to them on Facebook.

The First Day at School…

It’s neither as nerve wracking nor as expectantly exciting as the one we once faced in the real world. The reason is that online education is not new fangled as a concept these days. The novelty quotient would lie in the treatment given to an age old process.

Enrollment is not through the headmaster’s office and the cashier, but through a simple registration form and it’s free.

The Subjects in the Syllabus…

All learning at CosmoLearning is through the courses on various subjects and there is a huge list of them…29 in all. The Academic Subjects are arranged alphabetically on a left panel. From basic sciences to new age ones like entrepreneurship are given a class (old ‘age’ ones like Religion and Mythology too find their space).

Let’s not forget the extra-curricular subjects…often neglected, but many go on to careers in them. Look at the subject choices below.

The Teaching Aids…

This is the age of convergence and education is all the better because of it. Supporting the courses are Video Lectures, Image Files and Documentaries. Each gets a large chunk of server space.

There are 6184 video lectures as of now arranged around Video Type (Animation, Guest Lecture, Interview etc), Topics, Contributors, Alphabetically, Most Viewed, Top Rated et.al. Just let me say, that you won’t get lost searching for a specific video.

The Documentary list is on the same rich vein – 389 in all. I took a look at some truly good ones – Stephen Hawking’s speech in honor of NASA’s 50th Anniversary really perked my interest.

After these two, mentioning the bank of 733 images seems almost like an anti-climax. But it’s a small but focused collection.

Similarly tiny but open to growth is the small library of books. For now, it’s poetry centric.

All the content on CosmoLearning is arranged for easy navigation on subject specific panels. You can go to your favorite subjects or jump into the Top 10 Lists or the latest that has come in (via the News feed or the Recently Added lists).

Where does all this content come from?

No, it’s not ‘manufactured’ by the brother sister team behind the site. All of it comes from contributions from some of the most well known names and independent contributors. You can check them out on any of the pages for Courses, Videos, Images or Documentaries. You have Harvard University rubbing shoulders with Golf Tips Magazine. All content is free and the site exhorts contributors to pitch in whole-heartedly.

School ‘Report Card’…

A young site but a blossoming one. Some subjects could do with more content as time goes by. Inspite of an impressive lineup of contributors and contributions, CosmoLearning also suffers from a basic weak spot. I believe that for a learner it’s very important to have a roadmap for his learning…that’s defined by curricula. The path from the first lesson to the last, to gain some mastery in a specific study is what’s missing.

But CosmoLearning is an impressive attempt to gather together a horn of plenty of educational resources. The site is well structured and a breeze to go through. It is definitely not a last stop for your educational needs but it does deserve a stop on your learning curve.

How do you use educational websites? As a launching pad or as support material? Let us know…

Image Credit: Avolore

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If we make a grave error at MakeUseOf, we can post an update or correct ourselves in the comments section. When you’re working with print the problem isn’t that easily solved. Those mistakes cannot be erased.

Written errors aren’t the worst of it – they are glanced at and forgotten.

Bad photoshop mistakes are the absolute worst-case scenario – photo editing gone very wrong. We all suspect most glamor magazines touch up their pictures. That suspicion becomes very real if the model suddenly misses her leg or belly button.

It’s even worse when we’re not talking about modelling. How about an ad for children’s toys or – if worse comes to worst – a charity campaign. It’s ridiculous if you know how much has been paid for these ads. Although these errors are usually due to lazy and inattentive designers, everyone should have noticed these errs in passing – and stopped them.

There are blogs that gather these Photoshop mistakes – often dubbed Photoshop disasters by the 2.0 point-and-laugh blogs. Read on if you would like to have a laugh at what gets past the print editors these days.

Photoshop Disasters

PsD, short for Photoshop Disasters, is the leading blog in Photoshop errors. Since print is one of the only ways to make sure it really is an accidental occurring, they specialize in print covers, ads and overall article pictures. Ads make up the big majority of them – which is one of the only sectors where image editing is actually accepted.

You can expect uploading periods with relatively frequent updates, interchanged with some more quiet periods. But highly laughable quality material is always at hand. Browse the ‘Photoshop disasters’ chronically and dig into the not inconsiderable archive, or use the tags to browse similar errs.

If you’re a frequent magazine or newspaper reader and have encountered a Photoshop mistake in the past – or if you ever do in the future – you can send them into these sites. They’ll more than appreciate the extra content.

Photoshop Mistakes

Photoshop Mistakes makes for a decent second place. It isn’t as popular as the previously mentioned Photoshop Disasters, but does provide quality and a little change in content.

The content of the two sites is very similar and often recurring. After all, printed photo editing disasters don’t occur that often.

Like the former blog, you can browse the site chronologically, or by using the tags. Alternatively, they also offer a Twitter feed. If you’re an avid Twitter user, you can follow them to stay on top of any future updates. You certainly won’t be the only one.

What do you think of these image editing mistakes? A sad mistake or an opportunity for a good laugh? If you know any other sites, or twitter and meme feeds to keep an eye on future Photoshop disasters, drop a comment below.

Want to avoid disasters like these? You can start out by reading our Idiot’s Guide to Photoshop!

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Personally, I find that hiding the more distracting windows actually increases my efficiency while I use my computer. In fact, having less on the screen at one time means no more absent minded glances at the taskbar, no getting lost on facebook, and a whole lot more concentration.

OuttaSight is an excellent free solution to the common time management or privacy problems that computer users face today. This lightweight application allows users to hide active windows either by the push of a button, or automatically when they are run. While it is only stated as supporting up through Windows 2000, it works perfectly fine on XP and Vista.

OuttaSight is a Windows desktop utility that hides running application windows to un-clutter the desktop, quickly hide private work, or secure your applications while you’re away from your computer.

Features

• Hide running programs with the push of a button
• Set programs to automatically hide when they start up
• Hide OuttaSight from the taskbar
• Password protect OuttaSight to prevent changes
• Hide/Show all windows with a single hotkey
• Ability to hide windows to the system tray (instead of hiding them completely)

Using OuttaSight

The first thing you’ll notice when you download and run OuttaSight is that it’s very simple looking. This is one of my favorite aspects of the software – it’s very clear, lightweight, and efficient.

First, it is important to personalize the utility. Go to “Hot Keys” and decide what you want your shortcuts for different actions to be. My personal set up used F10 as the hide window hotkey, CTRL+F11 to hide all windows, and CTRL+F12 to show them all.  While you are setting things up, keep in mind the reasons you got OuttaSight in the first place. Do you want it to be very easy and intuitive to show and hide windows, or would you like to be the only person that knows how to do it?

Second, you’re going to want to decide how you want programs to hide. Would you like them to disappear altogether (for secrecy) or minimize to the tray instead? If you are tired of your taskbar being cluttered, but do not mind people seeing that the programs are running, you may want to tell OuttaSight to minimize them to the tray as shown below.

To do this, navigate to the Options tab and check off  “Hide windows to system tray“. If this is not checked, the default behavior is to completely hide windows.

Next, you’ll need to decide if there are some programs you would like to automatically hide whenever they start. These programs could consist of automatic virus scans, annoying startup messages, or other things of that nature. If for some reason you like to start up applications with the intention of not viewing them at all, you can do that too .

To set up a list of programs that will hide when they run, simply navigate to the “Auto-Hide” tab and start adding programs.

Note that you can specify whether you would like the program to hide completely, or run in the tray instead. To view a window that has minimized to the tray, simply double click it.

Finally, analyze things with your privacy in mind. You have the option to password protect OuttaSight. That means that even if someone knows it is running, they can’t use it without entering your password. That also means that your hidden programs remain hidden no matter what. To prevent others from seeing OuttaSight you have the option of hiding it from appearing even in the taskbar. If you do this, make sure you remember the hotkey to pull up OuttaSight – otherwise you’ll have to reboot your computer to access it again.

Hopefully this article was informative. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to post your comments and let me know if you found a better free alternative. Overall I’d like to hear what you have to say about this concept in general – do you use software like this and why?

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I hope I am not alone in reminiscing about these games but this is what I grew up on!

Now when you have some time to kill you can browse on over to the authors home page here or his software company’s webpage here and play a similar Asteroids arcade game called Luminara.

Luminara plays in your browser using flash 10. All you have to do is go to their website and start playing! When you arrive at their site you will see this:

Click on the word Play in the center of the screen and you will be off and ready to play.

The premise is the same as the asteroids arcade game – you shoot using your mouse button and spin using your mouse. You break or destroy the asteroids that are coming at you. But the twist is addictive music, colors and awesome looking icons. There are 50 waves of colorful enemies and explosions ready to draw you in…

But as they always say it is better to show you then explain it to you. How do you explain pretty colors other than slipping someone a hit of acid? Well without further ado here is a 6 minute video walk through that will get you amped for this game:

So now that you see a little bit of what I am talking about, let’s see what the game has to offer. As you play you will be offered different power-ups like lasers and companion players. Those friendly assistants help you clear out those hard boards. Use your up and down arrows to guide your ship around the screen and collect those power-ups. Here I am after grabbing my first companion ship. They sure help!

And the author named the companion players after the regulars in his forums! That sure is funny. I bet they love playing this game. Hit the P key on your keyboard to pause the game and bring up your options as you can see below:

You bounce off the sides instead of going through and out on the other side like the classic game. Your bullets also bounce off the walls and can continue killing after they bounce. My day is seriously screwed as I tried to get this game in between doing my duties! I am addicted.

We would love to hear about your high scores and your other favorite (FREE!) games. Leave them in the comments so all of our MakeUseOf readers can benefit.  Do you have a game you cannot get through the day without playing? Then hook us up, put us on and we might just do a full review of it here. Remember we are writing for you, the readers, so let us know what you want to see more of (or less of!)

Ok that’s enough for today boys and girls I umm have to…you know…get back to work. No really I have stuff to do

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(1) Cheapism – If you are a bargain hunter but also don’t like to compromise on quality then Cheapism is a website you should bookmark. What it does is simple – it searches for best quality products among the cheapest ones. The site features budget product reviews in various categories like home & garden, kitchen utilities, computers, electronics, sports, travel and many more. Read more: Cheapism – Finds Best Quality Products For Cheap

(2) iBotanika – Social network for gardeners, plant enthusiasts and botanists in general. Users can upload photos, add plants and connect with other users. There is also a catalog for plants to record their health, maintenance, environment and location. Read more: iBotanika – Social Network For Gardeners

(3) Mockingbird – New tool which makes creating and sharing website mockups a cakewalk. The service, which is completely web based, could prove to be extremely useful for designers and developers who work with large number of clients from all over the world. Read more: Mockingbird – Create Website Mockups Online

(4) CHOW Restaurants Regions – Restaurants Regions is a recently launched food guide by CHOW. While there are many food and restaurant guides available on the internet, what makes this guide unique is the ability to filter results by the type of cuisine. Read more: CHOW Restaurants Regions – Find Restaurants By Cuisine

(5) VeoProject – New and powerful web tool that lets you setup and manage projects online. Your projects will be hosted online and you can easily collaborate and share them with your team members. The application has a spreadsheet like interface where projects are organized in rows, with individual project parts and tasks hierarchically listed in between. Read more: VeoProject – Effective Project Management Tool Online

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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Enter Taweet.  Learn how to schedule future tweets!

There are a few tools I’ve come across that allow you to schedule posts for the future. Taweet is here to hopefully change the way we think about Twitter and tweeting from “thinking about the past” to “what’s going on in the future.” Twitter asks “What are you doing?” Taweet asks “What are you doing IN THE FUTURE?”

Taweet, as you can probably tell, majors on the art of the future tweet.  It allows for, amongst other things, talking about what’s going to happen, such as events or plans.

Taweet actually offers several perks that can enhance your Twittering: tweet scheduling, threaded discussions, AND multiple account management. Let’s see what these are all about!

Taweet provides you with a way how to schedule tweets for the future. There are several reasons someone would want to do this. If you want to create a buzz or get the word out about something in the future, a properly timed tweet could play a decent role. Also you can use Taweet as a kind of social calendar, letting your followers know what you’ve got going on.

Taweet has an interesting way of posting future tweets. The user interface makes it quite simple to choose the date and time.

When the tweet is posted,it gives the time and a link to the post on Taweet.com, allowing the viewer to comment.

This is where threaded comments come in. I for one like the idea of having the comments threaded directly beneath my tweet so I can get a handle on the conversation. Taweet does this for you and the result is something similar to what Facebook does with its updates and comments.

Taweet also gives you the option to add multiple Twitter accounts. This makes it easier to switch between them. Hey, if you like tweeting in the future with one account, why not all of them?

Signing up is really easy.  If you’re on the front page, you’ll notice the “Sign in with Twitter” button. Hit it.

Next you’ll have to be willing to allow Taweet to connect to your Twitter account.  If you want to use Taweet, you’ve got to hit “allow.”

You’re then asked the question, “Would you like to link this account with one previously used on Taweet?“  If you’re new to Taweet, the obvious answer is “I’m new to Taweet.”

After you enter your email address, a confirmation email is sent to you.  Before progressing any further, you have to check your email and click on the confirmation link.

Finally you’re given the controls!

So there you have it; yet another Twitter tool emerges filling yet another void!  There is obviously more to Taweet, such as searching other users’ future posts to find out what’s going on in the future.  To me, this tool seems simple enough to use but it also has the possibility to change the way we think about and use Twitter.

Now you too can learn to tweet for the future!

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However, it didn’t all go to plan. There was something wrong with the host which left my site back in 1982 until the MUO authors, more specifically Karl, was able to get her up and running while I yelled at my hosting company.

So I was happy. For a while. But then the thought of ‘what if the host was to go belly up right now?’ popped into my mind. At any minute it could all just go wrong and I’d be left blogless. All my posts would be gone. The theme I’ve fine-tuned. The media I’ve uploaded. It would be the virtual equivalent of pulling the pin from the hand grenade and tossing it into the epicentre of my site. The only remnants of its existence being a ‘404′ error. And you want to know the worst thing? No matter how many times your press ‘F5′, the blog simply wont appear. Ever.

There are two things you need to do to have a full backup of your website. The first one is easy, you just have to backups server files. This can be easily done using any FTP client. Just connect to your server and copy the contents of the folder to your computer.

Second, you need to backup your database. Figuring out how to backup your Wordpress blog database is the way to go. Most definitely.

One could do this the hard way. You could manually backup everything using an FTP client and an external hard drive. But that’s the hard way. So here is an easy way to backup your Wordpress blog – in three easy steps no less.

Getting a Wordpress database ‘back up’ plug-in

If there’s one thing that separates Wordpress from the other half dozen popular blogging platforms, it’s the abundance of plug-ins. There are quite a few which back-up your blog but I recommend using the ‘Wordpress Database Backup Plugin’. For those of you familiar with the innermost working of a website – this plug-in will back-up your tables in your Wordpress database. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the innermost working of a website – it will save you a weekend of going through the five stages of grief.

Installing the plugin

Have the plugin downloaded? You sure? You’re not just reading on through this post while your blog sits utterly vulnerable to destruction? OK, good.

Now comes the installation. It’s pretty much the same as any other plugin installation.

First go to the plugin menu on the Wordpress admin page and under plugins click ‘add new‘ as seen in the screenshot. Upload the plugin. You can leave it in the .zip format if you like. Then click ‘Activate‘ once the install has finished.

Setting it up

Go to ‘Tools‘ along the left-hand sidebar in the Wordpress admin area. Under ‘Tools‘ you’ll find a new menu called ‘Backup‘. Click on that.

There are three main areas that you have to fill out in the screen which appears. The first area is entitled ‘Tables‘ and put simply, it allows you to specify what you want to back up. I’d suggest leaving everything ticked. This will basically back up your entire blog including posts, comments, users and settings.

Then, under ‘Back Up Options‘ you can select where you want the backup files to go. You can either save to your server, download to your computer or e-mail to a specified address. Pick whichever one works for you. I’ll be keeping mine on an external hard-drive so I’ll be downloading it to my computer. However the other two options – particularly the e-mail options are also good.

Finally, the third table allows you to choose how often your blog is backed up. This is done automatically. I’d suggest doing it at least weekly. If your blog is really big with multiple posts per hour you can back up hourly, daily and twice daily.

Finally click ‘Backup Now‘ under the second section to make sure you’re safe from the get-go.

So now if it all does go horribly wrong (i.e. a virtual hand grenade has just blown up in serverland) you’ll be back up (no pun intended) in no time by simply restoring the backed up database and uploading Wordpress files using an FTP such as FileZilla.

For more great plugins for your Wordpress blog click here.

Image Credit: John Loo

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Most iPhone users relish being able to use our iPhone to get things done. We’re always wondering if there is indeed “an app for that” – iPhone apps for free, from mapping directions, getting movie previews, to iPhone food ordering apps.

I’ve tried ordering food using the traditional website structure of a few restaurants, but the iPhone web-formatted user interface for ordering food on those sites took more time than it was worth. The Chipotle iPhone food ordering app is the first of its kind that I’ve seen that makes ordering food very simple.

You can tell the app developers put a lot of thought in how to make the user interface relatively easy to use and aesthetically appealing. The application is built in a hierarchical manner, whereby a limited list of menu items in which you click to further drill down into additional menu items for more levels of details.

To order food using the app, you of course have to set up an account that includes your credit card. Based on the feedback the application has received, it is better to create your account online rather than through the application.

After clicking the application‘s opening screens and using the location feature to find the Chipotle nearest to you, you have a few ways to get started creating your order.  If you want a reminder of Chipotle‘s menu offerings, you click the Food menu button at the bottom of the application. This presents you with clean single-page photos and a short description of Chipotle’s main menu offerings. Granted, because Chipotle is not like say IHOP, with three or four dozen menu offerings, the application is not crammed with too much information. Chipotle‘s main entrée offerings are presented in 8 pages, in which you slide from page to page with a swipe of your finger.

Clicking the Order Now button on any one of main entrée or chips pages will take you to the Create New Order section. The resulting menu presents you with a list of six menu categories: Burrito, Bowl, Soft Tacos, Crispy Tacos, Salad, and Sides and Drinks. Clicking one of these categories leads you to another menu page where you select for example the type of Burrito you want to order. Prices for those items are also listed. You click the plus button to add to your order. You can just as easily click the minus button if you change your mind.

After clicking the Continue button, you are presented with a broad list of side items that you can add to your order, or your “bag”. So basically, the application is designed for you to easily build your order by clicking through the menu .

Once you’ve selected what you want, you click the Add to Bag button. You’re then presented with two input spaces, one for giving a name to your order (for example, Lunch) and “any special instructions” you may have. The reason you give this order a name is because when you are presented with your itemized order, you have the option to save that order as a Favorite, which is very convenient for making future orders.

Clicking the resulting Checkout Now button will present your order with the subtotal price. After clicking the Checkout button you have to log into your account. Ordering food using this app is almost faster than doing so in the restaurant itself, especially if you have to wait in a long lunch or dinner line.

Now once you arrive to pick up your order, you may experience a little breakdown in the process. Some users of the app have complained that when they arrived to a selected restaurant their order was either not ready or never received. I didn’t experience that problem, but I can imagine it happening. This breakdown doesn’t sound like a problem with the application itself, but perhaps what is done with orders when they are received. A Chipotle franchise may be overtasked and orders may be mismanaged. That’s a customer service issue that needs to worked out at each establishment.

But as for the application itself, I don’t think the process can be simpler. Are there other iPhone food ordering apps that you recommend and find accessible? Are the ones that you find very difficult to use?

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While you might already be familiar with the many apps that are available for your personal webcam that you use at home, there are also many very cool applications that are especially valuable if you travel a lot with a portable USB webcam, or if you use many different computers that have their own built-in webcams. These days, most laptops or desktops have them.

I’ve shared my own obsession with webcam software here at MakeUseOf with my own articles, such as adding VZOChat to your blog to interact with your visitors. I’m not the only one! Simon also wrote about how to use your webcam to control games, and Mark mentioned a couple of useful motion sensor webcam applications as well. To add to the MakeUseOf library of useful webcam resources, I’d like to turn now to three free applications that let you use your webcam live and online to take and share photos, broadcast or “tweet” video updates, and even speed date however, whenever and wherever you like.

Take Hilarious Snapshots From Your Browser With Cameroid

MakeUseOf covered Cameroid briefly before, and for good reason. If you like the ability to quickly take a snapshot and modify it in a way that will make people really laugh – you have to check this out. This isn’t an application you have to install on your PC. If you’re on any computer that has a webcam, or you have a portable USB webcam with you, just visit the Cameroid website and you can start taking and playing around with your snapshots.

Obviously, you can take perfectly normal snapshots of yourself if you like, but the real exciting thing about this browser-based software is how quickly and easily you can insert various special effects. On the right, you’ll find the various types of special photo effects that are available, including adding a filter, distorting the photo (this can be really funny), inserting yourself into scenes, or framing the snapshot. My personal favorite is the hilarious “scenes” section where you can insert your face into any of a number of scenes.

Here, I decided to go on my first scuba-diving expedition with the rest of the MUO crew, and they thought it would be funny if they unplugged my air supply. Thanks a lot guys. Wait – my even more favorite section is the “filter” section where you can select from a whole list of filters that add a very cool sense of drama or intrigue to your photo.

As you can see here, the aliens were coming to get me and I had no way out. Luckily, I survived the ordeal and lived to tell about it, but the rest of the MUO crew got massacred during the battle – such a shame.  As you can see at the bottom of each snapshot you take, if you have the nerve, you can add the photo to the public Cameroid Gallery for all of the world to see. Otherwise, you can either save it to your hard drive or print it out on paper. No registration and no fees required – all from the convenience of your web browser and any webcam.

Speed Date From the Comfort of Your Home With Randomate

So you’re single, alone, and on a business trip. You’ve just suffered through a full day of conferences and you’re back in your hotel room with nothing to do – and you start lamenting the fact that you have no one in your life who even cares about you. So go down to the lobby where there’s a computer with a webcam, and log into Randomate to set up a free webcam speed dating session. You never know, you just might find the person you’ve always dreamed of.

How does it work? Basically, you sign up for a session, and when it begins you get to chat with the other people in the session who are also looking for someone. The catch is that it follows the rules of speed-dating, which is you get to talk to the person for only five minutes. Then you move on to the next person, who you talk to for five minutes. Honestly – don’t you know within the first five minutes whether there might be a spark there?

Sessions are ongoing constantly, but slots are limited – so if you know you want to take part in online speed dating, sign up for a session early and remember to be there when it starts!

Seesmic TV is Twitter with Video

Another very cool online tool that you can use from anywhere and with any webcam is Seesmic TV.  David reviewed Seesmic Desktop not very long ago, so did Jason, and made mention of Seesmic Web as well – both tools that you can use to better interface directly with Twitter.

However, Seesmic TV, the app which Mark briefly mentioned being integrated with Twhirl, is an interesting community where you can issue video Twitter-like messages in video format, and reply to other folks video updates just like you do on Twitter. On Seesmic TV, this amounts to an interesting collection of actual discussions with actual faces and actual voices…just like actual live. It really makes you feel like you’re right there having a conversation with the person face-to-face.

The interface where you record your message is just as simple as in Twitter. You simply title your video clip, add a description and post to the community or send it privately to the inbox of another Seesmic user. You can do this from any computer anywhere in the world as long as it has an internet connection and a webcam (or you bring your own USB webcam with you).

The beauty of all three of these applications is that they let you interface with Internet communities in ways that simply aren’t possible in a purely text or even an audio medium. Using facial expressions and tone of voice, you can convey your messages to the world much more clearly and effectively.

Have you taken part in any webcam-based community? Would you ever consider it, and if not, what holds you back? Share your opinions and insight in the comment section below.

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We have reviewed quite a few online storage services in the past. Microsoft’s offering Skydrive is right up there with others when it comes to storage space, offering a staggering 25 GB of online space. In addition we also showed you how you can edit your Office documents stored in Windows Live Skydrive with Office Webapps.

One of the most annoying aspects of nearly all online storage solutions is that you have to use a web browser to upload and manage files. Some of them offer Java applets to upload but there are a number of other operations that you may want to perform on the files you have in your account. Doing them in a web browser is generally not the best way to do such things. It would be nicer if you could integrate Skydrive into the Windows shell. Wouldn’t it?

Skydrive Explorer is one such application that lets you do just that. With Skydrive Explorer installed you can easily access your Skydrive account just like any other drive from inside My Computer. A meagre 1.23 MB download, Skydrive Explorer installs in a jiffy. Once installed you will see a Skydrive Explorer System folder listed inside My Computer.

Double click on it and you will be prompted to log into your Skydrive account. You can then view the contents of your Skydrive account just like any other folder without having to use the web browser.

You should note that folders may take some time to load since Skydrive Explorer needs to send a request and then process it before it can display the relevant information to you. You should therefore avoid working directly with files stored in your Skydrive folders. The right way would be create a local copy, edit it and then copy it back to Skydrive. That said, the performance is acceptable and a large part of it would be attributed to your connection speed.

Skydrive Explorer lets you perform almost all the file/folder management tasks that you can need:

• You can create, delete, rename multiple folders in a single go.

• Copy files to Skydrive folders from your hard drive which would then be uploaded to your Skydrive account or copy the contents to your hard drive from the account.

• You can also right click on any folder and then copy its URL to the clipboard. Visiting the URL in any web browser would take you to your Skydrive account, right to where the file is located. You can easily use this functionality to share files with others by adding them to the “Public” folder.
• Create shortcuts to a Skydrive folder on your desktop for quick access

With a little effort you can easily use Skydrive to backup your important files. You can use software like the previously mentioned Directorysync pro or Freefilesync to keep two folder synchronized with each other. Let’s say you synchronize the Documents folder on your Skydrive account with the Documents folder for your user account in Windows. Now changes to any file or folder will be automatically communicated to your Skydrive account – just keep in mind the 50MB file limit!

You can also have a look at previously mentioned Gladinet and see which one would you like to use in case you are looking for a way to access your Skydrive. Which is your favorite online storage service and how do you access it?

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There are of course other ways to organize desktop clutter, such as buying a bigger screen, opening less windows, or grouping the windows into several virtual spaces. I accidentally found a rather old application – but working just fine under Snow Leopard – which takes a completely different approach to the problem: making the windows disappear.

To show or not to show

Whether it’s only to hide your games when your boss is around, or to instantly switch your cluttered desktop into a clean working environment (where only the chosen windows are visible), Show Desktop is your solution.

As the name suggests, this small application will hide all the opened windows and show the desktop. Maybe similar to Expose, but more powerful. And all it takes is just a click.

When you run this application for the first time, Show Desktop will appear in the “Icon mode“. You can activate its function through the app icon in the dock.

Clicking the dock icon will hide all the open windows. Everything is disappeared, only the desktop is visible. The windows are not minimized nor closed, they are just vanished. In this state, the dock icons of those applications will look transparent.

If you click the Show Desktop icon while all the windows are hidden, the minimized Finder icon will appear at the dock ready to be clicked back to the desktop. But to restore everything back to where they belong, you have to click the Show Desktop dock icon again while holding the Shift key. You could also use Alt + Tab to restore only one of those hidden applications.

Further enhancements

For those who prefer to have a menubar item of Show Desktop instead of a dock icon, you could do so by going to the Preferences, either using the menu or “Command + Comma” key combination, and then tick the “Show in menubar” box.

Changing between the Dock icon and the Menubar mode requires you to restart the application.

From these General Preferences, you could also pick the icon style and choose whether you want Finder to stay open after you hide other applications. If you want to have access to this “hide/show all” ability the whole time, be sure to tick “Open Show Desktop at login” box.

In the Menubar mode, the one that you could click to hide or show all the windows is the menubar item. To show the preferences, you have to use Control + Click (or right click) at the item. The pop-up menu will also show you a list of open applications.

But the coolest feature of this app is the ability to make a kind of ‘whitelist’ of applications that will not be hidden. Users can add their own choice to the list.

Using this ability, you could repeatedly hide all the other open applications and leave only one specific app that you want to work with. This allow you organize your desktop and focus more on the work at hand and discard all the distractions.

A little trick

This app would be perfect if it has a shortcut key combination to activate the show/hide applications function. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have one. To overcome this limitation, I tried to create the shortcut key using the Keyboard preference pane. It was an unsuccessful attempt.

However, I found a simple cheat. If you use a launcher – something like Quicksilver or Google Quick Search Box – to “launch” Show Desktop while this app is already active, a similar effect (hide all windows) would be triggered.

The opposite is also true. If you use a launcher to open Show Desktop while holding the Shift key, all the hidden windows would appear.

Have you tried Show Desktop to organize your desktop? Do you think you will ever need the function to quickly hide applications? Share your thoughts and opinions using the comment below.

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It’s hard to tell what people will enjoy or be revolted by. For instance I enjoy gruesome videos, my wife on the other hand like cuddly snuggly bunnies. So choose your videos wisely.

Here are 5 Internet video sites that I frequent to find videos that will entertain me! Let’s check each of them out.

VeryFunnyAds

The first one is called VeryFunnyAds. As you can imagine this website has only very funny ads, as in advertisements. It is a collection of awesomely funny commercials that have either aired on television or were mockups of what should have been aired! I worked for a company called Adforum way back when (10 years ago) and they catalogued advertisements as well -  but long story short – VeryFunnyAds has very funny ads!

From their homepage you can choose to see only the most recent videos or view them by categories. But come on, any Internet video site that has Kevin Nelon doing the introduction video has to be good right?  Just think of his amazing work on Weeds!

Here is a awesome ad with Coke as the subject. You see it plays onscreen in a flash player with the normal options like volume and full screen mode at the push of a button.

By clicking on the most watched tab you are guaranteed to find some awesome videos. Let us know what your favorite is in the comments!

Metacafe

The next Internet video site is Metacafe, located here. They also have similar categories as Very Funny Ad’s (and most other video sites) but here you can find the category Highest Rated and Most Discussed alongside Most Viewed and Most Recent.

Clicking on a video will bring it up also via flash in your browser window. I couldn’t resist the Never Look At Woman ad…when the woman smacks….oh wait I won’t spoil it for you! Let us know what you think of it in the comments.

Funny Video Shack

Funny Video Shack is online here and has – you guessed it – funny videos! The first video at the top of the featured ads is entitled NudeIT – New  iPhone app. The tag line says Do you want to see someone nude? Yeah, there is an app for that! C’mon how could that be bad?! Go waste some time over there viewing their top rated, favorites, popular, most discussed or recently added videos.

Let’s see what the most popular video on here is… Hot Chick Eats Maggots? First off she isn’t that hot and after seeing this I could not scratch that.  I would not want to picture her naked. After turning off the lights you would think there were bugs crawling all over you – and maybe there would be.

I stopped on What’s a HO? Gameshow style as you can see below:

Youtube

And of course we could not talk about video entertainment sites with out Google’s good old YouTube . This is the one site everyone thinks of whenever someone says “video online”. They have been around forever and have been the innovators of the industry. Today I clicked on Videos and the categories listing and chose Comedy.

That brought me to a lot of scary looking videos but luckily one stood out. Good old Family Guy and the Roadhouse parody…

YouTube clearly has the best interface for actually watching the videos.

Break

And last, but certainly not least, is Break which is meant as a video site for your breaks (i think!). I clicked on Videos at the top of the screen and was greeted by some strange ass videos!

Romanian Lady Goes Crazy On Live TV? Maybe things like this are not strange in Romania but this lady is w-a-c-k-o with a capital W!

Checking out their top videos I found some winners. And then I clicked on High School Girls Soccer Brawl….it did not disappoint.

They have options to share the video you are watching via the popular social network buttons below the video.

Where do you go to watch entertaining videos online? Share your sources in the comments!

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(1) The App Garden – Newly created section on Flickr which basically is a repository of Flickr apps. It lists all sorts of handy tools for Flickr i.e. stats counters, download/upload tools, slideshow generators, mobile browsers and so on. You can search for apps, browse by tags, and discover new tools. Read more: The App Garden – Great Flickr Tools Collection

(2) NewOCR – Web based tool that can recognize text from images or scanned documents and convert into editable text. The application is completely free, and the process of getting text from images is very easy. Read more: NewOCR – Recognizes Text From Images

(3) Voicethread – Powerful tool for creating multimedia slideshows and lectures. It combines different media to create effective teaching materials and projects, stored online and easily shared and commented on by others. Read more: Voicethread – Create Powerful Multimedia Slideshows

(4) Usabilla – Usability testing website that offers an easy way to quickly collect visual feedback on a webpage, mockup, sketch or an image. It has a nice interface with clear instructions on how to get the user feedback. Read more: Usabilla – Website Usability Testing Tool

(5) ForwardOn – Web service that provides an alternative way to share your favorite emails with others. Instead of forwarding them to your friends individually ForwardOn lets you send them to share@forwardon.com and convert email to html entities by publishing it on your personal www.forwardon.com<> page for your friends and family to see. Read more: ForwardOn – Convert Favorite Emails To HTML Pages

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 this article, let us look at two online guides to check your illness symptoms online, which are extremely easy to use and provide information about probable causes.

Before we proceed, it is necessary to stress that these guides should not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice. It is better that you use these tools as a supplementary resource to get more information, while you may be waiting for your doctor’s appointment, or to learn more about certain illnesses.

Check Symptoms Online With WebMD Symptom Checker

Web MD Symptom Checker is an easy to use interactive tool, where you select specific symptoms and it identifies possible causes.

You start by selecting your gender and age, after which you can specify the symptoms in three ways in the left panel:

• You can identify the symptom by zooming in on the affected body part in the interactive map of the human body on the left.
• You can select from a list of 76 possible symptoms organized in an alphabetical list and a common symptoms list.
• You can search for symptoms using the search box.

If applicable, you can select and add more symptoms. Once you identify the symptoms, the Symptom Checker shows you a list of possible conditions that may be the cause of them. You can check more about any possible condition right within the Symptom Checker.

For each condition, Symptom Checker provides you with an overview, a list of all symptoms associated with that condition, and related articles and videos on the WebMD website.

Mayo Clinic Symptom Checker

Use this guide to discover the most common causes of the most common symptoms. The Mayo Clinic Symptom Checker takes a different approach to isolating possible conditions than the WebMD version.

You first select between Adult and Child symptoms on the first page. For Adults, there are 28 common symptoms listed. After you choose one kind of symptom, the next page lets you select related factors depending upon the selected symptom:

• Details such as persistent/intermittent, started suddenly/gradually, etc.
• Whether it affects both pairs of hands/legs/etc.
• Details of the pain – duration, pattern, severity, location
• Trigger factors such as injury, repetitive use, stress, change in sleeping pattern, etc.
• Relieving factors such as medication, rest
• Accompanying symptoms associated with the selected symptom

Note that this page is specific and different for each of the 28 symptoms listed in the first page. The questions on this page are similar to what a doctor would ask you after you tell him about a symptom. So the process actually feels similar to an actual diagnosis!

After you make the appropriate selections on this page, the next one gives you possible causes of the symptoms. Here, you can see all associated factors or symptoms related to this condition.

Clicking on the condition takes you to the main page for it on the Mayo Clinic website. Here, you will find a wealth of information and resources such as description, causes, risk factors, tests and diagnosis, treatment and drugs, home and alternative remedies, prevention, etc.

For more health-related articles, check out our health category.

Did you find these tools useful? Any other online illness guide that you prefer? Tell us in the comments!

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It’s safe to assume that you have more than one browser installed on your system. I have five. Though we may not use more than two, all of us suffer from a bit of browser fancy. As soon as developers announce a launch of a browser that promises to speed up the web for us, we click on the download link. That’s not a problem, but keeping the same set of bookmarks across the browsers is.

Xmarks is a nifty solution to migrate bookmarks across the world. But for now, it supports Firefox and IE (with Safari in Mac OS). The one for Google Chrome is in the works. The browser that’s missing is Opera. That leaves us with a job half done. Bookmark syncing using Delicious and its bookmarklet tool is one roundabout. But it’s public by default and you have to log-in to change it to private. So, it’s still not as easy a click.

Transmute attempts to fill the gap by letting us migrate bookmarks across all the browsers.

Why Is it Such a Headache to Migrate Bookmarks?

Not very much so, but every browser has its own way of storing its bookmarks. Most bookmarks are stored as HTML files. Opera uses an .adr format. Firefox 3.5+ too differs in that respect as it stores its bookmarks in a Places.sqlite file which is a database file. The bookmarks.html files that used to hold all the links in the earlier versions had been discontinued from Firefox 3 onwards.

Does this create problems in migration of your bookmarks to other browsers still using the HTML formats? No, because Firefox, just like all the others has an import export utility under the Bookmarks Library that allows you to convert the database format to the HTML one for it to be picked up by the other browsers.

The imported bookmarks also get added to the existing bookmarks usually in a separate folder with the name of the browser that was the source. For instance, imported Firefox bookmarks get located in a folder that’s marked Netscape. Imported bookmarks in Chrome get added under Other Bookmarks. You can then manually shift the bookmarks around into any other root folder.

Next, you have to manually weed out the duplicates by going through each and every link. This is where the headache can start.

Transmute Offers Better (& Quicker) Control Over Bookmarks

Why such a name? Is it because it does the job of bookmark transfer ‘silently’ and without fuss? Perhaps, because the Transmute interface is hassle free.

1. You have two dropdowns – Source and Target. You can use the path field to select the location of the bookmarks file for the individual browsers in case you ever changed the default location.
2. Use the dropdowns to select the respective source and target browsers. There are 12 supported browsers and I am guessing that should cover most of what the world uses. The 13th placed XBEL format (XML Bookmark Exchange Language) covers a few other browsers like Galeon, Arora and Midori which use this one to store their bookmarks.



3. Transmute gives you two more options to migrate bookmarks – Overwrite Collections and Backup Collections.
   • Duplication can be handled if you select the overwrite option as it will plant a fresh copy of the bookmark links (but will also remove the older but unique bookmarks in the target).
   • Backup collections are a safety net in case something goes wrong with the conversion process and you want your old bookmark collection back. By default Transmute timestamps and backs up your bookmark collections before changes are made, providing extra safety.

   

   • To restore the old order, just browse to the bookmark folder location and rename the time stamped backup file to the default file name.
4. Close the source and target browsers and press Start. An alert box pops up and with your agreement the transfer begins. A preview window is the last stop before the conversion starts.

And finishes! That’s it; you can migrate bookmarks across multiple browsers without the hassle of import and export.

Transmute also comes in a PRO flavor giving some extra bookmark selection controls and co-ordination with services like Google Bookmarks and Delicious. But for the simple task of keeping all my browsers with the same bookmarks, the free version more than stands up. If you hate installing things, then there’s a portable option too.

Having the same bookmarks across all your browsers is such a basic need and keeping them all updated with each other is where Transmute steps in with a speedy click.

Transmute v1.63 is Windows only and requires Microsoft .NET Framework. It may also run on Linux and Mac OS X with Mono Framework 2.0 or higher installed.

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By building your own system, you will be able to suppress these costs, saving up to a couple hundred bucks.

But what you’re planning to do isn’t easy, and we’re not talking about the actual building. First you’ll need to gather all of your components.

MakeUseOf presents its latest PDF release - How to Build a Gaming PC, written by our very own PDF Manual Editor, Simon Slangen. In this guide, we’ll familiarize you with all the different computer components, from a gamer’s point of view. Instead of telling you what to buy, we’ll teach you how to weigh and judge these individual components.

In 27 illustrated pages, get to know your RAM from your CPU, and learn how to pick a decent graphics card. Go from zero to hero in no-time, and you’ll be able to buy the right components for your soon self-built PC. In the final chapter, we’ll be seeing additional hardware, and how to take extra advantage out of it as a gamer.

Don’t wait, download the the How to Build a Gaming PC guide now as a free PDF, or read it online on Scribd.

If you enjoyed this release, check out our other MakeUseOf PDF Manuals.

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Why am I telling you this? To let you know where I got this topic from. There have to be a few dozen old wives’ tales about how to get rid of hiccups. Cream soda, sipping water from the other side of the glass, a good scare, holding your breath for 13 seconds, 60 seconds or, my favourite, a year. That one works, however the outcome isn’t desirable.

So what other lists of Old Wives’ Tales are there out there? Fret not, I’ve done the research for you!

Old Wives’ Tales at Birthmarks

These tales are as interesting as the birthmarks they supposedly caused. Personally, I find birthmarks fascinating, but some people that have them are distressed by them. I think once you add the tales they’ve been told, you’ll understand the stress. Check a few of these out:

In Croatia, when a child has a birthmark, it is his/her mother’s fault: during pregnancy she wished something red to eat or drink (usually strawberries or wine) and she foolishly touched or scratched a part of her face or body damaging in that way her baby. The baby will have a mark (which is called “a wish”) on the exactly same place where his/her mother touched herself.

When a pregnant woman watches something burn (i.e. house, car, building, etc) the baby will be born with a birthmark.

And the dumbest, most ignorant one yet…

Your mom must have had sex with two men in the same day that she got pregnant.

There are quite a few more at the site. Some are quite sentimental and sweet, some are very personal, and a few are just downright foolish. Either way, they’re all interesting. They have some superstitions on birthmarks as well.

Corsinet

Here’s a small trove of more general Old Wives’ Tales. I think sometimes these tales have a root in truth, or at least in coincidence. Some just make me think that old wives had access to some great herbal remedies. Corsinet breaks them down into 2 separate pages – A to L and M to Z. Maybe you’ve heard a few of these:

A cricket in the house brings good luck.

Really? For who – the cricket? He’ll be lucky if I don’t crush him with the heel of my shoe, when I can’t sleep at 2 a.m.

Pictures of an elephant bring luck, but only if they face a door.

I need some clarity on this. Does the elephant have to face the door, or just the picture?

It’s bad luck to let milk boil over.

That’s one that makes perfect sense, especially if you’re the one that has to clean the stove.

By the time you get through this sites Old Wives’ Tales, you’ll probably be thinking those old wives had a lot of time on their hands and that must be all there is. Nay nay, my friend, nay nay.

The Longest List of Old Wives’ Tales

Really, just typing the name of the site would have been an article in itself. Although, you won’t doubt that they have the most Old Wives’ Tales when you get to this site. They don’t even have a list – they have an index.  Cats sneezing, stepping on a nail, ringing in your ears, knuckles cracking – the old wives have something to say about all of those. Most of it isn’t terribly good either and often involves rain. You’d think they’d notice the rain clouds before they notice a cat sneezing.

Here’s a one to try out:

Mirrors have always been fascinating to many people and that brings many superstitious tales and old wives tales into being. However, did you know that you could see the man you are to marry by looking at your own reflection in a mirror?

You will need a mirror that you can sit in front of and be comfortable such as a vanity, an apple and your hairbrush.

Sit down in front of the mirror; watch your reflection while eating the apple. Once you have finished the apple, keep watching your reflection while brushing your hair. The image of the man you are to marry will appear over your shoulder.

You may have to stare at your reflection until you have completely brushed your hair through or longer. The old wives tales does not say how long it will take so be prepared for sitting a very long time.

Pretty sure that doesn’t work for men looking for a wife. But Russian dating sites do!

I hope you got some good entertainment out of these tales and superstitions. Some are kind of fun to keep going, even though we know they aren’t true. If you’ve got a good family superstition or Old Wives’ Tale, let us know in the comments. We’re all ears!

Image credit: Steve Weaver

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Let me put this in perspective for you – I had less than 4 hours to research a topic for my next article (from scratch), think of the angle which should be presented to you (the readers), write the article, proofread it and submit it – all within the four-hour time frame. I’m not saying that it’s impossible but really, quite close to the limit.

Since then, I got myself a UMTS device and luckily from a provider which offers unlimited usage for a fixed monthly fee. I know for a fact that a lot of other providers out there charge by the megabyte. Those of you with such a tariff and are looking for a way to reduce your internet usage, read on.

Both of these issues (battery life and restricted internet usage) can be addressed with one simple application – BashFlash. You see, flash is a major pain in the ass. It appears in ads as animations and online video players. And it does two things very well; firstly, it takes up a lot of your internet usage because of those damned flash videos that masquerade as advertisements which automatically load whether you want them to or not; and secondly, when flash videos play, it uses a whole lot of CPU power, heating it up, and draining the battery because the fan has to run and cool it back down again.

Here’s where BashFlash comes in. It’s a menubar app that detects the activity of the Flash plugin. Whenever Flash takes up a significant amount of processing power, BashFlash’s menubar icon will turn from grey to red, allowing you to kill the Flash plugin.

Now, before you download BashFlash, know this: you need to be running an Intel Mac on Snow Leopard at 64-bit. Don’t know if you’re running at 32- or 64-bit? Check this page out, basically you need to have at least an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. Also, you need to use Safari in order for BashFlash to work. Firefox and other browsers doesn’t run Flash as a separate plugin so BashFlash can’t kill the process.

If you happily fulfill both requirements, then let’s see what BashFlash can do for you. After installing it, BashFlash places its icon on the menubar. If there is no Flash content running in Safari, the icon will appear grey. Once a flash-enabled ad or video loads, the icon will turn red and subsequently allows you to kill the Flash process.

And look what happens immediately. The plugin is temporarily disabled and the video stops playing, CPU usage goes back to normal, internet usage normalizes, and battery is saved. All is well.

Reload the page and everything starts up again, including the Flash plugin. Nothing is permanently disabled so you get to choose exactly when and how to deploy the Flash killer.

Again, BashFlash will only work with Safari and Intel Macs running on Snow Leopard at 64-bit. Do you get annoyed with flash ads that suddenly spike up your laptop’s core temperature and start spinning the fan unnecessarily? What do you do about it?

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Microsoft uses a special connector to attach the hard drive to the Xbox 360, and you won’t be able to connect it to your PC. At least not right away, because inside that shiny plastic and metal shell, there’s a small hard drive like any other.

Today we’re going to show you how to open up your Xbox 360 hard drive and connect it to your PC, in this step by step, illustrated guide.

Opening Up Your Xbox 360 Hard Drive

To pull this off, you’re going to need

• an Xbox 360 with hard drive (obviously)
• a Windows-enabled PC with at least one S-ATA port
• two special screwdrivers; a TORX T-6 and TORX T-10. These are somewhat different from your usual Philips screwdriver, so you might have to head to the hardware store for them. Without them, you’ll have a hard time reaching the hard drive and might even damage it beyond repair. Caution is strongly advised.

Since you’re working with sensitive electronics, you might want to wear an anti-static wrist strap or surface. Otherwise, by carrying over static electricity, you might short some of the components.

First thing we’ll need to do is open up the protective shell that envelops your Xbox 360 hard drive. Pull it out of your Xbox by pressing the button at the bottom. Turn it upside down, and remove the Microsoft seal.

Be aware that this voids all and any warranty that you have left on your Xbox 360’s hard drive. If it breaks after the procedure, you’ll have to buy a new one.

Don’t worry too much though, the warranty on your Xbox 360 system will remain intact nonetheless.

You’ll notice that there are four visible screws at the bottom, one of which was hidden under the seal. You can remove these with the TORX T-6 screwdriver. After that, the top side should part pretty easily. Don’t pull too hard, just start at the rounded side and pull it open slowly. The square part should give away too, in the end.

To your great horror, you’ll discover four more TORX screws. You can use the T-10 this time. After you’ve removed them, pull away the thin metal cover. Abracadabra. Below you’ll find a 2.5″ hard drive.

After you unplug the cable and try to take it out of its shell, you’ll notice that it only slides until it hits a little plastic button at the far side. To get it out, gently lift up the metal casing, and keep it high while you slide out your hard drive. If you can’t unplug the cable, start sliding the hard drive out first, and gently push the cable out of its socket once you’ve got enough room.

Voila, there you have it. Did you ever imagine your Xbox 360 hard drive would be so… ordinary?

Connecting Your Xbox 360 Hard Drive to Your PC

The Xbox 360 hard drive is a simple 2.5″ S-ATA hard drive, so you would connect it like you would a regular one. Most computers open pretty easily, and you can take the side away with only two screws. You’ll need to attach both a S-ATA cable from your computer’s motherboard to your hard drive, as well as a S-ATA power cable from your computer’s power supply. Both are depicted below.

Alternatively, you can find S-ATA to USB adapters online for ten to twenty bucks. It’ll spare you a lot of trouble, and is safer if you don’t like opening up your computer.

To view the files on your disk, or to make a full back-up, you’ll need to download Xplorer360. It’s an entirely free and easy to use tool. With Xplorer360, you can read and write to Xbox 360 hard drives. By going to Drive -> Backup Image, you can already make a full back-up. Have fun!

I hope you’ve learned something from this tutorial. If you’ve got any other questions, don’t be afraid to ask, there’s a comments section below!

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You can turn your portable computer or even your desktop computer into a full featured Kindle. It may not look like a Kindle but it can let you read, bookmark and annotate your eBooks.

Is it sounding too good to be true?

Well it’s not and it is here to stay! Why would Amazon want to limit their sales to only people who have shelled out the dough for a Kindle?

So with out further ado here it is in all it’s glory – the Kindle for PC, with the Mac version on it’s way!

Let’s take a look at how to download, install and start reading eBooks. Your Kindle for PC will also let you download and pay for books as well. But as we cover free software here we will focus on some free eBook downloading and reading.

I started by downloading the software from here. After the download is completed, run the installer and install the application. Then you will see a screen that looks like this:

You will need to give them a email account or your Amazon account’s email address to speed things along. And you will HAVE to have a credit card on the account. You will not need to buy anything but a credit card is required.

Fill in the required information:

Go ahead and click the register button. That will bring you to your Kindle home screen. On it in the upper right hand corner you will see this:

If you already have purchased or have books in your account they will show up here. If not, hit the shop in the Kindle store button next to the Menu button. From here you can buy or download free books. The ones on the home page are their best sellers and cost money!

But let’s search for some free books. Do you see the search box at the top? Go ahead and hit the go button:

That will return all the results in Kindle Land. Then when you have your search results lets sort them by price lowest to highest like so:

If you see something that catches your eye grab it. If not search for your favorite old world authors. I chose Charles Dickens as you can see below:

Then I went ahead and clicked on Oliver Twist, circa mid 1800’s. To download it click on the Buy now with 1 click orange button. It will deliver to your PC version of the Kindle by default. If you have other devices select the appropriate one.

Then you will see a thank you screen. Next go back to your Kindle screen and hit the sync and check for new items (F5) button as you can see below:

That will get the ball rolling…

Yeah! I have a book! Click on it to start reading…

The right and left buttons will turn your pages. And your other options are bookmark and note. Here is what the text looks like:

Hit the bookmark button to store a bookmark. To retrieve it hit the show notes and marks button:

You can add notes by dropping down that box to say notes and type away! Do you love it or hate it?

We would love to hear how you consume eBooks. Let us know in the comments!

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(1) CompareMyDocs – New web application that allows users to compare and merge text documents online. You can upload different versions of the same text document and see what has been changed. It automatically color codes changes it finds between the different revisions of a document and provides user with an easy way to approve, reject, or set aside a change. Read more: CompareMyDocs – Compare And Merge Documents Online

(2) X3Studios – Website that lets you quickly and easily generate artsy wallpapers, save them onto your computer and share with others online. You can also check out public library of wallpapers created by others. Read more: X3Studios: Create Cool Artsy Wallpapers

(3) Lists Widget – Official Lists Widget from Twitter that lets anyone to display tweets for any public Twitter list on their blog, social networking profile etc. It can be customized in appearance and easily embedded on any website, blog or personal web page. Read more: Lists Widget – Get A Widget For Twitter List

(4) CoTweet – Suite of tools within one app which helps small businesses to manage their Twitter communication easily and effectively. The main feature is letting various people use the same Twitter account. Hence corporate Twitter accounts can be managed easily. You could add up to six different Twitter accounts to the tool and invite people to tweet on your behalf. Read more: CoTweet – Twitter Management Tools For Business

(5) GazoPa – Unique similar image search tool that gives a variety of options when it comes to finding images based on similarity. You can upload an image, just draw a rough sketch, supply an image URL or conduct a similar image search using keywords. You could filter search results by color, layout, size, shape and on the basis of its age on the web. Read more: GazoPa – Search Images By Similarity

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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