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ALXRONE::TECH-GUIDE: RECOVER BIOS PASSWORD

2012-03-24T13:07:00.001-07:00

ALXRONE::TECH-GUIDE: RECOVER BIOS PASSWORD: Type/Model/Lock-Code Phoenix-Generic/ACER/DELLmini 5-digit code $5.00 USD HP Mini/Netbook 10-digit/hex code $7.00 USD Unloc...

3 Great Free Alternative Apps To Replace The Default Android SMS & MMS App

2011-07-01T11:10:00.000-07:00

As you might expect, all Android phones come with a stock messaging app that handles SMS and MMS messages. This app provides basic functionality, and may be modified in different ways based on the phone you’re using. It works well enough, but just well enough.
A two idiot explodes a sphere.

If you’re looking for more options, however, you’ll need a third-party SMS app. Fortunately, there are several great alternatives to the stock messaging app available, and best of all, they’re free.

chompSMS

If you’re looking for a simple, quick SMS app that can replace the default app, chompSMS may be your best bet. This app in default form comes bare-bones, lacking even the portraits of the people you’re texting (the app does fully support this, but it’s not turned on by default). The result is a quick SMS experience that should work well on most Android phones.

Some of chompSMS’s most interesting features include support for sending SMS via what is called “SMS credits” which can be purchased through the app. This makes it possible to buy additional text messaging beyond what your carrier’s plan allows. The app also has integrated support for a service called TextFreak, which sends texts using your data plan instead of counting them against your plan’s text message allotment.

My main gripe with chompSMS is the very obvious ad support. While I have nothing against developers getting paid, it is rather distracting considering the nature of the app. I also would like to see security via PIN – right now, it only offers security via a touch pattern.

chompSMS requires Android 1.5 or newer.

Go SMS Pro

Despite the Pro name, which usually indicates a paid app, Go SMS Pro is entirely free and is one of the best looking SMS apps available anywhere. This is thanks to clear, easy to use theming support that is paired with customization that offers a live preview (this feature is also found on chompSMS and Handcent, to be fair). While you can trick out the other apps here, Go SMS Pro is the one I found easiest to customize. Within a few minutes I had downloaded a cool theme that looks great.

There’s plenty of features to be found here, including a message scheduler, a Facebook chat plugin and security via both PIN and pattern input. I also found the ability to swipe between different messaging screens – the folders, messages and plugins sections – refreshing. Why don’t more SMS apps do this?

Clarity is the only problem I found with Go SMS Pro. The interface buttons at the bottom aren’t self-explanatory and a bit small. The menu options are also clunky and confusing. These issues are minor, however – overall, Go SMS Pro is a good choice.

Go SMS Pro requires Android 1.6 or newer.

Handcent SMS

I’ve saved what is, in my opinion, the best for last. That’s not to say everyone will prefer Handcent, but it is the SMS app I’ve chosen to use on my own Android phone.

The interface of Handcent provides an excellent compromise between beauty and simplicity. Although the basic theme is based off the iPhone, it’s not exactly identical, and it does a good job of walking the line between performance and functionality. The menu options, when displayed, are sensible and easy to navigate. There are interface buttons on the messaging menu, but I found them more intuitive, and they’re slightly larger which makes them easier to use.

Handcent also has a lot of features including built-in skins, security via PIN or pattern, and a great message scheduler. In addition to this, it’s possible to access “Handcent services” – special features including e-cards, group SMS and an online inbox to which you can save messages.

Handcent requires Android 1.5 or newer.

Conclusion

All of these SMS apps are quite popular and will serve users well. Generally speaking, I’ve found them to be better than the default apps that come with most Android phones. As usual, feel free to weigh in if you have a favorite app that’s not listed here!

Original Post

Matt Smith
Matthew Smith is a freelance writer living in Portland Oregon who frequently covers topics related to PC hardware and software. He runs the blog Smidgen PC. Online, he goes by the names of M.S. Smith, Mattdoommaster, and Faceless Clock.

Growly Notes: A Free Alternative To OneNote For Mac Users

2011-06-28T11:37:00.000-07:00

If you’re a Mac user and have been looking for a free alternative to Microsoft’s OneNote, GrowlyBird Software has the perfect solution. The note-taking and planning app, Growly Notes makes it easy to create individual notebooks with colour coded sections, sub-sections, with the ability to add images, PDF, text, audio and movie files directly into the document. The app also comes with several ready-made templates making it easy to dive right in and use Growly Notes in a variety of ways.

The ability to add all sorts of files, links, images and more into your notes turns Growly Notes into so much more than just a note-taking app, elevating it to a great organisational tool. With Growly Notes, it is easy to create any kind of template or notebook to serve pretty much any purpose, and there’s no end to how the powerful little app can be used. If you’re a freelance writer, it’s a great way to keep track of your articles, with a section for each newspaper or site you write for. If you’re working on a novel, it can serve as a great way to keep your ideas and thoughts in the planning stage organised. Growly Notes is basically whatever you make of it.

Growly Notes’ comes with a few standard templates for notebooks. The first, the Clients Template, allows you to create a notebook to keep track of your current and potential clients, regardless of what your business may be.

The Moving Checklist, gives you a great place to start when it comes to keeping track of all the various items you have to remember when you’re moving out of your home, and moving into a new place.

The Student template gives students a great way of keeping track of their assignments, to-do list, schedule, classes, projects and after-school activities.

The Task List template gives you an alternative way to keep track of your To-Do list.

To create a new notebook, go to File > New Notebook and you can then choose to create a blank document, or use one of Growly’s ready-made templates.

To add new sections or pages, simply right-click the menu on the left-hand side and selectNew Section or New Page.

When creating new sections, they are automatically colour coded for you, but if you want to change the colour, simply right click the section title, go to Section Colour and select a new colour.

Growly Notes is superior to other note-taking apps because of the extent of the media that you can insert into your notes, going way beyond just being a text editor. With Growly Notes you can add images, PDF files and even movie or audio files directly into your note.

You can also use the app to draw basic shapes, lines, and with variety available, Growly Notes becomes an ideal app for creating flow charts from scratch.

Inserted audio and video files can be played directly within Growly. Not only can you insert media files from your computer, you can also record new audio and video files, using your webcam, directly within the app.

Lastly, you can insert direct links to files on your hard drive.

If you’re not a fan of the default tabbed and colourful appearance of Growly Notes, go intoPreferences > Appearance, and change Window Layout from Fun to Serious.

The Serious layout is much easier on the eyes, and seems to suit the Mac appearance better.

If we had just one wish as far as Growly Notes is concerned, it would be to give users a place to share their templates, much like Microsoft does with all of its software.

If you’re looking for a free web-based alternative to OneNote, be sure to check out some of the suggestions listed here.

Have you tried Growly Notes? What do you think of it? What creative uses for Growly Notes have you come up with? Let us know in the comments.

Original Post
Nancy Messieh
Nancy lives in Cairo, works at a publishing house, is half poet, half geek, and suffers from a heavy dose of techno-joy.

3 Tools For Managing Your Photos In Dropbox [Mac]

2011-06-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

Recently it was reported that the popular file sharing site, Dropbox, went from 4 million users to 25 million users in a little over a year. Dropbox is one of MUO‘s favorite free services (see our other articles here), simply because it enables users to quickly sync, access, and share your uploaded files from any Wi-Fi or 3G connected computer or supporting mobile device.

For us Apple iOS users, the Dropbox application is one of the best solutions for syncing images between your computer and one or more mobile devices. In addition, there are a couple of other iOS apps that picture-taking iPhone users will want to have as part of their mobile repertoire.

Dropbox 1.4 Features

One of the newest features in the recent Dropbox 1.4 update (iTunes Store Link) is the ability to upload multiple photos and videos from the Dropbox app on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. In previous versions, you could only upload one photo at a time. But now, in version 1.4, you can use a dedicated Uploads tab to export photos in your mobile library to your online Dropbox account.

This bulk upload feature is great for quickly backing up your photos on your mobile device. This can even be done over wireless 3G access. You simply click the Uploads tab in the menu bar of the Dropbox app; navigate to your Photos Album for the camera roll on your iPhone and individually select the photos you want to upload; and finally, click the blueUpload button. Done. Dropbox saves you the trouble of having to connect your Apple mobile device to your iTunes library in order to get photos and videos off your device and onto your computer.

If you need to better manage your Dropbox folders, check out these these two folder action tips for Mac users that will automatically move items from your Dropbox folders to a designated folder on your local computer.

Picbox – Upload Your Camera Roll To Dropbox

If you take lots of photos with your iPhone camera, you’ll know that Apple doesn’t make it easy for you to get those photos out of your Camera Roll and onto your computer. Well, although the latest version of Dropbox now has a bulk upload feature – as described above – another Dropbox related app, PicBox (iTunes Store Link), makes bulk uploading photos twice as fast.

With PicBox, you can upload all the photos on your iPhone to your Dropbox account with the tap of just one button. The images uploaded to your account will be put into a folder entitled “Picbox” and inside that folder will be another one consisting of your uploaded images. PicBox will even keep track of the photos you previously uploaded so you don’t have to spend time figuring out which images you’ve already copied to your Dropbox account.

DropPics Lite

While it is quite easy to browse image files using the Dropbox app on your iPhone or other iOS device, another free app, the ad-supported DropPics Lite (iTunes Store Link) includes a few added features for browsing images on your Dropbox account.

DropPics is essentially a picture viewer that enables you to get a thumbnail and slideshow view of the images in your Dropbox, as well as move, copy, and delete them in your account. You can also view your images by date taken, name, or by random order.

There are a few restrictions to DropPics Lite (you cannot save pictures or upload them from your camera or photo library), but it’s still a useful app if you regularly keep photos in your Dropbox account.

Let us know what you think of these applications. Are there other Dropbox related apps that you like? Let us know about them.

Original Post

Bakari Chavanu
Bakari is a freelance writer and photographer. He‘s a long-time Mac user, jazz music fan, and family man. Bakari‘s business blog: http://bakarichavanu.net; Twitterme: @bakarichavanu

5 Simple Apps That Let You Do More With Evernote

2011-06-28T11:14:00.000-07:00

When you test as much software as I do on a fairly regular basis, you tend to notice which apps you rely on and which ones fall off your radar after a while.Evernote, which is a handy note-taking and web clipping utility, isn’t necessarily one of those apps that I’ve been using regularly, but it is one that I keep coming back to again and again, and I’m always looking for ways to incorporate it into my routine.

Did you ever notice how the most popular apps & platforms have lots of additional add-ons and extensions that were created for them? Evernote is no different – check out the Evernote Trunk and you’ll see. In this article, I’ll show you a few of the simple applications that will help you do even more with Evernote.

1. Read It Later

While it’s easy to copy text from a website to read later in Evernote, Read It Later makes this process even easier.

Read It Later gives you an easy way to copy text from a website to read later in Evernote. The service’s bookmarklet makes reproducing the contents of a webpage simple with just the click of a button, and the iOS app comes with Evernote integration built-in. What’s good about that is it allows you to take your archive of pages on the go.

I also recommend you check out Instapaper, another great app that functions a lot like Read It Later.

2. FastFinga

Livescribe smartpens are great because they keep a digital record of the things that you write and draw with them, but if you don’t have one, FastFinga could function as a suitable replacement. This iOS app lets you write your messages by hand on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.

You can link up your Evernote account and store the messages you’ve written there. The service’s handwriting recognition will transform what you’ve written into searchable text, which is really cool if you ask me.

3. Twipple

Twipple isn’t the most well-known or widely used Twitter client for iOS devices that’s out there, but it integrates with Evernote really well. With Twipple, your tweets can be saved to notebooks and tagged, allowing you to refer back to them later. This is especially useful considering Twitter Search only displays tweets for up to 2 weeks.

4. Twitter: @myEN

Okay, this isn’t an app as such, but I felt I had to include it here because it is very handy. @myEN, which Mark covered a while back, is a Twitter account that lets you save tweets straight into Evernote. Using this service is simple. All you have to do is follow @myEN on Twitter and you will be direct messaged a link that will let you link up your Twitter and Evernote accounts. Afterwards, just add @myEN to the end of the tweets you would like to save.

5. Voice2Note

Evernote already allows you to record voice notes, but they aren’t searchable and you have no cut and paste functionality. With Voice2Note, however, you can convert audio notes into text to make them easily searchable. Simply connect your Evernote account and the first 30 seconds of your notes will be transcribed.

Conclusion

If you aren’t a fan of Evernote but you like the idea of a web clipping utility, be sure to check out Saikat’s article on the 5 best Evernote alternatives.

What are some of your favorite Evernote add-ons?

Original Post

Steve Campbell
Steve, a Community Manager at VaynerMedia, is passionate about social media and brand building. Follow him on Twitter @Steve_Campbell & his Social Branding Blog.

Taptu: A Multi-Platform Mobile News Reader & Curator [iOS & Android]

2011-06-27T16:56:00.000-07:00

News reading is becoming a trend again, thanks to the iPad and its list of available beautiful news readers: Flipboard, Zite, and Pulse, to name a few. They give new life to the old news feeding technology and shows us that tablets and mobile devices are natural born news readers. If you look at the available alternatives, it seems that most of the good readers are made only for iOS devices. But there are exceptions, and one of them is Taptu: a multi-platform mobile news feed reader and curator available for iOS and Android.

Since I don’t have access to an Android device, all of the screenshots below were taken on an iOS device. There will be slight interface differences on an Android phone.

Reading & Sharing

The first thing I noticed about Taptu is the cool comic tutorial that appeared on the first use. This tutorial will tell you the basic usage of the app using beautiful illustrations. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a way to summon this tutorial again after I started using the app.

If you’ve used other mobile news readers before, you might find similarities in the interface between Taptu and Pulse. The news items are arranged in lines of sources, and each line contains chronologically ordered articles. The unread articles are displayed clearer than the read articles.

If you’ve read all the articles and/or you want to get the latest ones, tap and pull down the main page to refresh all the sources. To refresh individual sources, slide its line to the right and release. The fetching process will depend on your Internet connection speed and the number of news providers that you’ve subscribed to.

Tapping on an article will open it in optimized reading view, eliminating all the page elements except for the first image and the article text. On accelerometer-enabled devices, the layout will adjust itself to the position of your device – landscape or portrait.

As with every other app in this social era, Taptu allows users to easily share articles. Tap the share button at the top right of the page and you are ready to email, tweet, or post the article to Facebook. You can also open the full article in Safari.

Tapping the small Star button next to share will save the article for you to read later (the icon is different on the iPad). Taptu takes a different approach than other mobile news reader in saving articles to be read later. While others rely on “read later” services like Instapaper, Taptu saves the article within the application. When you save an article, a new “Saved” category will appear at the top of the page.

Taptu optimizes the layout of its app based on the device where the app is installed. This is what the reading view looks like on an iPad screen.

You can delete or rearrange the order of categories by tapping the “Edit” button at the top left of the front page. Tap the red button to delete, tap and drag the three small bars on the right to rearrange, and tap the small gear button at the top right page to access the “Settings“.

Adding More Sources

Even though Taptu has included several sources with its app, it doesn’t mean that you can’t add more. Tap the “+Add” button at the top right of the main page to explore available sources or to search and add your preferred feeds.

You can even link your Facebook and Twitter accounts to Taptu so you can keep up with all the tweets and friends’ updates while reading other news. If you are an iPad user, you can add Facebook and Twitter directly from Taptu’s main page.

There are lots of sources on the “Featured” tab that you can choose. Adding sources is as easy as tapping the “+” button.

If the source that you want is not featured, you can find it by doing a search.

Another way to find sources is to browse the categories under “Topics“. Some of the general topics – like Architecture or Technology, are curated by Taptu. They are collected from many relevant sources so you don’t have to go through individual sources.

Or if you have curated your own collection over the years and read them using Google Reader, you can easily add your collection by linking your Google Reader account to Taptu.

If you are a news junkie like me, you might want to try Taptu. Some might say that it is not as beautiful as Flipboard, but design is personal taste. Feature-wise, Taptu is on par with other available alternatives out there.

Have you tried Taptu? What do you think about it? Or do you prefer to use your own favorite mobile news feed reader? Share your opinions using the comments below.

Jeffry Thurana
An Indonesian writer, self-proclaimed musician, and part time architect; who wants to make a world a better place one post at a time via his blog SuperSubConscious.

The 7 Most Popular Items Most Commonly Sold On Craigslist

2011-06-27T16:10:00.000-07:00

The original Craigslist was created in 1995 by Craig Newmark as an email list for his friends in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1996 it became a web-based service and today it is one of the most popular free online classifieds service worldwide, although it is nowhere as popular as in North America.

Craigslist has it all. Whether you are looking for friends, a job, an apartment, a hair stylist, or a ride, you will find a matching category. While you can find almost anything on Craigslist, some items are more likely to be found than others. Let’s have a look at some popular items most commonly sold on Craigslist.

Cars

For this category I went straight to Craigslist in the Detroit Metro area but I found many more ads for used cars and trucks (sold from the owner) than for simple auto parts. Obviously, people are dying to get rid of their old cars to – hopefully – get something smaller and less expensive.

Furniture

Craigslist is the best place to get a great deal on high quality furniture, provided you don’t mind that it has been used.

Real Estate

In many cities, searching a room or apartment to rent via Craigslist is a standard procedure, just as browsing classified ads in newspapers was in the ‘old days’. If you’re in the market to buy, however, would you consider Craigslist?

Judging by the amount of ads posted by realtors, you should! The market is hot for those who can afford to invest, while sellers don’t want to lose even more money on advertisements. Hence, the best offers are more likely to be found on sites like Craigslist.

In this context, I should also recommend the following article: The 5 Most Significant Online Property Search Websites – Part 2

Computers & Tech

Where would you expect to find used computers and accessories if not on Craigslist? Indeed, if your keyboard or laptop suddenly died on you, an affordable replacement is certainly waiting for you in the respective category. Or maybe you need some additional toys?

Baby & Kid Stuff

For families on a tight budget, Craigslist can be a real life safer. Not only can families save a lot of money by making deals on otherwise horribly expensive items (strollers or baby furniture), they may also be able to afford less essential items.

Once junior has grown out of his fancy clothes, no longer needs baby furniture, or is tired of his toys, the items can easily be re-distributed via Craigslist, rather than catching dust in the attic.

Cell Phones

Mobile phones are hot items on Craigslist and if you don’t mind sporting last year’s model, you can get incredible deals. Or fall for a scam if the seller isn’t as honest as the one in the example below. So watch out!

Tickets

This is one of the cheaper items and in a city like New York with a lively entertainment culture, there are hundreds of tickets for sale on Craigslist every day. Unfortunately, a lot of these ads forward you to other ticket selling websites and thus this is not really the most popular item on Craigslist.

Original Post

Tina Sieber
Tina has been with MakeUseOf since late 2007. She has contributed over 300 articles and is also the Editor for MakeUseOf Answers.

8 Top Twitter Track Tools to Organize the People You Follow

2011-06-24T23:32:00.000-07:00

Here’s a rundown of eight of the best Twitter tracking apps to help you keep track of your friends and followers, and decide among them who are adding value to your usage of one of the world’s most popular social networking tools.The proliferation of tools created to support Twitter is astounding due to the early adoption and usage of the Twitter API by developers worldwide. While there are plenty of web applications to choose from to analyze and visualize your activity with Twitter, the Twitter tracking apps that help you manage all of your friends and followers with ease are indispensable.

TwitterKarma

While it may not win awards for its aesthetics, Twitter Karma makes up for its simple design by providing a quick solution to see all of your friends and followers sorted in a variety of ways. You can follow and unfollow quickly and easily among your friends, followers, and mutual friends.

FriendOrFollow

Another Twitter tracking app for a simple sorted visualization of your friends and followers is FriendOrFollow. It’s a fast way to find all of the people you follow who aren’t following you back. If you’re curious, you can also see who the top 100 most followed users are, or the top 100 users following the most other users.

ReFollow

For someone who wants even more control over their Twitter account, ReFollow provides a slew of features for any power user. You can view not only your friends and followers, but those who are friends or followers of any other particular user, or any user who has ever @mentioned you. These can all be sorted by last tweet, tweet count, alphabetical by username, or their friend/follower counts. There’s also a ton of filterable options if you need to get very specific. You can show only users with unique keywords in their bios, their geographic locations, or even if they have a custom avatar or not.

Twittangle

For people who like to manually label their friends and followers to get a better handle on who’s who, Twittangle allows users to form groups to better manage who they follow, or who’s following them. It also displays your friends and followers with a unique column view. You can rate them, add and apply tags to each of them, add them to unique groups, or see other users’ groups.

Tweepler

To best sort your followers, Tweepler takes a different, visual approach by presenting two “bucket” columns that you “process” your followers into. This allows you to assign certain followers into an ignore state that you don’t wish to follow back. You also have many sorting and searching options to help determine who gets dropped into each “bucket”.

Twitterless

Are you looking for more statistics and visualized graphs to help you sort out your friends and followers? Twitterless will graph your follower history over time and inform you of the users that stop following you. You can filter your friends and followers with keywords, words in their descriptions, or their location in relation to you. Twitterless also has a notion of forming groups to help you better organize your network.

Tweepi

For the geekiest Twitter users, Tweepi delivers a mathematical breakdown to help you decide if you have spammers or deadbeats among your friends and followers that you need to purge. The four modules Tweepi showcases are a Follow, Flush, Reciprocate, and Cleanup – all of which help to manage your network quickly and with plenty of numerical detail to help you make your tougher decisions.

Twerpscan

The last Twitter tracking app in the roundup is self-dubbed “anti-fool contact management”, which serves as a concise description of yet another visual solution which assists you in listing and sorting your network of friends and followers. The “Drilldown” feature allows you to research more about users, while the management tools present lists with ratios, tweet counts, and other info to decide who stays and goes.

All of the above tools are good choices for doing a better job of managing your network than what Twitter.com provides. It’s really a matter of how much control you’d like, and how quickly and easily you want to make changes. There’s plenty of ways to look at the users on your lists, and these 8 web apps can provide simple solutions, detailed analysis, or fine-tuned management solutions that help improve your experience with Twitter, and get more out of the service by narrowing the amount of people you stay in contact with to only those that matter most – for you.

Do you know of any other Twitter tools that you find to be essential for organizing and managing your network? Let us know the ones you like best with your comments!

Original Post

Nathan Chase
I'm a multimedia designer & developer living in central Florida, an online culture and social networking enthusiast, a proud father, an avid PC and console gamer, an incessant movie watcher, known for an eclectic musical taste, periodically avoiding being shot by paintballs, often writing and performing music - on the drums, guitar, piano, or computer. I'm also co-founder of the popular movie ranking tool, Flickchart.

How To Build a Mind Map In Microsoft Word

2011-06-24T14:05:00.000-07:00

It is said that an average person has 12,000 to 50,000 thoughts in a day. Of course, a genius might have more than you and I, but the figure mentioned was the hypothetical traffic that goes on in our brain. Our thoughts rarely go from Point A to Point B in a straight line. More likely, they flit about like a firefly caught in a jar.
This is where a tool like a Mind Map comes in use. A mind map is not a case sheet for a psychologist but simply a diagram that helps to connect related ideas or concepts around a central thought.
Try it out if you haven’t before”¦it is a great idea-capturing device to bring some order to the chaos that’s our brain.

By putting down ideas or thoughts on a mind map, the brain is encouraged to think from every aspect. A mind map also encourages brainstorming. It forces the brain to think in terms of relationships between ideas rather than forcing everything into hierarchies or lists. The bottom line about mindmapping is that it’s all about “˜visuals’ — words connected to graphical elements that makes it easy for us to take in large amount of data.
There are specialized applications for creating mind maps. But the simplest tool could be a paper and some pens. The second simplest when you don’t have software installed could be to create a mind map in MS

Simple Rules For Effective Mind Maps

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

Simple Mind Maps in MS Word Using Illustration Tools

Creating a mind map in Word is easy with basic shapes and flowcharts. Extended by other illustration tools like Callouts, Lines and Clip Art and a pinch of creativity; MS Word can effectively become a mind mapping tool. Let’s look at the tools we can use to construct a mind map.
The landscape mode gives the most horizontal area to work with. In a New Word Document, select Page Layout ““ Orientation ““ Landscape. If you want to finally print it, select the right Size in the Page Setup group.

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

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

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

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

Shapes and lines can be labeled with text to define the relationships. However, MS Word limits text orientation to vertical or horizontal. Text cannot be rotated to an angle as in PowerPoint, just yet. (Though, in MS Word 2010, one can). Callouts can be used to mark out extra data.
Mind maps can be illustrated with images from the Clip Art gallery or from an image on the hard drive. While inserting images, use the corner handles to define the size of the image.

Creating a mind map in Word can be extended by adding hyperlinks to external sources. Though, a workaround to add notes or attachments within the MS Word file is not there.
Here is a mind map that explains the various elements of what else, but a”¦mind map!

The Last Word on MS Word as a Mind Mapping Tool

MS Word (and even MS PowerPoint) is useful as a rapid tool for building a mind map. It’s better than a pen and paper, because you can easily update it by adding or rearranging the topics. You can copy it to the other Office programs and if need be, even print it out. Presenting it with PowerPoint or email sharing are added options.
MS Word is not a dedicated tool for mind maps. Tools like FreeMind have greater flexibility. Just to cite one feature, it’s not possible to collapse and open the branch nodes in MS Word.
But MS Word can make mind maps. Are you open to the idea? Let us know.

Original Post

Saikat BasuSaikat is a techno-adventurer in a writer's garb. When he is not scouring the net for tech news, you can catch him looking for life hacks and learning tidbits.

Buffer App For Firefox: The Easiest Way To Schedule Tweets From A Web Page

2011-06-21T10:15:00.000-07:00

We have had numerous Tweet-scheduling apps reviewed and tips shared on MUO including this round-up of the best tools to schedule tweets. We have also profiled Buffer App as well. However it deserves a more thorough look because it does offer an innovative approach to updating your Twitter account.

I am sure for many people, your process looks similar to mine. I start working by going through all shared news, email subscriptions and updates from blogs I follow. This is the time when I actually want to tweet a lot. Then I start working and try not to get distracted by sharing anything on Twitter. Obviously, I don’t want to tweet dozens of good stories within an hour – that’s where various Twitter scheduling tools might come in handy. However scheduling takes more time than I usually have. Besides, it somehow makes tweeting less fun because you get distracted from the normal Twitter flow by the need to think about when you want the tweet to go live.

Buffer App offers a different approach: you drop your links into your Buffer account and the tool queues them for future publishing. This way you can still enjoy your spontaneoustweeting without stuffing your Twitter stream with multiple updates within a short period of time.

With Buffer, you set your schedule once and then let all your tweets get published based on your schedule daily:

The free Buffer App plan currently allows you to have 10 tweets in your Buffer queue which has proven more than enough for me – but I am not that heavy a Twitterer. This also means the free account has been considerably extended since it was first reviewed on MUO.

While the Buffer App itself lets you enjoy your genuine tweeting without thinking about how often the actual tweets get published, the newly developed Buffer for Firefox addon increases your Tweeting productivity.

As an active Twitter user, I’ve tried various ways to easily tweet any page (without repeated copy-pasting work) including the Bit.ly bookmarklet, HootSuite Hotlet and others but the Buffer App one seems the easiest to me. It offers 3 major ways to instantly tweet any page or “buffer” the update (for it to then get published on Twitter based on your set schedule):

1. Tweet / Buffer With Your Keyboard

I find this option a huge time saver – and that’s actually the main reason why I am sticking to the addon. What can be faster than tweeting with the key combination:

CTRL + ALT + b

The above combination will also let you tweet any text from the page. Just highlight it and use the shortcut to generate the tweet:

2. Tweet / Buffer Any Page Using The Status Bar Icon

Tip: If you have lost your status bar in FireFox 4, try Statusbar 4 Evar to get it back:

The same option is also accessible from the context (right-click) menu.

3. Buffer Your Retweets

Our retweeting tends to be as spontaneous as tweeting itself: you go through your timeline, click through links and retweet easily with one click of a mouse. However we tend to forget that our retweets get published to our stream and all our followers see them, so it’s a good idea to somehow schedule the retweets as well.

The Buffer extension adds a tiny icon to each update on your Twitter home page, which lets you quickly add retweets to your Buffer account:

While I am using Buffer on FireFox, there seems to be extensions for other browsers as well.

Have you tried using the Buffer App yet? Any better alternatives? Let’s share our feedback in the comments.

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Ann SmartyAnn Smarty is an SEO Consultant, Internet marketing blogger and active social media user. Please follow Ann on Twitter as seosmarty

How To Download All Videos From A YouTube Playlist

2011-06-21T10:06:00.000-07:00

A bit after I figured out that there is a wealth ofprogramming tutorials on YouTube, I thought it might be a good idea to download them all so I can view them on the go on my mobile devices. Since the majority of these videos have been kindly organized into neat playlists, the question now seemed to be whether there is a way to download whole playlists. I certainly wasn’t the only one to ask this question. In fact, our readers have also wondered the same thingon the Answers community.

Today, we’ll go over two ways you can download entire playlists, one which should make Firefox users ecstatic, and another Windows program which presents some handy options for mass video downloaders.

BYTubeD – Bulk Youtube Video Downloader (Firefox Addon)

This Firefox 4-compatible add-on is a simple but fantastic little tool to help you find download links for multiple videos. Once you’re in a playlist page, you can right-click and select the BYTubeD option.The button can also be invoked from any YouTube pages with multiple videos, such as search results from a keyword.

After you click on the BYTubeD link, a window will appear with the list of video links it has found. Now this is the part that confused me at first, because I didn’t quite read theinstructions or the Help section. You have to select the videos you want to download by pressing Ctrl + A to select all videos or hold Ctrl while you click on the specific links you want.
Once you have a few neon green links, you can select the destination folder, whether you want the videos in FLV format or (MP4 if they’re available), and whether to generate links or enqueue videos for download.
If you chose Enqueue for Download and pressed Start, the default Firefox download manager will popup and show the current downloads.

Since I have DownThemAll, I chose Generate Links, so BYTubeD will create a new HTML file with links to the videos I selected so I can use DownThemAll on the current page. Generate Links should work for other download managers as well.

I have found BYTubeD to work flawlessly. If you don’t use Firefox, you can still download multiple videos from a playlist with the following program.

DVDVideoSoft’s Free Youtube Download [Windows]

DVDVideoSoft has a variety of converter software, but the one we are interested in is theYouTube Download 3.0.1. When you’re installing the latest build, make sure to carefully choose what to install, because for older versions of other program files by DVDVideoSoft, there could be crapware offers sometimes.

Once you have installed the YouTube Download program, you can paste in any video or playlist URL and choose the video quality and video format, such as MP3, FLV and 3GP.

For AVI, you have to click on Edit, which will bring up the preset editor.

One of the best parts about this downloader program is that you can preview the size of the individual videos and the playlist as a whole depending on the video format you choose. You can also select individual videos from a playlist that you want to download and which ones you want to skip.

The instructions for this program suggest that you can also use this program to download all of the videos from a channel as well.

For Linux users, youtube-dl is incredibly powerful and also supports playlist downloading. See this video for the how-to. Does anyone know if there’s a good YouTube playlist downloader for Mac?

Now, let’s hear from you. What do you use to download YouTube playlists? Enlighten us in the comments!

Image Credit: YouTube Playlist Downloader

Jessica Cam Wong
Jessica is interested in anything that enhances personal productivity and that is open-source. Find her on Twitter (@jecw) or email her at jessicacw at makeuseof dot com.

Kinect Fun Labs – Free Interactive Gadgets For Your Kinect & Xbox 360

2011-06-21T09:59:00.000-07:00

The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) comes and goes each year with new games, hardware, planned releases and the occasional freebie. This year Microsoft announced Kinect Fun Labs, a collection of “gadgets” that somewhat resemble highly polishedKinect hacks, free for your Xbox 360.

There’s only a few of these gadgets available at the moment, though Microsoft intends to keep adding new activities and mini games including the upcoming Avatar Kinect, a 3D chat innovation that can read facial expressions (and doesn’t require you to stand up!).

Kinect Fun Labs is downloadable from the 360′s in-built Marketplace and accessed via the Kinect Hub, so make sure you’ve plugged in your all-seeing-eye before you try and play.

Download & Play

You can grab Kinect Fun Labs from the Xbox Marketplace, either through the console or a web interface. To download via web, login with your Xbox credentials and add this download to your downloads list, then turn on your console and sign in to Live (the download will begin).

If you’re already in front of your Xbox you’ll find Kinect Fun Labs accessible from both the Game Marketplace menu and Kinect Hub menu. The download is around 700MB, and depending on the speed of your connection this could take a while.

At the time of reviewing, two Gadgets were included with Fun Labs (under the heading My Gadgets) – Kinect Me and Googly Eyes. In addition to these, a further two gadgets are available for download, Bobble Head and Build A Buddy weighing in at around 200MB and 250MB respectively, that’s around 1.2GB for the lot.

Rather frustratingly (and often a regular issue with Xbox 360 file transfers) I was unable to do anything else with my 360 whilst downloading these gadgets. Accidentally hit the “Xbox” button on your controller? Too bad, download cancelled, set it up again. This will annoy me until the end of time (or at least until Microsoft sort it out).

The Gadgets

I think I speak for a lot of Kinect owners when I say I’m both relieved and encouraged that Microsoft has finally taken the first steps towards putting Kinect “hacks” directly on its flagship console. We’ve all seen them by now: hand puppets projected on walls, balding blokes rotating “3D” images of their desks and some very intelligent arts, retail and live music integration.

Whilst there’s nothing quite so bold in this package, it is quite nice to finally try out some of the other Kinect capabilities on the console it was designed for. Were Microsoft encouraged by the community’s hacking efforts? Probably!

Kinect Me

The idea behind Kinect Me is to take images from the Kinect sensor of your face and turn it into an avatar. Unfortunately, there are two issues with this: you can’t export your created avatar to use in normal games or on the dashboard and it doesn’t work very well.

Now I’ve not got the biggest living room in the world, but games like Dance Central and Kinect Adventures work pretty well. I always stick a few extra lights on when I play (one directly above me, lighting my face well) but this didn’t seem to make any difference.

A close inspection of my avatar revealed some sort of nasal disfigurement I never realised I had, and some odd splotchy black bits (which I assume were my facial hair) that didn’t make me look particularly handsome.

And I’m not the only one. A thread on the official Xbox forums reveals a number of users have had issues. Comments include: “My avatar looked like it suffered acid burns to the mouth, cheeks and chin” (aarlin81), “Is there some sort of trick? My kinect me looks mexican and has a squashed face” (Right Wing Red) and “my face looked…well, scary. Blotchy, spotty. Nothing like the demo during E3” (Vinzter).

In fairness, I thought the way it handled my hair was pretty good and of course it might work just fine for you, especially if you don’t have a beard.

Googly Eyes

Much like Kinect Me, this one is daring yet somewhat flawed though there’s no denying that the technology is impressive. Googly Eyes allows you to “scan” in an object (both the front and the back), add a pair of googly eyes and then lets you to control it much like a puppet show.

It can be pretty fiddly getting things to scan without having your hand or arm in the picture, and my Xbox constantly told me items were too small, too close or too far away – making it pretty fiddly to use.

Once you’ve scanned in your item, adjusted the eyes and jumped around stage you’re invited to record a skit to share with your friends. It’s a nice idea, but somewhat pointless and not very rewarding.

Bobble Head

I honestly can’t see the point in this one. It’s Kinect Me, only instead of creating an avatar you create a “bobble head” and record a message. You can then share this bobble head and message with your friends, not that you’d want to.

The process involved in getting a picture for the bobble head was a long, drawn out affair of the scanner telling me to move forwards, then telling me I was too close, then telling me I was too far away… you get the picture.

The most satisfying part? You can repeatedly slap your brand new bobble head across the face afterwards. This went some way towards making me feel better about the 10 minutes I spent on my knees in front of the TV trying to capture an acceptable Bobble Head image.

Build A Buddy

So far, it’s not been great. The other gadgets are all a bit poor, with little to no longevity and overly fiddly image capture. I had far less issues with Build A Buddy, even down to using the Kinect to scan in images.

This Gadget allows you to scan in two sides of an object (much like Googly Eyes) and then apply different personality traits. Your creation is then brought to life for you to interact with on screen. In a highly unoriginal twist I used a teddy bear and despite being a bit low-resolution (and diseased looking, mostly due to shadows) the software did a remarkable job.

Thus far I’d mark this as the best gadget, mainly because there’s a reason to play again with different objects (applying different personalities). I’d also hazard a guess that kids will enjoy this one the most as there are virtually endless “characters” to create with every day objects.

Conclusion

It’s a shame that these gadgets, thus far, are a bit of a disappointment. Conversely, it’s awesome that Microsoft have put the effort into expanding the free Kinect experience, and hopefully future creations will be more effective.

Avatar Kinect already looks quite fun, and there’s another gadget in the pipeline called Sparkler. If you’ve got a Kinect then you might as well give these a go, and don’t forget to keep an eye on the Kinect Fun Labs additions over the next few years.

Have you tried Kinect Fun Labs? Any favorites? Did the technology fail you? Report your findings in the comments below.

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Tim Brookes
Tim Brookes is a keen writer & photographer who has been producing content for the web since 2006. You can check out his website at timbrookes.co.uk or try Twitter @timbrookes.

How To Recover An Unsaved MS Word 2010 Document In Seconds

2011-06-20T09:31:00.000-07:00

The general consensus is that most mishaps on our working with computers occur because of carelessness and an itchy trigger happy finger. It’s a bitter lesson that’s taught to us while working on documents like MS Word, MS Excel, or any other like MS PowerPoint. The lesson says – save and save early.
Even with the right MS Office etiquette in place, documents disappear from the screen before you can save them. The notorious Windows system crash or your house power on the blink could cause you to lose your work before you can click on save. Lot of times we also tend to close an unsaved document after taking a printout. So, how can you recover that unsaved MS Office document and restore your work (and also save yourself from a hair-tearing apoplectic attack)?
We turn to a little Microsoft Office 2010 feature that lets us recover document drafts in a second.

Bringing Back The Draft

Here’s my open MS Word document that will be taken through some deliberate steps to demonstrate the ‘life-saving’ feature that’s present in MS Word, MS Excel, and MS PowerPoint (MS Office 2010 only).

After closing the Word file unwittingly, open up a new MS Word document again. Go to File – Info – Manage Versions. Click on the little dropdown and select Recover Unsaved Documents. In Excel 2010 click on Recover Unsaved Workbooks or Recover Unsaved Presentations if you are in PowerPoint 2010.

MS Word opens the location where a copy of the draft resides.

Now, it’s just a matter of selecting the draft, opening it up as a fresh MS Word document and saving it properly using the Save As button on the business bar at the top of the document; something which we ‘forgot ‘to do the last time around. Copies of unsaved documents are kept for four days and then they are automatically deleted.

While opening the unsaved document, you can also make use of the Open& Repair feature for troubleshooting documents that might have got corrupted or damaged.

You can browse to the following file locations to open the file manually, depending on your operating system:
Windows 7/Windows Vista: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\<Application_Name>
Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<username> \Application Data\Microsoft\<App Name>
Saving of drafts takes place automatically in all applications within MS Office. The Auto Recover option kicks in if the document has been open for some period of time. You can easily change the Auto recover interval by going to File – Options – Save. The default is 10 minutes as indicated under – Save AutoRecover Information. I prefer setting it to a more frequent 3 – 5 minutes. Remember that AutoRecover may be a lifesaver, but it is not a substitute for the good habit of regularly saving your file while you are working on it.

AutoRecover is a feature to rely on and more often than not it will help save you from all that can go wrong while working on a long document. Microsoft Office 2010 makes it slightly easier to get back an unsaved document than the earlier versions of Office. If you are still on MS Office 2007, check out how you can use AutoRecover to come to your rescue. We have a substantial lineup of other MS Word tips for you. Were you aware of this one?

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Saikat Basu
Saikat is a techno-adventurer in a writer's garb. When he is not scouring the net for tech news, you can catch him looking for life hacks and learning tidbits.

5 Baby Steps To Learning CSS & Becoming A Kick-Ass CSS Sorcerer

2011-06-20T09:24:00.000-07:00

CSS is the single most important change webpages have seen in the last decade, and it paved the way for the separation of style and content. In the modern way, XHTML defines the semantic structure – the meaning and content of the webpage, while CSS concerns itself with the presentation. While most of us are comfortable writing a little HTML, we seem to think that CSS is some kind of black magic. I hope to change that with these 5 baby-steps to becoming a CSS sorcerer.
This article is aimed at users who have very little experience with CSS yet, though hopefully there is something here for everyone. Before you start playing with CSS, you may want to download our fantastic free beginner guide to XHTML.

(1) Grammar

Like any language, CSS has a certain grammar to it, and it may seem a little “computer programmy” at first, but it’s really just a list of things. All CSS is written like this:

SELECTOR {   PROPERTY:VALUE;   PROPERTY:VALUE;   PROPERTY:VALUE;}

As you may already know, CSS works by applying a style to a selected element in the webpage. For instance, to style how all your links are shown, you would use “a” as the selector. The various properties and values you will learn with experience, but some are easy – things like COLOR, BORDER, FONT-SIZE, HEIGHT are all some possible properties, whose values might be red, 14pt, 150%, 1000px – it really is that easy. Let’s see how we would go about styling all the links red:

a {color:red;}

You can also use the same block of CSS to do more than one type of element at the same time with commas:

a,h2,h3 {color:red;}

This makes not only all the links, but also all the h2 and h3 headings, in the same red color. Notice they might all be different sizes, as this particular code block ONLY changes the color.

(2) Class & ID selectors

Sometimes you don’t want to style ALL the a elements in the same way though – and in those cases, you could use CLASS or ID. As a general rule, ID is used for one-off elements and is most commonly used to define large blocks of content or single special buttons and such.
For example, you might have a large DIV for the HEADER, CONTENT and FOOTER blocks of your page – so defining those as IDs would be a smart move. Classes on the other hand are used when style elements are likely to be repeated throughout the page. Perhaps you want a bunch of items to have rounded corners with a 2px solid red border – rather than writing out the same inline style a million times, you would define a class for it, and attach the class to those elements instead. So how do you define these IDs and classes?

<div id="sidebar"><h1>SIDEBAR</h1><div><img src=".." alt="" class="red-rounded" /></div></div>

To target these items in CSS you would use:

.red-rounded { // this is a class
border-radius:5px;
border: 2px solid red;
}
#sidebar { .. } // this is an ID

(3) Descendants

You don’t need to attach classes and IDs to everything in your document though – you can also use what we call DESCENDANTS to select items. Look at this CSS statement and see if you can figure out what it does:

#sidebar h1 {font-size:20px;}

This will FIRST find the item with an ID of “sidebar” THEN it will narrow the selection down to all the <h1>s contained within that, and only apply the style to those.
So, if you can group of all your items together somehow, it’s best to use descendant selectors as it’s even less code than adding a bunch of class=”" definitions to everything.

(4) Where To Put This CSS?

The best way to deal with CSS is to separate it entirely from your HTML. Make a file called whatever you like .css, and simply add this line to your HTML header:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="mystyle.css" />

You can also add blocks of CSS to the section in between tags, but I don’t suggest this method as it results in messy and difficult to read HTML files.
The third place to add CSS is inline, but you should be wary of that too. Anything added inline like so:

<img style="height: 150px;" src=".." alt="" />

will automatically override anything defined in your separate style. So you may sit there trying to debug for ages why your thumbnails don’t resize, and your CSS may be perfect – but if the IMG element includes inline styles already then those will take priority. How do you know if something else is affecting it though?

(5) Get FireBug, or Use Chrome

FireBug is an amazing development tool that’s especially useful for figuring out how CSS works. Take a moment to download it and have a quick look at it. FireBug is available for Firefox as a plugin, or if you use Chrome then an identical set of features is already built-in. Once you’ve activated the plugin in Firefox or are using Chrome, simply right click anywhere on the page and select “Inspect Element“.

This will open a new pane in the bottom of your browser. On the left side is the XHTML view, nicely formatted and collapsible. If you hover over any element, it will highlight that element on the page and show you the CSS box model around it (we’ll talk more about the box model in a future lesson). The key point here is that you can also select any element and see precisely which CSS is acting upon it on the right hand side, and it will break those down into which selectors have caused that. Anything added inline will be shown under the “element.style” heading. Try it now on this page. Notice that very often a lot of the CSS listed on the right is crossed out with a central line – this means that another selector working on that element has priority and is overriding the one crossed out.

That’s it for today, but do feel free to leave comments if you think I’ve missed some fundamental key beginner points, or if you have any specific questions or problems with CSS then ask away in the tech support section of our site. Next time I’d like to develop your knowledge of CSS beyond basic color and size changes.

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James Bruce
James is a Wordpress developer from the UK, and when he isn't busy playing Xbox (gamertag: wolfieEU), he writes about his experiences trying to make money blogging.