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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From Gmail it is possible to chat with friends, organize and share calendars, edit word documents, and far more. The addition of Gmail Labs created an excellent way for Google to provide users access to extra functionality still in the development process. It gives users like myself the ability to personalize Gmail in such a way that it becomes more than an email client.

It is important to note that the list of add-ons for Gmail Labs is always changing – things can be added and removed without notice. I personally have been using Gmail Labs since it came out in 2008, and have never seen one of the features disappear, but Google reserves the right to do so if they decide.

With that said, what aspects of Gmail Labs are worth noting to the average user? When scanning a growing list of 50 or so Gmail extensions, what might most users find essential? I’ve taken some time to consider these questions and want to suggest four Gmail Labs extensions that I think you’ll love.

Note: To enable Gmail Labs, navigate to Settings > Labs within your Gmail. Simply select a feature from the list of labs by clicking enable and then save changes at the bottom of the page. If Labs ever malfunctions and prevents your mail from loading, use this link to disable Labs.

Navbar Drag and Drop

“Allows you to reorder the items in your navbar using drag and drop.”

Sounds relatively simple, right? This Gmail extension lets the user decide where those widget-looking boxes (like “chat” and “invite a friend”) on their sidebar in Gmail will go. To re-order a “widget” grab it by the bar at the top, and simply drag it somewhere else.

Face it, if you’ve just added a bunch of new Gmail Labs extensions you’re going to want some of them in different locations than where the all-knowing Gmail Labs placed them. It’s a fact of life. Embrace that desire with this useful extension.

Google Search

“Displays Google search results inside your mail window, letting you quickly find things and use them when you’re writing an email.”

This is another feature that most people tend to overlook. Once enabled, this extension appears as a small, unobtrusive Google Search box in the Gmail sidebar on the left. Searches in that box return results in a nice chatbox-style area at the bottom of the window.

When clicked on, results will open in a new window so that your email session is not disrupted. This may actually be the perfect extension for those of us that read emails which cause us to impulsively Google Search things.

Give this one a try—you won’t regret it.

Text Messaging in Chat (US phones only)

“Allows you to send and receive text messages (SMS) in Chat.”

Basically, this Gmail extension lets you text message other US cell phone users from your Gmail account in a chat-based style. To send a text message to a user, hover over their name in the Chat box, and under Video & More click Send SMS. From there it’s just a matter of inputting their number (which Gmail will remember for later use) and sending them a message. I’ve found a use for this on more than one occasion recently – it’s organized, handy, and free!

Gmail Beta icon

“Soothes the soul by putting the familiar beta sticker back on the Gmail logo”

If your Gmail inbox is anything like mine you’ve got features from Labs enabled, gadgets popping up all over the sidebar, and that strange feeling that something still isn’t right. Sometimes its helpful to have a reminder that if you’ve reached that point with your add-ons, your inbox is (whether you’d like to think so or not) mostly in a Beta state. That’s why Darren over at Google has created a Lab that changes the familiar Gmail logo back to the old one that many of us hardcore beta testers know and love.

As Gmail continues to evolve into more than just email for its users, Google continues to look for the public response to the changes they make. That’s why it is important to leave feedback – what do you want to see in the future of Gmail?

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

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

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Well, that’s what Gizmoz is. A Web 2.0 3d character maker that lets us create, customize and animate lifelike 3D talking characters and share it on sites like YouTube and Facebook. Yes, your very own talking, blabbering avatar.

The animated online clones are a new ‘breed’ of character-based visual icons. Digital characters that will take over from humdrum photos and dumb avatars. What Gizmoz does is provide a free web service that makes it dead easy to create dead ringers for our online selves. These are embeddable Flash objects with the look of a 3D caricature. It’s a huge lot of fun when you make these characters lip-synch with your own lines on social networking sites or just send it across like a 3D postcard.

There are three ways you can use the Gizmoz 3d character maker to make your own virtual showcase. But first, go through the simple registration and log-in.

Publish 3D Clips

Large repertory of templates to put your face on and publish them or embed them as Flash objects. The templates give you a gallery of choices to make slideshows, 3D greeting cards, animated mini-clips, vacation postcards, commentary clips for any video where you are the speaking critic, 3D avatars, and a new beta product where you get to swap faces with a celebrity.

Print Customized Products

You might not be asked to star in the next Indiana Jones film but you can put your face under his hat with a face swap. That’s the general idea in this section (which is basically the beta face swap option from the earlier section) leading up to the stage where you get to print it on mugs and tees. But the printing isn’t free though it may sound cool. If you don’t want to part with your pennies, share the finished file on your social networks or simply download it to your computer.

Create Cool Profile Pics

We are back to free with this part of the Gizmoz service. Create your own character using provided faces or your own snapped with a webcam or uploaded. You can customize your character by changing the hair, giving it some makeup, accessorizing it or just morphing it into something bizarre. The finished character is yours to download, print or share on social networks like Facebook.

Enter the Gizmoz Studio

The process behind all three options takes you into the Gizmoz Studio interface where you mashup your face on the templates provided, add bells ‘n whistles like graphics, media clips and voice bits to make the animations talk. Gizmoz gives you many tools to do the job. What’s needed is only the face.

Making the character talk is also easy using your own recorded voice or taking the help of the site’s text to speech engine. The steps to follow for each process are clearly outlined.

The Gizmoz site is designed around one concept – that it should be easy to make your own animated 3D avatars and share it across the web. Making animated reincarnations of your own self is fun, what’s better is finding out the ways to entertain your friends through it.

I will leave you here now and go make one Clint styled avatar for myself. Always wanted to spout the lines – “Go ahead, make my day!”

Will Gizmoz make yours? Discover it and let us know.

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

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

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Although many changes have occurred to the company over the years, and ultimately they’ve lost their crown, Mandriva Linux remains a solid choice in an alternative operating system.

Introduction

Mandriva is primarily a KDE distro, although they do give GNOME and others almost equal development time. This release features KDE 4.3.2 and GNOME 2.28.1 as well as several lighter choices. Linux 2.6.31.5, Xorg X Server 1.6.5, and GCC 4.4.1 form the foundation underneath. Traditionally, the outstanding features of Mandriva are its installer and system control panel – which are rivaled by few, but this release hopes to offer some amenities to appeal to users of newer trends in technology such as semantic desktop and netbook support.

The Mandriva Linux installer sets the standard in user-friendly Linux installers. They were the first to use a pretty framebuffered graphical interface but perhaps the most useful element was the partitioner. To this day it remains the easiest to use due to the manner of the visual representation of your hard disk layout. Many others have used Mandriva’s installer for inspiration in their designs, but Mandriva’s reigns supreme.

The Mandriva Control Center again was ground breaking at it the time of its unveiling and again, it has few equals to this day. From within the control center a user can perform the whole range of Linux configuration. From hardware to software to kernel to boot to users, it can be found in this handy compact system tool.

The Mandriva Software Management system is capable and easy to use as well. It will install software from a aptly stocked software repository, apply package and system updates, as well as removing unwanted software. Packages are categorized by function and can be sorted by their install status, package classification, or by search results. Information such as release data, changelog, and included files can be reviewed for each package. Checking the tick box and clicking apply is all that’s required to install a package or set of packages.

The software manager also includes a System Tray applet to check for updates and inform the user of any available. When available the applet icon will will alert the user and upon clicking a window will open listing the updates giving the user the choice of applying them or not. At first boot the user will be asked to configure a remote update and software source, which entails just a few mouse clicks.

Mandriva Linux is available in three basic formats: an installable live CD, a free install DVD, and an all-inclusive commercial PowerPack edition. The installable live CD comes in your choice of KDE or GNOME, your choice of languages, and ships with some convenient proprietary code such as Wi-Fi drivers, 3D graphic drivers, Flash, and some browser plugins. This is the recommended version for most users.

Advanced users may wish to use the free install DVD because it provides more desktop environments, several kernels, support for various hardware architectures, and developmental tools; but lacks proprietary drivers, codecs, and Flash. The commercial version has all sorts of extra goodies and is available at Mandriva Store.

All Mandriva Linux formats come with a nice set of applications. Web browsers, email clients, office programs, multimedia players, chat and messaging clients, photo and image management and manipulation apps, games, and utilities are found in the menu. The online software repositories contain thousands more waiting to be installed. Mandriva is one of the largest and most complete Linux distributions available.

2010 Improvements

For those familiar with Mandriva this release brings some great improvements. The best two so far have been the increased stability and performance. Mandriva may have had a reputation for being a bit crashy in the past, but it appears those days are gone. In the several days since a fresh install only one application crash has occurred here, and this application is known to be unstable across distributions. This new-found stability comes with even better speed as well. Not only does Mandriva boot quicker, but desktop performance has improved noticeably. Applications open and function faster, including the two heavyweights OpenOffice.org and Firefox. There is virtually no graphic artifacting and redraws are immediate. In addition, the 2010 graphics are just beautiful.

Some new features include a Live Upgrade for current users which allows them to update to 2010 without doing a fresh install. The installer now features a handy graphical initial partition layout screen before starting the actual partitioner, and the partitioner now has a file browser that lets you look at your current partitions’ data before making any decisions. Most of Mandriva’s original tools have seen lots of improvements in usability and efficiency and Ext4 is now the default filesystem. New guest user allows you to let others use your computer without risking your data.

Conclusion

This really is a banner release for Mandriva. It’s been a long time since I could recommend it too much, but it’s moved way up my list with 2010. For new users the complete experience with Mandriva One live CD will convince you better than my words and for loyal users, well, you already know. It might be too soon to say, but it feels like this release will go down as Mandriva’s best ever – and perhaps it just might be the best Linux release of the year.

Mandriva

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Speaking of optical disks, CD and DVD are the most commonly used media by common people nowadays to store their multimedia digital memories. Being a media that supports interactive menus, it’s a bit surprising that most people use DVD only to store the raw data – just a direct copy of the files from the hard drive.

Maybe they just don’t know how to make a DVD, or they think that creating DVD interactive menus is not for everybody, “those complicated things are too advanced for my simple brain” they might say.

Getting started with iDVD

But compiling pictures and videos to make your own interactive DVD shouldn’t be a daunting task. Apple provides its users with a tool to make a DVD easily. The name is iDVD.

I was opening iPhoto to organize my photos and videos taken from my cameras when I saw that there’s iDVD sitting there nearby waiting. Curious, I opened it and found out that the DVD creation process is as simple as using other iLife apps like iWeb and Garageband.

When you open iDVD, you’ll get the familiar menu with several start options. As our purpose today is to quickly and easily create an interactive DVD with our personal photos and videos, the suggested choice is “Magic iDVD“.

The next step is giving your project a name and choose the theme for it. There are several theme groups available: 7.0, 6.0, 5.0 and older versions. Each group has several themes to choose for. I just picked the “Revolution” theme as it’s the first choice that appeared.

Then you can browse the media folder to find items that you want to include in the DVD. The materials could be music, pictures and movies. Adding them to the project is just a matter of dragging and dropping.

Hit preview to see what the end result will look like. A preview window will appear, complete with the remote control-like playback interface.

If your project contains a big size of data collection, it might exceed the maximum capacity of the disc and iDVD will give you a pop-up notification.

You could delete some files to reduce the size, or you could try to modify the encoder setting. To do that, open “Project Info” from the “Project” menu (or use Command + Shift + I),

And choose the lower quality setting from the “Encoding” drop down menu.

Click “Start Project” to enter the next stage.

Giving the final touch

There are other things that you can adjust from the menu interface. Click the “Menu Info” buttom at the bottom left of the window.

The menu info window will appear. Here you can adjust the loop duration, audio volume, buttons and drop zone. You could also change the background music simply by dragging and dropping any audio file from the hard drive to the audio box.

You’ll see the general folders of the DVD such as Movies, Pictures and Music. The folder and sub folder names could be edited easily by double clicking on it.

While editing the names, a text object setting dialog will appear. You could choose the font type and size here.

The last step is producing the DVD. From the File menu choose “Burn DVD” or hit “Command + R“. You could also save the DVD as an image to store in the hard drive (Shift + Command +R).

Another way to start the DVD burning process is by clicking the “Burn” button at the lower bar of the window next to the “Play” button. The process will stall unless you have a blank DVD ready in the drive.

And all that’s left to do is wait. The time will depend on how big your files are and how strong your Mac is. You could do something else while iDVD handle the necessary steps one by one.

There are a lot of iDVD features still uncovered by this short introduction, but I think it should be enough to start your own DVD project.

Have you tried compiling personal movies and pictures into an interactive DVD? Do you know other free alternatives to iDVD? Please share using the comments below.

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Now, sharing presentation slides is a very controversial topic for many different reasons. After all, you will provide all the work you’ve put into developing your presentation for free. But what exactly is it that you’re giving away? Your ideas? Your skill? Your time?

Presentations are a work of art. When you share them in an edible format, you are losing control over what you have created. If you don’t want to see your hard work watered down by edits, you should not share your original files. However, you can offer two alternatives. Either share only the figures and images you used in your slides. Or make your presentation slides available in a format that does not allow simple editing.

In other words, if someone wants to edit your ideas in a way you don’t approve of, they have to start from scratch and can only draw inspiration from your template.

Here are 2 ways and several tools to safely share your presentations online.

1. Share Presentation Slides as PDF

You can export your PowerPoint or Word presentations to PDF. The disadvantage of this method is that you will lose all animations. If that is not an issue, try the following tools.

KoolWIRE

The easiest and most universal way is to use an online tool such as KoolWIRE.

Using it is dead simple. Browse for the file on your computer, choose the output format, i.e. PDF, enter your eMail address, hit start and wait for the download link to be delivered to your inbox. When I tried it, it took less than a minute and in less than 5 minutes I had my PDF.

File Savr

Now you will want to share the file. Let’s say you don’t have a website or server of your own. Also, you probably don’t want to eMail a huge file every time someone asks for it. Fortunately, the web has a simple solution in store. There are many free online tools that let you share your files through the web and you don’t even have to sign up for the service.

File Savr is just one of many. You can upload files of up to 10GB, more than enough for a PDF file. Simply select the file you wish to upload. Once uploading has completed, File Savr will display the download page for the file. Save the URL and share it with people interested in your presentation. A CAPTCHA test must be passed before the file can actually be download.

I have previously reviewed 5 Easy Websites to Share Files Online Without Signing Up.

PDF Hammer

If someone would like to use parts of your work, they could prepare a PDF presentation and, using a PDF editor, merge individual presentation slides from different sources.

One free online tool to edit PDFs is PDF Hammer.

Along with KoolWIRE it was reviewed in Aibek’s post about Simplest PDF Apps Ever: Merge PDFs, PDF to DOC, Convert to PDF.

2. Share as Web Presentation

You can upload and share your presentation through an online service. While this preserves the original design of your slides, including animations, single slides can not be extracted and re-used in another medium. If this is what you desire, go ahead and give SlideBoom a try.

SlideBoom

You can use SlideBoom as a guest. However, presentations will only remain online for 7 days. To use SlideBoom to its full potential, you should register. There is a free version, which allows you to upload up to 100 presentations. It supports animations, add-ins, audio, video, groups, graphical annotations and blog or website embedding.

SlideBoom creates a summary page for your presentation, which includes the actual presentation, your notes, a transcript, and optional sharing options. Members can vote on you presentations and download them if the owner has unlocked this option. Below is a demonstration of an embedded presentation.

If you would like to improve your presentation skills, check out my post on 10 Powerpoint Tips for Preparing a Professional Presentation.

Do you feel comfortable with sharing your presentation slides?

Image credits: duchessa

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

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

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It was originally conceived as a wireless alternative to RS232 data cables. It can connect several devices, overcoming problems of synchronization.

But in plain English, Bluetooth is a protocol that allows you to remotely access and use devices on a computer or phone without the use of wires. Originally it was used for connecting headsets to a mobile phone. Then Bluetooth started being used to connect headsets to a regular computer and then progressed on to making printers wireless as well as being able to connect to a Bluetooth network. Bluetooth signals travel through walls, windows, doors and can get great reach depending on what is in your way. In my home I can leave my phone upstairs and still use my headset all around the house thanks to our porous walls!

Today I used Bluetooth on my Windows Mobile device to connect to the internet on my netbook via internet sharing. All in all Bluetooth is AWESOME! Let’s take a look at how to connect bluetooth devices – such as Windows Mobile Devices or your Bluetooth headset.

First we should make sure Bluetooth is running. You should see an icon for it in your system tray. If you do not, hit up the control panel and turn it on. It will be under the Bluetooth Control Panel. This is the same on XP and Vista (and presumably Windows 7)

It depends on what you want to connect but go to Bluetooth Devices under the control panel and click on the add button.  This will start the wizard.

Next up is the passkey window. Devices like headsets have passkeys associated with them so you will not get hacked. Who wants to listen to someone else’s conversations or worse!

So when setting up a Bluetooth headset make sure you use the passkey that came with the device. Otherwise you are free to use and set up your own options. Once the wizard is complete it will prompt you to choose what roles you want the device to play. They will list items like stereo headset, a2dp and others. Choose all of them if you do not know what they do and experiment.

Once the headset is connected to your machine – it will use that as the default stereo device outputting all sound to your head set. Very cool!

Setting up Bluetooth on your mobile phone is usually very easy and can be set up in 2-3 steps. Consult your owners manual for specific information.

• Turn on Bluetooth
• Pair a device.
• Enjoy using your device!

It is that easy! The pairing process on the phone will also use a passkey so make sure you refer to the owners manual.

All in all I love Bluetooth and use it when ever I can. I have not had wires on my headphones since the late 90’s! How do you use Bluetooth? We would love to hear about it in the comments!

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(1) Files24 – Online torrent catalog which lists movie, music and game torrents in a visually attractive way. You can search for movies by name, actor and more such keywords. The cool thing about this service is that it integrates IMDb data to display information like plot summary, cast, IMDb rating, genre and year of release. Read more: Files24 – IMDb Integrated Torrent Catalog Online

(2) TwitterLists2RSS – Online utility with a simple purpose, it allows you to create RSS feeds for any public Twitter list. This can be very useful for those who use a feed reader like Google Reader to track news and updates. Read more: TwitterLists2RSS – Generates RSS Feeds For Twitter Lists

(3) Stereo8 – Free music radio site that streams music like many other radio web services out there. However, there’s one main difference which sets it apart – it’s user driven. Users can login using Facebook, Twitter, Google account or OpenId and vote for upcoming tracks a just like on social sites like Digg. Read more: Stereo8 – A Unique Free Music Radio Site

(4) KnowEm – Web service which lets you search for the availability of a username across more than 340 popular social networking websites with a click of a button. Read more: KnowEm – Quick Username Availability Checking

(5) kikin – Firefox add-onthat brings results from social media websites right next to regular search results on Google, Bing or Yahoo. It adds a tabbed panel at the top of the search results from where you can quickly check out related results on Twitter, Facebook, Amazon and YouTube. Read more: kikin – Adds Social Media Search Results to Google, Bing & Yahoo

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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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There are some amazing deals to be had through this site. For me, the problem is that I often forget to check the site everyday. It only takes a second and you never know when that must-have item is going to come up and you’ll finally be able to afford it! In trying to find some way to track W00t better, like a Google widget or desktop app, I stumbled across Wootalyzer. But beware, it is free, it is incredibly easy to use AND it tracks far more than W00t’s one day sales. There are other sites that do the same sort of thing – every day!

Let’s get started with Wootalyzer before I get into these other sites. Here’s how it’s done. Go on over and download the Wootalyzer installer. Install is a snap with an ordinary one-click type install. Here’s how it gets weird. It’s even easier to use than it is to install.

Once it’s installed you are presented with all the documentation that you will need to use this application effectively. I’m serious – take a look!

That’s all there is to it! Really, how else could I say that?

Next, you are given the option to choose basic user mode or a power-mode that people who have shopped the one-day-sale sites would find more useful perhaps. I wouldn’t know, since I don’t use them that often. That’s the point of getting the program.

I do know what a woot-off is, however I don’t know what a BOC is and I can only guess that they use the word monkey to mean something other than a real monkey. So I went with the regular mode.

Okay, so that’s a pretty sweet deal at W00t!. I don’t really need a recording studio (or do I?) so I’ll pass on that one. However, this shows you how the thing works. Clicking on the View Item button takes you to the page that has all the details about the equipment. The field that reads In Stock tells you whether they have more of the item or not. As you can see there are still some of these in stock. Clicking on the Buy Item button takes you directly to that item’s checkout page so you can seal the deal. The clock looking area is just that – a countdown clock to let you know how long the deal is valid for.

What I think is amazing is the button that reads Woot! When I clicked on it, my shopping universe expanded!

Did you see that? Under the General/Tech category there are all these other sites with timed deals as well! You should recognize at least 3 or 4 of them, such as eBay, Amazon, Buy.com, and Newegg. I went through and each one has a pretty decent deal on it. Maybe not something I need right now, but I’ll keep checking!

Under Other there are two categories that could really get me into trouble. One is DiamondShark and the other is ChronoShark. As you might guess, the former is for jewelry and the latter is for watches. I like to buy my wife jewelry and I have an unhealthy obsession with watches. Check this out:

See that? A Lucien Picard watch that retails elsewhere for around $900. Is it a knock off? I don’t know. But it would be worth checking out.

With Wootalyzer, you can set alarms with sound for different items, so you know when a new item is on, or when it’s about to run out. This is just a shopaholic’s dream.

At first I thought Wootalyzer would help me to save money, but if I keep spending on all these other great sites as well, it’s a less-than-zero sum game. I’m sure I would overspend. That doesn’t mean you will. You probably have a stronger will than I do. Or will you succumb to the world of low-priced products as well?

Wootalyzer

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Wouldn’t it be nice if your computer could just automatically do a Facebook login and provide you with an alert whenever anything new happens? Or wouldn’t it be wonderful to just pop open a little application on your mobile phone that would show all of your friends’ latest updates?

All of these things and more are possible – there are many ways to login to Facebook without going to the website, and in this post I’m going to detail four methods that you can use to do so. The four ways you can log into Facebook without directly navigating to the website and logging in is with your cellphone, with a desktop aggregator, with an Internet based aggregator, or through a desktop gadget.

Monitor Facebook on Your Computer With Digsby or Trillian

Since I spend a large majority of my time sitting in front of the same laptop while I’m writing articles, the ideal way for me to do a Facebook login without going to the website is through a desktop aggregator. Now, personally I use Digsby because I prefer the interface and I find it very easy to quickly update my status or add comments to my friends’ posts.

It saves a great deal of time because Digsby automatically logs into all of your social networks the moment you boot up your computer, and it immediately reports whenever there are any updates. You can review and respond to them right in the interface. If this sounds like the choice for you, make sure to check out David’s article on Digsby to learn more.

Now, it wouldn’t be fair to mention the PC aggregator method of an automatic Facebook login without mentioning Trillian. There are many people who prefer Trillian Astra over every other IM/social networking client, and for good reason.

Just like Digsby, you can set up Trillian to login to Facebook automatically, and all you have to do to see Facebook updates is hover the mouse over your Facebook connection. While I don’t personally prefer the Trillian interface, I can certainly see why it would be the preferred client app for many people. If this app appeals to you, then stop navigating over to Facebook to log in and instead read Saikat’s explanation as to why Trillian is the best IM client.

Check Facebook on the Web With Online Aggregators

Now, if you don’t want to download any software to your computer, there are still ways that you can login to Facebook without having to navigate to the website all of the time. You can do this by using an online aggregator of all of the social networking tools that you use. These usually not only include Facebook, but also things like your IM accounts, blog accounts and Twitter or Myspace.

One of the oldest portals is often also an overlooked approach to logging into Facebook automatically – iGoogle. When you search iGoogle for Facebook gadgets, you’ll find a number of them. Most of them are similar and work fine.

For example, the gadget I chose above works well, and it lets you login to Facebook directly from your iGoogle page.

Now, if you prefer an online portal that aggregates all of the social networks you use (in addition to Facebook), there are two very popular options. If you’ve been following along here at MakeUseOf, then you may know what they are. First, the one that’s my own favorite – Zooloo.

Once you’ve got the widget set up to automatically log into your Facebook account, all you have to do is set Zooloo as your home page and it’ll log you into Facebook every time you load up your browser. Mahendra covered Zooloo in excellent detail just recently. It’s definitely an option people use to connect to Facebook that’s worth checking out.

A very close second favorite is a site Daniel covered called Second Brain, which organizes your online networks into interesting “collections.” Either approach you take, the online approach to logging into Facebook allows you to check your Facebook account from anywhere, possibly even if Facebook itself is blocked by a firewall.

Login to Facebook From the Vista Sidebar

While this approach is limited to Windows Vista users, it is another convenient method you can use to receive notifications of Facebook updates. I covered a few of those Vista sidebar options a while ago.

Of the available options, myFacebook is my favorite because it offers more information than other widgets, such as a scrolling update from your friends’ status comments. This widget automatically logs into Facebook when your computer boots, and you receive notification of private messages, pokes and friend notifications.

You can download MyFacebook from the Windows Live gallery.

Just keep in mind that when you do install it, you need to go through a few steps to confirm authentication with Facebook, including obtaining and entering a special login code, and clicking on a link in Facebook that allows the application to access your account details.

The good news is that the widget wizard goes through the setup process in a few very simple, easy-to-follow steps.

Accessing Facebook From Your Mobile

The fourth and most commonly sought-after method to access Facebook is with a mobile device. Whether people use a Blackberry, iPhone or Windows Mobile device, they want to login to their Facebook account while on the go. The good news is that there are several ways to do this, depending which mobile device you’re using.

My personal favorite that I’ve been using for some time is F’im, a Windows Mobile based app for mobile Facebook. With that said, if I was running Windows Mobile 6.0, I would probably download Microsoft’s official Windows Mobile Facebook app.

While the user online status screen looks pretty cool, many of the screens just look like straight Facebook mobile screens. However, what F’IM lacks in terms of creativity for status screens is the software’s ability to automatically post images from your phone to your Facebook account.

Do you have a favorite way to log into your Facebook account other than going to the website? Which solution do you prefer, mobile, desktop aggregator, desktop widget or online aggregator? Share your feedback in the comments section below.

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The game was Texas Hold ‘Em, without a shadow of doubt the most famous gameplay variant spawned. It is easy to learn, simply addictive but inexplicably difficult to master. I digress.

During the tournament, we faced a minor speed bump. In Texas Hold ‘Em, blinds increase periodically and since this was a tournament, we decided that the blinds would go up every 15 minutes. Sure, that sounded sensible at the time but there wasn’t a clock in the room and none of us was wearing a watch. We had to resort to using our mobile phones to tell us the time. Every so often, one of us yelled, “Time to double the blinds, guys!” Personally, I considered that pretty inconvenient — especially so when you’re in a competition, it was distracting.

At the end of the tournament, one of the players suggested that we should bring a clock to time the blind increments. My mind immediately went, “What? A clock?” My innate geekiness wouldn’t allow myself to succumb to utilizing what I can only describe as “wall art”. I was positive that there was an app, somewhere out there in vastness of the internet, made for this specific purpose.

And there is. It sure took me a rather long time to find it, though.

It’s called Old Timer (a cunning play on words, I have to admit) and it’s available for Mac and PC because it runs on Flash. Ironically, I didn’t actually set out to look for a poker timer, per se — to be brutally honest, I didn’t think that an app like that existed. I initially searched for a timer application that would display a pre-set countdown and play an alarm once it reached zero. That proved much harder to find.

Old Timer is the perfect companion to a self-hosted, homebrew poker game. As soon as I launched the app, it gave me the option of running in full-screen. Instantly, I knew this was the one I was looking for.

The app is immensely simple to use. You are allowed three different modes of gameplay — all day, average or multi-table. Since my tournament consisted of several different tables, that was the mode I selected. Then, I had to enter my customized blind increment levels, the number of players, length of each round before the blinds double, cost of buy-in and rebuys, and finally the starting amount of chips distributed to each player; then hit Play.

Cleverly, Old Timer calculates the total number of chips in play and how much there is in the pot. But what I’m really pleased with is the timer! It’s a gorgeous white on black display with large fonts that everyone can see from across the room. What’s more, it shows how much the blinds should be at any given moment. Oh yes, it pays to be a geek!

In the final minute before the blinds increase, Old Timer plays a short soundclip to indicate that there is less than a minute left. It also displays the values of the blinds in the subsequent round. When the timer reaches zero, there is a wonderfully posh indication that new blinds are in play; and the timer automatically resets itself for the new round. It’s just perfect.

Old Timer will work on both Mac and Windows and there is no other way to say this – it is the perfect companion for a home poker game. If you know any better apps, I’m all ears; suggest them in the comments.

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General Networking With D-Link Wireless Routers

After connecting your D-Link wireless router and opening the start page in your browser, you’ll see a login screen.  All of these routers come with a default password or no password at all.  The first thing you’ll want to do is set one in order to guard against local and possible neighborhood intrusion.  While this measure seems a given, many may be tempted to skip this step for convenience.  The administrator password is your first line of defense.

Next you’ll configure your network settings according to your connection, hardware, and purpose of the router.  In addition, the option to configure remote management is offered so you can access your router from outside your local network.  It is not advised to allow this unless necessary as individual internet addresses can be spoofed and leaves your network another opening for intrusion.  In the advanced settings of the network there’s a tickbox for enabling WAN (from the internet) pings.  Leave this unchecked so that your router will not answer pings confirming its existence.

Wireless Settings

The most important part is under the Wireless Settings.  Here you will secure your router connections.  The first thing one might want to do is change the default name because most routers ship with their brand name as the default SSID, or broadcast name.  While this doesn’t help a whole lot if it’s broadcast across the neighborhood, at least it will hide your brand making it a bit harder to crack.

Next is the Enable Extended Range Mode.  Do not enable this unless your equipment is indeed in a large building.  There’s no sense in creating a larger circle of coverage to encompass even more neighborhood hackers than is necessary.  Most average sized homes and small business settings will not require this option to be turned on.  Along these same lines, it’s not recommended that one exchange the factory antenna for a high-range aftermarket replacement for the same reason. If your wireless network card in your computer supports 802.11g, then perhaps you might want to tick the 802.11g checkbox, perhaps excluding some who may not have the latest equipment.

Hiding your SSID aids in security by not announcing its existence.  This way only those who know your SSID will be able to use it.  While some experienced hackers may own tools to detect your router regardless, it will guard against some.  In and of itself hiding the SSID isn’t a strong security measure, but coupled with others decreases your chances of falling victim.

The most important part of securing your router is the Security Mode.  Here you will enable encryption and require a password to connect.  With most modern routers you have several choices ranging from the least secure to more so.  Leaving this disabled allows your information to soar across the air unencrypted inviting others to capture and read it, including credit card numbers, passwords, and private conversations as well as allowing connections from outsiders at will.

WEP, or Wired Equivalent Privacy, provides a modicum of protection better than nothing, but its algorithms were cracked many years ago and anyone with the tools to pull in your transmissions will certainly have these basic conversion tools as well.  WPA (version 1), or Wi-Fi Protected Access, was created in answer to the WEP failings, however, it too was cracked several years ago.  Again, it’s better than nothing and will keep regular freeloading neighbors from using your connection, but WPA2 is even better.  Most modern computer networking cards support this newer encryption standard, but some slightly older equipment may not.  If your computer supports WPA2, then that’s your choice.

After choosing WPA or WPA2, you also have the choice of TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) or AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) based algorithms.  Again, TKIP is the older less secure method and most computers and software support AES, so choose that. Then you have the further choice of PSK (pre-shared key) or EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol).  PSK is the type in which you have to set up your password on each device before encryption begins, so there is a chance someone could have gleaned that information during that process.  EAP is more secure but encompasses many different methods and can require specialized software matching the methods of your particular router model.  Many businesses use the latter for its increased security, but most home users choose the prior.  Be sure to pick a strong password with upper and lower case letters as well as numbers and even special characters.

One last element is the toggle to enable or disable accessing the configuration over wireless.  If your D-Link model has this option it is recommended to use it.  This way one would need physical access with a RJ-45 cable to try and guess or crack your password to change settings or invade your local network.

While nothing in the computer world is completely safe, things can be made reasonably so.  By implementing these simple measures your local and wireless network is much more secure.  Along with continued diligence in monitoring activity, your door is safely locked against many would-be intruders.

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Of course it’s with Google and it is hard not to trust in them after all they do to honor your privacy. Another such attempt by Google is the new Google Dashboard that makes you feel a little bit safer about keeping the majority of your virtual life on their servers.

Here’s what Google Dashboard is all about:

The Google Dashboard gives you quick access to all kinds of information that Google knows about you. Accessible here, it requires you to re enter your password even if you are logged into your Google Account, because the Dashboard contains all kinds of information about you. Once you log in, a summary of the services you use and what Google knows about you through those services is presented.

The Dashboard tracks a number of Google Offerings including your profile data, web history, Gmail, Docs, Talk, Reader, Orkut, Calendar, Picasa, Youtube, Blogger, iGoogle, Contacts, Friend Connect, Voice, Custom Search engines, Mobile Sync, Health, Alerts and Tasks.

Other offerings like Analytics, App Engine, Bookmarks, Groups, Sites, Notebook, Page Creator, Webmaster tools and the latest addition Google Wave are not yet included in Google Dashboard.

Dashboard lets you know which data is private – that is visible to only you (and Google) and which is public – meaning you, your contacts or anyone can see those details (depending upon the context). Such shared and public items are marked with an icon and details are presented wherever applicable.

In addition to personal information, Dashboard also provides quick access to settings for any particular service you use. So you can easily change or share/unshare information from the Dashboard. Alongside are listed the various privacy policies of each letting you know how your personal information is stored and used.

The Google Dashboard is not the first effort from Google’s side to give you greater control over your personal information and data. There is also an Ads preference manager that addresses similar issues as well. To add on to that, Google has a special Data Liberation Front, a team that caters to, vaguely similar if not exactly, the same issues.

It is all about making it easy for users to switch. As an example you may love Google Docs right now, let’s say you don’t like it two years on, but you have a number of documents that are now sitting on Google’s servers. Ideally you should not be tied down into using Google docs just because you have your data on there. So Google Docs also offers an export as zip feature, that lets you export all your documents in one go.

Google is certainly leading the efforts in empowering users with an ability to have a greater say as to who can view their information and data and what can be done with it. Purists may find that it is a little too less a little too late and that Google can easily hide what they don’t want you to see. That they are giving you glasses to look through, but what if the glasses only show the brighter picture?

It would be interesting to know what you think of the issue. No doubt Google makes great products that makes us use them, but are we putting too much information about ourselves in their hands? Let us know your thoughts.

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If you paid attention to their logos, you can see what they have in common: glossy, reflected (often) and light-colored text. Actually it doesn’t take a real gifted artist to create such a logo, so in this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to create a nice-looking, simple, eye-candy logo for your blog in Photoshop.

Thus, before dropping me an email ordering a logo for your blog, try it yourself (hell, am I losing my money here?) just to find out that you can’t make it better than me.

• Open Adobe Photoshop and create a new document (Ctrl+N or File->New). Set width and height to 400 and 100 pixels respectively. Make resolution 72 pixels/inch, leave the background as white. Note: these size and resolution settings are only web-friendly. For printing, use a higher resolution (like 300 pixels/inch).
• Using the Type tool, choose a clear, rounded font like Arial, set the size to 60 and type some text (i.e. your blog’s title). Set the color to sky-blue (hex code: #0099cc):

• Right-click on your text layer, select Blending options and set as shown on screenshots below:

(Drop Shadow: Structure: Blend Mode - Multiply, Opacity- 61%, Angle – 120, Distance – 5, Spread – 0, Size – 5;
Stroke: Structure: Size – 3, Position – Outside, Blend Mode – Normal.)

• Click OK. Here’s what you must have came up with:

Almost done. In the next step, we will add a glossy effect to the text.

• Ctrl+click on your text layer to choose the text only:

• Create a new layer (Ctrl+Shift+N or Layer->New Layer->OK).

• Using Paint Bucket tool , fill the selection with white color:

• Deselect (Ctrl+D) and with the Elliptical Marquee tool make a selection as below:

• Now we need to invert the selection. For that, press Ctrl+Shift+I or right-click over the selection and choose Select Inverse. Press Delete and deselect:

• Set the opacity of this layer to 32:

• Take a look at your now-glossy blog title:

• Let’s add some keywords under the title. Using the same font, size 12 and light-grey color (hex code: #b0b0b0), type something like I did “Internet. Life. Future.” (I don’t know why, just from the top of my head, you use yours of course) just under the main text:

Done!

One tip on saving your logo with a transparent background:

Hide the Background layer by clicking the eye icon on it’s left. Go to File->Save for Web & Devices (it may be “Save for Web“, depending on your Photoshop version, I use CS4) or press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S. In the upper right corner of the pop-up window you will see presets as shown on the screenshot:

Choose PNG-24, check the Transparency checkbox and click Save. Now you can use it on any background in your web design.

As you can see, with a little knowledge, you can create a simple logo for your blog in Photoshop, while waiting for the designer to finish his job on your unique logotype.

I hope you find this a simple and easy tutorial. Any suggestions, ideas and questions are welcome – please feel free to leave them here in the comments.

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(1) Shape Collage – Simple online shape collage maker using which you could easily create photo collages in your browser. Read more: Shape Collage – Online Shape Collage Maker

(2) SimpleDesktops – Recently launched website where you can download and share original and simple desktop wallpapers. All wallpapers are flare, shadow and gradient free, and provide just enough eye candy to not be bored. Great for people who want to spice up their desktops and at the same time stay focused. Read more: SimpleDesktops – Original & Simple Desktop Wallpapers

(3) Octopart – Electronic parts search engine that helps engineers and enthusiasts of electronics find the best deals on gadget components. It receives product data feeds from major electronic part retailers (Newark, Avnet, Arrow, Future, and Premier Farnell), organizes it, and presents on easy to browse interface. Read more: Octopart – Electronic Parts Search Engine

(4) GeoDomainMap -  Geo domain name search tool recently launched by GoDaddy. It lets users conduct a location based search for domain names and then book them if they are available. Users may search through domains by city, state, zip code or you could just zoom into a specific location of the map. Read more: GeoDomainMap – Geo Domain Name Search Tool

(5) BudgetPulse – Newly launched web based personal finance management tool which boasts of a variety of cool features. Contrary to other similar tools, this service is completely free to use at the moment. You can sign up and get access to a comprehensive online dashboard which helps you centralize your finances and manage them at one place. See your budget, cash flow, income and expenses and create personal finance goals accordingly. Read more: BudgetPulse – Online Personal Budget Management Tool

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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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I haven’t quite settled on what service I’ll use as my main advertising platform but I am going to partake in the Amazon Affiliates program to build a store for my blog, filled with products my readers may be interested in. So I’m going to show you how to add a good Amazon eStore to your blog or site.

Firstly, let me set one thing straight. Your readers aren’t going to read a laptop review you did and suddenly make the decision to buy it in your store. It just doesn’t happen. Sorry. So the answer to the question on the tip of your tongue is no, you won’t earn 15% on a $2,000 laptop from your store.

I want you to to sit down with a pen and paper with your blog open in your browser and really ask yourself – what would I buy having read this blog?  If it’s a how-to blog with cool homemade gadgets, maybe you could have a store that sells cheap tools, LEDs, wiring etc. That people will actually buy because they want to build a project on your blog. If you run a gardening blog, rare seeds or weird tools would be good picks. All of this boils down to three rules.

1. Is it under $10? If not, most people won’t make a split-second decision and buy from YOUR store. They’ll think about it and then buy direct later.
2. Can they get it around the corner from their home? If they can walk into WalMart and get the item today they won’t buy from you. Try to add items you’d only find on the internet.
3. Would you buy it? Honestly – ask yourself. Having read a blog post about a product, would you really want that product enough to buy it?

Ensure each and every one of your products answers yes to these questions.

Now join the Amazon Associates program. It will take them a few days to verify your blog is worthy of bearing their brand. If you post more than once a week and the content isn’t questionable then you should get through no problem.

On the affiliates homepage, click ‘Create aStore‘. This will display the page below.

Click ‘Add Category‘ to add a new section to your store. For example, I entered ‘Electronics’. Then, click on the ‘Add products’ button seen on the right. This will take you to the page below.

Here, simply browse through the products clicking ‘Add‘ next to the products you want in your store. I encourage you to consult the three rules mentioned above while doing this. When you have all the categories and products added, click ‘Continue‘ to bring you onto the design and customization phase.

In the screenshot above you can see the page where you can customize how your store will look. To the left there is a sidebar where you can change the colours of the different aspects of your store using the dropdown menus or, for the more tech savvy, the colour codes (ex. #FFFFFF for white etc…)

You can also name your store and add a logo. When adding a logo, you’ll be required to enter in an image URL. A good idea is to make this the logo of your blog if you have one. Simply right click on the your blog’s logo and select ‘Copy Image URL‘. Then paste it into the appropriate box on the ‘Customize Store’ page. Then click ‘Continue‘.

The next page is further customization of your store. This is merely placement of the sidebar and selecting which widgets (advertisements) you want to appear in your store alongside your ads. You earn revenue from these as well. When you’re finished click ‘Finish & Get Link‘.

You’re then presented with three options.

The first is the most basic. You can simply copy the link to your store and place a button on your blog/site. Preferably in the main menu section. When a reader clicks this button they’ll be redirected to your store on Amazon.

The second is to embed your store using an inline frame. An inline frame is kind of like a mini browser within your website. To do this, select that option along the top of the page. Then, copy all of the HTML code that is presented to you and create a new page on your blog. Then copy the HTML into your blogging platform’s HTML editor and your store should appear when you save the HTML.

The third, and perhaps the most desirable, is to fully place your store on your site. However, this is for more experienced users only. The inline frame will work just fine for most blogs and is a lot easier to do. This is similar to embedding the in-line frame, however it will be wider and take up all of the webpage below the header and menu bars.

Here are the steps:

Select the appropriate option at the top of the page. Then:

1. Create a new frameset page using the code sample provided to you. You can alter the dimensions of this to fit your site better.
2. Place your site’s navigation in one of the frames and your aStore URL in another frame.
3. Add a “Store” link to your site’s main navigation and link it to the new frameset you just created.

Your store should now be live on your website.

Before I sign off – a few tips about integrating a new store on a blog:

• It can be very tempting to make a big announcement to all of your readers and pretty much beg them to buy from you. However, all this will do is turn your great blog into a blog that’s losing readers and annoying people. Nobody likes to be constantly asked to buy things. It’s annoying.
• Instead, make a short post informing your readers about the new store. Tell them it contains some good products and be honest about the fact that it earns the blog some income. Also, the odd link in a post when it’s relevant and actually helps the reader works wonders.
• Finally, resist the temptation to add products that don’t follow the three rules above. You won’t make much sales. Think like a reader of your blog!

What revenue streams do you have for your blog?   We have previously covered a few other possibilities such as e-cards and 5 Adsense alternatives.   Which other ones do you prefer?

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

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So it was with me when I had to convert a delimited text data file to Excel and format it within the columns and rows. That’s a rough challenge for a guy who has a chronic fear of anything that resembles figures. The raw file that I had in my hand consisted of higgledy-piggledy blocks of text and numbers. My simple task was to make sense out of this jumble by importing it into Excel and sorting the data into columns and rows.

Thankfully, many web tutorials came to the rescue of my dead brain cells.

Delimited files are a simple way to store data and import or export it between various applications. Delimited in essence means, data that’s separated by specific delimiter characters. Common delimiters are tab, comma and semicolon.

Think of delimited files as the most basic file format that’s almost uniformly accepted by most spreadsheet and database programs. For those of us who don’t go down that road, a common example is the CSV (Comma Separated Value) files or Tab-separated files we come across in the Import Export wizards of email programs like Outlook and Gmail.

A delimited file is of no actual use unless it is converted into some form suitable for analysis and study. Microsoft makes it easy to convert a delimited file to a spreadsheet in three easy steps.

Let’s start with a text file with some data separated by commas.

To bring the data into Excel –

1. Open Excel and copy-paste the text contents into a spreadsheet. The contents take up one column and several rows.



2. Click on the column header to select the entire column. Click on the Data tab in the ribbon and then Text to Columns in the Data Tools group.



3. Clicking on the above command opens the Convert Text to Columns Wizard.
4. Alternatively – You can directly import a text file into Excel. Excel handles file types – Text, Comma Separated Values and Printer Text File. Make sure to dropdown to All Files or Text Files in the File Open dialog while selecting the file to import. If Excel recognizes it to be a delimited file, it opens the Text Import Wizard which is similar to the Convert Text to Columns Wizard.



In the Wizard, choose Delimited and click on Next.

5. In the second step, choose the Delimiter for you particular file (comma, in our case). For some other character, check Other and enter the character in the little field. The Data Preview window gives you an idea how the contents get separated into columnar data. Click on Next.



6. In the final window, you get to set the data type for each column by selecting it in the preview. The default data format is General. Date and numeric values can also be handled here.



7. Click on Finish to exit the wizard and get your neatly arranged spreadsheet.

It’s just three easy steps courtesy of a wizard. This simple utility gives us the ability to import delimited text files into Excel and apply its number crunching tools on it.

Liked this? We have other Excel tutorials to make an analyst out of you.

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

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The app is a multimedia magazine, featuring professional images and how-to articles by and about professional photographers.  It doesn’t replace a well designed magazine or photography book, but it’s a handy resource on your mobile device.

When you first open the open the app, the home screen dissolves to a browser of high quality Nikon images, including portraits, travel, wildlife, and numerous scenic photos. Each photo includes “Info” and an article interview with the photographer of the selected image.

The one sentence “Info” for each images is very skimpy. It might include the name of the Nikon camera and a brief public relations type comment, nothing more. Here’s an example:

The extended interviews include a little background about the photographers, their work, the Nikon camera(s) they use, and a link to their website. Since this is a “learn and explore” app, it would better if the “Info”  includes things such as the camera settings used and how the photographer went about making the photograph, both using the camera and in post-processing.

The Learn section of the app includes so far about 22 different lessons, ranging from shooting techniques about close-up photography, the value of zoom lenses, and getting candid urban photos. Unfortunately, these “learn” articles are very underdeveloped. Some “how-tos” include videos of the photographer explaining his work. The two videos I watched were much more informative than the accompanying articles. I realize that videos are much more time consuming and expensive to produce, but they would be tremendously useful on a mobile app, even if users had to pay a small subscription fee.

The next section of the app includes articles taken from Nikon World, the company’s quarterly print magazine. These articles include much more detail about the process photographers took to make their photos or complete certain projects.  As you may guess, much of the articles begin with or center on the use of a particular Nikon camera.

The application also includes a glossary of photography and Nikon related terms. For example, this is how “Aperture” is defined: “The circular opening inside the lens that can change in diameter to control the amount of light reaching the camera’s sensor or film”. Unfortunately, this definition doesn’t include an illustration or an example to further explain the definition.

Finally, you can star any article, image, or definition to add to your “favorites” list. This is a handy feature because the company says that the app will be updated with new information and articles, so a favorites list will make it easy to locate bookmarked resources.

Overall, Nikon: Learn and Explore is a great idea for an iPhone/iPod touch application. The company might consider offering an a simpler online option instead requiring future updates of the application itself. I could also foresee it making iPhone/iPod touch-formatted manuals for each of its major cameras.

I’m not a Nikon shooter, but I‘m looking forward to similar applications for us Canon photographers.

So what features would you like to see in an application like Nikon: Learn and Explore?

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

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Needless to say, all free personality tests should be taken with a grain of salt, which is to say, not very seriously, and certainly not as a replacement for professional psychologists. With that disclaimer out of the way, we can now present our hand-picked selection of the Top 8 Websites with cool tests that measure your Personality Traits!

#1: Signal Patterns Big Five Test

The Big Five is the leading industry personality model, shown to work across different cultures, geographies, and languages. It is the model most used in psychology and by human resource professionals. In this model, the personality attributes of a person are “measured” in five traits: Extroversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability and Openness/Intellect. The Signal Patterns test extends the model to 45 facets, each mixing two of the Big 5 traits.

The free personality test takes about 10 minutes and you get a nice visual representation of the results. You can also take this test as an application on Facebook or iPhone. From here, you can also take the Parenting Style test to find out what kind of a parent you are.

#2: Human Metrics MBTI Test

The MBTI is the precursor to the Big Five and remains the most widely administered personality test, with about 2 million tests taken every year. This is the granddaddy of all personality tests! According to the MBTI, all people are classified using four criteria: Extroversion – Introversion, Sensing – iNtuition, Thinking – Feeling, and Judging – Perceiving. Your “type” is then made up of four alphabets depending upon your score in these four criteria, for example ESFP or INTP.

There is a lot of typology information as well as several other tests available on the web, including websites devoted exclusively to each of the sixteen MBTI personality types. The Myers-Briggs Foundation site is the authentic source for further information.

#3: The Big Five Test

This site has a free personality test based on 45 questions from the Big Five Inventory, with more background information provided here.

Rate yourself on a 5 point scale from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree to discover your inclination on five personality dimensions.

#4: Keirsey Temperament Sorter

The Keirsey Temperament Sorter (KTS) is closely related to the MBTI, and uses four temperaments extended to eight roles to model your personality. KTS is also a popular assessment test, taken by 40 million people across universities and companies worldwide. The site requires a free registration to take the KTS-II test.

Find out if you are an Artisan, Guardian, Idealist or Rationalist with this test. Wikipedia provides further information about KTS, including a comparison with MBTI.

#5: The Color Quiz

Whether you agree with the results of this color quiz or not, this is surely a fun quiz to take! Simply go on choosing the color you like the most, in a two step process.

In the results, you get an assessment of your existing situation, stress sources, restrained characteristics, desired objective, and actual problem.

#6: TESTdex Personality & Intelligence Tests

This site offers a large variety of personality tests. You can choose from the Big Five, Jungian, Enneagram, Brain Hemisphere, and others.

The nice thing about this site is you can choose your test based on how much time you wish to spend, as you know the number of questions in each test beforehand. Apart from personality tests, you will also find a handful of Intelligence, Amusing, and Compatibility tests here.

#7: Queendom: Land of Tests

Queendom is a website maintained by a company providing psychometric services and psychological assessments. There are tests for everything under the sun on this website – Personality, Love, Health, IQ, Career, etc. Whether you are looking for serious tests for career or relationships, or fun tests for trivia, you will find them here.

Beyond the many tests that make this an attractive site, you will also find that there is an active community, articles, and advice related to all aspects of our life.

#8: Youniverse

This website is run by Imagini, a UK startup, to promote their VisualDNA concept. You can take a series of tests for Personality, Movies, Love, etc. in all of which you choose the best picture that matches a concept like my kind of bedroom, vacation, excitement, etc. It may not offer much psychological insight, but is a pleasant and interesting way to take quizzes.

You need to register with the site to see your results. More than 15 million people have taken the VisualDNA test, which Imagini uses to sell VisualDNA Shops widgets for blog and website affiliate sales.

Want more? See How to Have Fun with Online Personality Quizzes and more fun personality quizzes we covered earlier.

Did you enjoy taking tests on these sites? Any favorite site you like that we missed? Share it with us in the comments!

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I work on my computer a lot.  I use many different programs depending on my task at hand.  I am constantly monitoring different sources of information, from RSS feeds, several different email boxes, social networking streams, and different blog commenting threads.

All of this means that I have a lot going, computer-wise.  Sometimes all of this going on at once really puts a damper on my productivity because I have a severe lack of ability when it comes to multitasking.

What I finally tried the other day has given me hope that this mass confusion and ill-fated attempts at getting things done can finally have an end!  I finally broke down and tried to set up dual monitors in my home office setup.  While I am still learning to use it properly, I have already noticed a massive difference in my level of concentration and productivity.

As a blogger, there are several ways to use such a setup (which I am still learning) but I think there are many different ways a dual monitor setup can help someone be more productive.  Here are 6 of them:

1. Working and previewing at the same time

While working on a project (or article), you can set up dual monitors to use one monitor to work and use the other for previewing your work. For instance, when blogging using Wordpress, if you hit preview, a separate window (make sure you open it in a separate window as opposed to a tab) will open containing a preview of your article so far. If you set up that window in the second monitor, every time you hit preview the page will just refresh. That way there is no switching between tabs or windows! A similar setup can be useful for a design professional.

2. Testing in multiple types of browsers

You can use a different browser in each monitor.  For instance, I am currently using Firefox on one monitor and Chrome on the other (sorry Microsoft!).

I am doing that because certain sites run better or smoother on Chrome while I still enjoy the extensions and usability of Firefox but a coder or designer may be interested in viewing their work in multiple browsers simultaneously in order to see how it looks in each.

3. Testing multiple screen resolutions (color settings, etc.)

Yes, you CAN have different settings on each monitor.  For designers this could be an awesome help!  It all depends on what you need to see.  If you have a hard time reading, set the resolution a bit lower on the one you do reading from and keep the other one at a more reasonable resolution.

4. Making a lot of phone calls & recording data at the same time

If you are constantly running down a phone list, it may be helpful to have a list constantly open in one monitor while working or recording data in the other one.  Not having to constantly hit Alt-Tab (to switch between windows) or Ctrl-Tab (to switch between tabs) saves a LOT of time, believe it or not.  Also it’s harder to lose your place if the view is never lost.

5. Getting work done while keeping up with what’s going on

I’m currently doing this one!  I like having the ability to work while glancing up to see who’s saying what on Twitter or Facebook.  I also like keeping my email off to the side for glancability without losing my place on what I am working on. Plus I like to keep my RSS reader over there.

I suppose someone could also keep the news on a separate monitor so you can keep up with it while working.

6. Being entertained while working

Today’s Internet allows you to watch many TV shows online.  That doesn’t even count sites like YouTube!  You can also have a movie in your DVD drive.  I suppose you can be entertained on the side while working.  Please note, this could be taken both ways.  You can look at it like it’s stupid because you’ll be distracted and obviously lose any resemblance of productivity OR you can see it as a way to at least get SOMETHING done during down time.

To be honest, I’ve tried having video on while trying to work and I can’t do it, however I am sure there are those of you out there who can pull off some sort of light work while being entertained.

If you have the room, and you can afford it, go ahead and give dual monitors a try.  I’m loving it so far!  AND if you have any more productivity tips using dual monitors, let us know!

Image Credit : unimatrixZxero
Image Credit : Denbow
Image Credit : brykmantra

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All this changed when YouTube introduced their HQ video streams, and a little time back, HD videos. They even have a YouTube HD page, so you can more easily find that high(est) quality material.

Most YouTube download services haven’t progressed that far. They’ve stayed behind with support for downloading low quality FLV’s and decent quality MP4’s. Today we’ll show you an alternative application to download HD YouTube videos to your computer.

YouTube Downloader HD

YouTube Downloader HD is as straightforward as it sounds.You can use it to download those trailers, movies and holiday YouTube video keepsakes to your computer in just a few clicks with the mouse. The application works more or less the same as most YouTube downloading web applications, allowing you to specify the video by providing the relevant YouTube link.

The biggest difference with YouTube Downloader HD is that you can specify in what quality or file format you want to download the YouTube video. Most people don’t know this, but an FLV converter is usually unnecessary, because most videos can be downloaded in AVI and MP4 format as well. As such, all HD videos are stored as AVI’s and will provide no hassle if you want to watch it on your computer.

As an example, we tried downloading the latest Sherlock Holmes trailer, a movie that has called for a lot of critique, but is one that you should certainly grab when it comes out. The YouTube link is here.

After opening YouTube Downloader HD, we paste the link in the first text field. Because I’m a fervent supporter of eye-candy, we choose AVI HD – High Definition as our download option. Note that AVI HD and MP4 downloads will only work if the video has an HQ or HD relative on the side. If the trailer would only have been uploaded in Standard Definition, we’d be forced to download a lower quality FLV or AVI file.

Pick your destination directory and press download. Wait a few minutes or get a soda while the video is retrieved. Thanks to the fast YouTube servers, the download will nearly only be limited by your own internet connection.

Little more than a minute in and the download has finished. Click ‘open‘ to browse through the relevant directory and open your video file. As you can see, the file plays crystal clear, and nicely fills my screen.

Enjoy the YouTube Downloader HD. Do you often download from YouTube or other video sites? Tell us about it in the comments!

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But recently, I could barely keep up with everything that happened around me just relying on my biological RAM alone. While I’ve tried several free to do applications to overcome my anxiety, I couldn’t find free apps that can match the power of Apple’s iCal calendar.

So I chose iCal Calendars to help me manage my life better. One problem though, adding multiple tasks and events to iCal requires a rather lengthy process, including keeping it open at all time. Luckily, there’s FlexCal. This small application which reside in the System Preferences is designed to overcome that very problem.

The installation and settings

The installation process is quick and easy. Double click the prefPane file and choose which users you want to install this app to. Unless you use your Mac with several other users and don’t want the other users to use FlexCal, choose “Install for all users of this computer“.

Then the System Preferences will be opened. Since FlexCal is still in 32-bit, System Preferences needed to be restarted before you can tamper with FlexCal settings.

There are several things that you should adjust to make FlexCal comfortable to use. First the “Setup” tab. Click the “Start FlexCal” button (obviously) and tick the “Start FlexCal at login” box to make sure that this app will be available at all time.

Then you need to set your own shortcut to be able to access FlexCal quickly. Click on the shortcut field and press your chosen combination.

Don’t forget to choose which window should be opened every time you hit that shortcut key. If you add Tasks a lot, choose “Task Window“. The same thing goes the other way around. But whichever you choose, it’s not that important (and you’ll see why later on).

Next is the “Advanced” tab. This is the place to further configure FlexCal. You could choose to add an alarm to all new Events and how early should the alarm goes off. You could also choose which calendar should be the default place for all tasks and events, and whether you prefer to use Textual or Graphical style to display the calendar.

Using FlexCal

Using this app is a only matter of hitting the shortcut key. If you choose “Task Window” as the default, this window will appear every time the key combination is pressed.

But you could easily change the window to “Events Window” by hitting the combination one more time (and continuously alternate between the two).

Hit enter after typing the task/event and it will be saved to iCal. To cancel it, use the Esc key.

You could move between the field using the Tab key (forward) and the Shift + Tab key (backward), but you couldn’t edit the “Calendar” and “Priority” drop-down menu without using the mouse. The rodent is also needed to change the style of calendar from Textual to Graphical (and vice versa).

I wish the developer would add the ability to use the keyboard to its full extent so the process of adding Tasks and Events to iCal could be done without the need to lift a finger from the keyboard.

Other than that minor annoyance, FlexCal is something that every iCal user should have.

Do you use iCal calendars to manage your life? Do you know better free alternatives to add Tasks and Events to iCal quickly and easily? Share using the comments below.

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(1) Yast.com – Innovative online application that lets you keep a track of how much time you spend doing certain tasks. In its simplest form it works like a stopwatch, you create task  and press the ‘Play’ button to start tracking the time and then press ‘Stop’ when you’re finished. However it’s not that basic, and there are some cool additional features. Read more: Yast.com – Free Web Based Time Tracker & Logbook

(2) Measy – Useful online service for frequent gadget shoppers. It helps you customize your gadget search by asking questions about your budget, size, brand and various other questions that are specific to the type of gadget you are buying. Once you are done with questions, it presents you with what it thinks would be the perfect gadget for you. Read more: Measy – Customized Online Gadget Search

(3) BudgetBytes – Cool website about inexpensive food recipes which are simple to make and fast to prepare. It gives you various details for instance, a cost breakdown of each ingredient, the number of people the dish will serve, and the total preparation time. Read more: BudgetBytes – Provides Tasty & Inexpensive Food Recipes

(4) GoogleTranslateTools – Another service from Google that offers some cool translation tools for both webmasters and the average internet user who wants to read webpages in different languages. The three tools offered by this service are Google’s website translator, translation bookmarklets and the translation feature in Google toolbar. Read more: GoogleTranslateTools – Translate Your Site Using Google

(5) GroupBoard – Website that provides embeddable and multifunctional group-boards which come with online drawing, chatting, messaging tools and games. You can easily integrate these group-boards onto your site or personal webpage and let participants collaboratively interact, chat and play games together. The app can come in very handy for things like distance tutoring or training, collaboration or interacting with your website visitors. Read more: GroupBoard – Cool Embeddable Whiteboard For Groups

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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For the third and fourth quarter of 2008, the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group reported that approximately 90% of all eMail was spam. That’s an incredible number. It clearly demonstrates how much time and energy must be wasted to receive, identify and get rid of spam.

While spam protection has become quite effective at recognizing unsolicited bulk eMail, it’s still impossible to filter out and stop receiving spam.

Besides regular spam, we receive a lot of advertising in our inboxes. Although these eMails are often personalized, they still classify as spam. However, these eMails were usually created based on information we made available about ourselves, rather than straight forward eMail guessing.

Hence, one way to help stop receiving spam is to control the information you’re releasing about yourself. The best way to do this is to protect and hide your eMail address.

1. Scramble your eMail address

We often have to share our eMail address online. So what can be done to make it difficult for a bot to simply copy the information?

Rather than publishing your eMail address in its standard format, you could scramble and thereby conceal it. It requires an attentive and intelligent mind to recognize a scrambled eMail address and re-assemble it into a functional format.

A scrambled eMail address can look something like this: tina at make use of dot com

And this is the unscrambled eMail address: tina@makeuseof.com

2. Hide your eMail address in an image

A similar solution is to hide the eMail address within an image. There are several tools that will do this for you. One which provides many other functions is EmailCover.

Not only does it produce an image containing your eMail address in a CAPTCHA format, it also hosts the image and provides you with a set of links you can use to embed the image in your website, signature or on social network sites. Using the bookmark feature you can directly share your eMail address with the most popular sites. Finally, the tool records how often the image has been viewed.

Similar tool: E-Mail Icon Generator.

If you want to be sure only the smartest people can guess your eMail address, combine 1 and 2.

3. Encode your eMail address

If you must post an active eMail link, for example to give people a quick and easy way to contact you, you can encode your eMail address in a way that is not readable by spambots, which extracts eMail addresses from websites.

MailTO Encoder will decode your eMail address using Javascript. The result is a rather unsexy gibberish of characters.

Similar tools: E-mail Anti-SPAM Encoder (no Javascript), Hivelogic Enkoder

4. Hide eMail behind a test

With a tool called scr.im, you can protect your eMail address by hiding it behind a simple test.

At scr.im’s start page you enter your eMail address and the site will provide you with an ultra short scrimmed URL, along with custom HTML to share your eMail address on Twitter, Facebook, within HTML documents and in forums.

The link will lead anyone needing your eMail address to a quick test. If they manage to pass the test, they will be rewarded with a fully active link to your eMail address.

Similar tool: reCAPTCHA, tinymail.me

5. Don’t share your eMail address

The last resort is to not share your eMail address at all. Set up temporary inboxes or forms through which you can be contacted indirectly.

For example whspr! allows you to create a temporary form, which will relay messages to your eMail address. Users have to prove they are human by passing a CAPTCHA test.

Similar tools: kontactr, contactify

Summary of tools mentioned in this article:

Hide eMail address in image:
EmailCover
E-Mail Icon Generator

Encode eMail address:
MailTO Encoder (Javascript)
E-mail Anti-SPAM Encoder
Hivelogic Enkoder (Javascript)

Hide eMail address behind test:
scr.im
reCAPTCHA
tinymail.me

Contact forms:
whspr! (temporary)
kontactr
contactify

MakeUseOf has previously reported on how to identify and manage eMail spam. Dean denounced Top 5 Current Email Scams You Should Know About. Ryan explained How To Deal with Spam and Report Email Scams in the US. I outlined how to Get a Grip on eMail Spam Before It Gets A Grip On You.

How do you protect yourself from too much spam?

Image credits: mzacha, ItsMe1985

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The thing that I remember and loved about answering machines were that you could buy pre-recorded messages on cassette tapes so that your callers could hear this before leaving you a message.

Nowadays we all have voicemails so how can we do the same thing? Do you want Captain Picard telling your callers that you are not at home (don’t worry we won’t judge you – yes we will!!) then you need to head on over to one of these three ancient sites, play the recording back via your speakers and hold your cell phone up to the speakers as you are recording your message!

This will work for any sound emitted from your machine so you can use this trick with any audio files and not just the ones from these old school sites. Many of the ones that I remember from way back when are very down.

The first one up for funny voicemail messages is Audio Comedy’s site available here

Not only do they have real answering machine messages but they also have other audio files like song parodies and stand up comedians. They also have sound boards to have fun with sounds. You can play just the parts you want and use that as your voicemail.

The comedians they have available are: Carlos Mencia, Chris Rock, Daniel Tosh, George Carlin, George Lopez, Jeff Foxworthy, Kevin Meaney, Lewis Black, Margaret Cho, Pablo Fransisco, Robin Williams, Stephen Lynch and Jim Breuer. If this is up your alley you can also do this with video clips via YouTube.

You can see a glimpse of their sound boards below (I love the Eric Cartman one!- call me and see )

The next site up for funny voicemail messages is via AhaJokes and can be found here. This site has lots of funny audio links but the descriptions are non-existent. So unless you have lots of time to kill, this will probably make you mad. But I have found some gems on here that I have never heard before. So go exploring and enjoy!

The categories that they have are as follows: Machine Related, Authority related, Odd organizations, Musical theme, Fun with the family, Why can’t you answer it?, You are in big trouble now, Confuse or stun the caller, Science fiction and Other. Click on them play them and laugh! Let us know which are your favorites!

The last site is via Silly Humor and can be found here

This site does not have a lot of recordings but the quality of them make up for it! I listened to every one on this site! You can have Spock, Picard or even Humphrey Bogart answer your phone! People might snicker or call you a dork but who cares?

Don’t worry, one day some one will leave you a message!

Which sites do you like that offer funny voicemail messages?  Let us know in the comments!

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A better solution, if you have a Google Apps-run domain, is a service called Google Short Apps. This is a Google powered URL-shortening service you can run using your own domain and which you can customise the way you want it.    The advantages include :

• With every short link you send out, the name of your domain is attached to it.   If that link goes viral around the web, so does your web domain name.   Good advertising!
• Most importantly, you can decide what the short URL should be called.   So instead of the ending being 28jenq (which tells people nothing about where the link leads to), you can instead tell people that a link comes to MakeUseOf by inserting makeuseof into the tiny URL link.
• It requires zero setup on your part. Unlike other domain-based URL-shortening services we have profiled in the past which seem to require that you have a degree in IT to understand how to set it all up.   With Short Links, you just press a button and it is instantly installed on your Google Apps domain.   Then you just need to do a little tweaking to get it the way you want it.  Typically Google – very easy, direct and to the point.   No messing around.

To get the whole lot set up on your Google Apps domain, first go here and press the “add it now” button.   This immediately puts a new link on your Google Apps Dashboard.

You’ll see on the screenshot, the URL http://tinylinks.markoneill.org .  That isn’t there on your Dashboard immediately.   You have to go into the options and decide what you are going to call your URL-shortening service (and “tinylinks” is what I decided on).   It’s to your advantage to not make it a long name though because all of that becomes part of the shortened URL.   The longer you make the URL….well you would be eventually defeating the whole purpose of a short URL service in the first place!

So, the next step is to customise things the way you want them.   Go to the Service Settings at the top of the Apps Dashboard page and choose Short Links.   The first option you will see is naming your URL service.   As I said, I chose “tinylinks” but you can choose whatever you want.   But being a short URL, make your choice as small as possible.   I initially contemplated “tl” but I wanted to give my shortening service a proper name.   Saying that, you can have as many links as you want.   So I have http://tinylinks.markoneill.org but I will also shortly set up http://tl.markoneill.org (which I will probably exclusively use from then on as it’s shorter and therefore easier to remember and type.

Once you have chosen your URL-shortening name, you then have to your domain webhosting panel and make what is called a CNAME record.    This is basically an instruction to your website that everytime someone goes to your URL-shortening weblink, it should automatically redirect to Google so they can do their shortening magic.   Once you have set up a name for your service, Google then sets out, step-by-step, what you have to do to set up a CNAME record and it is very easy.

The other options are not really that important, such as enabling API access and creating IP Whitelists.  There are a couple of good options though that you should consider.   They are :

• Only Administrators can create new links :  this is handy if you have other people using your Google Apps domain for email and you don’t want them using the URL shortening to send out their own links.
• If a link cannot be found, do a lowercase search
• Convert all new links to lowercase

OK, now that you have successfully set up your very own URL-shortening service, it’s time to start using it.   Just go to your weblink that you set up and you should now see this screen :

To make a short URL, just enter the URL into the URL box.   Then on the left hand side, decide what you want the link to be called and enter it into the box after your domain name.    So a link to MakeUseOf could be called http://tinylinks.markoneill.org/makeuseof (click it, it works).

You can also have a “hashed short link” created which is the same as TinyURL.   By entering the URL and then pressing the button for a hashed short link, you would get something like http://tinylinks.markoneill.org/vhzvc.   But as I said at the beginning, URL’s like that tell you nothing about the link destination so I personally won’t be using that option.

You are also provided with bookmarklets which you can drag up to your browser toolbar.   So any time you want to make a Google short link, just go to the webpage link you want to send out and click on the bookmarklet.   You will then be taken directly to the Short Links page with the URL boxes already pre-filled with the website URL you were just on.

The last feature I should mention is the stats page.   The Short Links service gives you a page where you can see how many people have went to your short URLs :

On this page, each entry has an edit button so if you messed up typing the destination URL or if you want to delete one of your short URL’s, then you can do so at the click of a mouse button.

All in all, this is a very nice service and I have noticed visits to my personal domain increase since I started using this.  So if you do short URL’s a lot and you are also looking for a free easy way to advertise your domain, then give Short Links a try.

If you don’t have your domain attached to Google Apps, then I highly recommend that you do it now.    Your email can be run via Gmail and you can store all your documents via Google Docs, as well as some of the other usual Google Services (but not Google Reader, which is very strange).   Plus you get little Apps goodies like Short Links.  Setting up on Google Apps is also very easy and can be done in under 30 minutes.   I showed you how to do it here.

Which URL shortening service do you use?   Do you use Google Short Links?   If so, what has been your experience with it?

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

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Sleep disorders, behavior disorders, obesity, diabetes and so many other ailments produce physical pains and emotional reactions that many doctors can predict, but which most of us lack the medical training or expertise to understand. This is why, especially if you’re caring for someone who is mentally or physically ill, it’s so important to track and monitor health factors such as weight fluctuations, mood swings, sleep problems and more.

As the Earth gradually drifts further from the sun and the daylight hours begin to shrink, I would like to focus on an important online resource I discovered that can help you create a mental and physical fitness log to monitor and predict physical and emotional problems and get yourself or someone you love the help that they need before it’s too late.

Here at MakeUseOf, we believe in the importance of living a healthy life, which is why we’ve offered a number of articles with geeky resources that might help, such as the miVitals online system to store and share your medical information, Trusera – a health information social network, and iMedix – a health search engine. The application I’m going to cover today is an excellent online community called MedHelp, which offers a wonderful library of “trackers,” which are tools that can help you monitor every aspect of your health that you might be concerned about.

Tracking Your Mood With a Mental Fitness Log

MedHelp is a health conscious online community that, according to the website, has over 8 million members. The social community itself would require an article all of its own to review, but what I’d like to focus on are the free tools offered for free when you sign up that allow you to log dozens of mental and physical fitness factors. Having some personal experiences in the mental health field, there’s one particular tracker that I found extremely valuable and an excellent resource for anyone suffering from depression or other mood disorder – a mood tracker.

When you click on one of the mood trackers on the main MedHelp page and provide your sign-up information, you’re immediately presented the page where you can modify the particular tracker that you chose. You can customize the tracker depending what type it is.

You can set the tracker to be your own mental or physical fitness log or someone else’s that your monitoring, and you can also make it public – either to just specific friends or completely open to the world (it’s surprising how many people are willing to share their personal logs. You can configure the tracker to remind you to update your mood tracker daily, weekly or monthly (or never), and finally, you can set it so that it’s customized for a particular mood disorder such as major depressive or bipolar.

The major chart area is where you click to insert your log entries, and you can scroll from month to month so that you can see the history.

On your profile page, you’ll notice the community features on the menu bar at the top. You can add friends (or family) who can view your charts, add private or public journal entries, notes, photos and of course post to various message boards about health issues. When it comes to health, having a community to ask questions and share experiences is absolutely invaluable – especially when you’re going through a major medical health crisis. There’s always someone out there who has suffered through the same thing.

When you click the “Manage” button  at the right of the top menu on your profile page, you can add additional trackers to your profile. When you enter this area, get ready to be shocked by the impressive number of tracker apps that are available, including ones to track addictions, anxiety and panic attacks, baby health, cholesterol, diabetes, headaches and migraines, ovulation and even weight and exercise trackers.

Back to the mood tracker example, when you add a new item to the chart, you can choose the update based on what you’re tracking. In this case you can update what your (or your family member’s) overall mood was that day. Not only can you track mood, but you can keep track of a whole assortment of symptoms and other signs that something might be going wrong.

The items mentioned on these menus and screens hint that a doctor or some other medical professional put them together because they really do hit on the items that are relevant to what you’re trying to track.

If you want, you can even type a journal entry for the day to note an event or a situation that you want to remember later on when doctors or anyone else asks what might have caused a condition to worsen. As you enter data every day, you’ll notice a trend line developing on the large chart at the top of the tracker.

While you’re entering in your daily information, little details that may seem inconsequential all get accumulated into the big picture and the tracker shows you, in a graphical format, how all of these things – events, medicine, mental state and physical state – all factor into your sense of well-being. For example, how the change in season and shorter days has a significant negative effect on your mood (so you should plan a fall vacation!)

The MedHelp library of trackers include such a variety of tools that you could use it even if you’re perfectly healthy and just want to start exercising and losing weight. There’s a weight tracker, diet tracker and an exercise tracker that can show you what exercises and food have the greatest impact on your weight and how. Here’s the summary data for an obese, 220 pound guy who sits on his chair all day writing articles (why are you assuming that’s me?)

You can set goals, monitor progress, and troubleshoot your own health with mental and physical fitness logs for every aspect of your life. You can analyze, with real information and real data from your daily life, what works and what doesn’t. By tweaking your daily life – removing what you learn has a negative effect and adding what you learn is positive – you can transform your physical and emotional well-being.

Which of the tracker tools look like they may help you? Do you use any other tools to track and analyze your health? Share your feedback in the comments section below.

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When people feel this way, one of the opportunities that will evenutally knock on their doors is Multi Level Marketing (MLM). There are other names for it – network marketing, social marketing, direct distributing. Legally speaking, most of the legitimate companies that use this form of marketing are not pyramid schemes. At least not legally. However, they do strongly resemble pyramids in their structure.

Some people do make money with these opportunities. A few make really good money! However, often what you are told or shown isn’t the whole picture. The vast majority of people lose money in these businesses. If you’re meeting with someone about an opportunity like this, be forewarned with the information from these sites.

Pyramid Scheme Alert

PSA purports itself to be a non-profit, donation driven organization dedicated to revealing the truth about multi-level marketing and pyramid schemes. Founder Robert FitzPatrick has written a book on the topic and has been consulted as a professional by different media outlets in the U.S. and Canada.

Here you can find information on legal proceedings against MLM companies, news about them, and alerts as well. PSA does have an e-mail list that you can sign up for, to get regular information.

I find the site fairly well organized and easy to use. It appears to have the most in-depth information of the sites listed here.

MLM Survivor

This is a bit of a different site, in that it is a site within a site. What the heck does that mean? Well, MLMSurvivor has had a site since 1999 that featured information about Quixtar/Amway, Equinox/Trek Alliance and other MLM’s.You can get to it by clicking on the Original MLMSurvivor Site link.

The original site has hundreds of pages of personal stories, research, and an MLMSurvivorsClub with over 8,000 members on Yahoo! Groups.That site is somewhat wrapped inside a new blog that functions a bit more like a news site.

It appears to have been only recently resurrected, with just a few posts starting late last October. Looks like Amway is in the courts again.

The Pink Lighthouse

Just in case it seems like all these sites are about Amway, well, they aren’t. The Pink Lighthouse is a blog put together by a former Mary Kay Consultant. It sure seems that the pink isn’t all that you might think!

There are dozens of personal stories to be found here. Perhaps the most common thread between them all is that the products are great! However, the personalities that they had to work with (more like work for) was the biggest problem. Lots of inventory purchasing that seldom gets sold and tons of pressure to keep buying inventory just so the upline can make their monthly goals. Apparently Mary Kay isn’t an MLM, but rather a Dual Marketing system. I’m not sure what that means, but I do know you can put lipstick on a pig and it’s still a pig.

After you’ve read through these sites, I can see how you wouldn’t touch an MLM pyramid scheme with someone else’s ten foot pole. Yet still, the fact remains that there are people that make money with some of these business and there are even a few that have made millions. The question then remains, are you willing to do what it takes? Statistics only would say the odds are against you.

Have you had an MLM pyramid scheme experience, good or bad? Do you know of any other resources you’d recommend to people checking out MLM’s? You’d be doing us all a favour by sharing them in the comments.

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

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