15 New Articles on MakeUseOf

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• Cool Websites and Tools [May 6th 2013]
• GameFAQs Is Still Around & Still The Best Site For Gaming Information
• How Can I Fix My Facebook Page So It Doesn’t Look Stupid?
• How To Say Sorry – 8 Online Gift Services To Keep You Out of the Dog House
• The Latest and Best Free Android Apps From XDA Developers: Get Great Apps Before Your Friends
• Hashtags – The Key To Reaching a Wider Audience On Twitter
• What Does “Dual Core” & “Quad Core” Mean? [MakeUseOf Explains]
• 4 Ways To Take Time-Lapse Videos
• Void Your Bowels With Terror Thanks To FEWDIO’s Short Horror [Stuff to Watch]
• Keep a Digital Diary with Day One for Mac OS X and iOS
• Are These Circles Moving? 6 Places To Find Amazing Optical Illusions Online
• Invitation: Join a MakeUseOf Hangout
• Hazel – Performing Tasks On Your Mac So You Don’t Have To
• Not Just For Coders: Top Version Control Systems For Writers
• iCan’t: 5 Things Android Users Take For Granted and iPhone Users Just Can’t Do

Cool Websites and Tools [May 6th 2013] Posted: 06 May 2013 09:31 PM PDT Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. Most of the listed websites are FREE or come with a decent free account option. If you want to have similar cool website round-ups delivered to your daily email, subscribe here. Add Your Website Here!   eBook Glue – There is a good chance that you have set up an RSS or Atom feed for your own website and your visitors are getting your articles from those feeds. But there are other site users who might find it preferable to get your website content in the form of an eBook. One way to go about this is a web application called eBook Glue. Read more: eBook Glue: Convert RSS & Atom Feeds Into ePub & Mobi eBooks   CoolMojito CoolPosts – If you runa facebook page, you know how important it is to generate interesting and engaging content to keep your readers coming back for more, time and time again. After all, with no fans and readers, a Facebook page is just a barren wasteland with you simply talking to yourself. If you are looking for a way to create Facebook posts that are more than just text and images, you should try CoolMojito's new tool called CoolPosts. Read more: CoolMojito CoolPosts: Create Interactive Facebook Posts For Your Page (Free Licenses)     DotVoting – Normally in voting, each participant gets a single vote with which he must mark his preference. But there are instances when this form of voting is unsuitable. In such scenarios, you need dot voting – a number of votes to mark his preferences. Here to help you hold such dot voting events online is a useful web service called DotVoting. Read more: DotVoting: A Web Service To Help You Collect & View Dot Votes     Mindsnacks – Learning a new language is always a good idea. Not only does knowing a new language help you communicate with people of a different country, but you are also opened up to new forms of expression. And when it comes to languages, or any other thing that you are learning, the best way to learn is a friendly service called MindSnacks. Read more: MindSnacks: Get Educational Language Games On Your Device [iOS]     TalkBits – Conversing with people over text messaging and online forums is inconvenient for many people. Apart from the inconvenience of typing itself, the text you send does not fully convey your emotions. If you want to really communicate, you must use your own voice. Here to help is the phone app TalkBits. Read more: TalkBits: Talk To People In Your Area To Converse & Share Ideas [iOS]   Add Your Website Here! 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. The post Cool Websites and Tools [May 6th 2013] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

GameFAQs Is Still Around & Still The Best Site For Gaming Information Posted: 06 May 2013 07:31 PM PDT There are certain niche websites that resonate with an audience to an extent that competitors and alternatives aren’t even a concern. When you’re on the web and you’re looking to browse videos, you go to YouTube. When you’re looking to search the Internet, you go to Google. Since 1995, GameFAQs is the place that gamers have gone for knowledge regarding video games. For a gaming information website that has been around for nearly 20 years, it has experienced very few changes and continues to remain true to its roots. Every gamer knows about GameFAQs, but not every gamer knows how relevant and useful the website remains still today. GameFAQs hasn’t gone anywhere, and it continues to serve gamers of all types as a shrine of information. GameFAQs GameFAQs receives updates as frequently as daily, constantly adding new content to an archive that must have gigabytes behind it already. What kind of content? The community at GameFAQs is filled with contributors. This includes general FAQs and walkthroughs and then more in-depth documents, such as details on how to complete games at 100%, completion challenges, guides that outline the finer details of the games, bestiaries and equipment indexes for RPGs, maps of levels in PNG format, saved states, game scripts, cheat codes and more. The amount of information that GameFAQs offers the user is sometimes even overwhelming. Popular and older games, such as Chrono Trigger, have been picked apart and detailed for you to see and benefit from. While offering advice and tips to gamers is the core functionality of this gaming information website, in recent years GameFAQs has done an excellent job of incorporating more community elements and interactive features that breathe some fresh air into such a classic website. Every single game indexed on GameFAQs (and I challenge you to find a game that isn’t) has a community feel wrapped around it. This includes reviews and ratings from users, a complete description, release data, and credits, a full-featured message board dedicated solely to the game, screenshots, and even more. Really worth focusing in on is the fact that GameFAQs offers a forum community for individual games. This is the sort of engagement that can actually allow enjoy playing a game that was released 15 years ago. With individual message boards, you’re able to interact with a community of people who are interested in that specific title. While some message boards are obviously more active than others, it’s an opportunity that no other website manages to do quite like GameFAQs. There are also message boards for more broad topics, like consoles in general, classic gaming, shooters, suggestions for the site, browser games, and more. If you choose to register an account, you’re even able to tag certain game boards as your favorites, which can then be easily monitored and accessed under the Boards header in the top menu. As mentioned before, the GameFAQs community is all about contributing and growing the website as a home of gaming information. The Features section highlights some of the incentive you get in being a good community member. Shown above, you can see that GameFAQs actually sets bounties and contests out on their users so that sought after information is always within community reach. Users can write FAQs for gift certificates, compete in annual and weekly contests that revolve around gaming, view the top 100 most popular pages of the website, and revisit noteworthy events that have happened on this very day in the past. Another very appreciated feature is the My Games section, where you can keep an online catalog of all of the games that you own. From here you can rate them, write reviews, access message boards, and otherwise enjoy your collection. Don’t count out GameFAQs as a powerhouse of gaming information. While others have come along with new and fresher designs, GameFAQ has what we all want: the information. If you can’t beat a game, GameFAQs will help you. If you want to talk about a game, GameFAQs has a community for it. It doesn’t matter if it’s PC or console, 1980 or 2012, this is the website for it. Do you still use GameFAQs? Do you think there’s a better alternative out there? How has it aged? Let us know what you think in the comments section below. The post GameFAQs Is Still Around & Still The Best Site For Gaming Information appeared first on MakeUseOf.

How Can I Fix My Facebook Page So It Doesn’t Look Stupid? Posted: 06 May 2013 07:01 PM PDT Some people might say that having Facebook and Stupid in the same title is a bit redundant. They may be correct. There are definitely a lot of things that qualify as stupid on Facebook, and the harsh reality is that there are a lot of stupid people on Facebook. Come on folks, there’s over half a billion people on Facebook, some of them, statistically speaking, have to be stupid! In fact, at least 49% of us on Facebook are below average intelligence. There’s a good chance I am one of them. Yet that doesn’t mean that your Facebook Page has to be stupid. It can look fun, friendly, AND professional. What is truly stupid is up to you to define for yourself.  If you’re asking, “How can I fix my facebook page?” – I’m going to help you define whether your page is stupid by showing you some Facebook Page blunders. How Can I Fix My Facebook Page? Stupid Facebook Pages When I started web development, Vincent Flanders had a web page called, “Web Pages That Suck“. I thought he was arrogant at first, but no, really, the pages he highlighted really sucked! He used them as a beacon of warning of what not to do. Sure, there were a bunch of pages on what was right to do, but no one to say, “Hey. That sucks. You don’t want to use the blink tag. Seriously.” So let’s try a little of that with Facebook Pages. Don’t Be A No-Show Have you heard the saying that life is 95% about just showing up? Some very large companies headed by some (allegedly) very smart people don’t even have a Facebook Page. Mega investment bank company and beneficiary of lots of your money in bail-outs, Goldman-Sachs, is one of those companies. Now, Goldman-Sachs is relying on a Facebook Page generated from user-editable Wikipedia content to be their face on Facebook. Way to go faceless-multi-national. Ever heard of Santander Group? Apparently they’re another one of the largest companies in the world. If they keep not showing up, you might never hear of them. 186,000 employees and they can’t find one to do a simple Facebook Page. Get HR on the phone! Don’t Disappear Once you finally get yourself on Facebook, don’t just blaze into Zuckerberg’s domain and then dissappear. Please, don’t leave us. Is that what it’s going to be like once I’ve bought your product? Here you go, now leave me alone? Always alone. According to Recommend.ly, 70% of Facebook Pages never get updated. That’s a cricket below. Even she isn’t on the Page anymore. Don’t Ignore Your Customers According to Jim Singer at AT Kearney, most of the world’s biggest companies that ARE on Facebook simply don’t respond to customers. So you can go on there, ask questions, make suggestions, make complaints, do whatever you want and you promptly be ignored. Nintendo is one of these companies. Doesn’t that seem counter-intuitive for a gaming company that is supposed to be all about interaction? Go on their Facebook Page and you find post after post, often with more than 200 comments and not one response from anyone at Nintendo. That’s not Luigi looking cool and coy, nay! It’s Luigi AND Nintendo giving you the cold shoulder. Don’t Be Rude Maybe if you have nothing nice to say, you should change your PR company. You need to remember that a Facebook Page is another extension of the customer service you would give in your regular place of business. This does NOT mean that the customer is always right. Because they aren’t always right. Yet they are human and should be treated with respect. Quite possibly the greatest example of poor customer service on Facebook is what Nestle did back in 2010. People were protesting Nestle’s support of suppliers that were unethical and using altered Nestle logos. Nestle didn’t like that, and apparently hasn’t heard about satire. You can read the back and forth below. Nestle may have been right, yet that doesn’t justify their tone. Seriously? “It was ever thus.”? Pfft. Whatever Nestle. I’ll still eat your chocolate bars, but I’ll do it wistfully and with angst. Don’t Worry About Looks There are a multitude of ways to style and tweak your Facebook Page to make it look very cool and stylish, here and here, but content is STILL and ALWAYS WILL BE KING. Even if it is just cute kittens and strange people in Wal-Mart. Give your customers content. Content that they want. Content that they can only get on Facebook. If you’ve automated your social networking to blast every network you have with the same content, why should we Like your Facebook Page? I can just as easily ignore your boring self on Twitter. Look, even someone trying to be clever by intentionally being boring can only get 160 likes in 3 years. Hipsters, maybe irony is dead. If you’re looking for way to make your Facebook Page much more engaging, I suggest 5 Great Ideas To Make Your Facebook Fan Page Interesting, by Angela. The Take Away Like any other tool in this world, Facebook Pages can be abused, misused, underused, and even misplaced. When you do any, or all, of those things you make your Facebook Page look stupid. Which in turn makes your company, and maybe even you, look at least a little stupid. Is that really what you want to do? We all have a hard enough time coming across as competent on a day to day basis. Don’t go out of your way to make it even harder on yourself. Have you seen a stupid Facebook Page lately? Want to nominate a company for blowing it on Facebook? We have a place for you to share that, here and on Facebook. We loves your comments! As long as they aren’t…well, you get the picture. Images Credits: Cricket via Gemma Stiles @ Flickr Be Stupid via Michiel020 @ Flickr The post How Can I Fix My Facebook Page So It Doesn’t Look Stupid? appeared first on MakeUseOf.

How To Say Sorry – 8 Online Gift Services To Keep You Out of the Dog House Posted: 06 May 2013 06:31 PM PDT Contrary to popular belief, I am not a perfect man. I’ve screwed up. I’ve caused long-term plans to fail. I’ve been in the dog house once or twice. In such situations, I have found that a small gift is a perfect solution to a potentially big problem. In the past, I have used coffee, beef jerky, and guava juice to make amends, but as of late, I have discovered that the online world offers equally sentimental gift selections to choose from. So, how to say sorry to anyone at all? Brace yourself, people. These gifts are so apology-worthy that just by looking at them you will give up any grudge that you may currently hold. As a matter of fact, I expect to receive an email from my editor that simply says “It’s okay, Josh” after he reads this. Will he have a reason to have such a forgiving tone? No. No he won’t. It’s just that the gifts from these sites are so darned effective. Personal Creations Personal Creations offers creative home decor and keepsakes that will serve as a fantastic reminder of the love that you share with your partner. They also could easily serve as a fantastic reminder for the time you really, really, really messed things up, so be careful if you use them as a way how to say sorry and send your apologies to your special someone. Even still, the site has a few good gifts that, at the same time, are a little cheesy. Picture frames, pillows, and t-shirts can all be found here, and to top it all off, a few gifts can be customized to say whatever you them to say. Like I said, though – they could serve as easy reminders of a horrible past. I’m a fan of edible gifts when it comes to saying I’m sorry. There’s no evidence that way, but it still gets my point across. Red Envelope Red Envelope may be the exception to my “edible-only” rule, for the gifts found here are classy and extravagant. In the same vein, they are also incredibly pricey and if your situation would allow for a simple “I’m sorry” note instead, don’t waste you money here. Artsy gifts like personalized throw pillows and interesting jewelry can be found here, and I believe I even saw a champagne bucket kit for sale. The site offers simple gifts that are both classy and refined, but realize that you are still buying them from the Internet. You could probably pick up a few of the same items from a like-minded brick-and-mortar store. Gift Tree Gift Tree is a bit classier than most, offering baskets full of fancy wine and chocolate along with playful balloons and bouquets of roses. Furthermore, their delivery is fast - within two days if required. Needless to say, I was impressed by their offerings, and I would take them very seriously for both gifts of the apologetic nature and “just-because” situations. Gift Tree is also incredibly expensive – and rightly so. What else do you expect from a service that delivers champagne wherever you want and whenever you want? Save Gift Tree for those times when you really, really, really drop the ball. You also might want to start saving your money, too. Trust me. It will happen. Romanticraft Most of the services that you see here are generic gift sites that just happen to have a little romantic section. Unlike these, Romanticraft is a site that is devoted entirely to the world of romance, and rather than providing gifts, it offers gift ideas. So yes, my friends, you will have to work to say those two little apologetic words. What kind of gift ideas will you find on here? The kinds you make. Romanticraft obviously incorporates the word “craft” in its clever namesake, so you’ll find quite a few sets of instructions that show you how to make that perfect gift. Besides these DIY projects, Romanticraft also has links to various gifts across the web quite similar to the ones already written about in this article. My M&Ms M&M’s already have three traits that everybody loves: 1) they are chocolate – aw yiss, 2) they are colorful, and 3) they are tiny. Right away, you have the makings of the perfect ”I’m-sorry-that-I-ran-over-your-mother’s-cat” kind of gift! How could it get any better than this? Well, it can. With My M&M’s, you can personalize those tasty little candies with images, text, and various color combos. Let me be clear, though: it will be expensive to add images of your mother-in-law’s and cat’s faces to these little treats. The starting price is at $24.99 – a big step-up from what you get at the convenience store. Alternatively, there’s the so-called Smooches Blend which comes with pre-selected romantic images and colors. However, do you want to say you’re sorry, or do you want to say you’re sorry? (Vroom-vroom. Meow. Crunch.) Simply Personalized There are few better ways how to say “sorry” like a personalized mug, and Simply Personalized offers an assortment of novelty gifts that will help you get your point across without having to break the bank. Here you will find gifts like soaps, candies, trinkets, and the ever-so-lovely Hollywood’s Hottest Female fake front page. Yeah, if you’re in the dog house now, that last one is sure to bump you up at least to the couch. If you’re the type of couple that picks up customized magnets for each other while on business trips in exotic locations, then Simply Personalized is the site for you. If you’re the type of couple that cheats on each other while on business trips in exotic locations, then Simply Personalized could also be the site for you just as long as the gift comes in apology form. Zazzle Zazzle has always been the Internet’s favorite service for creating your own customized gift store. But besides selling rebranded material for the financial benefit of others, it also serves as a nice online gift shop for screw-ups like me and you.  The website offers tons of romance-themed products that are just corny enough to hopefully get you out of the dog house. The product selection is just what you would expect from Zazzle: t-shirts, iPhone cases, mugs, etc. No, you won’t find the perfect bit of jewelry that your significant other has always been looking for. However, for those of you who are a bit more clever than most, you may happen to find the perfect gift for whatever situation you’ve gotten yourself into. Shari’s Berries Yep. The other sites may not be able to satisfy the size of your big mistake. Instead, you have to handle this with a much more serious solution. This is the kind of solution that makes you say, “Yes, I am going to pay nearly $60 for a batch of chocolate-covered strawberries.” Don’t worry. We’ve all been there, and we won’t judge. Shari’s Berries is the perfect site for you to dish out your hard-earned cash in order to make things right, and honestly, I was this close to purchasing a few of their items just for myself. The site’s romantic gift section offers a wide assortment of chocolate-covered strawberries in addition to several other delicious treats like cupcakes and truffles (which are a bit less expensive). Even if you aren’t in a situation where “I’m sorry” is the answer, it might be worth splurging a bit on Shari’s Berries just for fun. What other sites do you use to find gifts that say “I’m sorry”? Have you ever used any of these sites before? The post How To Say Sorry – 8 Online Gift Services To Keep You Out of the Dog House appeared first on MakeUseOf.

The Latest and Best Free Android Apps From XDA Developers: Get Great Apps Before Your Friends Posted: 06 May 2013 05:30 PM PDT   Do you like getting amazing Android apps before your friends? XDA-developers.com hosts some of the most brilliant apps of the day, before they hit the market. Because of the site, finding your favorite app artists before they go mainstream requires very little effort. If you’re like me, scoring a great program feels like discovering Picasso or Caravaggio for the first time — but finding gems requires installing a lot of really bad software. XDA Developers makes the discovery process much easier by highlighting praiseworthy apps. If you find an interesting program, pop it onto your phone and BOOM. You just got bragging rights as a true app epicurean. This article highlights ten of the latest and/or greatest apps originating from XDA Developers: WakeLockDetector, a battery management app; “Naked Browser” and “Lightning Browser”, two of the most efficient and minimal browsers around; Got-It! a note-taking and Google Tasks management combination;  ”Tic Tac Cubed” and “Picture the Word”, two great games; AppWereRabbit, an all-in-one file manipulator; RottenFriends, a horrific photo editor. WakeLockDetector This is easily one of the best apps I’ve ever seen for finding misbehaving, battery draining programs. A nutshell summary of developer ahikmat‘s WLD is that it identifies wakelock-causing software. Wakelock events rouse CPUs from sleep-states, causing power consumption. Two kinds of wakelocks exist, partial and full. Partial wakelocks tend to occur more frequently than full ones. As the names indicate, a full wakelock causes the most battery drain. However, cumulatively, partials can drain more power. Some kinds of apps cause a great deal of wakelocks, which can be dealt with after identification by WLD. WakeLock Detect can find those apps that constantly cause drain – in my experience, the vast majority of wakelocks can resolve through properly configuring the errant app. For example, WLD found that Google Maps caused a ridiculous amount of drain on my tablet. However, by turning off its access to GPS, the drain disappeared overnight. Ultimately, WLD performs a similar function as BetterBatteryStats – with the exception that it’s easily understandable to the average user. Naked Browser I’ve mentioned XDA developer aminaked before – and his XDA debut of the ultra-slender Naked Browser. By the way, aminaked isn’t actually naked – to my knowledge at least. But don’t let that stop you from trying out his software. His browser ranks among the fastest and least bloated around, making it truly the hottest and nakedest in its field – an excellent combination. Aminaked emphasizes four core values in his design: security, speed, features and completely free. So while it uses the same rendering engine as the default browser, it does so without the bloat and privacy concerns, and with additional features (such as one-touch zoom, infinite tabs and tab restore). In all honesty, I consider it the finest browser in the app store. And it’s completely free. Lightning Browser A browser specially built for your tablet. I’ve covered Lightning in the past, specifically its performance – it performs on par with some of the fastest tablet optimized browsers. However, it comes out ahead in its minimal design and lightweight installed size. In many ways, Lightning offers a similar experience as Naked browser: It’s extremely lightweight, uses a minimal design aesthetic and it runs fast. Lightning differs in its appealing aesthetic design and Holo-themed interface. Personally, I prefer Naked’s minimalism, but that’s purely for personal reasons. You can check out the original development thread here. You’ll notice that senior XDA member Anthonycr really packed in a lot of features, relative to its installed size of .2 megabytes. Got-It! Billed as a competitor to Google Keep, XDA dev Mirko ddd’s Got-It offers a very straightforward note-taking system. A superior visual design combined with Google Tasks integration and syncing stand out as Got-It’s best features. Some other advanced capabilities include an ability to set a due-date for each note, as well as reminder notifications. In these two aspects, it compares favorably with the current best task management program, Tasks, by killing two birds with one stone – note taking and task management. Got-It comes in two editions – free and paid. However, it’s important to mention that the free edition comes without ads and provides essentially the same experience as the paid app. After extensively reviewing this app, I’ve decided to switch from Tasks. On the downside, it’s Android 4.0 and up only. Ultra Explorer Ultra Explorer compares well with ES File Explorer. Although it lacks ES’s sophistication and superior design, Ultra’s advantage lies in its open source code and simple, intuitive design. While I personally consider ES a better file manager, Ultra may appeal to you based on its “duplicates manager“, which can locate and eliminate duplicate files. Ultra can also backup your apps, which makes it one of the best open source file managers around. Ultra Explorer’s considers it an alpha build, which may explain its absence from the Play Store. However, it can be sideloaded to your device. For more information on how to sideload, check out Danny’s guide. To sideload, I recommend using Dropbox. Essentially, if you copy Ultra’s APK into the Dropbox folder, it will sync onto your phone — from which you can manually install it. Greenify An excellent battery-saving app, oasisfeng‘s Greenify received some mention on MakeUseOf recently. Unfortunately, only rooted phones can install it. For those of you requiring , Greenify may provide an easy-to-implement answer by suspending apps (the so-called “hibernation” method) to memory. Apps suspended to disk cause fewer issues than those killed, since some killed apps attempt to autorestart continuously. This equips users with a superior method to task killers, which can cause more problems than they solve. I advise using Greenify’s whitelist to suspend only the buggiest apps – software that you have identified as battery wasters. It’s pretty simple to get started: Choose the apps that cause battery drain and hibernate them. Greenify comes in both free and donation versions – however, the author included full functionality in the free version, so you feel generous, kick the dev some cash. If you’re interested in additional setup tips for Greenify, check out Danny’s article here. He advises hiberating only apps that you downloaded and not system apps. AppWereRabbit AppWereRabbit functions in a similar fashion to a Swiss Army knife: It provides a wide variety of indispensable file management software. In particular, allows the backing up of APK (Android installable executable) files on your phone. Most of these programs focus on creating app backups, system maintenance and file manipulation. AppWereRabbit’s developer, HairyRobot, seamlessly integrated a long list of tools into one kit. For example, if you want to backup a single file, simply click on it from the “installed apps” menu and several options pop up, ranging from backing it up to exporting an APK. AppWereRabbit actually runs a variety of programs in the background. Alternatively, you can choose to go to the Menu tri-dot button in the upper-right side of the screen and “Backup all“. Yes, a complete app backup is as simple as a single touch. To access the settings, swipe to the left – it shows up in the left menu bar. I advise turning off “Auto backup” since it automatically creates a copy of apps, as you download them. If you want to disable that feature, swipe left and go to settings (bottom of the context menu). Then just uncheck the automatic backup box. Tic Tac Cubed XDA developers pixie_dust and pizzaforbreakfast – a boyfriend/girlfriend team – came up with an app based on Tic-Tac-Toe combined with a Rubik’s Cube. Like Tic-Tac-Toe, the game revolves (pun intended) around attempting to create three contiguous, and linear, X’s or O’s. The twist comes in the shape of a Rubik’s Cube. By rotating the cube, it’s possible to mark squares that aren’t even on the same face, greatly improving game-play over Tic-Tac-Toe. It offers two modes of play: Compete against a friend and networked multiplayer. While playing against a friend, you simply mark each cube as either X or O and pass your handset back and forth with a friend. Networked multiplayer requires creating an account. The game provides an entertaining and welcome departure from Tic-Tac-Toe. It’s a simple-to-learn way of playing a two-player game with a friend or Internet enemy. Unfortunately, you cannot download Tic Tac Cubed from the Play Store, although it is available directly from the developers. You must “sideload” (directly transfer onto your phone) the app. For this purpose, Dropbox provides one of the most efficient sideloading methods. Picture the Word I love this app. XDA junior member, mattobeney really outdid himself in designing this one. Picture the Word presents you with two images and a jumble of words. The goal of the game is to rearrange the letters into a single word. The trick, however, is that the jumble of words represent both of the pictures added together. For example, in the only level I solved, one picture showed a cluster of grapes, the other a bowl of fruit – together, the words created “grape fruit”. Like with most games requiring mental acuity, I suck at Picture the Word. If you can help me solve the puzzle above and to the right, I shall forever be in your debt. Please help me. Rotten Friends If you’re anything like me, then god help you. But once you overcome your crushing student debt, you may come to enjoy awesome apps like developer HellGames’s RottenFriends. It’s relatively simply: Take a picture and it will overlay a zombified face. My best friend just went from precious to putrid! On the downside, RottenFriends is overpermissioned, requiring precise GPS coordinates, full network access, the ability to find accounts on your phone – and more. In truth, the app is terribly overburdened with ads and its performance is sluggish even on my state-of-the-art Nexus 4. Don’t install this one, it’s beyond terrible. I just had to include pictures of my zombie dog. Conclusion XDA Developers forums offer a kind of digital café, where all the famous app designers of the day congregate. Imagine the Les Deux Magots café on a balmy Parisian evening: Hemingway and Joyce sipping Absinthe while discussing their latest novels – those moments, while lost to time, are no different than what’s going on right now within XDA’s forums. With one exception: You don’t need to imagine their conversations. You can read what’s going through their minds, right now. Anyone else want to share an XDA app? Let us know in the comments. Image Credits: Robot via MorgueFile.com The post The Latest and Best Free Android Apps From XDA Developers: Get Great Apps Before Your Friends appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Hashtags – The Key To Reaching a Wider Audience On Twitter Posted: 06 May 2013 05:01 PM PDT Hashtags have made their way across social networks, but there is nowhere they shine more than on the social network where they first started – Twitter. The  feature, first introduced by a Twitter user, has taken on a life of its own. Twitter hashtags have become a great way to label tweets, to create a trending topic, or simply interact with like-minded people on Twitter. It can sometimes be a little overwhelming trying to navigate the sheer volume of Twitter hashtags, and it can be a challenge trying to figure out how to use hashtags to your advantage. If you want to make sure that your tweets are reaching the maximum possible audience, and give yourself the opportunity to take your topic viral, we’ve put together a list of things to bear in mind when it comes to putting hashtags to use for you on Twitter. While these tips are Twitter-specific, there’s no reason why they can’t be applied to other social networks, including Google+ and Instagram, where hashtags are alive and well. What Are Hashtags? Twitter explains what hashtags are: People use the Twitter hashtag symbol # before a relevant keyword or phrase (no spaces) in their Tweet to categorize those Tweets and help them show more easily in Twitter Search. Clicking on a hashtagged word in any message shows you all other Tweets marked with that keyword. Hashtags can occur anywhere in the Tweet – at the beginning, middle, or end. Hashtagged words that become very popular are often Trending Topics. Tips On How To Use Twitter Hashtags There are a few key tips that are worth keeping in mind when using hashtags. Select Your Tags Carefully If you’re trying to get an idea to spread on Twitter, pick your hashtag carefully. Don’t pick a hashtag that’s too long so it doesn’t take up too many characters in your 140-character limit. Make sure your hashtag is descriptive and can easily be associated with the concept you’re trying to convey. You also have to make sure the hashtag is unique so that it doesn’t become overrun with irrelevant tweets with users using your hashtag for other subjects. Search Before You Choose Continuing off the previous point, be sure to do a quick search on Twitter to make sure the hashtag isn’t already in use. Don’t Overtag Be cautious about how many hashtags you use in a tweet. You’ve only got 140 characters, so there’s no need to tag each and every word – as that will likely lose you followers rather than gain them in the process. Never Jump On The Bandwagon Of Sensitive Topics You would think this would go without saying but it has happened several times. Marketing accounts have hijacked sensitive and emotional events around the world. Kenneth Cole’s PR machine used the February 2011 protests in Cairo to promote a new fashion line while a year later, Celeb Boutique didn’t take the time to check why Aurora was trending on Twitter following the fatal shooting in Aurora, Colorado in December 2012. This also comes back to carefully searching a hashtag before using it. It’s key that you understand how the hashtag is already being used on Twitter. Ways Hashtags Are Used There are quite a few regular ways in which hashtags are used aside from promotion and marketing. Here are a few popular ways in which hashtags are regularly used: Every Friday, you can use the Twitter hashtags, #FollowFriday and #FF to recommend other tweeps worth following When attending conferences, watching popular TV shows, or taking part in group events, you can use hashtags to share your thoughts on the experience. This is another aspect of using hashtags that you should use carefully. If you’re livetweeting, be selective regardless so that you don’t flood your followers with tweets that might not be of interest to them. Hashtags are used to label all sorts of useful and creative information – everything from job listings to poetry can be found on Twitter through hashtags. You can keep up with your favourite topics using hashtags, as you’ll find with this list of hashtags tailored for every writer, or even discover topics you knew nothing about. Third Party Services Storify Storify is a great service to find out the broader narrative of how a Twitter hashtag is being used. Searching the hashtag on Storify will show you how it’s being used within larger stories, so you can find out more about the topic, in a pretty slick layout. Find out more about Storify in our in-depth review of the service. Topsy Topsy is a great way to find out how your hashtag is doing, and allows for a more robust search of Twitter than the social networking’s own native search. The best feature, by far, that Topsy offers users is one which allows you to see the analytics of the hashtag. You can view how often it’s been used over the past day, week, 2 weeks, or month. Find out more about Topsy in our post about the service here. Sopularity  Sopularity is still in private beta but the service looks promising. It will help you figure out what words to hashtag in your tweets, through an automated service. You can get 5 suggestions for free per day, or, for €5 a month, you can get unlimited suggestions. Tell us in the comments how you have used Twitter hashtags. Are they a useful tool for you? Do you have any tips or tricks on how to use hashtags? Let us know about them in the comments. The post Hashtags – The Key To Reaching a Wider Audience On Twitter appeared first on MakeUseOf.

What Does “Dual Core” & “Quad Core” Mean? [MakeUseOf Explains] Posted: 06 May 2013 04:31 PM PDT At one point, our computers had a central processing unit (CPU) with a single core. These days, most CPUs you’ll come across are dual core, quad core, or even octo core. We’ll explain exactly what a core is, dual core vs quad core, and how this all impacts your real-world computer usage. The answers aren’t just helpful for leaning more about your computer — you may have to choose between a less-expensive CPU with fewer cores or a more-expensive CPU with more cores when buying a laptop, tablet, or even a smartphone. Knowing the difference between dual core vs quad core CPUs – and what it means for you – will help you make smart decisions when purchasing new hardware. What Is a Core? Each CPU “core” is actually a separate central processing unit, which is the part of the CPU that actually does the work. For example, a dual-core chip may look like a single CPU chip, but it actually has two physical central processing units on the chip. Additional central processing units allow a computer to do multiple things at once. If you’ve ever used a single-core CPU and made the upgrade to a dual-core CPU, you should have noticed a significant difference in how responsive your computer is. For example, let’s say you’re extracting an archive file and browsing the web at the same time. If you had a single-core CPU in your computer, web browsing wouldn’t be very responsive. The single core would have to split its time between web browsing and file-extraction tasks. If you had a dual-core CPU with two cores, one core would work on extracting the file while the other core did your web-browsing work. Web browsing would be much faster and more responsive. Whether you’re doing multiple things at once or not, your computer is often doing system tasks in the background and you can benefit from additional cores to keep the operating system responsive. Applications can also be written to take advantage of multiple cores. For example, Google Chrome renders each website with a separate process. This allows Google Chrome to use different CPUs for different websites rather than using a single CPU for all browser-related tasks. Clock Speed vs. Cores CPUs have a clock speed – think of it as how fast the CPU does work. (That’s actually an imperfect analogy as the truth is a lot more complicated, but it will have to do for now.) For example, Intel’s Core i5-3330 processor has a clock speed of 3 GHz and is a quad-core processor, which means it has four cores. All four cores in this Intel i5 processor are each running at 3 GHz. Doubling The Cores Doesn’t Double The Speed Many computer programs are single-threaded, which means that their work can’t be divided across multiple CPUs. They must each run on a single CPU. This means that doubling the cores won’t double their performance. If you have a single-threaded application running on a 3 GHz quad-core CPU, that application will run at 3 GHz — not 12 GHz. It will use one core and the other three cores will sit idle, waiting for other tasks to perform. Writing properly multithreaded applications that can scale across several CPUs at once is actually a difficult problem in computer science. It’s becoming a more crucial problem, as the future looks to be computers with more and more cores instead of fewer cores at faster and faster speeds. Some applications can take advantage of multiple cores. Google Chrome’s multi-process architecture allows it to perform actions across several different cores at once. Some computer games can divide their calculations across multiple separate cores at once. However, most of the applications you use are likely single-threaded. A quad-core CPU won’t run Microsoft Office twice as fast as a dual-core CPU. If all you do is run Microsoft Office, the performance might be extremely similar. More cores help if you’re looking to do more at once or if you have a multithreaded application that can take advantage of them. For example, if you’re running several virtual machines while encoding video, extracting files, and doing other CPU-demanding things on your computer, an octo-core CPU may be able to keep up while even a quad-core CPU may stumble under such load. Dual Core, Quad Core & More Phrases like “dual core,” “quad core,” and “octo core” all just refer to the number of cores a CPU has: Dual Core: Two cores. Quad Core: Four cores. Hexa Core: Six cores. Octo Core: Eight cores. Deca Core: Ten cores. Controlling & Monitoring Cores You can actually control which running programs can use a core from the Windows task manager. Right-click a process on the Processes pane and select Set Affinity. You’ll be able to select which physical CPUs (cores) the application can run on. You shouldn’t need to tweak this most of the time, although it can be helpful when you want to restrict a demanding application to certain cores or avoid bugs in old PC games. From the task manager, you can also use the Performance tab to view the usage of all your CPU cores. Hyper-Threading Intel CPUs use a technology referred to as “hyper-threading technology.” With hyper-threading, each physical core presents itself to the system as two logical cores. In the screenshot above, we’re not using an octo-core CPU – we’re using a quad-core CPU with hyper-threading. This improves performance to some degree, but a quad-core CPU with hyper-threading is nowhere near as good as an octo-core CPU. You still only have four physical cores, although some tricks allow them to do a bit more work at once. Have a question of your own about how technology works? Ask us on MakeUseOf Answers! This article was inspired by several good questions on MakeUseOf Answers. Image Credits: Nao lizuka on Flickr, Installing computer CPU on a motherboard via Shutterstock The post What Does “Dual Core” & “Quad Core” Mean? [MakeUseOf Explains] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

4 Ways To Take Time-Lapse Videos Posted: 06 May 2013 04:01 PM PDT Time-lapse videos are some of my favorite videos to watch. They're just so fascinating, whether the video shows the passage of time in a desert or the workflow of a sketch artist. There's just something about watching many hours crammed into a 2- or 3-minute clip that stimulates my interest and if you've never given much thought to time-lapse videos, you should really reconsider. Making your own time-lapse video can seem daunting, especially because you need to record a long length of video before you can cut it down into an actual lapse. However, as long as you can spare the time to record for a while, the actual process of lapsing the resulting video is made really easy with a handful of tools that you can grab for free. In this article, we'll take a look at time-lapse apps and programs that you can find and use on various platforms, so you'll have no excuse not to make one of these cool videos of your own. Lapse It [Android] Lapse It is a fantastic time-lapse video app for Android. Not only is it easy to learn and easy to use, and not only is it free, but it comes with a handy little video that explains how time-lapsing works and how you can achieve the time-lapse effect with the app. Don't have the time to watch it? Basically, Lapse It takes a single snapshot every so often, then combines all of those images to play back at 30 frames-per-second. Done. The Lapse It interface is both intuitive and responsive. It's really fast and well-designed, which means you can focus on making the time-lapse instead of figuring out what does what. Some really cool features you can find here: Customize the capture speed and the frame rate. Stop Motion mode which lets you create – you guessed it – stop motion videos. Add various video effects to the final video. Insert soundtracks into the final video. Export the final video to MOV, MP4 and FLV formats. Upload the result directly to Youtube, Facebook, Google+, and more. Lapse It has a Pro version for $1.99 USD that unlocks the front-facing camera on your device (if you have one) and lets you capture stunning images using the camera full sensor. Timelapse [iPhone] Timelapse is an iPhone app that lets you create professional-quality time-lapse sequences right on your iPhone. The app comes with two functions: Timelapse Classic, where you can snap individual photos that you will use later for professional post-production, or Timelapse Express, which handles all of the video creation right on the device. To use Timelapse Express, all you have to do is set the shoot duration, the length of the final video, select an audio track that you want to use in the result, set up the device to frame your shot, then let it do its thing. By the end, Timelapse Express will have created a complete HD video that you can share with your friends. Unfortunately, the free version is limited to 59 snapshots and 20 seconds in the final video. To remove those limitations, you'll need to upgrade to Timelapse Unlimited for £1.99. Timelapse [Windows Phone] Now, Windows Phone isn't exactly the most popular mobile device brand out on the market, but I know there are those of you out there who use it. It's actually been making its presence known over the past few years, so if you're using a Windows Phone and want to make a time-lapse video, give this app a try. Timelapse is a simple app that does the following: set a time interval between shots, then let it go do its thing. You can enable or disable flash and focus and you can change the snapshot resolutions if you want. The video linked above was created using Timelapse. Chronolapse [Windows] Time-lapse videos on mobile devices are great and all, but a desktop time-lapse program can do so much more for you depending on what sort of videos you plan on making. If you want to record nature then go ahead and use your phone, but if you want to create tutorials or workflow videos, then you'll need a time-lapser on your computer. Chronolapse is the perfect tool for this. Check out the video above to see what it can do (Ludum Dare is a 48-hour game coding contest). With Chronolapse, you can define a specific time interval and the program will take snapshots regularly, then process them into a video file when you're done. The best part? It can do screenshots, webcam shots, or both simultaneously. Some other features that might pull your fancy: Support for dual monitor screenshots. Support for picture-in-picture snapshots. Support for scheduled captures, even when you aren't there. Uses the MEncoder interface for encoding the final video. Add audio tracks to the final video if you want. Conclusion So there you have it: tools that will help you to take and create time-lapse videos. It's a photography technique that's rather simple in terms of technological difficulty, but it can produce some really awesome clips and effects. Give the apps above a run and tell us how they worked out for you in the comments! Image Credit: Starry Night Via Shutterstock The post 4 Ways To Take Time-Lapse Videos appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Void Your Bowels With Terror Thanks To FEWDIO’s Short Horror [Stuff to Watch] Posted: 06 May 2013 03:31 PM PDT From terrifying games to feature-length horror films, as humans we seem to love being scared. Getting the adrenaline pumping and stepping outside of our comfort zones doesn’t have to involve skydiving or a wing suit; many of us prefer to immerse ourselves in the horror genre instead. FEWDIO is a small studio that specialises in the horror genre. In this instance short horror films are a specialty, with more than 40 finished products viewable on their YouTube channel. By putting their hard work online, horror junkies like you and I can fill our pants as much as we like, for free! Don’t look behind you while watching this shortlist of FEWDIO’s warped catalogue! Bedfellows At 2 minutes 47 seconds total including titles and credits, Bedfellows is the very definition of a short horror film. The concept could have been lifted right out of the “oh shi-” moment in a bid budget production for its incredibly tense reveal moment. Really, this is a spark of absolute genius that will make your skin crawl using visuals rather than atmosphere alone. Bedfellows is the perfect FEWDIO film to watch first to get a taste for their unique brand of horror. The Prey When a wannabe gangster sees an old man headed to a pawn shop with a bag of gold jewellery, he has to tell his equally gang-affiliated friends. However when the three decide to take the old man for everything he’s got, things take a remarkably different turn to how they had imagined. Conviction Lovecraft fans rejoice, this is FEWDIO’s own tribute to the horror novelist. The production team have based the short on H. P. Lovecraft’s personal religious philosophy and a staple of horror films for years (and years to come): fear of the dark. Ninja Clown Monster With a name like Ninja Clown Monster, how can this short not be included? A must for anyone who read the Goosebumps series of books as a child or who fondly remembers Chucky’s murderous tendencies, this is one Childs Play-inspired short scene you probably won’t want to show your kids. Show Me Is there anything more terrifying than a lifeless doll? Probably, but dolls carry that lifeless, glassy-eyed look that has been celebrated by horror filmmakers for years now. Show Me is considerably longer than FEWDIO’s past films at nearly 13 minutes long, though that’s not to say it departs from the unsettling feeling so many of their videos generate. Road Rage Another slightly longer short at just under 10 minutes total, Road Rage might make you think twice about losing your temper while behind the wheel. As you’d expect from a film that uses anger as its catalyst there is liberal use of hand gestures and strong language. This is one incredibly effective short that gets the blood pumping in bright sunshine in a busy city. Neighbours Not the Australian TV series but another (seemingly normal at first) short from the scare factory themselves. There’s a very light sense of humour with a touch of menace here, generating a burning curiosity in the viewer which is in turn extinguished by the rather clever ending O.C.D. A girl who suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder decides to give Internet dating a go. The results are, as expected, unexpected. The film treads very carefully around the subject of O.C.D. before culminating in a suitably mind-blowing finale. Really… I’m just… what? Cleansed A short that wallows in the horror film staple that is blood. Lots and lots of blood. Probably best avoid this one if you don’t like (you guessed it) blood. The film takes the resulting mess of most thrillers and chillers – the crime scene – and turns it into a horror film of its own with some excellent special effects (and blood). Meet the FEWDIO Team If you’ve read this far and have become somewhat of a fan of the team who brought you these short movies then the video above, shot at Comic Con 2009, shines some light on the warped imaginations behind the horror. Seeing as it’s a few years old there’s no reference to the newer films like Road Rage or Show Me, but it’s an interesting chat nonetheless. The Rest You can check out even more short horror at the FEWDIO YouTube channel where you can subscribe to be kept in the loop about new uploads and trailers for upcoming releases. The team also has an official website, though at the time of writing it’s scheduled to be completely overhauled. Let’s hope this promising young production company continues to make some of the best indie short horror on the web, Personally, I can’t wait for the next upload. Have you seen any FEWDIO films? Any other similar studios specialising in chilling short horror? Leave a comment below this post and let us know what you think. The post Void Your Bowels With Terror Thanks To FEWDIO’s Short Horror [Stuff to Watch] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Keep a Digital Diary with Day One for Mac OS X and iOS Posted: 06 May 2013 02:30 PM PDT Everyone has a story to tell. It’s not always a story in need of an audience, like Harry Potter or a Song of Ice and Fire. Sometimes a story just needs to be told. Your story. You may want to continue the journal you started when you were just a kid, or keep a weekly account of your travels around the world. Maybe it’s thoughts, not events that need writing down. We won’t guess to the particulars of your story, but let me ask: how do you plan on penning it down? An old-fashioned notebook works wonders, of course. I love me one of those leather-cover pockets. Ultimately, however, I’m mostly partial to a digital journal. Aaron Couch covered seven ways to keep a digital journal earlier this year. Day One is a good alternative for Mac OS X and iOS users, a great application aching to serve as your digital scribe, across platforms. Day One (Mac $9.99 + iOS $4.99) Day One is a journal or digital diary application that works across devices. You’ll find it on your Mac OS X computer, or on iOS; a universal application for the iPhone and iPad. Day One keeps a uniform design across these platforms and makes you feel at home regardless of where you’re jotting down your notes. Alas, you won’t find a Windows or Android client. Instead there’s an alternative diary for Android called Memoires which Saikat reviewed, last year. Day One’s Mac OS X version retails at $9.99 in the Mac App Store, for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and upwards. On the other hand, Day One for iOS has a price tag of $4.99 in the iTunes App Store. If you do purchase both, Day One will keep your data in sync across devices using Dropbox or iCloud magic. However, each client is standalone and can be used as your primary (even only) Day One client. Look and Feel One of the things that swayed my favor to Day One is its look and feel. There aren’t a lot of beautiful diary applications, another exception being Nancy Messieh’s suggestion Everyday.me for the iPhone. Rather than trying to mimic a ‘real’ journal, with post-its and fake coffee blots (putting the ‘ew’ back in GUI), Day One looks simple and stylish. Simple lines and simple fonts, yet great typography make Day One a pleasure on the eye. The design is slightly different across different platforms, but a theme clearly emerges. Day One may look simple, but that just serves to make it pretty, not limited. You can add rich content to your journals; break up the text with pictures and more advanced markdown. There’s even an option to insert the current weather conditions from your iOS device, if you want. In the Mac version, Day One displays a big date in the header. Any new entry you create on an empty day will include this elegant typographic contraption, giving every day the look of a new chapter in a book. A new entry on the same day will just be added below the first, with a new timestamp, as shown in the screenshot above. This makes Day One suited for most common diary types, from the short blurbs illustrated with a picture from your cellphone, painting a timeline of your day one frame at a time; or the long format plain-text journals that read more like a book than anything else. Reminders and Menu Bar Entries If you automatically reach for your journal in a quiet moment, I’m very happy for you. But a lot of us need some encouragement to keep going. It’s a little too easy to postpone adding an entry, and memory fails the best of us when enough time passes. For the forgetful and the procrastinators in the audience, Day One offers reminders, both on Mac OS X and iOS. On iOS, you can choose between daily, weekly or monthly reminders. The Mac OS X version gives you a little more flexibility, allowing you to pick anything between 15 minutes and one week. In any case, you can choose the time you’d prefer to be reminded. Maybe at morning, over morning coffee, or during your break at work. On Mac OS X, the Day One menu bar app provides an easy way to add a quick text-only entry. Although you can use the menu bar input method at any given time, it’s especially useful if the reminders guilt you into writing a small blurb. Access And Search Your Diary or Journal Not only is it important for a diary-keeping application to be pleasant as a writing tool. Revisiting those stories and memories should be easy and fun as well. Luckily, Day One succeeds here, offering multiple ways to peruse your own writings. The calendar view is best to get an overview. It’s a simple idea—a calendar setting apart days with entries—but it works well. The calendar lets you pick out a single day of entries; good if you’re looking for something specific. Pressing the timeline icon (the three horizontal lines) gives you a more conventional diary layout. Entry excerpts from different days follow one another in a continuously scrolling view, per year. If that doesn’t fit your bill, you can still use One Day’s search functionality, singling out entries with specific keywords. Conclusion Either of the Day One clients — iOS or Mac OS X — can be used as a great standalone diary application, easily trumping bloated competitors. If you’re willing to pay twice, the applications will work in tandem, synchronising across Dropbox or iCloud. Either way, the stylish and clean interface just makes you want to keep writing. And if you forget, Day One has you covered. Download: Day One for OS X ($9.99) / Day One for iOS ($4.99) Do you keep a journal? Let us know how you keep track of your personal story in the comments section below! The post Keep a Digital Diary with Day One for Mac OS X and iOS appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Are These Circles Moving? 6 Places To Find Amazing Optical Illusions Online Posted: 06 May 2013 01:01 PM PDT Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve adored optical illusions. Believe it or not, but 1993 found me browsing my parents’ hefty Escher art book, looking for more and more drawings I couldn’t quite figure out. This fascination continued through the famous Autostereogram era, when I learned to see those cool 3D images in seconds, becoming a source of jealousy to all my cross-eyed friends. Optical illusions, be it Escher-style drawings, surprising geometrical shapes, well-taken photographs, or even intricate video illusions, are a great way to pass some idle moments, without resorting to yet another endless Facebook or Twitter browse. It can also be quite an educational one — what better way is there to learn about things such as complimentary colors but seeing them with your own eyes? Not surprisingly, the Web is full of visual illusions of all kinds, and if you enter the words “optical illusions” in your trusty Google search box, you’ll find many good specimens. But here at MakeUseOf, we strive to doing the hard work for you, scanning the multitudes of Google results, and finding the absolute best places to get some optical illusion fun. So get ready to be amazed! Optical Spy Can you believe that all center dots in the cubes above are the same size? Optical Spy is a great place to find dozens of original optical illusions, visual challenges, amazing anamorphic street art, and other visual gems. The website is divided into different categories, and includes a blog where you can read more about special visual effects and why they occur. If you like visual challenges such as hidden words or tasks you have to complete only with your eyes, you’re going to love Optical Spy. Mighty Optical Illusions The above video shows a simple immobile structure, but for some reason, balls placed on it defy the law of gravity. This is one of the many illusions you’ll find on Mighty Optical Illusions. The website has been around for quite a while — long enough to have been mentioned in our previous post about optical illusions back in 2010. Mighty Optical Illusions is a mighty collection of everything that’s visually interesting, including photos taken at just the right moment, works of art, and videos, along with regular illusions. Many of the illusions come with fascinating explanations, and the “Random Illusion” button on top can keep you busy for hours. I did find that videos in posts sometimes don’t match the text above them, but all in all the website offers a fun experience. Illusion of the Year Look at the mask above, do you see anything special about it? If not, I’ll solve the mystery for you at the end of this paragraph. Illusion of the Year brings together amazing illusions from all over, picking the best ones every year. The illusions are sometimes created especially for the contest, so it’s a good place to find illusions you won’t find on other websites. The Illusion of the Year website is not the best looking one I’ve ever seen, but sections such as the top rated illusions are a real gem for illusion lovers. And no, I didn’t forget about the image above! Look carefully in the center part of the mask, is it really one face, or two faces of a man and a woman kissing? Brain Bashers Are the lines on the board straight or curvy? Brain Bashers is a website dedicated to much more than optical illusions, but its optical-illusion section boasts a respectable collection of what I would call “classic” illusions, like the one you see above. Despite its unimpressive looks, Brain Bashers offers a fun experience for illusion lovers, as it turns many optical illusions into dynamic challenges. Most illusions featured on Brain Bashers comes with a bar you can move your mouse over. When you hover over the bar, the image changes, and the solution comes to light. Try it! Pinterest Can you manage to see 4 complete circles? As a social network dedicated solely to images, Pinterest is the perfect place to find cool illusions. All you have to do is search for them. The search will not yield a consistent feed of optical illusions, but will definitely bring up some cool visual games and puns you’re bound to enjoy. And since Pinterest’s results rely on the way people categorize their pins, and not on Google’s algorithms, there’s lots to be found you may miss on a simple Google search. Brusspup – Illusions and Science Looking for some awesome visual illusions on video? Tim already found 10 incredible ones you really don’t want to miss in a previous Stuff to Watch article. After you’re done with those, though, you’re going to want to head over to the brusspup YouTube Channel, and watch everything you can get your hands on. Some of these already appear in Tim’s post, but there’s plenty more to watch. Believe me, you don’t want to miss these. Your Turn The real challenge with finding good optical illusions online is that many of them hide under websites that look like they were made in the early 90s. This doesn’t mean there aren’t other good websites I missed, or never managed to find. Know of a wonderful place to see some optical illusions? Do you even like optical illusions? Tell us all about it in the comments! Image credit: Optical Spy The post Are These Circles Moving? 6 Places To Find Amazing Optical Illusions Online appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Invitation: Join a MakeUseOf Hangout Posted: 06 May 2013 12:16 PM PDT MakeUseOf wants to hear from you! We poll you, we ask you, we anticipate your comments, we encourage conversations on Twitter and Facebook, we let you peek behind the scenes on Pinterest, we appreciate your questions, and now we even want to hang out with you. We at MakeUseOf want to get up close and personal with our readers and 9 of you will get the chance to meet me virtually. Sound interesting? Well, would you like to hang out with me? Do you have time this Friday, May 10th, at 5pm London, UK time? Are you a regular MakeUseOf reader? Do you know how Google+ Hangouts work? Do you have a working microphone and camera? And would you like to chat with me about MakeUseOf, how you use technology, and what your expectations as a reader are? If you answered yes to all of these questions, you’re a perfect candidate for our first Google-powered Hangout! Please fill in this short form by this Thursday 8am London, UK time to let us know you would like to join. 9 people from as many different countries and age brackets as possible will be invited to join me. Participants will be announced Thursday. Everyone else is welcome to watch the Hangout On Air. Watch the comment thread for the URL. If you cannot make it to this Hangout, you are welcome to fill in the form anyway and let us know what would be a better time for you in case we repeat this and what you would like to chat about. You can also leave your comments below. Looking forward to hearing from you! The post Invitation: Join a MakeUseOf Hangout appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Hazel – Performing Tasks On Your Mac So You Don’t Have To Posted: 06 May 2013 12:01 PM PDT I have previously written an entire MUO guide about using Apple’s smart folders and Automator program, but a classic third-party application called Hazel is one of my personal automation  assistants that works in the background, requiring no keyboard shortcuts and mouse clicks on my part. Hazel is an automation program that essentially goes into action when files are added or changes are made to designated folders. Automator includes similar functionality, but Hazel is much easier to use and faster on the draw. I have Hazel rules that automatically open new applications added to my Applications folder, change the file size of screenshots, automatically clear off files on my desktop after a certain period of time, and move PDF files in my Downloads folder to a designated folder in my Dropbox account (more about Dropbox here.) Hazel costs $25, but you can download it for a free 14-day trial to discover just how useful it can be. How It Works Hazel basically watches folders that you assign rules to. So, for example, you could set up a rule in which Hazel automatically opens PDF documents, or any files, when they are downloaded or added to your Downloads folder. Once you set up the rule, and it works correctly, you don’t have to do anything else to Hazel in order for it to perform actions. Hazel gets installed in your System Preferences, but you can choose to interact with it from your menu bar. The best way to learn what Hazel can do is to download the trial version and try out some of the rules described in this article. Hazel comes loaded with a few sample rules, but you will better understand what it can do by creating your own rule first. Let’s start off by having it perform an action on your Downloads folder. On the left side of the Hazel interface, click on the + button at the bottom, and in the drop-down window navigate to and select your Downloads folder. Next, click on the + button under Rules, and set up the conditions as I have done in the screenshot below. Click OK. If you already have PDF documents in your Downloads folder, Hazel will automatically run the rule and open them. Otherwise, locate a PDF on your computer or download one from our MUO Guides page and add it to your Downloads folder. Keep in mind, Hazel will automatically run a rule assigned to your Downloads folder. However, you can temporarily stop Hazel from running by clicking on its icon in your menu bar. Rules & Conditions The heaviest amount of work done in Hazel is setting up rules and conditions, and testing them out. Any time Hazel detects changes to designated folders that it monitors, it will run the rules you set up for those folders, so be careful how you apply the rules. When setting up a rule, you will first want to determine if you want to apply the rule to "all", "any", or "none"of a designated types of files or matching folders. Note, rules can also be applied to sub-folders and files. Next, you want to think about what type of files or conditions you want Hazel to monitor and act on. Hazel includes dozens of conditions to choose from, based on the type of things that we normally do on our computer. You may, for example, set up rules to act upon files added to a designated folder in the last hour or day, or when last modified or opened. Your rule(s) may apply to only certain kinds of files, e.g. Movie, Image, Application, or Text files. This means, for example, that if you set up a rule for your Downloads folder to only apply to PDFs, then Hazel will ignore other kinds of files added to that folder. Of course, you can click on the + button and add additional conditions for your rule. For example, since the Desktop is really a large folder, I have a Hazel rule that moves any files on my desktop that have been there more than three hours to a designated Junk Folder. As you can see in the screenshot below, I also added another condition in which Hazel will ignore any file with the name "hold”. I also have two similar rules – one set up that will change the dimension size of PNG files that are either greater than 580 pixels in width or height. The second part of any Hazel rule is have it perform a certain action or set of actions. As you can see in the screenshot below, Hazel can perform the type of actions we normally do manually, including moving, copying, renaming, opening, or revealing designated files in the Finder. For example, you might set up a rule that watches your Public folder for any new files added in the last five minutes. I set up another Hazel rule that moves all PDFs added to my Downloads folder to a designated folder in my Dropbox account. I use this rule because I typically read PDFs on my iPad in which I access and open them from the designated Dropbox folder. I have another rule that sets the color label of individual applications in my Applications folder, red, if they have not been opened in the last 465 days. I activate this rule only when I want to select and delete applications I have not used in a long time. And to quickly remove the red color labels, I of course, set up another rule to do just that. Again, I only activate this when I need it. The best way to get the most out of Hazel or any automation program is to think about actions that you perform manually on a regular basis. If you give this some thought, those redundant actions can typically be done for you by programs like Hazel, Automator, or another one of my favorite programs, Keyboard Maestro. Let me know what you think of Hazel and how you use it to manage tasks on Mac. The post Hazel – Performing Tasks On Your Mac So You Don’t Have To appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Not Just For Coders: Top Version Control Systems For Writers Posted: 06 May 2013 11:01 AM PDT For years, my computer has been a chaotic jumble of documents with names like “work-document01″, “work-document01.1″ and so on. I gave them a semblance of organization with timestamped folders. But that was just a false front for my lack of smart organization, or the more complete lack of knowledge about version control systems and how they can be effective for writers. The mention of version control or revision control makes it seem like something for geeks. You will be surprised to know that version control systems have their place not only in academic writing but in anything that has to do with typing an alphabet on a document. As writers, we know the word draft. But draft is a mere rough sketch and it doesn’t actually take us back in time to the incremental changes we make. With a draft, you would be lost if someone asks you to go back in time and show them the changes you made on a specific date. With version control, you can. Why Should Writers Use A Version Control System? Software developers use version control systems like Git as essential tools. Git is a popular and advanced version control system which takes some learning. If you do try to learn Git, you will be introduced to terms like Repository or repo which is the main database for storing all files – current and historical — related to a project. Branch suggests that someone is creating a separate copy of a file for personal use or testing. Merge or patch denotes the application of changes from one file to another. Revision represents a version of the source code. While Head is the latest revision, Changelog lists all changes made to a file. These few basic definitions should give you a basic idea behind a version control system and how a writing project can benefit from the organized approach of tracking changes with a VCS. The benefits are not difficult to understand. Track incremental backups and recover: Every document can be backed up automatically and restored at a second’s notice. Track every change: Every infinitesimal change can be recorded and can be used to revert a file to an earlier state. Track writing experiments: Writing experiments can be sandboxed to copies while keeping the main file intact. Track co-authoring and collaboration: Teams can work independently on their own files, but merge them into a latest revision – common to the team. Track individual contributions: Good VCS systems tag changes with authors who make them. Once you get into using organized revisions, immediate benefits like overseeing the evolution of a document over time become apparent. The good thing is that you don’t have to use specialized tools like Git or Subversion. You can lean on some common tools to implement basic forms of version control that you already might be using as a writer. Simple Version Control With Dropbox My friend Bakari mentioned version control with Dropbox in passing when he said it’s one of the uses for Dropbox you may not have thought of. Using a cloud storage solution like Dropbox gives you an added dimension as you can access revisions from anywhere. Understanding the Dropbox version of version control is a no-brainer. Dropbox saves snapshots of every change in your Dropbox folder over the last 30 days. If you are a Pro or Business user, you can avail of the Packrat feature to keep unlimited changes for unlimited time. Save your document in the Dropbox folder. As you can see below, I have created a demo folder and a demo file and saved it in my local Dropbox folder that syncs with the cloud. Right-click on the local Dropbox folder and browse to the Dropbox website. Another right-click on the specific file shows you the option to check any previous versions of a file. Choose Previous Versions and Dropbox will display an online list of the various snapshots Dropbox has taken during the history of the file. Pick a time from which to restore; select the radio button to the left of the file and press the Restore button. Points Of Note: Dropbox allows you to share a file. Any modifications made will be recorded against the name of the person who has made it. Dropbox does not have real-time synchronous collaboration features, so the first person’s name that saves a revision will be displayed. The other will be displayed as a conflicting copy. Dropbox does not automatically save your document. Dropbox does not merge changes. Going To Google Docs Google Docs brings real-time synchronous editing to documents. Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides have a revision history pane that shows at a glance all changes made to a document by each co-author. To access revision history, follow these steps: Go to File – See revision history. The Revision history panel opens on the right with detailed timestamps and author name. Collaborative edits will be displayed like this: Changes made by specific collaborators are color coded in the body of the document in the color matched against the individual in the revision history pane. Click on Restore this revision to display a version from a particular time. Click the X in the upper right of the ‘Document History’ pane to return to the current version of the document. Points Of Note: Google Docs automatically saves your document. Google Docs has a Show more detailed revisions option to display finer revisions. Google automatically deletes revisions after 30 days or 100 revisions to conserve space. Don’t forget, with Google Docs integration with Hangouts, this rudimentary version control becomes more useful. Manage Versions & Track Changes With Microsoft Word While MS Word does not have true version control, you can automatically save versions of your file while working on them with the AutoRecover feature. It’s more of an emergency feature in case of a crash rather than an explicit way to manage versions. I had shown you how to auto save documents with AutoRecover in MS Word 2007. The idea remains the same. You will find the AutoRecover setting in MS Word 2010 and 2013 under File – Options – Save. By default, it is turned on. To recover a file, go to File – Info. Under Versions, choose the file you want to recover according to the timestamp. On the yellow bar which appears at the top of the document, click on Compare. Clicking on Restore overwrites any earlier saved versions. Clicking on Compare gives you this review screen: The Manage Versions dropdown also helps you recover draft versions or delete all draft versions of a document. The Track Changes feature in MS Word allows a reviewer to make changes to a document, and Word keeps a track of the changes proposed. Its real value comes up when two or more people are working on a document – let’s say a writer and an editor.  It is also an essential tool for co-authoring documents. Here is a YouTube video which shows Track Changes in action: That’s the closest you can come to a method of versioning with MS Word. Points Of Note: Implementation of version control in MS Office documents needs the help of add-ins like TortoiseSVN which is a Subversion client for Office. Draft – Because Nothing Else Cuts It Nathan Kontny, who is the man behind this writer’s tool, calls Draft a better version control system for writing. He felt shortchanged by Google Docs and doesn’t like the learning curve of Git. Draft is the version control system for writers which removes the complexity and actually makes collaboration smart. Though, Draft deserves a full review, for the sake of brevity I will stick to its core features. It starts with a simple sign-in. The Draft interface is like a minimalist text editor. Simply start writing. You can mark changes and save them as drafts. You can have multiple drafts. Changes from one to the next are color coded. You can restore or delete any draft. You can compare all your drafts and see how it has changed with time. With collaboration, writers work on their version of the document, and the main writer gets to accept or ignore each individual change. Import your documents from Dropbox, Evernote, Box, and Google Drive. Changes can be auto-synced back to the cloud services. You can transfer a file via FTP or upload it from your desktop. Image uploads are allowed. Draft allows you to leave comments and notes. Draft has a Chrome extension that works on any turns any text area on the into an editable block. The full features on Draft are well explained. It definitely is a tool you should have in your arsenal if you are a writer. If you appreciated the simple elegance of Draft, then it’s easy to see how it stands out from any of the other tools. When it comes to version control for a writing task, I personally like to keep things simple…with the focus on writing. Draft ticks the “write” boxes. What about you? Do you use version control consciously? Give it a thought and come back to us with your comments. Image Credit: Abstract White Masks via Shutterstock The post Not Just For Coders: Top Version Control Systems For Writers appeared first on MakeUseOf.

iCan’t: 5 Things Android Users Take For Granted and iPhone Users Just Can’t Do Posted: 06 May 2013 10:00 AM PDT Have you ever thought that there might be a reason Android users brag about their customizability? Sure, as an iPhone user, you can add and configure apps, change your wallpaper, and otherwise make yourself feel at home. But at the end of the day, you’ve only changed a few small details. If you happen to have jailbreaked your iPhone to run Cydia and are enjoying some of the best Cydia tweaks, you can do more. But users with stock iOS are able to do much less. Don’t believe me? Check out these different things that Android users can do but iOS users cannot. From changing your keyboard to using a live wallpaper to putting an entirely new face on your phone (in the form of a launcher), Android lets you customize your phones in remarkably flexible ways. Keyboards If you don’t like the keyboard on your iPhone, tough luck. Without jailbreaking the device, there’s no way to get a different keyboard app on your iPhone. On the contrary, Android is built to allow users to choose between different installed keyboards, from the very capable default keyboard to Swype to SwiftKey. This not only allows for different looking keyboards, but also different typing mechanisms (tapping versus swiping) and prediction algorithms for those fast typers with low accuracy. I’m not saying that the iPhone’s keyboard is bad, but I highly doubt that every iPhone user likes it and those picky users will just have to endure. Home Screen Mechanics The iPhone’s home screen is one of the most iconic features of the iOS platform — big icons in a 4×4 grid (or 4×5 grid with the iPhone 5) and four buttons along the bottom bar for commonly accessed apps. Besides changing the wallpaper and rearranging the order of the icons, there’s nothing that the iPhone user can do to change how it looks. For example, a mechanic that annoy me would be the fact that I cannot move an icon from the very top of the screen to the very bottom — all icons fill in row by row. At least iPhone users can move their icons onto a new page. Widgets Android launchers also have another cool feature that is entirely lacking in iOS — widgets. These nifty tools can be placed anywhere in your home screens and offer quick access to the related app’s functionality. For example, the Wunderlist widget will display your to-do list, the New York Times widget can be configured to show the latest news, and weather widgets can show the forecast for your location. Widgets can usually be resized, too. Launchers I absolutely love the default Android launcher, but others may want to use other alternatives. With Android, you can install additional launchers and choose which one you’d like to use. Each launcher can offer different functionality, such as themes and the ability to add more pages to your home screen. With iOS, this is also completely impossible as Apple wants everyone using the same launcher. Wallpapers Android includes some creative features with wallpapers to give your phone a nice touch with small details. Whenever you set a new image as your wallpaper, you can choose how you’d like to resize it, as well as determine whether the image should be “scrollable” or not. When set to scrollable, the wallpaper moves left and right as you switch between different pages in your home screen. Otherwise, the wallpaper would remain completely still as you switch between pages in your home screen. Additionally, Android also offers the use of live, animated wallpapers. These cool wallpapers are similar to Windows Vista’s DreamScene wallpapers; however, are more appropriate on a smartphone as they usually include smooth animations and other computer-generated objects, and not a real-life video. Some live wallpapers animate on their own, while others react to the user’s touch. They can be pretty fun to mess around with, and with (usually) minimal battery impact. Android vs iPhone – Conclusion Believe me now? Android users can change some significant stuff to their phones, without having to resort to rooting or installing custom ROMs. I’m sure this list isn’t entirely inclusive of all things Android users can do that iPhone users cannot, but it gives you a good idea of how you can do more with Android. What’s your favorite feature of your Android or iOS device? What do you wish it could have that the competitor has? Let us know in the comments! Image Credits: Ricky Romero The post iCan’t: 5 Things Android Users Take For Granted and iPhone Users Just Can’t Do appeared first on MakeUseOf.

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