15 New Articles on MakeUseOf

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• Cool Websites and Tools – August 12th – Create Dynamic Videos, Rent Out Your Car, & HTML5 Animation
• Looking For Feedback For Your Fiction? Check Out These 4 Websites
• 3 Things That Almost Make Final Fantasy Feel Like A Consistent Series
• 3 Ways To Make Your Smartphone Communications More Secure
• 50 Things Every Geek Should Know
• 4 Ways To Bulletproof Windows XP Forever
• Watch Hilarious Reviews Of Terrible Products, Awful Food & Geeky Wares With Ashens [Stuff to Watch]
• Need A New Game? Candy Crush Is Boring Compared To This One [Android]
• Sismics Reader: A Simple Local Alternative To Google Reader
• Internet Censorship In The UK – Why It Won’t Work
• Android TV Boxes: What Are They, And What Can They Do?
• NVIDIA Shield Review And Giveaway
• YouTube Founders Launch Challenge To Vine & Instagram: MixBit [Updates]
• Stop. Breathe. Relax. 7 iOS Apps To Relieve Stress
• 8 Tumblr Blogs To Download Stunning Wallpaper Images

Cool Websites and Tools – August 12th – Create Dynamic Videos, Rent Out Your Car, & HTML5 Animation Posted: 12 Aug 2013 03:00 PM PDT Today in Cool Websites and Tools, we take a look at 5 cool websites, including a dynamic video creator, an iPhone app for creating simple graph charts, a site for renting out your vehicle, an online animation tool for making javascript and HTML5 animation, and an iOS app for adding notes to your smart device home screen. MixBit – is a new app that helps people create dynamic videos together. It lets you record, edit and publish videos as short as one second or as long as an hour—right from your mobile phone. You can also create videos without needing... Read the full article: Cool Websites and Tools – August 12th – Create Dynamic Videos, Rent Out Your Car, & HTML5 Animation

Looking For Feedback For Your Fiction? Check Out These 4 Websites Posted: 12 Aug 2013 02:30 PM PDT The number one rule when writing fiction is that most of the writing happens in the rewrite. Once you’ve typed out that monstrous first draft, you're going to want a fresh set of eyes (or several fresh sets of eyes) to look over your work and give you feedback. After all, you can't fix something if you don't know what's wrong with it and this applies whether you're writing novels or screenplays. One way to go about it is to hire a freelance editor but they can cost you a pretty penny — upwards of hundreds, if not thousands, of... Read the full article: Looking For Feedback For Your Fiction? Check Out These 4 Websites

3 Things That Almost Make Final Fantasy Feel Like A Consistent Series Posted: 12 Aug 2013 02:10 PM PDT It’s quite ironic that one of RPGs‘ most successful series of all-time doesn’t behave much like a series at all. If you’re a gamer of any sort, you’ve surely heard of Final Fantasy. It is a franchise that lifted off in 1987 and has gone big places since. While I’m of the opinion that the later games in the series stray far away from the great roots that earlier games planted, it’s not worth arguing that Final Fantasy has cemented a legacy in the genre forever. Assuming you’re one of the crazy folk who have never played a single game... Read the full article: 3 Things That Almost Make Final Fantasy Feel Like A Consistent Series

3 Ways To Make Your Smartphone Communications More Secure Posted: 12 Aug 2013 01:00 PM PDT Don’t Trust Anyone. That used to be something only the paranoid said, but then something happened along the way. We became informed. We learned that people could listen on on the telephone’s party line, so we paid the extra for a private line. Then we knew our kids or our parents could overhear us on the phone on the wall, so we got multiple lines for our home. Then we could suddenly get a cellphone and have our own private phones anywhere we wanted. Total privacy! Or so we thought, as our words and information went flying through the air.... Read the full article: 3 Ways To Make Your Smartphone Communications More Secure

50 Things Every Geek Should Know Posted: 12 Aug 2013 12:30 PM PDT If you’re a geek, then you should know how to hide stuff in a JPEG image, why people should “try turning it off and on again” before they call the IT department, know the One Ring to rule them all quote from Lord of the Rings. You should also know how to spend Bitcoin, and know how to set up a LAN party. Out of these 50, how many things did you know? If it’s less than 10, you obviously need to spend more time here at MakeUseOf. Click to enlarge. via VirtualHosting Read the full article: 50 Things Every Geek Should Know

4 Ways To Bulletproof Windows XP Forever Posted: 12 Aug 2013 12:03 PM PDT Windows XP is slated to be exterminated for good by Microsoft in April of 2014. It is the last stage of a multi-year effort to kill off the operating system. Microsoft previously cut support for any system running SP2, driving a massive effort across corporations to ensure their systems were all up to SP3. As of April of 2014, even that will no longer be supported with patch updates by Microsoft. We certainly fell in love with XP here at MakeUseOf, just like everyone else. Even on my recent article on the Windows XP virtual machine, readers were commenting about... Read the full article: 4 Ways To Bulletproof Windows XP Forever

Watch Hilarious Reviews Of Terrible Products, Awful Food & Geeky Wares With Ashens [Stuff to Watch] Posted: 12 Aug 2013 11:30 AM PDT A few years ago I featured two of my favourite YouTube members in an early Stuff to Watch post about geeky tech reviews, one of which was Lazy Game Reviews and the other was Ashens. Going by his real name of Stuart Ashen, Ashens puts the worst examples of technology, video games, toys, food and other cut-price-crap through its paces for our entertainment. The YouTuber now enjoys success outside of YouTube as a full blown comedian, and he has literally (this week) released the long-awaited film, Ashens and The Quest for the Game Child, for free! So, in addition to... Read the full article: Watch Hilarious Reviews Of Terrible Products, Awful Food & Geeky Wares With Ashens [Stuff to Watch]

Need A New Game? Candy Crush Is Boring Compared To This One [Android] Posted: 12 Aug 2013 11:02 AM PDT Let me be straight about this: games are not my forte. Not only do I not have time to play most days, I’m also extremely picky when it comes to mobile games. Yes, I got addicted to Temple Run (who didn’t?), and maybe several other iPad games, but I’m usually very hard to please, and only very specific types of games get me coming back for more. At first glance, I Need A Hero did not seem like the right kind of game at all. The name sounds cheesy, the graphics and music did not impress me, and the background... Read the full article: Need A New Game? Candy Crush Is Boring Compared To This One [Android]

Sismics Reader: A Simple Local Alternative To Google Reader Posted: 12 Aug 2013 10:00 AM PDT You are most likely aware by now that Google Reader is dead. You may have moved on to Feedly, like many of our readers, or one of the other great Google Reader alternatives. But what happens if your chosen service decides to call it quits? Or what happens if their servers go down? The only 100% reliable way to not have your hopes and dreams crushed by another RSS service is to host your own. That’s where Sismics Reader comes in. Sismics Reader is an open source, free alternative to Google Reader that allows you to host the service on... Read the full article: Sismics Reader: A Simple Local Alternative To Google Reader

Internet Censorship In The UK – Why It Won’t Work Posted: 12 Aug 2013 09:20 AM PDT I’m not a parent. I’ve not had the experience of creating a tiny version of myself and bringing it into the world. I’ve never experienced what it’s like to take responsibility for a tiny, innocent baby and then bring them up as best you know how. But the fundamental concept of parenthood isn’t lost on me. You have a child, and you love it and you keep it from harm with the aim of creating a happy, productive adult. It is for this reason why I can understand the motives behind David ‘webcameron‘ Cameron’s proposed mandatory, ISP level filtering of... Read the full article: Internet Censorship In The UK – Why It Won’t Work

Android TV Boxes: What Are They, And What Can They Do? Posted: 12 Aug 2013 08:59 AM PDT High-definition video is not the easiest task that can be thrown at a device – far from it – but, even so, mobile processors have become incredibly good at showing 1080p video without lag or stuttering on a wide range of displays. This, combined with the low power, makes smartphone hardware ideal of streaming television. Companies like Apple, Roku and Western Digital have already capitalized on this with their set-top boxes, but now a new wave of Android options has hit the market. Typically available for between $60 and $100, and often sold as a “Google TV” or “XBMC Streaming”... Read the full article: Android TV Boxes: What Are They, And What Can They Do?

NVIDIA Shield Review And Giveaway Posted: 12 Aug 2013 08:40 AM PDT Recently, we reviewed the Wikipad, which managed to make its way to market before NVIDIA’s highly anticipated Shield. Ever since NVIDIA showcased the Shield at CES, I’ve found myself more and more fascinated by it. After enjoying other Android gaming tablets, I assumed I would absolutely love the NVIDIA Shield, which certainly looks like the pinnacle of Android gaming devices. So does it live up to the hype? Does its powerful Tegra 4 processor make for a gaming experience unlike anything else? Or is it more power than any game can fully utilize? For all these answers and more, keep reading the... Read the full article: NVIDIA Shield Review And Giveaway

YouTube Founders Launch Challenge To Vine & Instagram: MixBit [Updates] Posted: 12 Aug 2013 08:30 AM PDT YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen recently launched their answer to Vine and Instagram for iOS and the Web on Thursday, and the Android version is set to be released in several weeks. The new personal video app called MixBit takes a cue from its predecessors by letting users record brief 16-second videos on their smartphones. Following the trend of mini-videos, smartphone filmmakers can produce clips with an app powered by the original creators of widespread home video distribution. However, unlike Vine and Instagram, MixBit takes a cue from the YouTube mothership and implements several unique editing and sharing features. For... Read the full article: YouTube Founders Launch Challenge To Vine & Instagram: MixBit [Updates]

Stop. Breathe. Relax. 7 iOS Apps To Relieve Stress Posted: 12 Aug 2013 07:48 AM PDT What a stressful day! Do you ever find it impossible to relax after an especially annoying day? We all have them from time to time, and while the best possible way to relax (at least in my book) is to leave everything and take a walk outside, this is sometimes not possible due to weather, children and other constraints. Did you ever think of turning to your smartphone in order to relax? Of course you did. Trying to wind down, you fire up Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or even your email, and 8 times out of 10, find yourself even more... Read the full article: Stop. Breathe. Relax. 7 iOS Apps To Relieve Stress

8 Tumblr Blogs To Download Stunning Wallpaper Images Posted: 12 Aug 2013 07:00 AM PDT Are you big fans of Tumblr? Here at MakeUseOf, we certainly are. The blogging platform brings together the idea of blogging together with social networking and has become home to some of the most creative, entertaining, humorous and thoughtful posts we’ve ever come across. With an easy-to-use backend that lends itself to both creating new content and sharing content that you like, it is home to some of the most viral content on the Web. The sheer amount of content on Tumblr, which makes it a joy to browse (as well as  very easy to lose hours of your day in the... Read the full article: 8 Tumblr Blogs To Download Stunning Wallpaper Images

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