4 New Articles on MakeUseOf

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• Cool Websites and Tools [April 27th 2013]
• Building A New Character On Path Of Exile? Check These 3 Sites
• How Microsoft Overhauled User Accounts In Windows 8
• One Of The Most Important Tools In Linux – Understanding Chmod

Cool Websites and Tools [April 27th 2013] Posted: 27 Apr 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!   Weavly – Are you looking for a fun way to make some cool video clips by mixing together YouTube videos, Loopcam animated GIFs and music from SoundCloud? With these three services, you can mix together some really cool stuff. Of course, finding a way to get all three of the services together is easier said than done. With the cool website Weavly, you can edit your videos with ease. Read more: Weavly: Remix YouTube Videos, Loopcam GIFs, And SoundCloud Tracks   Jitouch 2 – One of the coolest features of the Apple Magic Mouse and the trackpad is the use of gestures. You can accomplish all kinds of things without taking your hand off the mouse or trackpad. While Apple offers lots of options, it could most certainly offer more, and that's where jitouch 2 comes into play. Read more: jitouch 2: Add Lots More Gestures To MacBook & Magic Mouse     Coub – GIF images perfectly communicate the message in an animation without requiring a lot of loading data and while keeping things succinct. If there is one flaw to the GIF animation format, it is the lack of audio. GIF animations with audio is what is offered by a new web service called Coub. Read more: Coub: Create Entertaining 10 Second Videos To Play The Role Of GIFs On Your Website     Pixplit – Photo collages are a visually appealing way to showcase images and share them. But this can be time consuming. What you need to make the creation of such collages easier is to split the task so that your friends have access to the collage and can add their own images. Here to help you do that is Pixplit. Read more: Pixplit: Create Social Photo Collages Using Pictures Of Yourself & Friends [iOS]     Reflap – The language of the Internet has moved to more elastic and flexible platforms like tweets and Facebook updates. Before, everyone was online on Yahoo Messenger or MSN Messenger so creating group chats and video conferences was easy. Now, you have to schedule online chats. Fortunately, a new website called Reflap lets you connect with your friends and family through video chatting. Read more: Reflap: Get A Permanent Address For Quick Video Chats   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 [April 27th 2013] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Building A New Character On Path Of Exile? Check These 3 Sites Posted: 27 Apr 2013 07:31 PM PDT I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - Path of Exile has done better for the ARPG genre than Blizzard has with Diablo III. It’s my opinion that Path of Exile is a better game in practically ever facet imaginable. Sure, there’s no “real money auction house,” but does anyone actually like that anyway? Nearly two months ago, I brought a post to MUO that introduced readers to five resources that can help you improve your Path of Exile gameplay and better understand this game. It’s an extremely deep and complex ARPG, and to be a solid player you will definitely need to read up. One of the most dynamic aspects of Path of Exile is the passive skill tree. In conjunction with the items system and skill gems, it makes for some very unique builds. In this article, I’d like to show you three websites that will help you build your Path of Exile character along the way. Exile Pro Curse is one of the most recognized names in competitive gaming. They’ve sponsored multiple eSports teams and they constantly push out fresh and interesting content on their network of websites. Exile Pro is one of the newest additions to their family. In the aforementioned article where I list a few websites that offer great help on getting started and improving with Path of Exile, I mentioned a guy named Kripparrian as one of the most worthy resources. Kripparrian practically runs Exile Pro himself, and that makes the website a pretty big deal. This guy is an incredibly intelligent individual and an innovator of so many builds on the game. I couldn’t think of a better person to control the content of a Path of Exile website. Browsing through builds is quite simple. Click one of the playable classes (shown in the screenshot above) and you’ll be immediately taken to the relevant set of builds. Build pages are laid out very cleanly and the tabbed interface allows you to quickly and easily see the most important parts while avoiding fluff. Each build page offers an introduction, layout of your passive skill tree, relevant gems, endgame items, and general tactics on how to play with the build. Path of Exile Builds No creative name needed with this one. Path of Exile Builds is one of the very first websites to introduce build sets to a community following. Reaching the builds section of the website is as easy as, again, clicking on the thumbnail of whichever class you’re interested in on the front page. Optionally, you can click the Builds header on the menu bar, which will also allow you to search builds or show a random build. While the build page layout doesn’t strike me as efficient as Exile Pro’s, it is still easy to navigate and does a fair job. Builds consist of a single page and passive skill trees are outbound links to completed trees on the official website’s tree planner. The Gear section of the build is the most lackluster, where it’s purely text describing what items you should be on the lookout for. If Exile Pro doesn’t have something you’re looking for, Path of Exile Builds is the best secondary option. /r/PathOfExileBuilds As usual, Reddit proves to be a great resource when it comes to gaming banter and advice. Reddit’s format isn’t exactly ideal for laying out an in-depth guide on how to build your Path of Exile character, but this sub-reddit still manages to be one of the most reliable places to go for just that. The difference between /r/PathOfExileBuilds and the alternatives in this post is that you’ll rarely see a user outline a build upfront. The majority of posts here revolve around the community members asking for advice first, and then receiving tips and information on how to build around their preference. This sub-reddit includes a lot of very high-level and experienced players who seem more than happy to help a newbie out. If you have an interesting build idea and you’d like to see how players would critique it, this is one of the best places to go. In a game like Path of Exile, sometimes the best way to become a better player is to be a bit of a copycat. Luckily for you and I, there seem to be players who are willing to hand over the details on some of their favorite builds so that others can reap the benefits. Path of Exile is still a young game, still in beta actually, so there aren’t many of these websites (and the ones that do exist are fairly dry as of yet). What do you think of Path of Exile and the depth there is to building new Path of Exile characters? The post Building A New Character On Path Of Exile? Check These 3 Sites appeared first on MakeUseOf.

How Microsoft Overhauled User Accounts In Windows 8 Posted: 27 Apr 2013 01:31 PM PDT What’s up with user accounts in Windows 8? It’s not complicated – Microsoft wants everyone to use an online account to sign into their desktop operating system. Sure, they offer an offline equivalent, but they also made a few features available only to online accounts – the entire app store, for example. It’s clear Microsoft would rather you use an online account, regardless of what you yourself would prefer. Traditionally, when setting up Windows, it’s one of the first things that you do – create a Microsoft user account. It’s still true with Windows 8, with one key difference – by default you’re asked to create an online account, or simply log into an online account you have. If you’ve got a Hotmail, MSN or even an XBox account you can sign in using that. The idea is that you’ll be able to log into any Windows 8 computer using your account – and bring your apps and settings with you. Of course, not every computer is constantly connected to the Internet – something Microsoft realizes.And some people don’t want to register for an online account just to use a particular operating system. It’s why the latest version of Windows offers two distinct types of accounts – online and off. Online & Local Accounts Like I said, there are two different sorts of Microsoft user accounts. It’s hard to tell by default, however, because Microsoft seemingly goes far out of their way to hide the option for an offline account. You’ll find it buried at the bottom-left of the account creation screen: Click that and you will, before you can actually get to creating the account, see an entire screen of reasons you should consider an online account: They’ve even gone out of their way to make the “Microsoft Account” option stand out, just to increase the likelihood that you’ll click it. Whatever you think of Microsoft accounts, one thing is clear – Microsoft really, really, really wants you to use one. That being said, offline accounts are still available – and if you plan on mostly using desktop apps (ie, apps not from the Microsoft Store) you probably won’t notice the difference. Why You Want An Online Account So, why would anyone want a Microsoft account? Some of the reasons – like having one user account for multiple computers, complete with synced browser history – obviously need an online account to work. Others – like exclusive access to the Microsoft Store – are required by Microsoft despite no technical reason for being so, perhaps in part to encourage people to use online accounts. Let’s break down some of the reasons you should consider using a Microsoft account instead of a local one. Access To The Microsoft Store Want to try out one of the thousands of apps that populate Microsoft’s answer to the App Store? You’re going to need a Microsoft Account, then – even free apps require an account. Was it necessary for Microsoft to do this? Not necessarily – they could have allowed anyone to download free apps, account or not. And even if your primary account is offline you can add an online account specifically for the store – but at that point you might as well sign in with it. SkyDrive Space Sign up for a Microsoft account and get 7 GB of SkyDrive space. It’s that simple. Sure, at this point cloud storage space is such a common commodity that 7 GB of online space doesn’t sound particularly special. But the cloud is key to what Microsoft perceives as new in Windows 8, and SkyDrive is a good example of that integration. It works well with Microsoft Office – and might work well with your workflow. It’s all made easier, however, if you sign into Windows using a Microsoft account. Your files will follow you, without the need for a lot of setup. Syncing Take your browser bookmarks, apps, and all of your Windows settings with you, automatically. With a Microsoft account it doesn’t matter whether you’re on your Surface tablet or your desktop Dell – your settings stay the same everywhere. Even your browser bookmarks will follow you – assuming, of course, that you’re primarily using Internet Explorer. It goes deeper than that, though – you can link your Microsoft account to other online accounts, and those links will also follow you. Sign into Facebook, for example, and all of your contacts will show up in the Windows contact manager. Add your email settings and they’ll show up in Microsoft’s default mail client – and follow you instantly from PC to PC. The idea is to simplify jumping from one machine to the other, and while it’s not incredibly useful now – too many people are jumping between Windows 8 and 7 machines, not to mention non-Microsoft tablets and phone – it could be a killer future if the platform continues to grow. Of course, your desktop apps and their settings won’t sync – just the apps from the Microsoft store and a few Microsoft settings. So don’t expect miracles, but know that the syncing can be pretty nice. Switch Account Type Did you set up Windows without an offline account? Whether you didn’t have an active Internet connection at the time or were simply skeptical, Microsoft makes switching from one form of account to the other simple. Just head to the “Users” section of the PC settings and you’ll see a button for the job: Click that button and you can switch from an online to an offline account in no time. Conclusion So, should you use an online Microsoft user account? Microsoft clearly thinks so – they’re pushing the feature pretty heavily. And despite the skepticism I’ve shown, I don’t think there’s a compelling reason to stick to an offline account for a personal user. Businesses, however, should perhaps think twice before setting up online accounts for their user base – there’s a potential security hole here without a lot of enterprise features in return. But I want to know what you think. Do you use an online or an offline account with Windows 8? Why? I’ve said enough, so speak your mind below. I’m looking forward to it. If you want to learn more about Windows 8, check out our Windows 8 manual and our list of Windows 8 keyboard shortcuts. You’ll learn a lot, I promise. The post How Microsoft Overhauled User Accounts In Windows 8 appeared first on MakeUseOf.

One Of The Most Important Tools In Linux – Understanding Chmod Posted: 27 Apr 2013 11:31 AM PDT There are plenty of features that make Linux special, but one of them that makes it so secure is its permissions system. You can have fine-grain control over all the files in your system and assign permissions to users, groups, and everyone else. The terminal utility “chmod” helps you control all the permissions on your system, so it’s vital to know how chmod works in order to get the most use out of this feature, especially if you’re planning on building your own Linux server. There’s plenty of information that you’ll need to know in order to understand the mechanics of the permissions system and control it as you please, so get ready to take some notes. Additionally, for starters, it’s best to take a look at 40 terminal commands that you should be familiar with before diving in. Components Of Permissions The Linux permissions system is configured in such a way that you can assign file and directory permissions to three different categories – the user, the group, and everyone else. Each file or directory is owned by a user and group, and these fields cannot be empty. If only the user should own the file, then the group name is often the same as the username of the owner. You can assign specific permissions to the owner, different permissions to the group, and even other permissions to every other user. The different permissions which you can assign to any of these three categories are: read – 4 – ‘r’ write – 2 – ‘w’ execute – 1 – ‘x’ The numbers 4, 2, and 1 as well as the letters r, w, and x are different ways in which you can assign permissions to a category. I’ll get to why these numbers and letters important later on. Permissions are important because, as you might assume, they allow certain people to do certain things with the file. Read permissions allow the person or group to read the contents of the file, and copy it if they wish. Write permissions allows the person or group to write new information into the file, or overwrite it completely. In some cases this can also control who is allowed to delete the file; otherwise a sticky bit must be used that won’t be covered here. Finally, execute permissions allow the person or group to run the file as an executable, whether it’s a binary file, an .sh file, or anything else. Understanding Assigned Permissions Let’s go in your terminal to any folder on your system – say your Home folder. Go ahead and type in the command ls -l and hit enter. This command lists out all of the files and directories found in whatever folder you’re currently in. Each line represents a file or directory, and it begins with something that might look like -rw-rw-r–. This shows you the permissions of the file or directory. In this case, the first dash shows us that you’re looking at a file. If it were a directory, there would be a “d” in this spot. The next three spots, rw-, shows us that the user who owns the file has read and write permissions (rw), but no executable permissions as there’s a dash instead of an “x”. The same is repeated for the next three spots, which represents the permissions of the group that owns the file. Finally, the last three spots are r–, which means that everybody else can only read the file. As a reference, the possible permissions are drwxrwxrwx. It’s also important to note the “dmaxel dmaxel” that you see after the permissions. This shows that the user owner of the file is dmaxel and the group owner is dmaxel. For files that really are only supposed to belong to one user, this is default behavior, but if you’re sharing with a group that has multiple members, then you’ll be able to see that. Assigning New Permissions Remember the numbers and letters I mentioned earlier? Here’s where you’ll need them. Let’s say you have a file called “important_stuff” that’s located at the path /shared/Team1/important_stuff. As the team leader, you’ll want to be able to read and write to the file, your group members should only be allowed to read the file, and everyone else shouldn’t have any permissions at all. In order to make sure that you and your group own the file, you’ll need to run the command chown. An appropriate command for this situation would be chown me:Team1 /shared/Team1/important_stuff. That command runs chown, and tells it that the file at path /shared/Team1/important_stuff should belong to the user “me” and the group “Team1″. It’s assumed that the desired group has been created and that members have the group added as a secondary group in the system (also not covered here). Now that you have set the owner and group, you can set the permissions. Here, you can use the command chmod 640 /shared/Team1/important_stuff. This starts chmod, and assigns the permissions 640 to the file at path /shared/Team1/important_stuff. Where did 640 come from? You look at the numbers represented by the different commands – for read and write permissions, you have 4 + 2 = 6. The 6 represents the permissions for the user. The 4 comes from just the read permissions for the group, and the 0 comes from no permissions for everyone else. Therefore, you have 640. The number system is very good because you can have a number for all possible combinations: none (0), x (1), w (2), r (4), rx (5), rw (6), and rwx (7). As an example, full permissions for everyone would be 777. However, if you have security in mind, its best to assign only the permissions that you absolutely need – 777 should be used rarely, if at all. Alternative Method While I prefer the number method of assigning permissions, you can increase your flexibility and also add or remove permissions using the representative letters. For the above situation, the command used could also be chmod u=rw,g=r,o= /shared/Team1/important_stuff. Here, u=rw assigns read and write permissions to the user, g=r assigns read permissions to the group, and o= assigns no permissions to everyone else. There’s also ‘a’ which can assign the same permissions for all categories. You can also combine different combinations for varying permissions, as well as + or – signs instead of =, which would simply add or remove permissions if they haven’t already been added/removed instead of completely overwriting the permissions that you’re changing. So, different examples can include: chmod a+x /shared/Team1/important_stuff assigns execute permissions to everyone if they don’t have it already chmod ug=rw o-w /shared/Team1/important_stuff forces the user and group to just have read and write permissions, and takes away writing permissions for everyone else in case they had it. Applying Permissions To Multiple Files Additionally, you can add the -R flag to the command in order to recursively apply the same permissions to multiple files and directories within a directory. If you wanted to change the permissions of the Team1 folder and all files and folders within, you can run the command chmod 640 -R /shared/Team1. Applying the same permissions to multiple, but individually picked files can be done with a command such as chmod 640 /shared/Team1/important_stuff /shared/Team1/presentation.odp. Conclusion Hopefully, these tips have helped you improve your knowledge of the permissions system found in Linux. Security is an important matter to consider, especially on mission-critical machines, and using chmod is one of the best ways to keep security tight. While this is a fairly in-depth look at using chmod, there’s still a bit more that you can do with it, and there are plenty of other utilities that complement chmod. If you need a place to start, I would suggest doing more research on all of the things you can do with chown. If you’re just getting started with Linux, have a look at our Getting Started Guide to Linux. Are file permissions important for you? What permissions tips do you have for others? Let us know in the comments! Image Credit: Eduardo Amorim The post One Of The Most Important Tools In Linux – Understanding Chmod appeared first on MakeUseOf.

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