How To Get Started With Open Notebook Science
Category: Technology>Make Use Of

Open Notebook Science (ONS) is slowly making a splash in the scientific community. By publishing all experiments in online notebooks via blogs and wikis, scientists are bypassing the lengthy patent process and working toward creating faster solutions to world problems.

Open Notebook Science (ONS) is “the practice of making a researcher’s laboratory notebook, and all associated supporting data, public in as close to real time as possible,” says Dr. Jean-Claude Bradley, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Drexel University in Pennsylvania and pioneer of ONS.

The first ONS research project was Bradley’s UsefulChem project.  He opened the walls of his lab to make all data open to the public through a wiki and blog mashup. By doing so, his experimental data can be indexed and harvested by both human and computational agents.

While his open approach is not the standard for science (especially in Chemistry), ONS is gaining rippled momentum in the scientific community as more and more scientists are seeing the value in collaborating on lab experiments.

What is the Difference Between ONS and Open Access?

Open Access (OA) and ONS are similar in that data is shared freely.  Open Access means there is no charge to the reader when the article is published.  Typically, a library has to pay for journal subscriptions, but Open Access journals are made free via the web.

The main differences between OA and ONS are timing and detail.  In ONS, the scientists are working and documenting their research live. Both successes and failures are published.  This is not the standard for science where only successes are published (even in OA).

In OA, the articles are polished and can happen any time after an experiments concludes.  The publication is not live, and all of the failed experiments are removed.

Nature is an Open Access scientific journal devoted to environmental biology.  Their material is made free to the public, but it is polished work and not the raw types of work found in Open Notebook science.

Some OA journals are peer reviewed and some are not.  The OA Librarian has awesome resources on the topic if you would like to learn more.

What are the Benefits and Risks of ONS?

While losing the right to a patent can be financially devastating, the effects of producing faster research can help cure world killers.  Bradley estimates that we can cut down the time it takes to go from lab to medicine by 10-15 years with Open Notebook Science.

While pre-tenured faculty and research scientists need peer reviewed publications and patents to advance in their fields, many tenured scientists are able to contribute to the body of knowledge without much risk.

Time will tell is Bradley’s predictions are right, but, in the meantime, here are some tools for getting started.

How to get started

If you want to be start an Open Notebook for your scientific experiments, you need a few simple tools and a commitment to publishing successes and failures in real time.

Tools:

1. A Blog with RSS Feed
2. A Wiki
3. An RSS Reader
4. A Social Network
5. A digital still camera
6. A digital video camera

Methods:

1. Keep a computer in the lab
2. Document all steps, materials, and findings (good and bad) as they happen on your wiki notebook
3. When possible, take pictures or video of experiments
4. Write a summary for the blog BEFORE you leave the lab.
5. Publish your blog so that it gets pinged by your RSS feedburner.
6. During down time, keep current with other similar experiments using your social networks and RSS reader.

A Good Blog and Wiki Mix (Bliki)

Dr. Bradley uses Blogger and Wikispaces to create his Bliki environment, but any blog or wiki platform will work.  If you would like to explore and compare wikis, try wikimatrix.

You can learn more about wikimatrix from our article here and learn about another free program called intodit here. While Blogger is super powerful because it is owned by Google, there are lots of other blogging platforms out there.

Timely publishing is the key to ONS, and experiments should be documented in as near real time as possible. When possible, pictures and videos should be included in the bliki.  It is crucial to make sure that you connect your blog and wiki so they are seamless.

A Good RSS Reader

Open Notebook Science requires that a scientist keeps up to date with the experiments of others.  For example, in the Bradley Lab at Drexel, undergrad and grad students are working on a inhibitor to Enoyl Reductase, the root cause of malaria.

It is important for scientists to report their findings immediately while the details are fresh, so that others around the world can duplicate or enhance an experiment in their own labs.  Likewise, it is imperative for scientists to read the work of others so they can add to the body of knowledge.
RSS readers are a dime a dozen, but Google Reader is one of the best.  The students can write collect notes from other online notebooks, create notes in text, save and share notes, email notes to other team members, and organize materials very easily.

Open Notebook Science is about sharing data consistently in real time.  Bradley predicts that, in the future, humans won’t be needed to aggregate data.  But, for now, we have to collect and disseminate data the old fashioned way…by talking about it! Social networks like Facebook and Twitter allow for instant sharing, and Bradley uses FriendFeed to collect it all in one location.

The Wrap

Will Open Notebook Science change the nature of the scientific community? Probably not.  But, if more people share their data in real time, we can help people around the world combat disease.

Do you share your scientific data in real time?  Why or why not?

em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!

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Microsoft Windows 7: The 7 Most Noticeable New Features
Category: Technology>Make Use Of

Windows 7 has been out in the wild for quite sometime now.

Many people have had a taste of what it has to offer. Windows 7 brings with it a number of improvements in key areas.

Here are some of the Windows 7 new features that stand out in the latest version of the popular operating system.

Taskbar and Jumplists

There are lots of tweaks to the Taskbar. The taskbar buttons are icon only by default, they group by default. You can pin applications to the taskbar, user Ctrl + <number> to invoke pinned applications. Applications now support jumplists, which help you launch a particular file or url from the button directly. The taskbar buttons show a progress indicator if the application is displaying a progress bar and many more.

Libraries

Libraries are like virtual folders. A library can draw its content from multiple folders. For example, if you have your Music stored under more than one folder across various drives, you can see them consolidated into a single virtual folder or library. Libraries can help you manage clutter and organize files the way you like while still being able to view them inside a single location. Details here.

Windows XP Mode

Windows 7 offers something known as the Windows XP mode. What Windows XP mode is that it allows you to run a fully functional copy of Windows XP from within Windows 7. It is essentially the same as running Windows XP virtual machine inside a virtualization software like VirtualBox. You need to download additional files and make sure your computer can support Windows XP mode. Details here.

Desktop and Theming

Desktop and Theming got a major overhaul with Windows Vista. Windows 7 manages to add new features to those changes. Themes are now easier to create and share. Right click on the desktop and click Personalize and you can access every aspect of the themes from the resulting window. Windows can now natively rotate the wallpaper choosing one from the collection you specify. There are also a number of themes available online as well.

Aero Snap and Aero Peek

Aero Snap and Aero Peek help you work with multiple open windows easily. Aero Snap can snap windows to the sides or the top, making them cover the entire screen or exactly half the screen. Just hold the title bar of a window and drag it to one of the edges of the screen. Aero Peek on the other hand lets you peek through all the open windows so that you can see you desktop easily. Aero Peek can be activated using Win + Space key or by hovering the mouse pointer over the bottom right corner of the taskbar.

Media Streaming

Apart from inclusion of new codecs to support even more filetypes, Windows Media Player can now be used to stream media files. The streaming can take place within your network or over the Internet as you please. You can stream to other computers as well as devices that are compatible with Windows 7. Details here.

The HomeGroup

Its not a stretch to own more than one computer these days. If you have more than one computer at your home you would most likely want to put them on a network so that you can share Internet Connection, share music, videos and pictures. Windows 7 now creates a HomeGroup that all other Windows 7 machines can be a part of and the network is up and running in a snap. You also get a password to control access to your home network.

There are a host of other features and under the hood improvements that you may not notice in day to day use. It supports more hardware, boots faster, runs snappier. The games, media center and accessories like Paint and Calculator have been updated as well. Overall it wouldn’t be wrong to consider it the best Operating System from folks over at Redmond. There is nothing stopping you to hold on to the previous version of Windows and bypass Windows 7 altogether as was the case with Windows Vista.

What are your favorite Windows 7 new features?

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How Do I Unblock a Web Page From Behind a Strong Firewall?
Category: Technology>Make Use Of

Many times we find ourselves on networks where we cannot get to websites that we want to see because of some silly restriction on particular subjects and all sorts of good stuff. There are instances where you will need to get to a specific site for homework or real work and you cannot get to them due to things like restrictive materials, dangerous knowledge and even reproduction. What do you do? Not do your work?

I will show you some tricks I have seen in action as a network administrator over the years and some I have discovered myself. But before starting, know that your system administrator might not be partial to you circumventing their network security so do so at your own risk and make sure you are fully aware of the possible consequences first!

How to Unblock a Web Page – Retrieving The Site’s IP Address

The first trick we will use gets around most firewalls or content filtering that work by domain name or URL. The trick is to ping the website from the command line from your home or another computer not on the restricted network. This can be done by hitting start ->run and then typing cmd. On Vista and Windows 7, just hit the start orb and type cmd.

Then at the command prompt type ping www.site.com replacing site.com with the actual website you want to get to. Like so:

I chose a random site called www.restricted.com and pinged it as you can see above and it returned the IP address. Then I can type in http://216.34.131.135 in my browser and bypass the URL’s restriction.

The Google Cache Trick to Unblock a Web Page

If that didn’t work for you we will move on to the Google Cache trick. Search for the website you are trying to get to. In this instance, we will use http://www.wtfluck.com. On this imaginary network we are blocking this site and its IP address. So what can we do? Google for it of course, like so:

Hit Google Search and you will see results that look like these:

Maybe you have never noticed it before but there is a Cached button after each entry and you can click on it to see the site like so:

And on closer inspection to the URL we see this:

The URL http://www.wtfluck.com does not appear in the main URL which here is http://74.125.113.132 but if you click the links then you will be taken to the real site so be forewarned!

Wayback Machine

The next method to unblock a single web page from behind a restrictive firewall or filter is to use the Wayback Machine located here. Archive.org keeps a working replica of sites from way back when or maybe closer. This is a good way to get content that is a few years old.

Check it out and lets take a look at what we can see:

Can you imagine a network blocking MakeUseOf? Well this is what we could do to read it regardless:

Clicking on one of the links will take you “back in time” and that will bring up a version of the site from that day like so:

And clicking on the links will still keep you in the archive like so:

Looking at the URL it is: http://web.archive.org/web/20080728061910/www.makeuseof.com/tag/get-your-computer-startup-under-control-with-autoruns/

And my final suggestion is one which is the one I always use, which is 100% effective, and is not monitored by your IT group. Use Remote Desktop to connect to your computer at home and browse away there. For even more security, open a VPN tunnel between the two machines and encrypt your traffic! You can find a post on this subject by Varun by clicking here. Also, check out Jack’s article on some more tips to bypass a firewall.

How do you bypass security restrictions like this? Let us know in the comments!

em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!

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Cool Websites and Tools [March 5th]
Category: Technology>Make Use Of

Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. All listed websites are FREE (or come with a decent free account option). No trials or buy-to-use craplets. For more cool websites and web app reviews subscribe to MakeUseOf Directory.

Submit Your Web App

Chatab – How would you like to browse the web while chat with your friends at the same time without having to leave the chatroom or change webpages? Fortunately, Chatab is an all in one online messenger with a built-in browser that lets you chat and browse at the same time. Read more: Chatab: All in One Online Messenger With A Built-In Browser.

		TVARK – We live in a visual world, although most of us don’t know how we got there. TVARK seeks to archive the visual history of television programs and shows, making it an excellent resource for anyone with a passing interest in the history of visual rhetoric. Read more: TVARK: Visual History of Television Programs & Shows.
		Dental Plans – If you’re really lucky, your job covers all the dental work you need. Most people aren’t really that lucky. If you yourself aren’t that lucky, and you’re not sure dental insurance is an option financially, it’s worth checking out DentalPlans.com. Read more: DentalPlans: Find Discount Dental Programs In Your Area (US Only).
		Goformat – Microsoft Word and Open Office both lack one key ability – changing entire sentences or paragraphs typed in capital letters to lower case en masse. Goformat.com, on the other hand, does have this online text formatting ability. Read more: Goformat: Quick Online Text Formatting Tool.
		CSS Color Editor – Re-designing a website can be a hassle if you have a large and messy CSS file. CSSColorEditor makes it easy for you by allowing you to change CSS colors without writing any lines of code. Simply upload a CSS file from your computer and load it into the tool. Read more: CSSColorEditor: Easily Change CSS Colors Online.

Submit Your Web App

These are just half of the websites that we discovered in the last couple of days. If you want us to send you daily round-ups of all cool websites we come across, leave your email here. Or follow us via RSS feed.

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The 5 Toughest Tech Questions [MakeUseOf Answers]
Category: Technology>Make Use Of

MakeUseOf Answers has helped solve many of your questions. Today we ask you for help!

Every now and then we are presented with a question that is so specific that we cannot help, for example because we don’t have access to the respective software or hardware.

With so many people coming together on MakeUseOf, however, chances are that some of you had to solve the exact same issue previously and are now able to help. Are you the one?

Have a peek at our toughest questions from the past two weeks:

1. How can I set up Visual C++ Express 2005 as a portable app?
2. How can I play Southcast streams in Ubuntu?
3. How can I get Time Capsule to work on my Mac?
4. Is there a way to convert icalendar .ICS file to .PST Outlook calendar data file?
5. How can I prevent audio/video to get out of sync on a Nokia 6085?

You can see more questions that we couldn’t answer on the Unanswered Questions page. Please help us out!

Now, if you have a question yourself, go ahead and ask it on MakeUseOf Answers. No sign up or registration required.

Please keep in mind that sometimes questions are difficult to answer because essential details are lacking. Thus, when you submit a question, please make it a point to provide us with a good description of your problem. This should also include the basics, such as your operating system, hardware information, and eventually further details.

For those of you who would like to follow MakeUseOf Answers via RSS, here is the Feedburner feed.

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

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How To Make Your Regular Mobile Phone Smarter With SMS/MMS (Part 2)
Category: Technology>Make Use Of

In the first part of this article, we presented various ways for you to stay social on your regular cell phone thanks to SMS. SMS services abound nowadays and can make your regular mobile phone as reliable as smartphones without even the need for a data plan. It all depends on whether you’re aware of these SMS-integrating services.

This second part of this series on SMS tips and tricks will focus on productivity services that you can reach by SMS. They can simplify your usual web activities on-the-go. You must be aware that having an unlimited messaging plan will benefit you greatly if you follow our advice here because you’ll start texting a lot. If you don’t have such a messaging plan, be ready to pay your mobile company’s extra fees.

Be Productive

1. View books and documents: BooksInMyPhone and ManyBooks offer lots of downloadable ebooks for Java-enabled phones (which you probably have if you own a regular phone that you got in the last five years.) So unless you don’t prefer these methods, you can try setting up an account with DailyLit, a bonus site from the top 6 sites for free books, that sends you snippets or installments of books in the form of email or RSS on a day-to-day basis for free. To be able to view books from DailyLit on your phone, it’s recommended to go to Settings and under Your DailyLit Reading, click on Manage the books you’re reading.



Select Plaintext Unicode in Installment Text, otherwise, you’ll see ugly HTML codes in your phone message later. Now use Gmail filters to forward DailyLit installments to your phone’s email. You could also email any plain text documents to your phone for view-only so you can read them while you’re waiting in-line somewhere.

2. Transcribe messages or notes: You know you can create notes by calling Reqall which will transcribe the message you leave and can then be accessed on the Reqall website.

   

   Alternatively, you could use Google Voice’s transcription service to transcribe your notes by calling SlyDial (this site lets you head to someone’s voicemail directly) first and then your own Google Voice number. Since you get a transcribed copy of your message in Gmail, you don’t even have to go to the Google Voice page if you don’t want to. If you rather not hear SlyDial’s 10-second ads, follow the easy guide to set up your non-GVoice number in a group to which you’ll direct to voicemail right away here.

3. Create and backup your notes: If you express yourself better by typing, try creating your notes in your phone’s built-in note application and then emailing your finalized notes to backup sites.

   

   Some great note repository sites include Evernote (since you get a personalized email to upload notes) or your Gmail (with the appropriate filters to move the message to the appropriate label).

   

   You can also text your notes to your own Google Voice number so you’ll be able to view them on the Google Voice site later.

   

   One downside from the popular Google Voice and Evernote services is the fact that you can’t retrieve your notes. GluNote is a simple Twitter tool that saves your notes and retrieves them for you by DM. When you want to retrieve your notes, DM Glu with search keywords and it will send you back the notes that contain your words. Registration is virtually non-existent as you can easily get started by just following @Glu which will follow you back. After that, you’re ready to shoot some notes. RememberTheMilk’s Twitter bot can also help you retrieve lists (Shopping, Work To-Do’s, etc) as we will explain in the next section.

4. Add to your calendar/to-do list and get reminders: Google Calendar has been featured over and over because it’s just a simple but powerful calendar app where you can create events and get reminded by text message. Heck, you can even be notified by GCal when someone contacts you on Pidgin.

   

   Main things to remember: Set up notifications in the GCal website so that you get an SMS reminder 10 minutes (or 10 days) before the event. Add 48368 to your Contacts in your phone as GCal and text it any event or to-do with a date and time. Any time you want to know what’s in your agenda, text GCal “next” for your next event or to-do, “day” for today’s agenda, and “nday” for the next day’s. Alternatively, RememberTheMilk lets you add tasks via SMS to your personalized email while its Twitter integration lets you direct message the service to also add tasks, get reminders and retrieve lists (e.g. shopping list). This is a great deal considering the applications for smartphones such as the iPhone app and MilkSync for BlackBerry/WinMo require you to have a Pro account.

5. Get reference information, accurate translations, driving directions and answers to any question: Save 466453 (“GOOGLE”) in your Contacts as it will be your useful companion for any web searches you’d perform on Google.com. Just be sure to remember certain keywords for input, such as “weather,” “flight,” “movies” and even name of hallmarks and restaurants to get your information. The same contact can be used to translate words as we’ve explained before why Google’s translation service rocks. Just text “translate WORD to LANGUAGE” and get your WORD translated back in a few seconds. For some quick directions, text “directions pasadena ca to 94043.” You can also SMS 242-242 (Chacha) to ask literally any question or 44636 (4info) for a service similar to Google.
6. Save, backup and archive your text messages by forwarding your texts to your Google Voice number or directly texting to your family and friends through their GVoice-designated numbers. Or try DM @MyEN to archive your text messages to Evernote.
7. Track your expenses: There are several services from our great list of expense tracking tools that are worth mentioning here. Texthog and Buxfer both excel as expense and budget tracking sites, where you can see beautiful pie chart and bar reports of your expenses, which you can input with a quick SMS to your personalized email (instructions for Buxfer/Texthog) or by sending a direct message to @Buxfer or @TextHog on Twitter.

   

   Texthog doesn’t pull transactions from your online bank accounts so you can rest if you’re worried about privacy, but you can export/download transactions to Quicken, MS Money, etc. on both Texthog and Buxfer. Some differences are that Buxfer offers the option of uploading your bank statements manually or automatically to the site and makes it easy to add IOUs. Read more on Texthog here and Buxfer here. BillMonk is another dedicated expense/IOU-tracking service that you can read more about here. If you prefer something simpler, check out TweetWhatYouSpend.

Play

1. Shopping: See a product at the store and think you could buy it online at a better price? Text your product’s name to 262966 (AMAZON’s TextBuyIt), get search results with price information and buy it!



2. Entertainment: ChaCha is the service we recommended to find reference information and we second it again because it’s truly an amazingly helpful service that you can even set to send you weather, jokes, etc at a specific time daily. Here’s how you can Set Up a Fav on ChaCha.

Miscellaneous

While you’re making use of your regular phone, why not also take advantage of these bonus non-SMS tools that you can use on your regular phone? For a free call to anywhere in the world, call 1-800-FREE411 and say “Free Call” when prompted. You’ll have to wait through two short ads and you can talk for a maximum of 5 minutes, but there are no limits on how many times you can call. This service and Google’s GOOG411 number both offer free directory services.

Also, if your phone supports taking pictures and videos, that probably means you can play media on it. You may think it’s troublesome to mess with transferring files, but here’s something that will facilitate your media transferring: Use a file converter that understands your phone.

Daniusoft’s Online Converter is a free tool that elegantly describes the right video and audio file formats that your phone can take in. The user-friendly approach makes it easy for newer users to convert files to transfer to their phones, but it also features settings for more advanced users to tweak, such as frame rate, encoder, bit rate for videos and audio files, which can be as large as 100MB in size.

We weaved our way through plenty services today that we hope will generate more appreciation of the existent features in  your regular mobile. Want to recommed services that I missed? If not, which ones do you find yourself using the most? You may really enlighten fellow readers who aren’t familiar with these services.

Photo credit: Sarah Jones, j0438320, j0442135, j0436075, j0439835w

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Artwork Gofer: The Hunt For Free Album Cover Art [Mac]
Category: Technology>Make Use Of

Sometimes I miss the good old days when I spent my spare time in the traditional music store, browsing through piles of CD cases adorned with beautiful images on their covers. Not many people do that anymore though, because the music industry has gradually shifted from the physical to the digital form.

Even though browsing through the cover art in digital format is not as fun as touching the real thing, I think most people can cope with that. The one thing that annoys most people is the absence of cover art here and there within the collection. Among thousands of songs in your library, I’m pretty sure that some of them have the blank look in the cover flow mode.

You can manually search for free album cover art on the net and add them one by one to the songs. But why bother? We have Artwork Gofer.

Start Hunting!

Artwork Gofer is a free application which will help you search and add missing cover art in your music collection. It uses one of the biggest storage of free album cover art as its resources: Amazon Stores.

The first time you open Artwork Gofer, you will find the Preferences window. You may adjust some of the settings here to fit your needs. For example: change the store location from US to Japan if you are looking for cover art for J-Dorama songs.

You can also choose to allow a single track to have multiple artworks and replace low-resolution existing artwork with better ones.

Done with the preferences, you can then start hunting by clicking the File menu. There are several options that you can choose: “Get Artwork for Selection (Command + O)“, “Search Album (Command + Option + O)” and “Get All Missing Artwork (Command + Shift + O)“.

If you choose one of the options while not having iTunes opened, you will get this warning window popping up.

To search cover art for individual songs, select the song in iTunes, switch to Artwork Gofer (you can use Alt + Tab for faster switching) and hit Command + O.

Artwork Gofer will do its magic and show you the search results. Pick the best one from the results (if there are many) and click the “Add Artwork” button. That cover art will then be added to the previously selected song on iTunes.

Please note that it’s also possible to have zero results for your searches.

You can take another route of this cover art hunting by directly searching for an album. Just hit the “Command + Option + O” and write the title of the album and the artist’s name and hit the “Search” button.

The ultimate method is the “Search all missing artwork” (Command + Shift + O)”. The option window will open with several items that you can adjust. Hit the “search” button when you are done adjusting.

Artwork Gofer will read your Music Library for songs with missing cover art.

Then the search result window will open. All of your songs with no cover art will be listed on the left pane along with the number of possible free album cover art found. Click the results one by one and select the best cover art for your songs.

From my experiment, I found that even though this tiny app is not perfect, it did its job very well.

Music lovers who want to get a richer experience with iTunes should check our other related articles about: TunesArt and GimmeSomeTunes.

And as always, if you know other free methods to quickly find and download cover art, please share using the comments below.

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How To Configure & Use Windows 7’s XP Mode
Category: Technology>Make Use Of

You are running Windows 7 and you have already looked at some of our previous posts on Windows 7 such as here and here.  Now you want to know how to install and run Windows XP Mode on your Windows 7 machine. Windows 7 XP Mode is really a virtual machine running Windows XP that lets you run applications that do not run on Windows 7.

This application can help a company with legacy applications and still upgrade to the latest and greatest iteration of Windows. If this is your situation you can follow this post to see how to get Windows 7 XP Mode and running.

First things first you need to make sure your machine is capable or running XP Mode. You need to have a minimum of 2 Gigabytes of memory and a processor capable of handling virtualization (with AMD-V™ or Intel® VT turned on in the BIOS) and at least 15 gigabytes free to install your fully functioning XP environment.

If you do not know if your processor can handle it, check out this site to check your Intel processor over here and you can check your AMD processor with this site called Securable. You can also run this application from Microsoft to check your processor and BIOS settings.

OK now that we know that we CAN run XP mode lets see what we need to do next. We will need to download two packages from the Internet. The first download is called Windows XP mode for Windows 7. You can download that here from Microsoft. This is a 500MB download.

The next download is called Windows Virtual PC that allows us to run the XP virtual machine which was downloaded above. There the instructions provided by Microsoft state clearly:

Once you have installed Windows 7 XP Mode, click the Windows 7 Start,then select All Programs > Windows Virtual PC > Windows XP Mode to begin setup. For information on how to set up Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode, check out “Running Windows XP Mode with Windows Virtual PC” on the Support and Videos page.

You will need to specify your username and password for your XP installation as you can see below:

After you have installed both components, click on Virtual Windows XP for it to complete the installation.

You will see a bunch of dialogues as Windows 7 installs your Virtual Windows XP Environment. When it is complete you will have a real Windows XP installation in your virtual machine as you can see below:

You can check your virtual machine settings by right clicking on the file, choosing properties and you will see the following:

You can change your memory allocation and other virtual machine settings here. You should have Auto Publish turned to enable so when you set up a application to work with your XP VM the shortcut can be published to the start menu.

To add items to your XP virtual machine, simply drag shortcuts into the start menu under Programs or install them within the XP VM. They will be auto-magically published to your Windows 7 start menu (if Auto-Publish is enabled) under the XP virtual machine shortcut so you can launch them with a single click.

What do you use your XP virtual machine for?  Leave us a note in the comments!

em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!

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• (27)The Ultimate ‘Upgrade To Windows 7′ Guide

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Cool Websites and Tools [March 3rd]
Category: Technology>Make Use Of

Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. All listed websites are FREE (or come with a decent free account option). No trials or buy-to-use craplets. For more cool websites and web app reviews subscribe to MakeUseOf Directory.

Submit Your Web App

Navilator – James Cameron’s Avatar is probably one of the biggest movies of the decade. The indigenous people portrayed in the movie speak a totally different language called Navi. Unlike languages in some other sci-fi movies, Navi is an actual language created by a linguist at University of Southern California. Now you can learn it too with the help of Navilator. Read more: Navilator: Avatar Na’vi Language Translator.

		Flame – Not everyone was born with a talent for painting and the arts. While others struggle to learn the basics, some people are much better as if it is a common thing to do. Fortunately, Flame from Escape Motion is a simple web app that lets you create gorgeous flame paintings within seconds. Read more: Flame: Draw Cool Flame Paintings Online.
		Twiangulate – is a great tool to analyze the followers of any Twitter user. For example, just enter the Twitter handle of any user and choose the Biggest Follower tab. Twiangulate will then tell you who are the most influential people following that particular user. Read more: Twiangulate: Find Common/Biggest Followers For Any Twitter User.
		Blogtrottr – Some people use RSS feeds; some people use email updates. If you prefer email updates to RSS readers, but noticed that RSS lets you subscribe to a more specific section on the site, then Blogtrottr was designed for you. This service lets you subscribe to any RSS feed via email. Read more: Blogtrottr: Subscribe to RSS Feed Via Email.
		Urtak – If you are fond of making poll questions and gathering survey answers from people, then Urtak might just be perfect for you. It is a free collaborative poll tool which allows you to create your own embeddable polls. Read more: Urtak: Create Embeddable Polls For Free.

Submit Your Web App

These are just half of the websites that we discovered in the last couple of days. If you want us to send you daily round-ups of all cool websites we come across, leave your email here. Or follow us via RSS feed.

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

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How To Search Emails In Gmail Efficiently
Category: Technology>Make Use Of

When Google launched Gmail they revolutionized emailing.

Until then, the focus of email clients and services had been on sorting emails. Thunderbird for example has over a dozen sorting criteria including date, size, and status. Searching emails, however, is notoriously difficult.

Google is a search engine. Consequently, Google’s email service provides many different ways to search your Gmail emails, while sorting is neglected. This article shows you how to use all the search options you have within Gmail.

Search

When entering a search term into the query field, Google will suggest terms based on names and email addresses found in your emails. This can help to quickly find out an email address.

Search Options

On the right side of the search buttons are two inconspicuous pieces of text, one of them reads “Show search options“. Clicking the text will bring up a menu with advanced search options.

These search options combine several operators, such as from:, to:, subject:, and in:. You also can manually enter these operators into the search field, followed by your query. In my example above I would type “from:mark in:anywhere deadline after:2009/02/28″.

If your search is limited to the criteria available from the search options, it’s of course much easier to use the form.

Search Operators

Using the search options you can search any of your folders, without having to know complicated operators. However, your options will always be limited.

When you need to search something very specific, you can use operators, just like you were using a search engine. The cool thing is that when you start typing an operator, the search filed will provide matching suggestions for supported operators.

Here are five of the most useful operators:

OR

When you want your results to match either one OR the other term, this is your tag.

Example: from:mark OR to:authors

cc: and bcc:

With these tags you can search for recipients that were (blind) carbon copied.

Example: cc:jorge

label:

In Gmail you can label important emails to make it easier to find them again. A menu button in the bottom right of each email allows you to quickly add labels. Additionally, the system will automatically label emails based on the folders they are stored in.

Example: from:mark label:deadline

has:attachment

A useful operator to locate emails with any type of attachment, such as photos or documents.

Example: subject:vacation has:attachment

filename:

When the previous operator comes up with too many results, you can further specify the filename. Since the full filename also includes the filetype, e.g. .pdf, you can also use this operator to search attachments by file types.

Example: subject:vacation has:attachment filename:.jpg

A full list of operators can be found in Gmail Help: Using advanced search.

MakeUseOf has published many, many articles about Google Mail. Here are a few highlights:

• Productivity
  Angelina wrote How To Turn Gmail Into A Multitasking Machine Part 1 (configuration, consolidating, labels), Part 2 (filter tips), and Part 3 (sidebar, mutliple inboxes).
  Abhigyan shared 6 Gmail Productivity Tips You Need To Know.
  David has 7 Tips to Make Gmail The Best Free Email Service For Productive People.
  Ann covered 3 Great Examples of Using Gmail Filters for Productivity.
• Offline Use & Backup
  Sharninder explained How To Access & Use Gmail Offline. Karl showed you How To Backup Your Gmail Account To YOUR Hard Drive.
• Shortcuts
  For a list of essential shortcuts, download the Gmail Cheatsheet PDF compiled by Jim.

This article on how to search Gmail was inspired by a question posed on MakeUseOf Answers. Swamy asked whether it’s possible to search emails by size in Gmail. This is not possible. However, you can search your mail by size in clients like Thunderbird or Outlook. So, a compromise would be to use one of these tools and import your email from Gmail.

Do you know of other ways to search mails in Gmail? Please shout it out in the comments. Thank you!

em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!

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• (13)How To Turn Gmail Into A Multitasking Machine (Part II)
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How To Easily Download All Facebook Photos You’re Tagged In
Category: Technology>Make Use Of

One of the best features of Facebook are the photos albums, which allows you and all of your friends to upload an unlimited number of pictures to share with your personal networks.

You can also create Facebook “tag” photos, which means a person’s profile is linked to the specific picture they appear in.  This gives you the very useful ability to quickly view pictures of specific people – all without ever having to dig through a photo album.

While it’s great having all of these pictures online, you aren’t guaranteed that they will always be available.  You can easily lose access to these photos if Facebook removes an album, if the internet is unavailable, or if the friend who uploaded the photos decides to remove them.  It is possible to save Facebook pictures individually, but that can be incredibly tedious if you have a large amount of photos you’d like to download.

In this guide, I’ll show you how to download all of the Facebook tag photos that you and your friends are in with a great application called PhotoGrabber.

Getting Started

To begin, simply head over to the PhotoGrabber homepage and download the application for your operating system.  PhotoGrabber is available for both Mac (PhotoGrabber-OSX) and Windows (PhotoGrabber-Win), so make sure to download the right .zip file.

After you’ve downloaded the file, Windows users should extract its contents to a new folder on your computer and Mac users should unzip and drag PhotoGrabber.app into your Applications folder.

One very nice feature of PhotoGrabber is that it is a standalone executable file and requires no installation.  Once you’ve extracted the files, all you need to do is run pg.exe (just make sure to keep it in the same folder as the rest of the extracted files).

Downloading Facebook Photos

Now that you’ve downloaded and extracted PhotoGrabber, double click the PhotoGrabber executable to get started.  When you first open the program, you will be presented with a login screen.  Click the large Login button to be taken to a Facebook authentication page.

Click Allow on the Facebook authentication page which will allow PhotoGrabber to have access to your content.

Now that you’ve authorized PhotoGrabber to work with your account, head back to the application.  Click I want to download…

PhotoGrabber will now display a list of all of your friends, including yourself.  To download all pictures tagged with your name, simply select Myself then click the large Begin Download button.

Before the download begins, you will need to select a directory where you would like to save the tagged photos.  Click OK and the download process will start.

Facebook photos are fairly small and download quickly, but the duration of the download will vary based on how many pictures have been tagged.  It took approximately 20 minutes for me to download 1,000+ photos, but your experience may vary based on the network connection.

When the photos are finished downloading you can browse to the folder where they were saved to view them!

You can repeat this exact same process to download any tagged pictures of your friends, just select their name instead of Myself at the download selection screen.

Using the PhotoGrabber application for Facebook is great for keeping a personal copy of photos from Facebook and is an excellent way to protect them for the future.

Do you have any other tips for saving your personal content from Facebook?  Share it with us in the comments!

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

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Cool Websites and Tools [March 1st]
Category: Technology>Make Use Of

Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. All listed websites are FREE (or come with a decent free account option). No trials or buy-to-use craplets. For more cool websites and web app reviews subscribe to MakeUseOf Directory.

Submit Your Web App

PaperRater – One of the most boring things that comes with being a student is proofreading your own paper. Diligent students should make sure that their work is well-written, original, coherent, and grammatically correct. PaperRater is a web service that helps you with that. Read more: PaperRater: Instantly Proofread & Check Your Paper For Plagiarism.

		Tube2Tone – We have seen tools converting YouTube videos into MP3, but what if you could use a YouTube video as a ringtone on your mobile phone? Tube2Tone is a web app that lets you do that by converting YouTube videos into ringtones. Simply enter the URL of any YouTube video and click search. Read more: Tube2Tone: Convert YouTube Videos To Ringtones For Free.
		Feeder – Facebook and Twitter both have tons of apps that allow you to post about your currently playing music. Feeder is a new web app that lets you quickly share music on Facebook and Twitter without launching any apps or adding any plug-ins. Read more: Feeder: Instantly Share Music On Facebook & Twitter.
		CarbonCalculator – In an age where everybody tries to be conscious of the environment, it is important to know how much carbon dioxide your house is producing each year and how you can reduce that. Enter CarbonCalculator, a site for calculating a carbon footprint of your house. Read more: CarbonCalculator: Site for Calculating a Carbon Footprint of Your House.
		TheFilter – The internet offers a good way to expand your horizons by discovering new videos and movies. However, not all that we come across on social media sites are suited to your tastes. The Filter is a media discovery website that allows to explore cool movies, web videos and music based on what you like. Read more: TheFilter: Discover Videos & Music Based On What You Like.

Submit Your Web App

These are just half of the websites that we discovered in the last couple of days. If you want us to send you daily round-ups of all cool websites we come across, leave your email here. Or follow us via RSS feed.

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

New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too.

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Cool Websites and Tools [February 27th]
Category: Technology>Make Use Of

Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. All listed websites are FREE (or come with a decent free account option). No trials or buy-to-use craplets. For more cool websites and web app reviews subscribe to MakeUseOf Directory.

Submit Your Web App

FollowUpThen – Some people respond to emails on time and some don’t. If you’ve a friend or contact in the latter category it’s worth giving FollowUpThen a shot. You don’t need to sign up for an account to use the service, either: simply CC the email to the service, using the amount of time between now and the follow-up as the user name and “followupthen.com” as the domain. Read more: FollowUpThen: Schedule Automatic Follow Up Emails by Adding a CC.

		ZeroCurrency – If you live in a part of the world where corruption is rampant, ZeroCurrency offers an interesting tool for activists. Simply select the country you live in and you’ll be given a high-resolution picture of a fake bill, inscribed with a value of zero. Print this out, and hand it to the next person who asks you for a bribe. Read more: ZeroCurrency: Print Fake Bills To Send A Message About Corruption.
		Rhymes.net – If you need to dish out rhyming words for your next song or poem, then you should check out Rhymes.net. This online rhyming dictionary provides thousands of rhyming words arranged according to the number of syllables. Read more: Rhymes.Net: Discover Rhyming Words Online.
		ECwid – Are you looking to set up your own online store? If you are, then you should check out Ecwid. This nifty web application lets you create your own online store for free within your existing website in less than five minutes. Read more: ECwid: Create Your Own Online Store For Free In Minutes.
		DiscountYeti – Unlike other deals websites, DiscountYeti focuses on your neighborhood instead of the whole country. It brings you a listing of cool deals from businesses near you when you search by city name or zip code. Moving your mouse over any deal highlights its location on accompanied Google Maps. Read more: DiscountYeti: Find Deals From Businesses Near You.

Submit Your Web App

These are just half of the websites that we discovered in the last couple of days. If you want us to send you daily round-ups of all cool websites we come across, leave your email here. Or follow us via RSS feed.

em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!

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Geeky Fun: Latest Hilarious Picks
Category: Technology>Make Use Of

Check out the top picks from MakeUseOf Geeky Fun during the last week.

1. Woman Calls Tech Show When Her Stolen WiFi Disappears (Video)
2. iMaxi: The Apple iPad Case with Protective Wings (Pic)
3. Google Threatens To Kill Users (Video)
4. The Cost of Gadgets Over The Decades (Pic)
5. Why Computers Suck: Myth Vs. Reality (Pic)
6. Interesting Facts About The Blogosphere (Pic)

If you would like to keep up with all latest Geeky Fun additions, please subscribe to the Geeky Fun feed here. You can also subscribe and get the latest additions via email.

em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!

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Raft Wars – A Fun Pirate Turn-Based Shooter Time-Waster
Category: Technology>Make Use Of

I had about 15 minutes to kill today and I went looking for a fun flash shooter game online. I have covered others in the past including this OMG Zombies game which was really fun. 15 minutes is not a lot of time so I chose the first game that tickled my fancy and was already playing it within 2 minutes.

You can check it out. This game is called Raft Wars and you an play it here.

Once you get to the Raft Wars site, you can click on ‘Play’ to start. They will give you a quick intro and a little tutorial.

I won’t spoil it for you by showing you the screen that made me laugh. But here you are — a little baby on the beach.

You find gold and diamonds. And even a baby can be corrupted by greed and money, so here is how the shooter game starts.

Pirates hear about your find and try to take it from you.

Protect your treasure by aiming and firing. You can hit the pirates directly or have the ball ricochet off the mast and hit them in the back of the head. Either which way you have a Par of 6. So beat them in under 6 shots for a good bonus… Arrrr

You are babies so it doesn’t make much sense why they don’t just walk over and throw your land-loving butt into the water but putting that aside, let’s kick some pirate ass!

Move the mouse to aim and click (left click) to fire. When you make contact, the pirate’s life meter will deteriorate.

Once both opponents are done, you can continue on as you have won the battle. Depending on how many shots it took you to win and how good of a shot you were, you get extra bonus points.

The bonus points can be saved up and used at any board’s end or you can buy yourself a grenade with 300 points or a rocket with 500 points. it is your call. You could hold out for an upgrade to your raft as well for 1500 points.

Click done when you are finished and we will move on to the next board. Ah, they appear to be Vikings this time around. No more Arrrr’s and instead we replace them with Yah’s!

Start firing again and take out the offending Vikings! Sheesh can’t anyone leave these poor kids alone? And where are their parents anyways??

This board has 3 Vikings and I guess it will increase with each board. On my first shot, I hit the guy closest to me and made him bang into the one behind him. That killed the first dude – I mean Viking – and damaged the second one as you can see in the screen shot above.

It took me 8 shots to do the three of them in and it cost me my little friend’s life. Luckily he was right back by my side in the next round though… And my time is up… Crap 2 hours, late. My bad!

Do you have any good free flash shooter games online? Come on share them with the group in the comments.

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

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