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13
Mar/100

5 Steps To Understanding Basic HTML Code
Category: Technology>Make Use Of

HTML is short for HyperText Markup Language. That’s gibberish for ’something that makes plain text look good’. It’s the ‘code’ that’s behind every webpage. Even this one. And, surprisingly, it’s actually quite simple.

The teachings of HTML can (almost) be broken down in two all-ruling disciplines: style a.k.a manipulating the appearance, and referring, a.k.a marking and pointing to locations of, and within documents. HTML can’t do anything more complicated than drawing a table, or creating frames, and we’re not going to cut into PHP or Java.

Yet HTML is still far off the beaten path for your average Joe. It’s wizardry, and none of your business. My goal today is to give you some of the HTML building blocks in the course of a few minutes. You won’t be a programmer just yet, but you’ll be able to skim the source of a webpage, understand it, and grab that image that Flickr is trying so hard to keep from you.

Step One – The Concept Of Tags

As said previously, HTML manipulates a plain text document to apply style and reference. It does so by applying ‘tags’. A tag does nothing more than indicating a position or selection of the document, and specifying the kind of wizardry that needs to be done.

<tag-example-1>This, and only this part of the document is affected.</tag-example-1>

<tag-example-2>Something just happened, preceding this part of the document

Example 1 shows a sentence that’s encapsulated by two tags, a begin- and end tag. Everything in between is affected. Very common examples are making text bold, cursive, or creating a link. The end tag is identical to the begin tag, but is preceded in angle brackets by a forward slash ( / ).

Example 2 shows a tag that works alone and (arguably) doesn’t need to be closed. Although not required, it’s occasionally also written as <tag /> to emphasize this very attribute. Loner tags don’t affect ‘part’ of the document, but signify local wizardry, things that happen ‘in between’. Common examples are line breaks and paragraph breaks.

Note: for loner tags, <tag>, <tag />, and <tag></tag> all mean the same thing.

<tag attribute=”value” attribute2=”value2″>This, and only this part of the document is affected.</tag>

Sometimes tags allow for additional attributes to be supplied. Common examples are text font and color, or image width, height and source. In those cases, the tag name is followed by a space, and a number of attribute with a value, again separated by spaces. The value is the variable part of this formula. Note that the end tag remains the same, regardless of the attributes.

We’ll review some common tags in the next few steps.

Step Two – The Parceling of HTML, HEAD & BODY

The HTML, HEAD and BODY tags are to an HTML document what a bedroom, kitchen and living room are to a house. These encapsulating tags parcel out the big parts of a document.

<HTML></HTML> simply indicates the use of HTML code. They’ll show in every webpage, usually at start and end, and embrace practically all the other code, including the next two.
<HEAD></HEAD> mark the ‘administrative building’. These will encapsule the title, and enable certain scripts. Usually at the very head (no pun intended) of the document, this is where you don’t need to be.
<BODY></BODY> is located below the HEAD tags, and makes up most of the document. This part tells the tale of what’s actually showing on your webpage. Living here are the text, images, links, and pretty much anything you can see in your browser. This is where we play. The following tags all occur within the BODY part of an HTML document.

Step Three – Because <P>, <BR> & <FONT> Make You Feel Pretty

We’ve already said HTML was a markup language. This means as much as making text feel pretty. Remember, HTML dates back to when the web was a very text-y experience. Besides, the internet would’ve been far too slow to support YouTube. Here are some of the most common pretty-making tags.

<b></b> makes your text look bold
<i></i> makes you write in cursive
<u></u> underlines what you just wrote

You’ll be delighted to know that these also work in the comments section. Don’t overuse them, though.

<br> hits the break, making you continue on a new line
<p> indicates a paragraph, creating an extra large break

These allow you to structure the document, because an actual break doesn’t mean anything in an HTML document.

<FONT></FONT> allows you to manipulate a bunch of other stuff with text, by using attributes like size, face and color.

An ideal example would be <FONT color=”blue”>smurfs</FONT>.

<H1></H1> to <H6></H6> allow you to quickly draw up different sized headers. H1 is biggest and H7 smallest. The ones we use in MakeUseOf articles are usually about H3.

Nowadays, markup is often kept in a separate CSS file. The exact style figures are explained externally, and one only needs to ‘mark’ part of the document to apply them. This is done by using div tags. For example, <div class=”headermakeuseof”>sometext</div> will look for a headermakeuseof class in the CSS file. We won’t discuss this in detail.

Step Four – Embedded Images with <IMG>

Images have become customary on HTML pages, and yet there’s a piece of code behind it. The <IMG> is one of two tags we’re going to discuss in detail, because it’s something you’ll be able to use. Just think of those annoying web sites that don’t allow you to download some pictures to your desktop (I’m looking at you, Flickr). Next time, just go into the source and grab the source yourself.

Here are some of the attributes used in conjunction with the IMG tab.

src=”http://site.com/image.jpg/”

Very important. The source attribute specifies the location of a picture. That’s right, a picture is never really rendered in a web page, but gets pulled in from an external source. Once you’ve got that address, you’ve got the picture.

Sometimes, only part of the URL is displayed. The actual URL will depend on the location of the HTML file. This is called a relative address, contrasting with an absolute address. An exemplary http://site.com/dir1/dir2/dir3/page.html may show a value of “image.jpg” when the picture is located in the same directory as the webpage. In this example, the full address would be http://site.com/dir1/dir2/dir3/image.jpg.

If you encounter a relative address of “dir4/image.jpg”, the image will be located in http://site.com/dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/image.jpg

Similarly, “../image.jpg” will have you go back one directory, “../../image.jpg” two directories, and so on.

height=”200″ width=”50%”

These tags define how large the image is displayed. It doesn’t say anything about the actual size of the image. Sizes can be added in pixels (where 200 and 200px are one and the same) or percent. With only height or width specified, the other one changes accordingly. Using both tags allows you to ’stretch’.

alt=”alternative name or comment”

The alt tag specifies the text shown on mouse-over, or when an image fails to load. More specifically, these are what XKCD uses for those funny afterthoughts.

Proper usage would be, e.g. <IMG src=”image.jpg” height=”20px” alt=”example”>

Step Five – Links Are Made With A Tag

This one could be even more important than the IMG tag. An <a></a> tag allows you to mark a spot in a document, and link to documents, pictures, files, and even anchors in other HTML sites. Here are the most common attributes.

href=”http://www.makeuseof.com”

One of the most common attribute, written <a href=”address”>text</a>. You can create links by defining the web address and encapsulating said ‘anchor text’. Links can also be used in the comments section, provided you don’t link to spam or inappropriate content.

name=”neverwhere”

Used in conjunction with the name attribute, the tag will create an anchor. You can use this anchor to link back to from within the same page, or even over the web. One can link to an anchor by using a relative or absolute URL, respectively <a href=”#name”> or <a href=”http://site.com/page.html#name”>.

In Conclusion

This is the part where I admit we’ve only brushed the surface of HTML. What we’ve seen today will allow you to skim through and understand a big part of simple websites. Go ahead, try it. You’ll definitely find some tags you don’t know, but that’s where Google comes in handy. If you’re willing there’s a lot more information where that come from, and you can all find it online.

If you’re looking for something very specific, like an image, an audio file, or a link, there’s no need to read the entire HTML page. Press Ctrl+F and search for those files or the relevant tags. You know what you’re looking for now, and especially when you’ve found it.

What do you think? Your first or last encounter with HTML? Let us know what you think in the comments section below, and don’t be afraid to try out some of the markup code!

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12
Mar/100

How To Set Up A Wireless Home Network With Just a Mobile Phone
Category: Technology>Make Use Of

wmWifiHead The key piece in a wireless home network is the wireless router. Once you have the router set up to your internet connection all you have to do is let the computer connect to the wireless router and authenticate.

Now what if you want to use your mobile phone’s internet connection to power your network? And what if, instead of using a physical wireless router, you decided a freeware application called Mobile Wi-Fi Router would do just fine.

Now remember if you and your phone leave the house you will not be able to remotely connect to your home computers. You are essentially taking the connection out with you.

This makes a good setup for a few computers and casual Internet browsing. NOT if you have seven computers and a server all pulling in gigs and gigs of data.

I am sure you can do this from any mobile platform but today we will be using a Windows Mobile 6.5 device to connect. I have also tested this on Windows Mobile 6.1. If you try it on other versions please let us know in the comments.

First we will need to download the Wi-Fi Router application. You can grab it from here. Once you have it downloaded and installed on your Windows Mobile Device, you can launch it. Go ahead and start up the application by simply clicking on the desktop logo. Set up from there is just as easy.

The main interface of Wi-Fi Router looks like this:

WMWifi2

The options are ready to go right out of the box with a WEP password of 1234567890 and a generic network name. These will be fine for testing but when you decide to put this to use please do everyone a favor and change the network name and the WEP key.

Once you have your settings as you want them, you have the option to check the box next to Use these settings next time without asking.

I only have my 3G connection active so that is the only option that appears under Internet Connection. When you have another connection active like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth those will appear there as well for you to choose from.

When you are ready to test, go ahead and hit the Start soft key button. You will then see a screen that looks like this:

WMWifi3

As you can see it clearly spits the network information back at you so you can look at your device to reference the WEP or network name. Hitting OK will allow you to use your device again keeping the Wi-Fi network active.

Now walk on over to each computer you want to join your new wireless home network and connect to it. Remember to enter your WEP key in the correct field on your computer.

Before the first computer connects the status screen will say Ready to accept connections as you can see below:

wmwifi5

When the first computer connects that status message will change to Connection Established.

Go ahead and test out your connection – we will wait right here! If your connection to your phone is flaky you might want to position the device better. Maybe move it closer to the window or somewhere it gets the most bars / best reception.

WMWifi4

To disable your wireless home network you can hit the Stop button on the Wi-Fi Router’s main page like so:

wmwifi6

If you know how to do this on the iPhone or on Android please hit us up in the comments. Do you have a better way of doing this? Put us on and let us know!

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

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12
Mar/100

Cool Websites and Tools [March 11th]
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.

List Your Website Here!

Etacts – Enter Etacts. Give your Gmail login and this service will analyze your email history and tell you which contacts are most important to you. It will also tell you how long its been since you’ve contacted these important people. Read more: Etacts: Find Out Who You’ve Lost Touch With On Gmail.

		JustUnfollow – If you are one of those who feels offended by those who do not follow you back on Twitter, you can easily recognize and unfollow them using JustUnfollow. It is a Twitter-based app that displays your Twitter contacts that do not follow you back. Read more: JustUnfollow: Unfollow Twitter Users That Don’t Follow You.

		ZipList – There are hundreds of to-do list apps online that let you create grocery lists, however, there are very few that are actually created for the sole purpose of making grocery lists. ZipList is one of them. Read more: ZipList: Create Grocery Lists To Print & Share Online.

		BuzzCounter – Even though it was launched just recently, Google Buzz has become one of the popular social networking tools, more so because of it’s integration with Gmail. BuzzCounter provides you with a Google Buzz Widget that lets you display your information on any website or blog. Read more: BuzzCounter: Embed Google Buzz Widget On Your Website.

		CodeOrgan – Ever wonder how your favorite website sounds? Me neither. The folks at CodeOrgan evidently have, however. The site is really easy to use: simply enter any URL and hit the “Play This Website” button. CodeOrgan will then analyze the web site’s content and isolate all the characters on the musical scale to construct a melody. Read more: CodeOrgan: Hear How Any Website Sounds.

List 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.

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11
Mar/100

How To Turn Boxee Into The Ultimate ROM And Game Launcher
Category: Technology>Make Use Of

Boxee users who also love to play their favorite retro games using emulators have wanted this for a long time: a way to launch ROMs using Boxee’s slick, remote-based interface.

With some regularity Boxee’s enthusiastic users will ask about the possibility of a game launcher for their favorite games , including ROMs and native applications. This is now possible.

Sort of.

There are a few glitches, and it’s not an instant process, but if you’re willing to work at it you can turn Boxee into a ROM and game launcher right now.

The following instructions assume you’re already fairly familiar with Boxee, and that you already know how to use emulators, assuming you want to launch ROMs. If you know that much, you’ll have Boxee set up to launch your favorites in no time.

Install the Game Launcher App

The first step toward setting up Boxee to launch your ROMs and games is to install FuzzTheD’s excellent Launcher App. This dandy little Boxee App allows you to execute any external program from within Boxee. The developer gives the example of Chrome and Filezilla, but you can launch any program using this App–including all of your games.

To install this app, you’re going to need to add Fuzz The D’s repository to Boxee. If you’ve never added a repository on Boxee, don’t worry: it’s painless. Just open the App section of Boxee, then bring up the left-side menu. At the bottom of this menu is a “Repositories” button; click this. You’ll be given the option to add a new repository: click this and type “dir.fuzzthed.com”. You’ll now see a new repository to your right, called “Boxee Repo.”

Browse this repo and you’ll see tons of Apps not offered in Boxee’s standard library (some work better than others.) Explore this as you will, but for the purposes of this tutorial the one you’re looking for is called “Launcher.” Click it, then click the “Add to My Apps” button to make sure you have this application in your Apps menu. I also highly recommend hitting the “Add Shortcut” button for easy access.

Setting Up The Game Launcher

Now that you have Launcher set up, you can create shortcuts to your favorite games. Open the Launcher App and scroll the the left-menu to bring up your options. Click “Add Application” and you’ll be presented with the opportunity to fill in a name for the application, a link to the application and the URL of a thumbnail.

To get started, type the name of the program in the top field. Now add a link to the game you want to launch, either by typing the location of the program or by using the built-in file browser. Windows users will need to point to the game’s executable, while Linux users need only type the command that brings up the game.

Finally, pick an icon for the application. You can type the location of a local image you want to use, or press button beside this field to automatically search Google for images related to the title you selected previously.

This feature makes finding relevant icons for your games a snap.

Launching ROMs

And now the part you’ve been looking for: using Boxee to launch ROMs. How to this varies depending on your operating system, but it’s not that hard.

Windows users looking to launch ROMs using this method need only to make sure their emulator is set as the default program for opening ROM files. For example, if you want to open Nintendo games with the excellent multi-system emulator Mednafen, make sure Windows is set to open .nes files with Mednafen (and that all your NES ROMs end with the file extension .nes).

Now, using the instructions above, add a new application to Launcher, pointing directly to the ROM when asked for a link to the application.

Linux users will find the above method doesn’t work, and that writing the full command (for example, “mednafen /home/me/roms/mario.nes”) also doesn’t yield a good result. No problem: simply create a script that can launch the game using Mednafen. Open your text document and create a document similar to this:

Save this document and make it executable, and you’ve got a single file to point Boxee towards to open your ROM using your favorite emulator. You’ll need to make one of these for every ROM you want to launch, but it’s not a terribly time consumer endeavor.

Not being among the elite ranks of computer users who own a Mac, I cannot verify a method of accomplishing this on OS X. I’m quite sure, however, that some industrious MakeUseOf user will explain how to do this in the comments below. After all, our readers are awesome.

Full Screen to Full Screen

Unfortunately, using this method to launch programs full-screen while Boxee is running full-screen can crash your system on both Windows and Linux. There’s an obvious solution to this: don’t use the method to launch your games full-screen. Alternatively, you can run Boxee outside of full-screen when you intend to launch a ROM: just press “\” to enter windowed mode.

My Boxee box runs Linux, so I worked around this problem by always running Boxee in windowed mode while using a program called devilspie to make Boxee appear to be full-screen whilst in windows mode. I simply installed devilspie from the repositories, then saved this script in a sub-directory of my Home Folder called “.devilspie.”

Save this script with a “.ds” extension, and devilspie will automatically make Boxee appear fullscreen when it operates in windowed mode, meaning Set devilspie to start automatically on boot and you’re ready to launch full-screen games from within Boxee without crashing.

There must be similar workarounds for Windows and Mac, but I don’t know what they are. Again, chime in in the comments below if you work out a solution.

Conclusion

Perhaps someday Boxee will arrange deals with the companies that own the rights to our favorite retro-games, giving us the option to legally purchase games for Boxee. I’d be more than willing to pay for such integration. For now, however, I’ve managed to turn Boxee into a ROM launcher perfect for my needs.

That’s not to say there isn’t room for improvement here. A Boxee developer wanting an enthusiastic user base should consider creating a dedicated ROM game launcher; perhaps one that integrates the programs launched into Boxee itself, but even a launcher built specifically to launch external programs without crashing Boxee would be greatly appreciated. For now, however, users looking for similar functionality can work toward this functionality right now–and they have FuzzTheD to thank.

What do you use Boxee for?

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10
Mar/100

6 Cool Widgets For Myspace
Category: Technology>Make Use Of

I have had just about enough of MySpace, Friendster, Facebook and the rest of them. I guess it is just me growing up and settling into my ways. I am 30 years old and I blog and tweet all the time.

But I do recognize that a huge part of the younger population are into Myspace and that is why I will be running down 6 really cool Widgets for your MySpace page.

Aibek covered a huge amount of additions, widgets and more for your MySpace page back in 2006 here.

The first widget I will cover is a game called Age of War. Learn the Art of war. Buy turrets, fight and evolve. This is an epic game and will bring people back to your page over and over again! I found this widget here at WidgetBox

cool widgets for myspace

To install the widget on MySpace your best bet is to grab the embed code and insert it where you want it like so:

cool widgets for myspace

The next widget is called My Flash Fetish and is a MySpace comment widget as you can see below:

cool widgets for myspace

There are lots of customizations to color and styling so you can make it fit your page. Click the get code button below the widget and choose “other” then copy the embed code and you are on your way to pasting it into your page.

Want more cool widgets for Myspace? Next, we have another MyFlashFetish widget that allows you to show how long you have been sober from drugs, alcohol or what have you. Visit this site and follow the directions and grab the embed code when you are done to post it on your MySpace page.

myspace widgets

Alright now how about a count down widget to show how much time is left until your birthday? Check out this widget from Magic Widgets.

myspace widgets

Fill in the data on top, change the colors and the background image. Your preview will appear above it. The message can also be dragged around to place it where you would like in the widget on this screen. Then you click get HTML code to get and insert your embed code.

I particularly thought this one was very cute and appropriately titled Stick Figure Family. You can set up yours from FreeFlashToys.

myspace widgets

After editing mine looked like this:

the most wanted widgets for myspace

Here is a good prank for your page. It is called Tic Tac Prank and in the author’s own words:

Haha… we love scaring people with good ‘ol pranks. That’s why we made TIC TAC SCARE. It’s one of the best ways to make your friends piss themselves, by playing a “harmless” game of tic tac toe. So put it on your profile and wait to hear your friends’ reactions. People even record the reactions on YouTube! Check it out.

Here is the URL to grab the code and below that is a YouTube video of a mom pranking her children with it! Bad mom!

So all in all, there are an infinite amount of widgets out there for whatever social network you use no matter if it is MySpace, a blog, or anywhere they will let you enter code!

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

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10
Mar/100

Cool Websites and Tools [March 9th]
Category: Technology>Make Use Of

List Your Website Here!

Sprdword – This website indexes documentary videos that offer alternative perspectives and worldviews. You will find a collection of best controversial documentaries that you wouldn’t normally find in traditional media. Read more: Sprdword: Aggregates Best Controversial Documentaries Online.

		Fill That Form – Many web services still ask you to fill out boring forms before you can do anything else. If you are one of those people who hate filling out the same information again and again, check out FillThatForm. It is a cool app that provides you with an automated way to fill in forms online with a single click. Read more: FillThatForm: Automatically Fill In Forms Online.

		ABCya – Learning from a book is so old-fashioned. Kids today are so much into technology that it has to be the medium for their education. ABCya is one such site that allows children to learn through thousands of interactive browser based games for kids. Read more: ABCya: Thousands Of Educational & Browser Based Games For Kids.

		Meetifyr – Finding out when everybody is available for a meeting can be a real hassle, specially if the group is large. Meetifyr is a free availability calendar that helps you with this by providing a dead simple way to check everybody’s availability. Simply go to Meetifyr and launch a new calendar. Read more: Meetifyr: Dead Simple & Free Availablity Calendar.

		ColorIQ – How good your eyes are doesn’t entirely revolve around clarity: some people are better at judging colors than others. If you’d like to know how you see colors compared to others in your age the ColorIQ offers you a way to find out. Simply arrange four rows of similar colors in hue order. Read more: ColorIQ: Test How You See Colors.

List Your Website Here!

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9
Mar/100

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.

open notebook science

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.

open notebook science

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:

A Blog with RSS Feed
A Wiki
An RSS Reader
A Social Network
A digital still camera
A digital video camera

Methods:

Keep a computer in the lab
Document all steps, materials, and findings (good and bad) as they happen on your wiki notebook
When possible, take pictures or video of experiments
Write a summary for the blog BEFORE you leave the lab.
Publish your blog so that it gets pinged by your RSS feedburner.
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?

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9
Mar/100

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.

windows 7 new features

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 7 new features

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.

windows 7 new features

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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8
Mar/100

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:

how do i unblock a web page

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:

how do i unblock a web page

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

how do i unblock a web page

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:

how to unblock a restricted web page

And on closer inspection to the URL we see this:

how to unblock a restricted web page

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:

how to unblock a restricted web page

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

how do you unblock web pages

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:

how do you unblock web pages

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

how do you unblock web pages

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!

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6
Mar/100

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

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

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6
Mar/100

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:

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.

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6
Mar/100

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

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.

SMS tips and tricks

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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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

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!

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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5
Mar/100

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.

free album cover art

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.

free album cover art

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.

free dvd cover art

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.

free dvd cover art

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.

07b Artwork Gofer - Reading Library.jpg

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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4
Mar/100

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

7Head1 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.

Windows 7 XP Mode

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

Windows 7 XP Mode

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

windows 7 xp

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:

windows 7 xp

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

windows 7 xp

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.

xp7

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!

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4
Mar/100

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

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.