It’s your favorite friendly neighborhood admin here, dropping another free tool on you to make your life easier.

I find myself transferring huge amounts of data to and from my data center over the weekend. I need to transfer files on a schedule because there is no way in hell I am going to be logging onto a computer and manually setting up backups or transfers on my days off. Because bandwidth is a commodity these days, I find myself needing to know how long a transfer will take. This way, I can schedule all of my transfers and not worry about them until I verify them on Monday.

I might be a network engineer and I might be the guy who you ask what to do when your computer starts acting strange. However, I do not know how long a transfer is going to take before it starts. I don’t know how to figure it out… But now, I don’t have to!

Enter Transfer Time Calculator. Such a simple application and yet so powerful! This is a 44KB file that is fully portable. You simply download it and then run it.
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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.

(1) Foozya – Web application which lets you add a “Feedback” button to any of your web pages and easily gather feedback from visitors. By default, the button will appear at the bottom of your webpage, you can customize its orientation, size and color any way you want. Read more: Foozya: Add Feedback Tab To Your Site
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Picking the restaurant for dinner is hard. Whether it’s a date, or just colleagues or friends hanging out, there’s all kinds of unspoken pressure on the person who picks the restaurant. If the food’s terrible, it must mean I’m terrible. And what if I can’t get a reservation anywhere, and we end up eating at McDonald’s? It’s just all so overwhelming.

Luckily for me, OpenTable’s got my back. OpenTable is a massive (and still growing) system of restaurants, foodies and tools for helping you find the right restaurant as well as always getting a table.

First, you’ll see this screen below (which looks an awful lot like a parking screen for an ad company, but really isn’t). Pick your locale – most major American cities are well-represented by OpenTable, as are a number of international cities. Then, you can refine your search even more: by a more narrow location, by type of food, or even by date and time (eliminating any restaurant that might be closed when you want to eat).

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While some of us have been lured over to Google Chrome, Mozilla’s Firefox remains the favorite browser here at MUO, and I’m willing to wager that it does so because of near-limitless customization options. We’re also very security-minded as well, so we’ve compiled a brief list of security-conscious Firefox extensions which are compatible with each other. In fact, I can safely say that these are three of the top four extensions under “Security and Privacy” on Mozilla’s Add-Ons site (number four being Xmarks, for reasons uncertain, since it’s a bookmark manager).

1. NoScript

Many browser security issues stem from exploits of JavaScript code. NoScript prevents that code from executing, and then notifies you of what code is blocked. You may then add the page to your white-list with a few clicks. That way, you’re protected when browsing unfamiliar sites, but can still check your Gmail and surf Digg.
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How many times have you bought a CD only to find that most of the songs are not to your liking? I am sure most of you have this kind of experience. It is definitely not a good feeling, perhaps coupled with a pain in the wallet. This doesn’t apply only to physical CD that you buy off the shelf, but also those songs that you bought from iTunes store or Amazon.

Won’t it be great if you can listen to the whole songs (or CD) before you buy? iTunes store and Amazon has the preview feature, but they only come with a 30-second preview, which is not enough to sample a song.

We need some alternatives, great alternatives. So, here are my favorite websites where users can listen to CDs before buying them.

1. AOL music

AOL music is one of the best place in the Web that offers free full length songs and music for listening. It has a huge database of songs. You simply pick the songs you want. If the song is not available, AOL will search for it in the web and playback (from the remote location) the song on the fly.

In addition, AOL music always have a “New music releases” section where you can listen to new CD releases for free in their entirety every week.
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In these ever so serious days, what better way to get a smile on your lips than with cute, furry animals.

Even the most dull and serious people can’t escape a laugh when they see a lemur getting tickled, silly pet pics, or browse lol pets pictures.

We’ve gathered the all-time cutest websites on the internet. Hakuna Matata - read on, forget about your worries and relax.

Cute Overload

Cute-hunters out there most probably know all about Cute Overload, and for those who don’t – the name says it all.

Cute Overload brings daily new cutie pictures, ranging from ninja hamsters to fat immobile cats. All pictures are based on reader suggestions, so they’ve got cuteporters all over the world, ready to make your day.

If you want to have a dose of funny cute, Cute Overload is the place to go.
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“Is there a way to send personalized bulk emails using Mozilla’s Thunderbird? That is sending mails to a group of people without each of them knowing about each other’s email address (without using BCC). Also, with each person having only his own mail address in the ‘To’ field.”

I expected this question after my previous post – How to Send Personalized Mass Emails in Outlook. So, let me continue where I left off and do a bit of Mozilla Thunderbird add-on hunting. After all, Mozilla’s rich add-on universe has a cure for every conceivable ‘problem’ except world hunger.

Yes, I found the answer in Mozdev.org. It’s the Mozilla developers’ community dedicated to open and free, quality applications and extensions – a perfect place to check out when you want to know how to set up Mozilla Thunderbird for anything.

Mail Tweak is a Thunderbird extension for Thunderbird ver. 2.0+. It’s a collection of enhancements and workarounds for the email client. The enhancements total around 36 (113KB) and one of them is called Personalize messages.
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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.

(1) LinkUp – Job aggregator that lets you find hidden jobs listed on company websites. These jobs listings are generally unadvertised to the outside world and can be difficult to find if you don’t know where to look. The site currently lists data from over 21,000 company websites. You can search by keyword, job title or location. Advanced and more refined search options are also supported. Read more: LinkUp: Find Hidden Jobs
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My darling wife was volunteering at the world-famous Ponoka Stampede (props to my cowboy homies). She saw a kid playing some cool games and asked what they were. “It’s Roblox!”, I imagine the child said. “Your husband should check it out and write about it on MakeUseOf.com. His article will go straight to the front page of Digg and be Twittered near and far.” Did I mention I imagined that he said this? The sky is purple in my world.

In any event, I did check out Roblox. Not only is it fun, it has some great features. It’s a cool, free virtual world for kids where you get to create your own character, much as you would for SecondLife or any number of other virtual world games.

In this one, the characters are blocky, and reminiscent of those little yellow Lego fellows. It’s kind of like Sims, where you get to build your own buildings and towns. Sort of like Webkinz in that you can earn points (known as tickets or Robux in Robloxian) so that you can do different things like buy user-created online goods for your Roblox character.

What really sets it apart is that kids playing on Roblox can create their own games and put them out there for the world to use.
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Do you like to find hidden meanings in your dreams? Do you ever wonder why do people dream? Would you like to control your dreams? We spend one-third of our lives sleeping and most of it dreaming.

Many people perceive dreams to be important because:

• Dreams are important for our overall well-being and health. Dream deprivation leads to irritability, disorientation, and depression.
• Dreams are our connection with our subconscious mind. They reveal suppressed emotions, as well as our innermost desires and fears.
• Recurring dreams may point to an unresolved issue in our lives. This helps us understand how to reduce stress and where we may need help.
• Dreams can provide guidance and inspiration for ideas and creativity.

A lot of information about understanding why people dream, and analyzing your own dreams, is now easily available on the web. A simple search reveals dozens of sites that claim to help you interpret your dreams. Unfortunately, many of them are outdated or are marketing gimmicks for selling books or premium services. Let us see some of the best free sites and how you can make use of them.
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