What I’d like to do for you now is to break down the letter and address important things about it.

Then I’d like to explain what precautions you can take to prevent this from happening again in the future.

We are writing to inform you that we have received a complaint that alleges that your Internet Service account has been involved in copyright infringement. This complaint was traced back to your account based on the IP address used at the time of this activity.

Yes, this can really be done in cases of copyright infringement. Your ISP should be automatically making logs to track who they’ve assigned IP addresses to, as well as when. There really isn’t any thing that you can do about this. If you want, you could reboot your modem to see if you get a new IP address assigned to you. All that will do is make it harder for a copyright holder to establish a pattern of downloading. But they still can!

Please note that we have not provided any of your personal account information to the complainant. It is our policy to disclose such information to a complainant only if ordered to do so by a court of law, which has not happened to date.

That’s pretty decent of them to have that as a corporate policy. However, check the policy for YOUR ISP on this sort of thing. They may want nothing to do with dealing with copyright holders, and will hand over your information upon request if copyright infringement is claimed. If that is the case, you may consider changing ISPs.

There’s more in the letter, but it pretty much echoes what you see above. So, here’s where we get into making sure it doesn’t happen again.

1. Stop downloading copyrighted materials. If you’re not sure if it is something that carries a copyright, you’re probably best off to not download it.
2. If it wasn’t you doing the downloading, talk nicely to everyone you know who has access to your account. Hopefully, they will be honest with you. In this case, the friend’s teenager was downloading TV shows because they canceled the cable TV service. Fortunately the kid was honest, so they looked at legal alternatives for watching TV online.
3. If no one who has access confesses to the deed, refer back to the letter. The one I read listed the date and time that the copyrighted material was accessed, as well as name and type of file. So if you see it’s the new Eminem album, chances are it wasn’t Great Aunt Ethel who did the downloading. That information will help you to identify who did the downloading. Talk to them about the perils of copyright infringement when you download copyrighted materials.
4. If no one that you know was responsible for the download, then you need to start looking at your wireless router to see if someone outside of the house is accessing your network. Most wireless routers will show you who is connected, and some will keep logs of connections.If more people are connected than you have wireless devices in your home, something is wrong.

   

   That’s all there is in our house, although I don’t know what the unknown is. Possibly our DivX Connected device. The System Log will look something like this.

   

   Try to match up that information with the information in the copyright infringement letter. If it is someone outside of your house, you need to look at strengthening the security on your wireless router. If it seems to be just one person, your router will likely have a way for you to block them specifically. You can get the MAC address from the system log or connected devices summary. This is also a great way to ground kids from the Internet.

   

5. Let’s say that you have copyrighted content that you legally purchased on your computer, but it’s in the same folder as the files for your P2P application. Make sure you move those files out of there, as you may be accidentally sharing them with others. That’s a copyright violation as well.
6. Last but not least, do a very thorough virus scan of your computer. It is possible that you may have a trojan that is opening up your hard drive to the Internet. That may result in unauthorized sharing of files also.

   Something else you may want to consider is a program called PeerBlock. Karl just wrote an article about it. It’s important to note that with PeerBlock, you can create block AND allow lists. So that’s a blacklist/whitelist scenario. You could just create a whitelist of people that you legitimately share files with, so those are the only people that can access you via P2P. That would help eliminate any unauthorized snooping around in your files as well.

Has this article helped you to understand why you got the infringement letter? Has it helped you to understand what you can do to prevent this situation from happening again? I sure hope so. Nobody needs to pay tens of thousands in fines for things they could have bought for a few dollars.

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.

• How To Secure Your D-Link Wireless Router (14)
• How To Install LimeWire & Use it Without Getting a Virus (10)
• How To Get A Layer Of Downloading Protection with PeerBlock (11)
• Technology Explained: Open Router Ports & Their Security Implications (9)
• Protect Your Privacy On P2P With Peer Guardian 2 (29)

Say for instance you’re buying a new iPod for almost 200 Euros. I’m always amazed by the amount of people (almost all) who’ll just pay it even through they could have put in 20 minutes work and saved themselves 30 Euros. That’s an extra thirty Euros you could have in your pocket for basically doing nothing.

As a younger person (although I know most people are affected by the recession) I’m kind of expected to be somewhat up to date with ‘fashion’ and of course technology. And that means expensive purchases. Many young people just bite the bullet not realising that they could easily save (and make) money by following even a couple of the steps I’ll outline below. I’ve compiled the following list of 5 ways to save money that you might not have considered before.

Go Open Source

Until a few days ago when I did a post about this subject on my blog I had no idea how much Microsoft Office cost. Not a clue. To be honest, I was a little shocked that Microsoft were charging a whopping $399 for the full version and $149 for students.

It’s completely unnecessary expenditure. As somebody who writes and blogs for a living, I check e-mails, type up articles, use spreadsheets and run the business aspect of things without expensive software. All those shiny features in Office won’t be used by over 90% of us. I think we just buy Office because that’s all there is on the shelf at the PC store.

Programs such as Open Office, Thunderbird, Gimp and Windows Live Writer easily manages all of my documents, e-mail, Photoshop and blogging needs so why not yours? I estimate that by switching to Open Source the average power-user could save themselves in excess of $500. Check out our directory for all the apps and open source programs you could ever need.

Buy Small Items In Bulk Online

There is a certain myth about online shopping and that is “Shopping online is always much cheaper”. And it is – if you use it right. For example, a big burden on many students are textbooks and other such school supplies. So we head online in search of these in the hope of saving a few dollars. But are we really? Postage on massive textbooks is expensive so it’s important you make sure you’re actually saving money.

For small items such as books, second-hand book stores often trump the internet. Some items that are cheap online when you buy in bulk (from the same seller to save on postage on sites such as Amazon and the products own site) include DVDs, CDs, stationary, magazine subscriptions and the likes.

More expensive items such as iPhones and laptops will always be cheaper and cost little for postage so it’s best to shop for these online too. Online will always be cheaper if you buy the right products in the right quantities.

Coupons & Promotions

If there was ever a place to find bargains it is the Internet. Everyday thousands of promotions are listed but few actually use them. Sites such as Coupons.com and Ask Deals list thousands of new promotions everyday. Each time before you buy something (either online or in store) do a quick promotion search on these sites.

I can’t remember the last time I bought a domain on GoDaddy without searching for a promotional code – each time I’ve saved a few dollars which adds up, let me tell you. If, at every checkout on sites such as Amazon and Play.com, when you see a promotional code entry box you ran a quick search you could save yourself hundreds of dollars per year just for Googling something like ‘Amazon Free Shipping Promo Code’.

Easy, right?

Also make sure to check out Top 10 Grocery Coupon Websites for Cheapskates.

VoIP Services

When I first started getting serious about writing I worked for a gaming network based in the Netherlands. Me being in Ireland meant international call charges. I just kind of accepted it for a couple of months and must have wasted at least fifty Euros on calls to and from my bosses/co-workers.

Some people may call me stupid for not using VoIP services earlier like Skype and Google Talk before but I just never thought of it at the time. A few e-mails later and I had switched my normal method of calling my bosses to Skype – and I saved money (lots by my calculations). I think that international calling will be extinct over the next few years as VoIP services gain more recognition as a good way to conduct long distance calls and conference meetings.

Also check out some Skype replacements which we have covered in the past such as Gizmo5 and ooVoo.  Charnita also covered 6 other VoIP possibilities.

Make Money on the Internet

There are numerous ways to do this but only a few ways to make it work properly to the extent that you can call it a job. eBay businesses (when done right) can become quite profitable but I suggest you do your homework. To make online selling work you have to have a product that’s in demand. For instance, if you know a guy who refurbishes 16GB iPod Touches and will sell them to you for 100 bucks, you can then sell those for $150 and make money. Its all about the product.

Another way to make money online is by blogging (check out my authors page to see my posts about blogging). It’s tough work and the chances of success without actual interest in your niche are nil.  Jimmy Rogers did two MakeUseOf posts on how to find blogging work (here and here) and MakeUseOf is always hiring if your interests lie in the internet / technology area.

However, as students you may want a quick way to make an extra $50 per week. Well I have one that will work – and it’s not a scam or short-term solution. You simply write copy for a large company called Bright Hub. There are others out there but this one pays the best. It’s easy to get accepted to a channel there and they pay $10 per article (minimum of just 300 words). You can write as many articles as you want too.

In my experience, most articles take around an hour or so to write up. But they can be pretty draining considering some of the ‘less interesting’ subjects you may be asked to write about. However, spending a couple hours every day doing this and you’ve got hundreds of dollars at the end of the month. You also get 85% of the ad revenue from your articles. I don’t write for them anymore but I still get a monthly payment in excess of $50 just for the revenue my articles bring in every month.

In the past, we have covered numerous other ways of making money on the internet. Here’s some of them :

How To Score Money With T-Shirt Designs – Simon

Make Money Online With Your Humorous Pet Video – Laurence

Top Three Ways For Kids To Make Money – Ryan

Earn Money By Taking Online Surveys – Simon

Hopefully you’ll be able to save money using the above tips. Do you have any money saving (or making) tips for tech? If so let us know in the comments.

Image Credit: _ES

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Top 10 Sites For Online Coupons & Promotional Codes (44)
• Wootalyzer – Alerts You Woot! Super Sales and Other Sites (7)
• The Top 10 Grocery Coupon Websites for Cheapskates (62)
• FreshBargains : All-in-one Deals Search Engine (5)
• 5 Online Shopping Sites That Will Actually SAVE You Money (42)

MakeUseOf writers have highlighted Dropbox’s virtues more than once. In 2008 Dave interviewed its founder, Drew Houston; Angelina suggested several interesting ways for students to use Dropbox; Jackson reviewed Dropbox’s iPhone app; and Jeffry showed Mac users how to remotely trigger a file download using Dropbox.

But as useful as the Dropbox file sharing program is on its own, it’s even better when used in tandem with the applications you already know and love. Whether it’s remotely starting a Bittorrent download, synchronizing your calendar and to-do list or making your video game habit instantly portable, Dropbox can make multiple computers function as though they are one.

Start a Bittorrent Download From Anywhere

Bittorrent is the peer to peer technology of choice for most Internet users, but it’s not exactly easy on bandwidth. So if you think of something you want to download while you’re at work, running bittorrent on your work computer is probably a good way to get fired. You can, however, easily start a bittorrent download on your home desktop machine or media center from work with a little bit of Dropbox magic.

Most bittorrent programs are capable of watching a given folder for .torrent files. Point your program towards a folder in your Dropbox file sharing program, and volia. If you leave your desktop computer on while you’re at work, you can add a .torrent file to the folder in your Dropbox from work and your download will automatically start — at home.

Can’t install Dropbox on your work machine? No problem; just use Dropbox’s web interface to upload the files.

Keep Your Calendars Synchronized

I’m sure many of you use Google Calendar for your online calendar needs — it’s an easy-to-use calendar you can access anywhere. But online calendars are only useful when you have an Internet connection, leaving you without you data in those (admittedly increasingly rare) instances when there’s no nearby WiFi connection.

Dropbox’s strength being  the ability to make data on one computer accessible from all your computers, combining Dropbox with your desktop calendar application of choice can deliver a great compromise between an offline and and online calendar: simply save your calendar file to your Dropbox. Your data will be accessible when you’re offline, and you’ll even be able to make changes. As soon as the computer you made those changes on connects to the Internet, however, they will take affect on all your computers.

Mozilla’s Sunbird works beautifully this way. Simply create a new iCal file and save it in your Dropbox, then open the file with Sunbird on all your systems. Now all changes you make to your calendar will be visible on all your systems.

Sync Your To-Do List or Desktop Wiki

For many, Remember the Milk is the ultimate to-do list, but if suffers the same limitation online calendars do: you need to be online to access it. If you find for this reason that your ultimate to-do list strategy is an old-fashioned text document with a list of tasks, Dropbox can make that document accessible on all your computers. Simply move your text to-do list to your Dropbox and you’re set.

Alternatively, if you use a desktop wiki such as Zim [Windows/Ubuntu] or Tomboy [cross-platform] to keep track of your current tasks, consider storing your wiki’s repository in your Dropbox. I myself use Zim to store everything from phone numbers I need to remember to wireless passcodes I need when visiting friends and family. Dropbox ensures I’ll never forget to transfer a critical piece of data from my desktop to my netbook.

Make Your Gaming Instantly Portable

All work and no play makes Dropbox sound very dull. If you love playing video games on your media center computer, or your desktop computer, but wish you could continue the fun on your netbook during your bus commute to work, Dropbox can help with that too. Many games will give you the opportunity to save your game to a certain folder; simply save to your Dropbox and you can continue on your netbook without missing a beat (assuming the game’s installed on that computer as well.)

Are you a retro-gaming fanatic who likes to always have your emulator on-hand? Most emulators allow you to configure where to save your progress for all games. Point your favorite program towards a dedicated folder in your Dropbox and it will save your game to all your computers without any effort on your part.

Conclusion

There you have it: four unique ways to combine Dropbox with programs you already use on a regular basis. The underlying theme may be the same —data from a given program automatically synchronizing between all your computers — but adding such automatic synchronization can change the way you interact with your computers.

If your calendar has a date on one computer you can access it on another. If Link is about to save the princess on your media center, you can finish the job on your netbook. The best part: once you set up programs in this manner everything happens without any intervention from you, allowing you to focus on whatever you’re working on. This is how computers should work.

Download Dropbox here, if you haven’t already. The service is free for a 2 gigabyte account, and you won’t need more space than that to apply the tricks described above.

Do you have your own Dropbox mashups you’d like to share? Please share; point it out in the comments below.

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Show Your Outlook Calendar On Desktop with Desktask (8)
• Reviewing Dropbox For iPhone – Is It Up To Expectations? (11)
• Manage Your Life with Free Online Time Management Tools (11)
• Make Use Of Podcast #9: Selling your home online, new Twitter clone and Syncplicity (5)
• How To Trigger the Download of a File Remotely (Mac Only) (11)

Before You Get Started

Before you decide to download Chrome OS, there are probably a few things I should tell you about it. It is in the very early stages of development, so there is still a lot of stuff that doesn’t work. In fact, it may not work for you at all.

You should also be made aware that this operating system is very simplistic by design, as it is intended for use on netbook computers. By definition, a netbook is a small and inexpensive laptop intended for very casual use such as web browsing and simple office tasks. When you launch Chrome OS, pretty much all you get is a web browser. Don’t be surprised if you go through all this and say to yourself, “I did all that work just to log into a freakin’ browser?”

Requirements

First of all, you will of course need a USB drive you can use to try it out. The disk image is 2,988,442,112 bytes, so you’ll probably need a 4GB thumb drive to be able to use it. If you have any files on your USB drive that you need, be sure to back them up to a safe place because this will wipe all the data from your USB drive. Consider yourself warned.

You will also need a computer that allows booting from a USB drive. You’ll need to instruct your computer’s BIOS to boot from the USB drive instead of the hard drive like it normally does. When you boot up your computer, it should provide you with information as to how to bring up a boot menu. On some machines it is the F8 key and others the F12 key or some other key.

If it all scrolls by too fast, some computers will allow you to pause the boot sequence by pressing the Pause key. That should give you all the time you need to read all that stuff on the screen to see if you can find out what the boot menu key is (if there is one). If you don’t see anything about a boot menu, you could also try editing your BIOS settings to boot from the USB drive. You may wish to consult your computer (or motherboard) manual on how to do this.

You will also need a little bit of luck. Chromium OS may or may not work on your computer hardware. I did successfully run it on two home-built frankenstein computers (with ASUS motherboards), but it did not successfully recognize the network adapter on my Dell laptop. All of this work may be for nothing, if it ends up that Chromium OS does not like your network adapter. Ah yes, I forgot to mention that you do also need a computer with a network adapter.

Finally, you’ll need to download the necessary files to put Chromium OS (that’s what the open source version of Google Chrome OS is called) onto your USB drive. I’ve packaged it all together in a torrent for you:

Download the Chromium OS for USB Torrent (Right-click and Save As)

You’ll need a good BitTorrent client like µTorrent to download it. If you’re new to BitTorrent, be sure to check out our Big Book of BitTorrent. You’ll learn more than you’ll ever want to know about it.

The torrent has a zip file that includes the disk image, as well as a Windows tool for putting the image onto a USB drive. The program you’ll use to create the Chrome OS USB boot disk is called Image Writer for Windows. It’s a nifty little tool for writing disk images, it’s free, and it’s open source.

You don’t need to download it seperately because I’ve already included it in the torrent. I just wanted to mention the good folks that developed the great application and send them some link love as well.

Installing Chromium OS to your USB Drive

Unzip chrome_os_usb.zip, and launch Win32DiskImager.exe. If you need a program to unzip the archive, you can download IZArc. If you get the warning below when you launch Image Writer, don’t sweat it. It’s looking for a floppy disk that’s not there.

Once you’ve got Image Writer running, click the folder icon and select the chrome_os.img file (it should be located in the same place where you extracted the zip file and launched Win32DiskImager.exe).

Connect your USB drive to your PC. If you have autorun enabled, you may want to wait a few seconds for your computer to do its thing. Just close whatever window may pop up. Next, click on the Device dropdown and select the drive letter that corresponds to your USB drive. Then, click Write and the program will commence writing the disk image to your USB drive.

Boot Up Chromium OS

You’re now ready to boot up Chromium OS! You can just leave the USB drive in your machine and reboot it. When the machine boots, press the boot menu key on your keyboard. Select your USB drive from the menu. In about 10 seconds or so, you should see the Chromium OS login screen.

Login with chronos and password. This will log you in as a local user. Once you log in, you should see what looks almost just like the Google Chrome browser. If you click on the Chrome sphere in the upper left corner, you should see a Google Accounts login page telling you to log into Welcome. Log in with your Google Account.

If you do not see this page and you get a browser page that says it could not find the page requested, then unfortunately luck is not on your side. It means that Chromium OS doesn’t like your network adapter. You could still however try it out in a virtual machine if you so desire. If you were able to succesfully log in, you should then see the application page.

As you can see, it is all in the cloud. All the applications you see on the app page bring up different webpages, and everything you do takes place within the browser. In my experience, although it did boot up relatively fast, the browser tends to run a bit slow and is a bit jumpy. Although the calculator and notepad launch properly in little popover windows, the apps don’t work and nothing loads into the windows at all.

The To-do List application doesn’t work either, and you get a Google.com account login page. Note, this is not the same as a Google Accounts login so you won’t be able to log in with your Google Account. The Google.com login page is only for Google employees. The Contacts application brings up a Google Talk gadget that doesn’t appear to work.

As I said earlier, a lot of the stuff isn’t working right. You’ll also see right at the top of the application page a message that says UI under development. Designs are subject to change.

All the other applications are simply links to webpages. One thing that I found rather amusing is that when you click on the Hotmail icon, it takes you to Gmail. However, the Yahoo! Mail icon does indeed bring you to the Yahoo! Mail login page. I suppose Google likes Yahoo! better than they do Microsoft.

So what do you think of Chrome OS? Do you think it is the netbook operating system of the future?

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Create A Portable Ubuntu Installation USB On The Mac (44)
• 4 Ways To Use a USB or External Drive Like Your Own Mobile Computer (22)
• Using Keepass to Secure Your Online Accounts (19)
• USB Office Showdown: Tiny USB Office vs. Portable Apps (16)
• Tweak Your Windows OS With Portable Ultimate Windows Tweaker (18)

Let’s see how you can make use of this exciting new Twitter feature!

Popular Twitter clients like TweetDeck and Seesmic have supported creating Groups of users. However, these Groups were specific to the client and could not be transferred if you changed your client. Lists are the “official” Twitter Groups, meaning that once you create a Twitter List, you will be able to follow it from any client that supports Twitter Lists. Almost all the Twitter clients will eventually support Twitter Lists, with Seesmic Beta and Brizzly already doing so.

The advantages of using Twitter Lists are:

• Ability to follow specific people more closely
• Ability to follow a set of brands, blogs, companies, or news sources
• Ability to follow types of people like tech bloggers, celebrities, sport teams, politicians
• If you simply follow Lists created by others, you don’t need to maintain and update the List yourself

In this article, we will see how you can create and follow Twitter Lists using Twitter’s web interface.

Create a List

It is simple to create a list. On the Twitter homepage, you will see a Lists section below the search box, with a New List link. Clicking it brings up the Create a new list dialog.

Specify a name for the list, which will used for creating the list URL. If you use spaces in the name, they are converted to dashes. So a list named “my good friends” gets a URL of twitter.com/yourname/my-good-friends.

Public lists are visible to everyone and anyone can follow them. Private lists you create are only visible to you, and not even visible to the members of the list. Once you click the Create list button, you have created an empty list. Next step is to add members to the list.

Add/Remove Members

There are multiple ways in which you can add people to a list. Once you create a list, Twitter shows you a Find People search box to add people to your newly created list.

Alternatively, you can add people to a list from their Twitter profile page. All Twitter profile pages now include a Lists button that you can use to add or remove people from a list.

Another way is to add people to a list from your own or anyone else’s Following or Followers pages. Each user in the list of following or followers has a Lists button that you can use as shown below.

As you can see, you can also use any of the above 3 ways to create a new list and add the corresponding user at once. In the same way as adding people, you can also use any of the 3 ways to remove people from a list. On the list page, you can Edit or Delete a list from the links at the top right.

Follow a List

Suppose you want to follow all the MakeUseOf writers on Twitter. On the MakeUseOf Twitter profile page, you will see @MakeUseOf/staff under the Lists section on the right. Clicking it takes you to the @MakeUseOf/staff List page.

From here, click Follow this list to follow the list – simple!

Once you start following a list, you will see a link to it in the Lists section on the right on your Twitter home page. Click on it to see the tweets from members of that list. As in the above screenshot, you can see how many people a list follows and how many people follow the list.

Discover Cool Lists

The best place to discover cool lists is Listorious, a third-party website that tracks popular lists.

You can find the most popular Twitter Lists on different subject areas. Lists are categorized using tags into sections like News, Art, Sports, Politics, Humor, Health, etc. Of course, if you have friends on Twitter, you can always see which lists they are following as well.

Are you excited about this new Twitter feature? Share your favorite lists with us in the comments and don’t forget to follow the MakeUseOf staff list!

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Threadsy – Integrates Your Email and Social Networks (+Invites) (24)
• Psst…Do You Plurk? (21)
• Have All Your Social Updates Collected & Sent With NutshellMail (1)
• Become A Star In The Plurk Universe With These Tips (4)
• 9 Steps To A Great Start In Friendfeed (12)

What happened was this; I got bored so I decided to go for a stroll. After half an hour I found myself caught out in the rain. It got really bad and huge puddles started to form on the road. The worst I’ve seen it in a long time. At points, the roads were flooded right across with five inches of water covering the footpaths.

Needless to say I got splashed three times by cars (I think one wise guy did it on purpose). I assumed my phone would be fine because it was in my jacket pocket – away from my jeans which were completely soaked through. But no. The flap which covers my jacket pocket at the front was tucked into the pocket creating a nice funnel for the rain and splash water to flow right into. My phone was literally submerged in water in my pocket. It didn’t work when I got home and went to check my e-mail. Shocker.

However now it does because I worked my magic. Here are three tips to fix a phone with water damage..

Act Quickly

The minute you discover that your phone is water damaged it’s time to act. Remove every cover and detachable part you possibly can. On my phone I took out the memory card, the SIM card, battery and back cover. Unfortunately, because it’s a touch screen the front does not come away.

Using toilet paper or a thin cloth, blot away any excess water you can see inside of the phone. Be sure to get as much as you can. Failing to do so will mean that all this water will start evaporating and collecting in hard to reach places in your phone.

Your phone may work now if it was only submerged for a short period of time. Like if you dropped it in the sink. If not, keep reading.

Quick Drying

Your phone now has an appointment at the beauty salon. Get hold of a hairdryer and start to dry your phone paying extra attention to the battery housing as this normally has small holes which allow air (and ironically enough, water) into the phone.

A warning: Don’t hold the hair dryer too close to the phone. Keep it at a distance whereby if you put your hand in front of the hair dryer it wouldn’t burn you. Any closer and you could damage your phones electrical components. No seriously. Try putting a hair dryer up against a sheet of paper for a few seconds. It turns it brown – would you want that happening to the inside of your phone?

If 20-30 minutes of this doesn’t work – go to plan C.

Long Term Drying

This is what I eventually had to do to fix my phone because it was so badly soaked. Put it in the linen closet or some place warm and dry in your house. Airing cupboards and next to boilers are good choices. The rule of thumb is that it must be a warm place where the phone isn’t in contact with direct or intense heat. So putting it on top of a radiator (despite what other guides say on the internet) is a bad idea as you can damage your phone by heating it too much and it will just rapidly evaporate the water on the inside causing it to collect – this is an ongoing cycle.

By putting it in a warm dry place you allow the water to slowly evaporate and escape through the holes in the phone (remove the covers and battery when doing this).

Some other tips for this method:

• Try to point the back of the phone upwards with the screen pacing down. This allows the moisture to escape easier.
• Around 20°C is a good temperature.
• Disassemble the phone as much as possible.

From my own experience and those of my family, you stand a pretty good chance of fixing your phone this way. I’d say there is a success rate of around 75%.

For touch screen phones, the front won’t come off which leads to moisture build up on the screen. However, there are normally tiny screws at the back which, when removed, should enable you to take off the front. This will allow you to dry the moisture from the touch screen. You do this at your own risk.

Despite what the phone shops would have you believe, it is fairly easy to fix a phone with water damage. Many people assume that once water gets in that’s that. But really, phones are just circuit boards, a screen and a few other bits and bobs. The main reason for them not working when they’re wet is because water on the board or at the battery connectors is causing it to short out.

This is a quick fix to a problem almost everyone will have at some stage. For more of my articles relating to cell phones – see my authors page. Or what if you got your Mac computer wet? Make sure to check out Jackson’s article on how to deal with spilled coffee or coke on your Macbook.

Do you have any other secret methods for fixing water damaged phones? Let us know in the comments.

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.

• 3 Simplest DIY Computer Repairs Anyone Can Do (15)
• The Complete Guide: Troubleshooting Mozilla Firefox Problems (25)
• The 4 Fixes to Common Problems with iTunes for Windows XP (6)
• Six Steps To Help You Fix Common DVD Drive Errors (7)
• How To Solve Any Windows Problem with Event ID (10)

So in the spirit of sharing, the following are some ideas  for those of you who haven’t got out with your camera in a while and made some photographs. Your challenge of sorts is to shoot take 10 different photos in the next month or so. These ideas and photos don’t take a professional camera, nor do they require you to travel to some exotic place to take better photographs. As you will see, these photos are the kind that can be taken nearly anywhere.

Start At Home

Start at home with everyday objects. Shoot something simple, but capture it as aesthetically as possible. As always, don’t settle for one shot. You’re shooting in the digital age, so taking several shots, from different angles and in different lighting conditions is simply not an expensive problem.

This photo represents a part of my morning routine. A cup of black coffee. Nothing special. But what captured my attention were repeated circles of the white cup and saucer, and the black coffee inside. The light coming from the kitchen window was overcast, so I was OK in that area. I took a few shots from above the cup, moved the spoon over some, and settled upon this photo.

Look around your house or apartment. Maybe there’s an interesting clock, bookcase, or musical instrument that you can photograph from an interesting perspective. Don’t let the ordinariness of the subject keep you from shooting it.

Capture Rain Drops

I must have shot photos for like five years before I realized the beauty of shooting rain drops. I’m not the kind of person who likes getting out in the rain. I don’t like the itchy feeling you get from wet clothes. But with this image, when that rain settled I took out my Canon Powershot G9, set it to macro mode and tried to hold the camera as still as possible. I was too lazy to get a tripod, which would have worked better. But since the shutter speed was 1/125th of a second, I was OK. I of course increased the sharpness using Aperture 2.0 software.

Shoot An Out-Of-Focus Shot

Following up on the rain idea, try another shot from your car window. But in this shot, don’t focus the shot.  Just raise your point-and-shoot or 35mm camera and take several shots. Look for some color or shapes to seep through the blur. If your camera’s automatic focus won’t let you take an out-of-focused shot, then turn that feature off. Don’t let your camera boss you around and keep you from getting the shot you want.

Shoot Some Art

Some critics say that photographing art is not really photography. It’s like you’re cheating by making an image out of an image. But that’s not so. You can capture art in context. Or you can ignore the critics and just shoot art for arts sake, plain and simple. Don’t shy away from using one artistic medium to capture another one. I took this shot while at a stoplight. My camera was on the car seat; I saw the photo in my mind before I raised the camera and fired off several shots.

Street Portraits

Okay, this one is for truly brave shooters. For a year, I committed to a self-project of photographing 100 strangers. That’s right, people I didn’t know and would probably never meet again. I discovered the project through a Flickr 100 Strangers group. It is the most challenging photo project I have ever done. It got me out of my comfort zone when it comes to people. Stranger portraits are not candid streets photos in which you take photos of people when they’re not aware of you doing so.  Street portraits are about photographing individuals you find interesting. To get these shots, strike up a conversation before you ask to take a photo. Tell the person about your project and politely ask to take their photograph. If they reject you, don’t take it personally. Just move on and find someone else. The best places to do these type of shots is in busy downtown areas or crowded outdoor events.

Go To The Zoo

Having a hard time finding good subjects to take that better photograph? Go to the zoo. Take your kid or significant other along and see what you can capture. If your city zoo is anything like mine, the animals aren’t going anywhere, and most of the time they can care less about about how many photographs you take of them. So bring along a long range lens of a minimum of 105mm, and see what you can capture in the “wilds” of the zoo.

Old Buildings

One the things I most dislike about where I live is that so much public space has been given over to commercial interests. Old buildings have been torn down, and there are few places that have survived from the demands of modernity. So when I’m out and about, I try to capture interesting old buildings, especially old churches and cathedrals. I’m not religious or anything, but I like capturing the architecture of these buildings.

I captured this photo by driving up to the top of a high-rise parking lot, which gave me a parallel view of the religious crosses. That little extra effort in driving made a difference in the image.

Shoot Slow

Sometimes photos should show the motion of something moving.  If you put your camera on what’s called Shutter Priority, you can set its shutter speed to like 1/25th of a second to capture the motion of a moving subject.

Try this out on moving cars or trains, kids playing, or at a sports event. This is a great way to learn about shutter speeds and an equally interesting way to capture motion.

Shoot Fast

In the same vein as the idea above, shoot to freeze action. Again, use your Shutter Priority, but this time raise the shutter speed to 1/400th of second or faster. If you need to, raise the ISO so that you get more light into the camera. See if you can free action of a moving subject. This shot is another one of my street portraits where I asked the skateboard rider if I could photograph him doing his thing. After I showed him some of the shots I took, he asked me to take a few more.

Paint With The Shutter

Okay, this is the last one in regards to Shutter Priority. I got this idea from reading Understanding Shutter Speed, by Bryan Peterson. This shot is about lowering instead of raising the shutter speed to say 1/5th of second, in a well lit area. Raise the ISO to about 400-600 if you need to, to let in more light. As you take the shot, you, as Peterson says, “twirl, arch, jiggle, or jerk the camera in an up-and-down or side-to-side or round-and round motion.” In other words, paint with your camera. Because the shutter speed is slow, the lens opening will not close up so quickly. Do this several times and you’ll really learn something about slow shutter speeds, plus make some great art.

Faceless Shot

People shots don’t always have to include faces of the people you photograph. Take some shots of someone’s legs, a hand or arm, or a person’s back. Get the face out of the picture and take on the challenge of shooting a faceless photo. This photo was taken very quickly as I crossed a downtown street. I saw these two bikes roll by and took the shot.

Mix Black-and-White With Color

This one involves doing a little Photoshop work after the photo is taken. Select a photo in which you convert it to black-and-white  and then brush back in some of the color. The process in Photoshop is fairly easy: Open the photo in Photoshop. Click on the adjustment layer at the bottom of the Layers palette. Select the Black & White adjustment. Make adjustments to your liking.

Next, set the foreground color to black, and then select the Brush tool. Re-size  the brush tool enough to paint back some color on the image. If you make a mistake, simply change the foreground color to white and paint back in the black-and-white part. This photo is of a dance class in which students a public performance.

Hope these ideas for taking better photographs are helpful. If you decide to try a few out, shoot me a link to your posted image results.  Or perhaps you know some more methods to shoot some really great photos?  Let us know what they are in the comments.

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• [Google Picasa 101] – Master The Special Effects In Picasa (16)
• [Google Picasa 101] – How To Edit Your Photos (14)
• Tips For Taking Digital Photography Using Live View (24)
• Technology Explained: How Does A Digital Camera Work? (32)
• Stitch Panoramic Photos Together with CleVR (21)

As a person who spends a great deal of his spare time researching old and new conspiracy theories, folklore and legend, I find the prospect of traveling to a remote part of the world for such exploration one of my greatest dreams. However, with a small family to support and responsibilities to my employer and my writing clients, there is very little time left over to travel around the world. With that said, there are times when some claims or legends really require an examination of the land, buildings and civilization surrounding a specific area.

In this update I’d like to take readers on a few amazing adventures to explore some mysterious areas of the earth where local folklore and legend makes claim of strange creatures, scary encounters, secret military bases and countless other conspiracy theories. If you’ve got all of your gear ready and you’re ready to board the flight, let’s head out on our first adventure.

Exploring The Island Of Malta

Back in 2006, I wrote a speculative article about underground caverns around the world, and in particular about the amazing story published in Borderland Science magazine where an employee of the British embassy, Miss Louis Jessup, claimed that when she explored the catacombs beneath the Island of Malta, she had a surreal and terrifying experience where she saw large creatures walking around in the darkness.

To give this story a little bit of reality, it would be interesting to explore the Island of Malta, in particular Valletta, to see if we can’t spot at least the entrances to these underground passages, or determine whether or not these places even exist in the first place. According to the archeological website I found that described the excavated caverns under the temples of this island, these temples with many underground levels of catacombs are scattered all throughout the island. The map below shows a significant temple, called the Hal Saflieni, an ancient site that dates back to 3,600 to 2,500 B.C.

It would be interesting to see what the area actually looks like. According to the archaeology site, the area should be free of buildings and structures, but with plenty of pits and recesses in the earth.

Let’s jump in our Google Earth plane and see if we can visit the island of Malta and locate the temple.  Typing in “Valletta, Island of Malta” in the “Fly To” field gets us there.

Just from this distant overhead view, it’s pretty clear that the island is a beautiful place. The inlet of water must provide some beautiful scenic spots. Exploring the area on foot must be a real treat, with so many old palaces and other buildings to tour. However, we’re here to find the ancient temple Hal Saflieni – which, according to the archeological maps, was located just southwest of Valletta itself.

Sure enough, zooming in a bit closer and rolling the mouse over a few of the site markers lands the right one. Marker C is the legendary Hypogeum itself. Zooming in as much as possible without the map becoming blurry reveals a few details about the real location.

Sure enough, while there are buildings and structures around the area, the Hypogeum itself is an area of land that remains untouched. You can see the brown indentations of Earth where there’s no vegetation and the above ground parts of the ancient structure remains. While you can’t zoom any closer than this, you can click on the Wikipedia symbol to learn more about this particular Hypogeum.

Just reviewing the images of these subterranean caverns, it’s very easy to understand how so many local legends exist about these ancient ruins. To think that this is only one of the many multi-layer underground catacombs throughout this entire island is fascinating.  Thanks to Google Earth, you can actually check out the location and read more about each one.

The Human-Alien Conspiracy Theory – The Military Base of Dulce, New Mexico

This is a very fun conspiracy theory to explore because it’s one that I’ve seen debunked so often it’s almost pointless to pursue. But in this second half of this article, I wanted to show how you can explore even the most remote areas of the earth. Unfortunately I didn’t succeed in solidifying my case for no secret base…read on.

According the the various silly legends and stories within Ufology throughout the years, the legend of the human-alien base near Dulce, New Mexico is an old conspiracy theory that claims that the military created the base around 1969 when Project Blue Book (the Air Force investigation of UFOs) was officially closed. According to the stories, the base entrance is at Mt. Archeleta, and the base itself exists on the Jicarilla Apache Indian Reservation (I’m not sure how the government got the Apache to allow such a project – go figure). Considering that there are actual, geographical locations to check out with Google Earth, this is an excellent exercise to show how you can use Google Earth to debunk such conspiracy theories.

The first thing you’ll notice when you map out the distance from Mt. Archeleta to the Jicarilla Reservation is that it’s well over 40 miles from one location to the other. An entrance to a base over 40 miles from the base itself? Not very likely. Forgetting about the Indian reservation, we’ll zoom in on Mt. Archeleta to show that the terrain is so rugged and the mountain so remote that nothing could ever make it there to enter any sort of “secret base entrance.”

You can zoom in pretty close in this territory, and following the various roads shows both roads or riverbeds traveling between the enormous mountains, but not a single road or trail headed up toward the steep incline toward Mt. Archeleta. There’s no obvious structure or even anything that looks like a cave anywhere around the isolated mountain.

However, with that said, as I was scrolling around the peak of Mt. Archeleta, I noticed a very strange, faint track that looked like an old dirt road. Sure enough, when I looked a bit closer it was – and tracing it back along the winding peak I found that after a very long and twisty journey it joined up with the main road at the base of the mountain. The image below is the road along the ridge, headed toward the Mt. Archeleta peak.

Eventually, the road passes just below the peak of Mt. Archuleta, fades out quite a bit (I thought it ended there because the trail faded), but it does continue on well past the mountain.

Regardless of the very odd existence of the road (I could find no similar roads along the top of nearby mountain ridges), there was nothing at all in the area to suggest any sort of entrance or even a structure in this isolated and desolate area. Why don’t you take a look around yourself and see if you spot anything out of the ordinary? As you can see, exploring some of these isolated areas can be a lot of fun, especially when you base your searches around the Earth on the very strange and surreal conspiracy theories and legends you’ll find throughout the Internet.

Do you know of any locations on Google Earth that might be fun to explore? Are you able to spot anything strange at any of those locations? Tell us about your Google Earth adventures in the comments section below!

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Top 10 Conspiracy Web Sites (44)
• Top 8 Websites To Find The Latest UFO Sightings (19)
• Top 5 Sites With Future Predictions About The World (15)
• Top 10 Activities To Do When There’s A Power Outage (8)
• The Seven Wonders of The World (Wide Web) (45)

Lala has become my main jukebox and is used ten times more than I use iTunes. With my setup, it doesn’t take much effort to access my Lala account. This article explains the method I use as a Mac user. I’m sure there are similar applications for PC users.

What You Need

FluidApp
Butler
Airfoil (optional)

Each of the applications, except for Airfoil, can be downloaded for free. Donations, of course, are accepted.

Creating a Site Specific Browser for Lala.com

The Lala music player lacks a dedicated desktop web application to play music. You must sign into your account and use its web application. To get a dedicated player of sorts onto your desktop, you can use FluidApp, a “site specific browser” (SSB), for a dedicated website or page. Making your Lala account homepage a SSB is like making it an application, which means it’s less likely to get lost in the clutter of all your other web pages on your desktop, especially if you use some of its advance features that I will describe below.

Instructions for creating an SSB using the application are clearly explained on its website, so I won’t rehash them here. But the following are some extra instructions for how to specifically use FluidApp to create a “Lala Player” on your desktop.

• First off, when you’re creating a SSB for the Lala music player, you’ll want a well designed icon, so download Goggans’s design posted on his Flickr photostream (once you use the Fluid creation, it won’t have the black border that you see here.)

• After your SSB is created, you can customize the browser some.
• Your SSB includes a menu bar and a set of preferences similar to what you find on any web browsing application. In the FluidApp preferences you can choose to style the window of your SSB as I have done here. I like using the black top framing or “HUD” for all my SSBs. That makes them distinctive from my main web browsing windows.

• There’s also an option in Preferences (click on Behavior Preferences) in which you can have a SSB window immediately hide when it’s not in the foreground. Using this option means you can open up your Lala Player, select a playlist or album to play, and when you click to another application, the browser window gets out of the way so you can get back to what you’re doing.

Use Butler for Quick Access

Like any other application, your Lala.com FluidApp will appear in your dock for easy access. But in my opinion, using a launcher application like Butler or Quicksilver provides even faster access.

Butler allows you to assign a Hot Key or Hot Corner to an application to launch. Since I’m more of a mouse user, I assigned a Hot Corner to my Lala app. It’s easy to do: Start up Butler and click on its Configuration tab. Drag the Lala FluidApp to the Hidden section. With the application selected, assign a Hot Key or Hot Corner that works best for you.

AirFoil (optional)

Lala is beta testing an iPhone application for its site, but until the app is released, you can use a free iPhone application called AirFoil Speakers Touch to hear music on your Lala account on your iPhone or iPod touch. The only catch with using the AirFoil Speakers is that you have to purchase Airfoil for Mac ($25), which sends audio remotely from your Mac to its mobile counterpart speaker application. This is a cheaper solution than getting Apple‘s limited AirPort Express, which can only be used with iTunes. Of course, you can also AirFoil to stream any other audio coming from your computer.

So what do you think of this? If you’re a Lala member, drop me a few comments and let me know what you think about the site and this set up.

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• TubeRadio.fm– A Slick & Cool Internet Music Player for YouTube (8)
• How To Move Your Music Library Online with Moof (11)
• How To Listen To Millions Of Songs For Free On Your Desktop (39)
• DJ The Easy Way With Top 3 Sites To Make Music Playlists (8)
• Top 5 Websites To Listen To CDs Before Buying (22)

One of those occasions was very recently. With its own mobile operating system, Google has been challenging Windows Mobile (not much of a challenge) and the iPhone.

If you’ve got an HTC Windows Mobile phone, you might not have to buy yourself another device to enjoy the hype. But install Android on your Windows Mobile device instead. Nevertheless, porting this operating system has proven a tedious task, and not all phone types support it yet. Newer GSM devices will have a better chance, and to date CDMA is scarcely supported.

Right now it’s not yet possible to boot Google Android as the default operation system. Instead we’ll be using HaRET, a Windows Mobile boot loader. Note that we’re not running or emulating Android in Windows Mobile, but using it to reboot the phone into Android.

1. Gathering Files

Different phone types require different base Google Android files. Even for supported phones, the files will be scattered over different sites and developer areas. I will supply links for some of the most popular HTC phones.

• HTC Diamond
• HTC Vogue/Kaiser/Polaris/Nike
• HTC Raphael/Fuze/Touch Pro

Again, if you don’t see your phone listed, don’t give up. Do a Google search with your own model – because it’s a user-generated wiki, some major advancements aren’t listed on the site yet. When going off-site, always double check your sources, making sure that you aren’t downloading any malicious content.

Download the Google Android files for your phone type.

• The latest Android bundle/files for your phone type
• HaRET (executables)

Most sites will supply file bundles, others will put a directory of files online. If need be, download all of those files, we’ll be telling you which to use in the next step.

2. Installation

If you’re already running a custom ROM, you might want to format your phone. Conflicts can occur when double-modding, and you’re probably going to be using Google Android anyway.

First, let’s put the files in place. Connect via USB and navigate to your phone’s root (this is the mother-folder, the highest directory level). After unzipping your Google Android release, transfer the files you’ve just downloaded. Putting them in any other directory won’t work. You should have something like this:

• HaRET.exe
• zImage (kernel file)
• Initrd.gz
• default.txt
• rootfs.img
• system.img/system.sqsh (Android OS files)

It’ll help to shorten filenames. Some have a date or programmer suffix that can be deleted.

Next, configure your default.txt. Open the file in Notepad and make sure all the values are right. How do you know? Check out a list of Boot Options here. You might need to change phone model, screen resolution, internet access and the like. This will take the most time, but if you keep your eyes open, it isn’t a hard job.

Finally, disconnect your phone and use your Windows Mobile file manager to locate HaRET.exe (it should still be in your phone’s root). You might want to add it to your applications shortcuts. Open HaRET and press Run.

HaRET will reboot your phone with the Android files. Perhaps in the (near) future, we might be able to install Google Android as the standard operating system. But even though progress is unstoppable, it moves at its own pace.

Did you like the tutorial? Let us know in the comments if you experience any problems. Or better yet, direct that at the your phone type’s site. They’ll be able to help you with the really technical business.

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Using Yahoo Go to Stay Connected On Your Mobile (8)
• Total Media Domination – Your TV, Video and Audio on any Device (12)
• The Ultimate Guide To Your Windows Mobile Phone [PDF] (12)
• Snaptu- Free iPhone Theme for Pocket PC or Cellphone (8)
• Make Unique Free Ringtones & Share Them With Friends (8)

These tips to fix dvd drive errors will also work for a CD or CDR drive. The first thing we need to do is determine where the issue is. It can either be a physical issue like power not getting to the drive or a IDE / SATA cable has come unplugged. It could be a Windows operating system problem that is preventing your drive from showing up or reading disks and finally it could be that disk is garbage. You might have a scratched up dirty disk and it is unreadable by your player.

Let’s see how we can identify and resolve these issues. I see issues with drives on a daily basis in my day job as well as hundreds of questions coming in at Ask The Admin. Let me share some of my troubleshooting tips with you. Maybe it will stop the questions – but I doubt it!

These instructions can be used for both internal and external drives but some of the fundamentals might be a little different. Like the power cord versus the internal power connector, the USB interface or a IDE connector. But use your intuition to guide you.

Some of these problems are common both to the external and internal drive and can be fixed with a little application or by following the tutorials that come with these drives.

Step one: Is the drive not showing up in Windows Explorer? Here I can see my CD burner but not my DVD burner. My DVD burner is usually drive E:\.

First things first, we should check the power and connections to your computer.External drives can be checked while the system is powered on but internal drives will need you to shutdown the system and remove the power cord before beginning.

If the cables are connected but loose pull them free and reconnect them.  Start the system back up and see if the drive or drives are showing up. If you have recently modified your drives in your system and have removed or changed jumper settings remember cable select is normally the best way to go. If you are on an external drive these jumpers will not matter.

When the system is on and the drive is getting power you can push the eject button and it will open. If it does not open and it is powered on it can be a physical issue which we will see below.

Step two: If your drive is getting power and will not open or close, it is time for the paper clip trick. Sometimes these drives get stuck closed and you cannot open them. This can be from someone spilling something or using the drive as a cup holder. Go get a paper clip and straighten it out. Ladies and gentleman we will perform this amazing feat of opening a stuck drive with a paper clip and only a paper clip. Are you ready?

Push the paper clip into the small hole located on the right, left or slightly to the right of the left hand side in the older drive above. Pushing the paper clip in the hole releases the door and you can open it with your hands. If it is sticky use a damp cloth to clean it.

Step three: Your drive is opening and closing and it still doesn’t work? We need to check that the drive is connected to the computer. Just as you checked the power, check the connectors. See if the drive now shows up in your computer.

Step four: You have ruled out power and system connections. Now let us look at the device manager in Windows. Open it by right-clicking on My Computer and selecting manage. Then select Device Manager. On older machines it will be in the system properties and then device manager.  If there is a red exclamation point next to one of the items, resolve it and your problems will go away. The drive should appear like this:

A device with an error will have this icon before it:

Step five: If your drive has power and your Windows operating system recognizes it but still it does not read the discs it may be because of a dirty laser lens in the drive. Clean the laser lens with a cleaning kit or run some other discs after the cleaning kit and then try. If the drive works after cleaning it you have found your issue.

Step six: If the drive still is not reading your disk but it is connected and the system sees it, try another disk. If this other disk works it can be the disk. Some older drives cannot read CDR’s or CDRW’s. Try a purchased CD  and see if that works. If so you should probably replace your drive.

Got any other tips for fixing DVD Drive errors – share them with us in the comments!

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Trade Books, CDs, & Video Games for Free with SwapTree (14)
• Make Printable DVD Movie Covers with DVD Print [Windows] (10)
• How To Rip & Convert A DVD Movie For Your iPod (Mac Only) (23)
• How To Repair Damaged CD’s Or DVD’s & Recover Data (25)
• How To Read Scratched CDs or DVDs In Windows (16)

There are many ways you can lighten dark photos in Photoshop. In fact, there are usually many ways to achieve a particular results when working with Photoshop. The one you eventually choose, would depend on the photo and your level of expertise in Photoshop. It involves a bit of trial and error and some experimentation. Here are some techniques that I use often when brightening a dark photograph.

As an example this is the image we will be working with. Our objective is to lighten the background and bring back some details in the foreground as well.

Ready? Let’s get started.

Brightness and Contrast

The name says it all. To use brightness and contrast:

• Open up the photo in Photoshop.
• I always like to duplicate the layer before applying any adjustments, just in case I go too far and make a mistake, the original image isn’t affected. Press Ctrl + J or Cmd +J to duplicate the layer
• Go to Image > Adjustments > Brightness and Contrast and play with the sliders a bit, till you get the desired result.

New users would be tempted to use brightness slider to lighten their dark photographs. While it is easy to use, it only does what I would call a fairly good job of lightening your photos. Any time you are find yourself pushing the brightness slider too far, you are better off using any of the other mentioned ways or else it would be evident that you brightened your photo in post processing.

Levels

Complexity moves up a notch when you use Levels for this kind of work. You can summon the levels dialog box by going to Image > Adjustments > Levels or hitting (Ctrl/Cmd + L). Immediately, you are greeted by a histogram. Histograms in image processing and digital cameras let you know how many pixels or each brightness value are distributed in your image. Having graph lean towards towards the black slider means your photo is predominantly dark; if the graph leans towards the white marker, that means your photo is predominantly bright. (Things get a little more complex when we move into individual color channels, so you can leave that part out for the moment!)

You can use Levels to lighten photographs as follows:

• As always, feel free to duplicate the layer before you apply any adjustments. (Ctrl/Cmd + J)
• With the duplicate layer selected, hit Ctrl + L and you will see the Levels dialog with the histogram.
• Start moving the white slider under Input levels towards the center. As previously mentioned, if you are having to move the slider too far in to get what you want, perhaps you are better off with one of the advanced methods.

  

• If you looking for a drastic change you can play with the Output Levels slider, but note that this time you would have to move the black slider inwards to brighten.

Tip: Hold down the Alt Key while dragging and Photoshop will show you the overexposed areas in the photo. You want to keep this area to a minimum!

Curves

Curves gives you the greatest control when doing a job like this. It is just a bit complicated and not as intuitive as the brightness/contrast sliders, but it also gives you finer control. I would suggest using one of the presets when working with curves for the first time. There is even a preset to lighten your photos. Go ahead and try it out:

• Duplicate the layer and select the duplicate layer you just created
• Hit Ctrl/Cmd + M to show the curves dialog. Choose “Lighter(RGB)” from the Presets drop down.
• You will notice slight brightening in your photo, if that is a little less and you need to lighten more, just click on the square that appears on the curve and while holding the click down, drag upwards.
• As you move further from the baseline you would see your photo lighten even further.

  

• Choose the sweet spot and click OK

Some Pro Tricks

While those are the conventional ways you would lighten a dark photograph, there would be tens of other ways to achieve the same inside Photoshop. As you play around, you will discover new tricks of your own. Here are some I find useful in similar situations:

Screen Blend Mode

• Duplicate the layer, select the duplicate layer and change its blend mode to screen.

  

• Incase the effect is too intense you can lower the opacity of the duplicated layer.

Soft Light Blend Mode

• Create a new layer (Ctrl + Shift + N) or by clicking the new
• layer icon on layer’s palette.
• Hit the D key and press Ctrl + Backspace to fill the new layer with white.
• Now change the blend mode of the new layer to “Soft Light”

  

• If the effect is too intense, you can lower the opacity, if its is a little subdued you can duplicate the white layer to intensify it.

So there you go, five ways to lighten your dark photographs in Photoshop. Actually, there are many more but you are pretty much covered with these five. If you have any other creative way to achieve similar results, we would love to know about them. Let us know via comments!

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Add A Cool Tattoo To Your Photo in Photoshop (15)
• [Google Picasa 101] – How To Edit Your Photos (14)
• Stitch Panoramic Photos Together with CleVR (21)
• Simple Image Retouches with Free Lightbox Editor (12)
• Remove Unwanted Photo Elements With Photowipe (12)

The first and quickest way to start is to simply use your status update feature to announce to all your friends that you have something to sell or that you are looking for a specific item. This is quick, easy, and painless. However, the audience is limited to your friends and you may not have too much success, particularly if most of your friends live hundreds of miles away and you are trying to sell a refrigerator.

The next place to go is the new or used Facebook Marketplace. This site was launched earlier this year and allows you to find items for sale or to sell your used stuff. The site is powered by oodle. Stefan covered oodle at length in his March 2009 article Oodle – Another Craigslist, But Slightly Better. To list items for sale, you have to allow Marketplace permission, like other Facebook applications. The site has four primary categories: items for sale, housing, jobs, and vehicles. Beside each category is a small “+ post” button for you to add a post.

Marketplace is as easy to use as Craigslist, and to me, easier than ebay, since you don’t have to bid and wait. Via the Facebook interface, you can comment and ask questions about the items up for sale. When you go to the main screen and begin browsing, you can set your location and search area to limit the distance you want to search. You may find a deal 500 miles away, but shipping costs or a trip to pick it up may make it less cost effective. Once you select your location, a section of the resulting page will show you pictures and a brief description of the latest items listed for sale.

If you choose to browse one of the four categories, the page comes up in classical Facebook interface style. The “type your status here” bar is replaced with a “Post in ___” bar (fill in the blank for the category). You are also provided a choice to “post” a listing or “find” an item.

From the main page, if you have clicked the “+ post” button beside a category, you are given the choice to “sell it” or “give it away”. Curb alert! Also from here you can post requests for items by clicking on the “ask for it” button.

You just can’t find what you are looking for in the Marketplace? Hunt up one of the Freecycle groups. If you’ve never heard of Freecycle, let me explain – at least a little. Freecycle groups exist in many locations and through various internet channels. Freecycling is simply giving away things that you would normally throw away or donate. A large majority of items are clothing related, but I have gotten some decent video games and books through Freecycling. Many people don’t have time or enough items to hold a yard sale, they don’t think the stuff is worth much money, they don’t live near an organization’s donation location, or they just don’t want to throw it away, so they list it through a Freecycle group.

Freecycle groups are accessible through Yahoo, Craigslist and Facebook, among others. On Facebook, simply go to “Groups” and in the “search Groups” box, type in ‘freecycle’. Numerous groups will come up and you can browse for one in your area. Join the group, and you will get status updates when items come available.

Some groups, like those on Yahoo, are set up to send an email alert every time something is listed. Be forewarned if you live near a metropolitan area, you may get swamped with emails regarding items you are not interested in. You may want to establish a separate email account tied specifically to the Freecycle group or you may want to use email filters set for a particular item you are needing. If you use a Facebook Freecycle group, your wall may end up being flooded with status updates about items as well, so you may want to turn these off and just go look at the offerings when you are looking for something in particular.

Yard Sale groups on Facebook are another way of finding good deals. Yard sale groups are relatively unexplored and there are only a few out there. Like the Marketplace, you buy and sell, but like Freecycle, this is done through a Facebook group.

I really like this concept, particularly if you have a group of friends who live relatively close to one another, but you just don’t have time to hold a yard sale or time to go to yard sales on Saturday morning. You can start the group, advertise via your status, and start a small local network of friends who can buy, sell, or trade items.

Do you have any other creative ways to use Facebook to find good cheap stuff?

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Watch Online Products for Price Drops with ShoppingNotes (9)
• Top 10 Sites To Find The Hot Selling Items On eBay (19)
• The Top 10 Grocery Coupon Websites for Cheapskates (62)
• Take A Closer Look At Your Pictures With Cooliris (19)
• Milo- Find Cheapest Local Store for the Item You Want to Buy (5)

The registry is the central part of the system data and the one most likely to cause problems. It contains all information about installed software, drivers, plugins, updates, and more. After countless edits due to software being added, changed or removed, errors and bad entries pile up in the registry. This can make your computer slow or even unstable.

Here are 3 ways to backup the registry, two of them along with other critical system data.

1. Export Specific Registry Keys

If you are going to make changes to a specific registry key, you can selectively export or restore this key.

Backup

Click > Start > Run, type > regedit and click > OK. The registry editor will open.

Select the key you wish to backup, right-click to open the menu and click > Export.

Enter a name for the REG file and save it to a safe location.

In the same fashion you can export an entire registry branch or the registry as a whole.

Restore

To restore, you simply double-click the backed up REG file and it will automatically update the registry with its contents.

2. System State Backup

Windows XP Pro and other NT based Windows versions have an internal backup feature, which can be used to backup essential system data, including the Boot file, the COM+ class registration database, and the registry.

Backup

Go to > Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Backup Option.

The Backup or Restore Wizard will open. Click and switch to > Advanced Mode and open the > Backup tab.

Select the files you would like to backup, in this case > System State, which can be found under > My Computer.

Be sure a path is displayed under > Backup media or file name. If this is not the case, click > Browse… and select a destination. You can also change the name of the backup file. Then click > Start Backup.

A window summarizing the backup data will open. Change the backup description and eventually make further settings. Then click > Start once more. This backup can take up to 5 minutes.

Restore

To restore a system state backup, open the Backup or Restore Wizard in Advanced Mode as described above.

Switch to the > Restore and Manage Media tab. Your previous backups should be listed. Select the one you would like to restore and click > Restore Backup.

3. System Restore Point

When you set a system restore point, several files are saved, including files in the Windows File Protection (Dllcache) folder, the local user profile, COM+ and WMI databases, IIS metabase, all files that are monitored due to their file extension and the registry.

With a system restore point you can return to a previous system state. This can be helpful in case changes to the registry, new drivers or program installations have caused damage. Your personal documents, such as browser bookmarks, eMails or photos are not affected.

Backup

To create a system restore point manually, click > Start > Run, type > %SystemRoot%\System32\restore\rstrui.exe and click OK to launch the tool.

On the welcome page select > Create a restore point and click > Next. On the following page enter a name for this restore point and click > Create.

Stefan recently reviewed a tool called Single Click Restore Point, which significantly speeds up this process.

Restore

To restore previous computer settings and an older registry, you open the System Restore welcome page as described above, select > Restore my computer to an earlier time and click > Next.

On the subsequent page select a recent system restore point from the calendar and click > Next.

The Confirm Restore Point Selection page displays the restore point you chose. Click > Next to continue. Your computer will now start to restore the previous Windows XP configuration and reboot.

If you’re running into issues after installing hot fixes or patches from Microsoft, you might want to know How To Roll Back Windows Hot Fixes & Patches in XP. Fortunately, Sharninder has explained it in a recent article.

Did you ever ruin your system or the registry to the point where only a backup could save it?

Image credits: flaivoloka

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Three Quick Registry Tweaks to Customize Windows Like a Pro (13)
• How To Speed Up The Shutdown Of Your Windows (14)
• How to Prepare Yourself for System Restore From Scratch (13)
• How To Move My Documents Folder To A Different Drive (25)
• How To Create An Unattended Windows XP Disk (43)

So you have the last episode of the Sopranos to watch and no way to get it to play on your DVD player? I will help you learn how to burn mkv files to DVD with a free application!

The application is called E.M. Free MKV Video2Dvd V3.10 (Freeware). It can be downloaded from here. Once you download and install it you will be ready to convert and burn your MKV files to a DVD directly or to an ISO file to burn later on. Either which way you will be on your way to watching your video file in no time.

You will then choose between Easy Mode and Advanced Mode. The easy mode is well um….easy! So that is the way we went. If you need to modify the menus, chapters, subtitles or other good stuff choose the advanced mode option.

Hit OK and you will see the program’s main interface. This is where you will drag and drop your MKV file (or files) to be converted to a DVD. It looks like this:

Locate your MKV file in Windows Explorer and drag and drop the file in the white portion of the window above. Repeat the process for any other files you want in the same compilation. Could it be any easier? Yeah well they could do it for you right! But this is pretty damn easy.

Once you get your files in there can you guess what we do next?

If you said hit the Burn Now button – shame on you Make Use of reader!  We should look at the settings before burning! If you don’t want to hit Burn Now choose your output files as ISO or burn to DVD and you are done.

You will see choices for NTSC and PAL on the TV system pull down menu on the left hand side. And then on the right you will see the display aspect ratio. You can drop that down to choose widescreen or normal old TV options on the aspect ratio. 4:3 is normal for those of you who don’t know. You can also hit the change profile button to see the pre-configured profiles for quality. I left mine on the Automatic adjustment setting. You can choose the best setting for yourself and obviously the worse the quality the more you can fit on the disk.

Now you are ready to burn. Hit OK on the settings screen and Burn Now on the main interface. From there you will see your two options. One for a DVD disk burn and another for a straight ISO image. You can burn the ISO later.

Once you select your burn now preference you will see the progress of the burn. My video was just a sample 5 minute clip and it finished almost instantly.

I saw this and knew I was done. I now had a ISO I could burn. If I had a DVD burner in this machine I would have burned directly.

How do you deal with MKV files? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Top Free Media Converters for Windows (32)
• How To Rip & Convert A DVD Movie For Your iPod (Mac Only) (23)
• How To Easily Convert Video Files to DVD, MP4, VCD, MPEG, AVI … with VideoSpiritLite (22)
• How to Create a DVD from Any Video File (21)
• How to Compile Photos & Videos to Make a DVD with iDVD [Mac] (4)

In this article, we’ll see how you can add free animation for your PowerPoint 2007 presentations.

PowerPoint Animation Basics

It is useful to understand the four basic types of free animations for PowerPoint:

• Entry: used to introduce animated objects on a slide
• Emphasis: used for emphasizing elements already present on a slide
• Exit: how objects move off the slide
• Motion Path: move objects in a specified path on the slide

Now let us see some simple ways you can add animation to your presentation.

Use Preset Animation for Text or Objects

To animate any object (text, shape, etc.), do the following:

1. Select the object you wish to animate

2. On the ribbon, select the Animations tab.

3. Choose an animation effect from the Animation drop-down.

Use Custom Animation for Text or Objects

For fine-grained control, click the Custom Animation button to bring up a task pane on the right.

Clicking the Add Effect button brings up a menu with four types of animations from which you can select the one you like. You can also add multiple animation effects, and see them added to a numbered list in the task pane. To remove any of them, select the animation from the list and click Remove. As you add animation effects, you will see numbered tags added beside the object you have selected.

You can further customize each animation effect using the three drop-downs. Start specifies whether the effect starts upon a mouse-click, starts simultaneously with the previous one, or starts after the previous one. The second drop-down depends on the effect and is used for customizing direction or other properties specific to that effect. The Speed drop-down selects the speed with which the effect is applied.

For advanced customization, right-click an effect in the list to bring up the context menu. Select Effect Options from the context menu to bring up a dialog box with more options to customize the effect.

You can reorder effects within the list using the Re-Order arrows at the bottom, and click Play to preview your animation.

Add Transitions Between Slides

Animations between two slides are called Transitions. To add Transitions, do the following:

1. In the left pane where all slides are shown in a vertical row, select the Slides tab.
2. Select one or more slides in the pane for which you want the desired transition.
3. On the Animations tab in the ribbon, choose a transition effect from the Transition to This Slide group.

You can optionally add Sound and change the speed of the transition using the drop-downs in the ribbon to the right as shown above. If you want to remove the transitions you have added, just select the slides and choose No Transition (first one) from the list.

Add Motion Path Animation

To make a graphic object move in a certain path on the slide, use Motion Path animation. This works best for graphic images with transparent backgrounds, as the graphic moves across other elements on the slide. To add Motion Path animation to an object, do the following:

1. Drag the object you wish to animate to its starting position.
2. Click to select the object.
3. Open the Animation task pane, as described earlier.
4. Select Add Effect > Motion Paths > Draw Custom Path > Scribble. The mouse pointer becomes like a pen.
5. Draw the desired animation path, starting at the object, and click where it should stop moving.

You can also check out a gallery of preset motion paths by selecting the More Motion Paths… menu item.

Add Animated Clip Art

You can also check out free animated clip art graphics on the web. The Clip Art section on Office Online has a huge library of clip art, including animations. You can filter your search at the bottom to find only animations related to your search term. In this way, you can get some cool free animations that are ready to be added to your presentations. Another website to check out animation clip art is Animation Library.

Do your presentations come alive after adding animation? Tell us in the comments!

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Use PowerPoint Video Converter to Convert PowerPoint Presentations to a Video (15)
• Show and Make Presentations Online with 280 Slides (11)
• Make Your Speeches Shine with Acrobat Presentations (6)
• Make Beautiful Online Presentations With Sliderocket (13)
• 2 Safe Ways To Share Your Presentation Slides Online (3)

I used to draw them when I was at school a few years ago. Mostly just little characters with funny expressions when I should have been doing physics or French or something.

So the other day I had an idea for my new blog; I’d start a weekly web comic. Why not? People like them, they’re fun to make, more memorable than an average post and they keep people coming back when you post them on a regular basis.

But there were a couple of obstacles in my path when I considered how to make a web comic. The first one was that I hadn’t picked up a pencil in almost five years. The second one (and perhaps the bigger problem of the two) was that my scanner is currently out of operation. And what I mean by that is I lost the power cable and the adapter.  However, there really is no extreme need for a scanner if you’re only making a basic web comic.

So my first task. Draw my cartoon. I decided that I’d make my first strip a quick one using the same image three times. The joy of drawing cartoons is that they don’t have to be good. Just draw it big. Really big. An A4 page will make up one panel. Then, when you shrink it down and edit it a little your mistakes will become so miniscule they won’t matter. In fact, blemishes and bad effects add character to a drawing.

So I drew out my basic shapes and added some features to make a fat, round man sitting at a computer. It’s not perfect. His hands can even touch the keyboard for God’s sake but that’s what makes it a cartoon. Then I took a snap of it with my mobile phone and sent it to my PC via Bluetooth. This is what I got on my screen: not exactly the makings of a great cartoon (like if I’d had a scanner) but fully workable.

This is where technology works its magic. Send the drawing to a Photoshop program. I used Gimp because it’s free but you could also use Adobe or another program similar to that. If you need to brush up on your Photoshop skills I suggest reading MUO’s Idiot’s Guide to Photoshop.

The first thing we want to do in Photoshop is blow the picture up to 200%. This is normally found under the ‘Image‘ tab along the top of Photoshop programs. This is so the editing tools used later on will be more accurate. Then we want to highlight the different areas and separate the lines from the open spaces. To do this, lower the level of brightness and up the contrast like in the screenshot below.

This will give you red areas with deep black lines like they’ve been inked beforehand. Now it’s time to clean it all up. Using the eraser tool (on its largest setting) clean up all the spotty and blotchy areas from when I altered the brightness and contrast. Don’t try to be too perfect as you’ll be there for hours. Just get the big areas and the blemishes in noticeable places. All the bad areas will be further cleaned up as you go along and then made smaller when downsizing the image.Your image should look like this when you’re erasing all the blemishes.

Now that you’ve got all the main blemishes and marks removed, fill in the large areas with the colours and textures that you want. I chose to go with the simple ‘fill with colour‘ tool but you can use different brush styles and patterns to replicate hair, leaves, sky etc. It all depends on what style you want your drawing to be. Since I’ll be posting mine weekly to my blog I want to keep it simple so it won’t take up too much of my time.

When all of your main areas are coloured there will still be marks and the image won’t look good at all. No really I mean it, it won’t. Click ‘Save‘ and then open the file with MS Paint. The reason I’m using Paint to finish off the editing is because it has some good ‘line tools’ to make the objects look better and it’s easier to work with.

Your image should look much bigger in Paint. Use this opportunity to go around with the paint brush and fill in any missing details and white areas. Use the colour matching tool highlighted in the screenshot to the right to match the colour exactly.

Then use the line tools and the box tools to make regularly shaped objects look better. You can see how I made the table appear better by using the deep, bold lines but I’ve still left in some blemishes and crooked lines because that’s the style of my drawing.

If you’re going to use the same drawing in multiple panels like I did then select it with the cropping tool. When you have it selected, right-click on it and click ‘Copy’ and right click on the page and paste the drawing in again. Then move it into the next panel area.

Use the shape tools to add panels (don’t be afraid to experiment with different style panels – when they’re all the same it can get boring. It’s not a spreadsheet!). Finally, resize your image to a good size for your blog. Six hundred pixels wide is about the max you can hope for on the web.

The final task is to add captions and speech bubbles. You do this last because resizing text ruins it completely. Enter in the text where you want it to go in the panel. Then surround it with a shape which will form the basis of a speech bubble. Erase one of the corners, and by using two lines make a little point towards your character. You can used curved lines for this if you wish.

Here is my finished comic strip. Nothing fancy as it was largely just a test to see if I could do it.

It took me about 45 minutes from start to finish. It would have taken less if I had a scanner – that would have meant less cleaning up in the beginning.

Here are some tips for how to make a web comic on your PC:

• Make lines/shading bolder where there will be less light. I’ve done this on his back as the light from the computer screen doesn’t reach there. Do the opposite for where there is light – such as on Harold’s face in my cartoon.
• Be sure to blow your image up big in the beginning to make your tools more accurate.
• Always leave text until last.
• Experiment with different panel styles.
• Use textures in Photoshop to replicate water, sky, sand, wood etc…
• It’s okay to crop the one image and simply reuse it if you’re feeling lazy like I was.
• Make your character simple – you’ll have to draw him/her again and again – remember that!

Of course, if you have a drawing tablet you can simply draw it directly onto your PC and forget about all that cleaning up!

How do you manage to draw and produce your web comics?   Any tips you’d like to pass on?

Thumbnail Image Credit: atibens

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• The 4 Great Lunchbreak Websites for Online Freelancer (4)
• Drawing Cartoon Faces Easily with PimpTheFace (5)
• 5 Great WebComics you Should Read (58)
• [Google Picasa 101] – View, Folders, Toolbars (18)
• [Google Picasa 101] – Saving, Exporting & Uploading To Picasa Web Albums (6)

You have to remember that hundreds of thousands of people who have given up their job search in the depths of the recession are all going to pile back onto the job market quicker than you can say ‘credit crunch’.

So I thought I’d share with you a tip I use when I’m looking for more blogging jobs. This tip can be applied for when you’re looking for work, a new house, great deals and other thing that are hard to come by. I simply set up iGoogle to perform how I want it to so it can become my Mission HQ.

Firstly, go to Google (if you don’t already have an account, create one). In the top right-hand corner click iGoogle. Then, from the tabs located to the left of the screen click ‘Add a tab‘ and give it an appropriate name in the box which appears.

Now that your new tab is created we have to add some gadgets which will help you in your job search. Our main tool here will be the RSS gadget so I need you to do the following.

Visit sites specific to your job search. Craigslist will cover pretty much everything from jobs to houses to items for sale. Most other jobs search websites also offer RSS feeds as a way of bringing you back to the site with the promise of alerts. Right-click on the feed’s icon and copy the address. Then go back to iGoogle.

Click on the ‘Add Stuff‘ link at the top right of the screen. Along the left-hand side in the sidebar you’ll see an Add Feed or Gadget link. Click on that and paste in the link address you copied from the RSS link on the job site and click ‘Add‘.

The RSS feed should now appear in iGoogle like my example at the bottom of this post. Keep repeating this procedure for all the job searches (or any other search) you like. Here are some popular websites which offer RSS feeds and jobs, apartments and more are frequently posted.

• Craigslist
• Twitter (perform a search and then use the RSS feed for that search)
• Indeed
• Yahoo HotJobs
• Monster

For more job search websites, click here.

Finally, click on ‘Change Theme from Classic‘ and select one of the cool themes they have there. This doesn’t really improve your iGoogle HQ but you don’t want to turn on your computer every day and see the same generic theme, do you?

Now all you have to do is check back daily and follow up on anything promising. Without a doubt you’re ahead of the competition by making iGoogle your search HQ because while you’re giving the advertisers a call they’re still rummaging through search results.

Photo Credit: Danard Vincente

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Top 5 Free Resume Hosting Websites (30)
• Top 10 Most Effective Job Search Websites (24)
• Mindopia – Check out Occupation Descriptions for a List of Different Careers (4)
• Make Use Of Podcast #30: More Current Google Searches (8)
• Get “Real Time” Google Results With Keyboardr (11)

Personally, I find that hiding the more distracting windows actually increases my efficiency while I use my computer. In fact, having less on the screen at one time means no more absent minded glances at the taskbar, no getting lost on facebook, and a whole lot more concentration.

OuttaSight is an excellent free solution to the common time management or privacy problems that computer users face today. This lightweight application allows users to hide active windows either by the push of a button, or automatically when they are run. While it is only stated as supporting up through Windows 2000, it works perfectly fine on XP and Vista.

OuttaSight is a Windows desktop utility that hides running application windows to un-clutter the desktop, quickly hide private work, or secure your applications while you’re away from your computer.

Features

• Hide running programs with the push of a button
• Set programs to automatically hide when they start up
• Hide OuttaSight from the taskbar
• Password protect OuttaSight to prevent changes
• Hide/Show all windows with a single hotkey
• Ability to hide windows to the system tray (instead of hiding them completely)

Using OuttaSight

The first thing you’ll notice when you download and run OuttaSight is that it’s very simple looking. This is one of my favorite aspects of the software – it’s very clear, lightweight, and efficient.

First, it is important to personalize the utility. Go to “Hot Keys” and decide what you want your shortcuts for different actions to be. My personal set up used F10 as the hide window hotkey, CTRL+F11 to hide all windows, and CTRL+F12 to show them all.  While you are setting things up, keep in mind the reasons you got OuttaSight in the first place. Do you want it to be very easy and intuitive to show and hide windows, or would you like to be the only person that knows how to do it?

Second, you’re going to want to decide how you want programs to hide. Would you like them to disappear altogether (for secrecy) or minimize to the tray instead? If you are tired of your taskbar being cluttered, but do not mind people seeing that the programs are running, you may want to tell OuttaSight to minimize them to the tray as shown below.

To do this, navigate to the Options tab and check off  “Hide windows to system tray“. If this is not checked, the default behavior is to completely hide windows.

Next, you’ll need to decide if there are some programs you would like to automatically hide whenever they start. These programs could consist of automatic virus scans, annoying startup messages, or other things of that nature. If for some reason you like to start up applications with the intention of not viewing them at all, you can do that too .

To set up a list of programs that will hide when they run, simply navigate to the “Auto-Hide” tab and start adding programs.

Note that you can specify whether you would like the program to hide completely, or run in the tray instead. To view a window that has minimized to the tray, simply double click it.

Finally, analyze things with your privacy in mind. You have the option to password protect OuttaSight. That means that even if someone knows it is running, they can’t use it without entering your password. That also means that your hidden programs remain hidden no matter what. To prevent others from seeing OuttaSight you have the option of hiding it from appearing even in the taskbar. If you do this, make sure you remember the hotkey to pull up OuttaSight – otherwise you’ll have to reboot your computer to access it again.

Hopefully this article was informative. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to post your comments and let me know if you found a better free alternative. Overall I’d like to hear what you have to say about this concept in general – do you use software like this and why?

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Your Easy Guide to Windows 7 Themes (16)
• Your Computer, Your World – How to Keep Out the Mindless (51)
• WinHack – How to Change the Windows Start Button (Win XP) (20)
• Windows System Tools at your Fingertips with FastKake (13)
• Windows Registry Tweaks (Part 2) (8)

However, it didn’t all go to plan. There was something wrong with the host which left my site back in 1982 until the MUO authors, more specifically Karl, was able to get her up and running while I yelled at my hosting company.

So I was happy. For a while. But then the thought of ‘what if the host was to go belly up right now?’ popped into my mind. At any minute it could all just go wrong and I’d be left blogless. All my posts would be gone. The theme I’ve fine-tuned. The media I’ve uploaded. It would be the virtual equivalent of pulling the pin from the hand grenade and tossing it into the epicentre of my site. The only remnants of its existence being a ‘404′ error. And you want to know the worst thing? No matter how many times your press ‘F5′, the blog simply wont appear. Ever.

There are two things you need to do to have a full backup of your website. The first one is easy, you just have to backups server files. This can be easily done using any FTP client. Just connect to your server and copy the contents of the folder to your computer.

Second, you need to backup your database. Figuring out how to backup your Wordpress blog database is the way to go. Most definitely.

One could do this the hard way. You could manually backup everything using an FTP client and an external hard drive. But that’s the hard way. So here is an easy way to backup your Wordpress blog – in three easy steps no less.

Getting a Wordpress database ‘back up’ plug-in

If there’s one thing that separates Wordpress from the other half dozen popular blogging platforms, it’s the abundance of plug-ins. There are quite a few which back-up your blog but I recommend using the ‘Wordpress Database Backup Plugin’. For those of you familiar with the innermost working of a website – this plug-in will back-up your tables in your Wordpress database. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the innermost working of a website – it will save you a weekend of going through the five stages of grief.

Installing the plugin

Have the plugin downloaded? You sure? You’re not just reading on through this post while your blog sits utterly vulnerable to destruction? OK, good.

Now comes the installation. It’s pretty much the same as any other plugin installation.

First go to the plugin menu on the Wordpress admin page and under plugins click ‘add new‘ as seen in the screenshot. Upload the plugin. You can leave it in the .zip format if you like. Then click ‘Activate‘ once the install has finished.

Setting it up

Go to ‘Tools‘ along the left-hand sidebar in the Wordpress admin area. Under ‘Tools‘ you’ll find a new menu called ‘Backup‘. Click on that.

There are three main areas that you have to fill out in the screen which appears. The first area is entitled ‘Tables‘ and put simply, it allows you to specify what you want to back up. I’d suggest leaving everything ticked. This will basically back up your entire blog including posts, comments, users and settings.

Then, under ‘Back Up Options‘ you can select where you want the backup files to go. You can either save to your server, download to your computer or e-mail to a specified address. Pick whichever one works for you. I’ll be keeping mine on an external hard-drive so I’ll be downloading it to my computer. However the other two options – particularly the e-mail options are also good.

Finally, the third table allows you to choose how often your blog is backed up. This is done automatically. I’d suggest doing it at least weekly. If your blog is really big with multiple posts per hour you can back up hourly, daily and twice daily.

Finally click ‘Backup Now‘ under the second section to make sure you’re safe from the get-go.

So now if it all does go horribly wrong (i.e. a virtual hand grenade has just blown up in serverland) you’ll be back up (no pun intended) in no time by simply restoring the backed up database and uploading Wordpress files using an FTP such as FileZilla.

For more great plugins for your Wordpress blog click here.

Image Credit: John Loo

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 18 Wordpress Security Plugins & Tips To Secure Your Blog (65)
• How To Install Wordpress Blog Locally On Your PC (23)
• 4 Free Tools for Fool-Proof Wordpress Backup (13)
• The Best New Features Of Wordpress 2.8 (14)
• The 5 Free Wordpress Templates To Dress Up Your Blog (15)

It’s safe to assume that you have more than one browser installed on your system. I have five. Though we may not use more than two, all of us suffer from a bit of browser fancy. As soon as developers announce a launch of a browser that promises to speed up the web for us, we click on the download link. That’s not a problem, but keeping the same set of bookmarks across the browsers is.

Xmarks is a nifty solution to migrate bookmarks across the world. But for now, it supports Firefox and IE (with Safari in Mac OS). The one for Google Chrome is in the works. The browser that’s missing is Opera. That leaves us with a job half done. Bookmark syncing using Delicious and its bookmarklet tool is one roundabout. But it’s public by default and you have to log-in to change it to private. So, it’s still not as easy a click.

Transmute attempts to fill the gap by letting us migrate bookmarks across all the browsers.

Why Is it Such a Headache to Migrate Bookmarks?

Not very much so, but every browser has its own way of storing its bookmarks. Most bookmarks are stored as HTML files. Opera uses an .adr format. Firefox 3.5+ too differs in that respect as it stores its bookmarks in a Places.sqlite file which is a database file. The bookmarks.html files that used to hold all the links in the earlier versions had been discontinued from Firefox 3 onwards.

Does this create problems in migration of your bookmarks to other browsers still using the HTML formats? No, because Firefox, just like all the others has an import export utility under the Bookmarks Library that allows you to convert the database format to the HTML one for it to be picked up by the other browsers.

The imported bookmarks also get added to the existing bookmarks usually in a separate folder with the name of the browser that was the source. For instance, imported Firefox bookmarks get located in a folder that’s marked Netscape. Imported bookmarks in Chrome get added under Other Bookmarks. You can then manually shift the bookmarks around into any other root folder.

Next, you have to manually weed out the duplicates by going through each and every link. This is where the headache can start.

Transmute Offers Better (& Quicker) Control Over Bookmarks

Why such a name? Is it because it does the job of bookmark transfer ‘silently’ and without fuss? Perhaps, because the Transmute interface is hassle free.

1. You have two dropdowns – Source and Target. You can use the path field to select the location of the bookmarks file for the individual browsers in case you ever changed the default location.
2. Use the dropdowns to select the respective source and target browsers. There are 12 supported browsers and I am guessing that should cover most of what the world uses. The 13th placed XBEL format (XML Bookmark Exchange Language) covers a few other browsers like Galeon, Arora and Midori which use this one to store their bookmarks.



3. Transmute gives you two more options to migrate bookmarks – Overwrite Collections and Backup Collections.
   • Duplication can be handled if you select the overwrite option as it will plant a fresh copy of the bookmark links (but will also remove the older but unique bookmarks in the target).
   • Backup collections are a safety net in case something goes wrong with the conversion process and you want your old bookmark collection back. By default Transmute timestamps and backs up your bookmark collections before changes are made, providing extra safety.

   

   • To restore the old order, just browse to the bookmark folder location and rename the time stamped backup file to the default file name.
4. Close the source and target browsers and press Start. An alert box pops up and with your agreement the transfer begins. A preview window is the last stop before the conversion starts.

And finishes! That’s it; you can migrate bookmarks across multiple browsers without the hassle of import and export.

Transmute also comes in a PRO flavor giving some extra bookmark selection controls and co-ordination with services like Google Bookmarks and Delicious. But for the simple task of keeping all my browsers with the same bookmarks, the free version more than stands up. If you hate installing things, then there’s a portable option too.

Having the same bookmarks across all your browsers is such a basic need and keeping them all updated with each other is where Transmute steps in with a speedy click.

Transmute v1.63 is Windows only and requires Microsoft .NET Framework. It may also run on Linux and Mac OS X with Mono Framework 2.0 or higher installed.

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Set Your Browser Homepage in 5 Browsers (17)
• How To Change Default Webpage Source Editor Of Browsers (14)
• How Installing an Active X Control Can Open The Door To Hackers (7)
• Check Your Website Design In Different Browsers With Adobe BrowserLab (6)
• 6 Reasons Why Mozilla Firefox Is Safe Compared To Internet Explorer (23)

Microsoft uses a special connector to attach the hard drive to the Xbox 360, and you won’t be able to connect it to your PC. At least not right away, because inside that shiny plastic and metal shell, there’s a small hard drive like any other.

Today we’re going to show you how to open up your Xbox 360 hard drive and connect it to your PC, in this step by step, illustrated guide.

Opening Up Your Xbox 360 Hard Drive

To pull this off, you’re going to need

• an Xbox 360 with hard drive (obviously)
• a Windows-enabled PC with at least one S-ATA port
• two special screwdrivers; a TORX T-6 and TORX T-10. These are somewhat different from your usual Philips screwdriver, so you might have to head to the hardware store for them. Without them, you’ll have a hard time reaching the hard drive and might even damage it beyond repair. Caution is strongly advised.

Since you’re working with sensitive electronics, you might want to wear an anti-static wrist strap or surface. Otherwise, by carrying over static electricity, you might short some of the components.

First thing we’ll need to do is open up the protective shell that envelops your Xbox 360 hard drive. Pull it out of your Xbox by pressing the button at the bottom. Turn it upside down, and remove the Microsoft seal.

Be aware that this voids all and any warranty that you have left on your Xbox 360’s hard drive. If it breaks after the procedure, you’ll have to buy a new one.

Don’t worry too much though, the warranty on your Xbox 360 system will remain intact nonetheless.

You’ll notice that there are four visible screws at the bottom, one of which was hidden under the seal. You can remove these with the TORX T-6 screwdriver. After that, the top side should part pretty easily. Don’t pull too hard, just start at the rounded side and pull it open slowly. The square part should give away too, in the end.

To your great horror, you’ll discover four more TORX screws. You can use the T-10 this time. After you’ve removed them, pull away the thin metal cover. Abracadabra. Below you’ll find a 2.5″ hard drive.

After you unplug the cable and try to take it out of its shell, you’ll notice that it only slides until it hits a little plastic button at the far side. To get it out, gently lift up the metal casing, and keep it high while you slide out your hard drive. If you can’t unplug the cable, start sliding the hard drive out first, and gently push the cable out of its socket once you’ve got enough room.

Voila, there you have it. Did you ever imagine your Xbox 360 hard drive would be so… ordinary?

Connecting Your Xbox 360 Hard Drive to Your PC

The Xbox 360 hard drive is a simple 2.5″ S-ATA hard drive, so you would connect it like you would a regular one. Most computers open pretty easily, and you can take the side away with only two screws. You’ll need to attach both a S-ATA cable from your computer’s motherboard to your hard drive, as well as a S-ATA power cable from your computer’s power supply. Both are depicted below.

Alternatively, you can find S-ATA to USB adapters online for ten to twenty bucks. It’ll spare you a lot of trouble, and is safer if you don’t like opening up your computer.

To view the files on your disk, or to make a full back-up, you’ll need to download Xplorer360. It’s an entirely free and easy to use tool. With Xplorer360, you can read and write to Xbox 360 hard drives. By going to Drive -> Backup Image, you can already make a full back-up. Have fun!

I hope you’ve learned something from this tutorial. If you’ve got any other questions, don’t be afraid to ask, there’s a comments section below!

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How to Backup Your Computer With an Old Hard Disk (18)
• How To Quickly Fix A Phone or MP3 Player With Water Damage (13)
• How To Make Your Own Ethernet Cables (20)
• 3 Cool Gadgets That You Can Build Yourself (8)
• Total Defrag 2009 Special Edition [Now Free for Home Use] (20)

You can turn your portable computer or even your desktop computer into a full featured Kindle. It may not look like a Kindle but it can let you read, bookmark and annotate your eBooks.

Is it sounding too good to be true?

Well it’s not and it is here to stay! Why would Amazon want to limit their sales to only people who have shelled out the dough for a Kindle?

So with out further ado here it is in all it’s glory – the Kindle for PC, with the Mac version on it’s way!

Let’s take a look at how to download, install and start reading eBooks. Your Kindle for PC will also let you download and pay for books as well. But as we cover free software here we will focus on some free eBook downloading and reading.

I started by downloading the software from here. After the download is completed, run the installer and install the application. Then you will see a screen that looks like this:

You will need to give them a email account or your Amazon account’s email address to speed things along. And you will HAVE to have a credit card on the account. You will not need to buy anything but a credit card is required.

Fill in the required information:

Go ahead and click the register button. That will bring you to your Kindle home screen. On it in the upper right hand corner you will see this:

If you already have purchased or have books in your account they will show up here. If not, hit the shop in the Kindle store button next to the Menu button. From here you can buy or download free books. The ones on the home page are their best sellers and cost money!

But let’s search for some free books. Do you see the search box at the top? Go ahead and hit the go button:

That will return all the results in Kindle Land. Then when you have your search results lets sort them by price lowest to highest like so:

If you see something that catches your eye grab it. If not search for your favorite old world authors. I chose Charles Dickens as you can see below:

Then I went ahead and clicked on Oliver Twist, circa mid 1800’s. To download it click on the Buy now with 1 click orange button. It will deliver to your PC version of the Kindle by default. If you have other devices select the appropriate one.

Then you will see a thank you screen. Next go back to your Kindle screen and hit the sync and check for new items (F5) button as you can see below:

That will get the ball rolling…

Yeah! I have a book! Click on it to start reading…

The right and left buttons will turn your pages. And your other options are bookmark and note. Here is what the text looks like:

Hit the bookmark button to store a bookmark. To retrieve it hit the show notes and marks button:

You can add notes by dropping down that box to say notes and type away! Do you love it or hate it?

We would love to hear how you consume eBooks. Let us know in the comments!

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Who Needs The Amazon Kindle When You Have A Netbook? (26)
• How To Remove DRM from MOBI and PRC eBooks (112)
• Offer Your Readers A RSS To PDF Option With Feedbooks (3)
• Mobipocket – An Awesome ebook Reader Which is Free (14)
• Make Your Own eBooks with eBook Hood (3)

It was originally conceived as a wireless alternative to RS232 data cables. It can connect several devices, overcoming problems of synchronization.

But in plain English, Bluetooth is a protocol that allows you to remotely access and use devices on a computer or phone without the use of wires. Originally it was used for connecting headsets to a mobile phone. Then Bluetooth started being used to connect headsets to a regular computer and then progressed on to making printers wireless as well as being able to connect to a Bluetooth network. Bluetooth signals travel through walls, windows, doors and can get great reach depending on what is in your way. In my home I can leave my phone upstairs and still use my headset all around the house thanks to our porous walls!

Today I used Bluetooth on my Windows Mobile device to connect to the internet on my netbook via internet sharing. All in all Bluetooth is AWESOME! Let’s take a look at how to connect bluetooth devices – such as Windows Mobile Devices or your Bluetooth headset.

First we should make sure Bluetooth is running. You should see an icon for it in your system tray. If you do not, hit up the control panel and turn it on. It will be under the Bluetooth Control Panel. This is the same on XP and Vista (and presumably Windows 7)

It depends on what you want to connect but go to Bluetooth Devices under the control panel and click on the add button.  This will start the wizard.

Next up is the passkey window. Devices like headsets have passkeys associated with them so you will not get hacked. Who wants to listen to someone else’s conversations or worse!

So when setting up a Bluetooth headset make sure you use the passkey that came with the device. Otherwise you are free to use and set up your own options. Once the wizard is complete it will prompt you to choose what roles you want the device to play. They will list items like stereo headset, a2dp and others. Choose all of them if you do not know what they do and experiment.

Once the headset is connected to your machine – it will use that as the default stereo device outputting all sound to your head set. Very cool!

Setting up Bluetooth on your mobile phone is usually very easy and can be set up in 2-3 steps. Consult your owners manual for specific information.

• Turn on Bluetooth
• Pair a device.
• Enjoy using your device!

It is that easy! The pairing process on the phone will also use a passkey so make sure you refer to the owners manual.

All in all I love Bluetooth and use it when ever I can. I have not had wires on my headphones since the late 90’s! How do you use Bluetooth? We would love to hear about it in the comments!

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Connect Your Cell Phone To PC Through Bluetooth (18)
• Technology Explained: Understanding The Internet Speed (29)
• Technology Explained: Open Router Ports & Their Security Implications (9)
• Technology Explained: How Does a Router Work? (33)
• Technology Explained: How Do Satellites Track Mobile Phones? (31)

General Networking With D-Link Wireless Routers

After connecting your D-Link wireless router and opening the start page in your browser, you’ll see a login screen. All of these routers come with a default password or no password at all. The first thing you’ll want to do is set one in order to guard against local and possible neighborhood intrusion. While this measure seems a given, many may be tempted to skip this step for convenience. The administrator password is your first line of defense.

Next you’ll configure your network settings according to your connection, hardware, and purpose of the router.  In addition, the option to configure remote management is offered so you can access your router from outside your local network. It is not advised to allow this unless necessary as individual internet addresses can be spoofed and leaves your network another opening for intrusion. In the advanced settings of the network there’s a tickbox for enabling WAN (from the internet) pings. Leave this unchecked so that your router will not answer pings confirming its existence.

Wireless Settings

The most important part is under the Wireless Settings. Here you will secure your router connections. The first thing one might want to do is change the default name because most routers ship with their brand name as the default SSID, or broadcast name. While this doesn’t help a whole lot if it’s broadcast across the neighborhood, at least it will hide your brand making it a bit harder to crack.

Next is the Enable Extended Range Mode. Do not enable this unless your equipment is indeed in a large building. There’s no sense in creating a larger circle of coverage to encompass even more neighborhood hackers than is necessary. Most average sized homes and small business settings will not require this option to be turned on. Along these same lines, it’s not recommended that one exchange the factory antenna for a high-range aftermarket replacement for the same reason. If your wireless network card in your computer supports 802.11g, then perhaps you might want to tick the 802.11g checkbox, perhaps excluding some who may not have the latest equipment.

Hiding your SSID aids in security by not announcing its existence. This way only those who know your SSID will be able to use it. While some experienced hackers may own tools to detect your router regardless, it will guard against some. In and of itself hiding the SSID isn’t a strong security measure, but coupled with others decreases your chances of falling victim.

The most important part of securing your router is the Security Mode. Here you will enable encryption and require a password to connect.  With most modern routers you have several choices ranging from the least secure to more so. Leaving this disabled allows your information to soar across the air unencrypted inviting others to capture and read it, including credit card numbers, passwords, and private conversations as well as allowing connections from outsiders at will.

WEP, or Wired Equivalent Privacy, provides a modicum of protection better than nothing, but its algorithms were cracked many years ago and anyone with the tools to pull in your transmissions will certainly have these basic conversion tools as well. WPA (version 1), or Wi-Fi Protected Access, was created in answer to the WEP failings, however, it too was cracked several years ago. Again, it’s better than nothing and will keep regular freeloading neighbors from using your connection, but WPA2 is even better. Most modern computer networking cards support this newer encryption standard, but some slightly older equipment may not. If your computer supports WPA2, then that’s your choice.

After choosing WPA or WPA2, you also have the choice of TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) or AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) based algorithms. Again, TKIP is the older less secure method and most computers and software support AES, so choose that. Then you have the further choice of PSK (pre-shared key) or EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol). PSK is the type in which you have to set up your password on each device before encryption begins, so there is a chance someone could have gleaned that information during that process. EAP is more secure but encompasses many different methods and can require specialized software matching the methods of your particular router model. Many businesses use the latter for its increased security, but most home users choose the prior.  Be sure to pick a strong password with upper and lower case letters as well as numbers and even special characters.

One last element is the toggle to enable or disable accessing the configuration over wireless. If your D-Link model has this option it is recommended to use it. This way one would need physical access with a RJ-45 cable to try and guess or crack your password to change settings or invade your local network.

While nothing in the computer world is completely safe, things can be made reasonably so. By implementing these simple measures your local and wireless network is much more secure. Along with continued diligence in monitoring activity, your door is safely locked against many would-be intruders.

There were a couple of other related posts on MakeUseOf before:

- How To Set Up Your Own Secured Wi-Fi Hotspot
- How To Secure Your Wireless Network Connection

Please share your comments below. If you have other suggestions on how to secure a D-link router we would like to hear them as well.

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• What To Do When You Get A Copyright Infringement Notice from ISP (3)
• Technology Explained: Open Router Ports & Their Security Implications (9)
• How To Troubleshoot Weak Wireless Connections (15)
• How To Share The Internet Connection Between Mac and PC (16)
• How To Set Up Your Own Secured Wi-Fi Hotspot (16)

If you paid attention to their logos, you can see what they have in common: glossy, reflected (often) and light-colored text. Actually it doesn’t take a real gifted artist to create such a logo, so in this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to create a nice-looking, simple, eye-candy logo for your blog in Photoshop.

Thus, before dropping me an email ordering a logo for your blog, try it yourself (hell, am I losing my money here?) just to find out that you can’t make it better than me.

• Open Adobe Photoshop and create a new document (Ctrl+N or File->New). Set width and height to 400 and 100 pixels respectively. Make resolution 72 pixels/inch, leave the background as white. Note: these size and resolution settings are only web-friendly. For printing, use a higher resolution (like 300 pixels/inch).
• Using the Type tool, choose a clear, rounded font like Arial, set the size to 60 and type some text (i.e. your blog’s title). Set the color to sky-blue (hex code: #0099cc):

• Right-click on your text layer, select Blending options and set as shown on screenshots below:

(Drop Shadow: Structure: Blend Mode - Multiply, Opacity- 61%, Angle – 120, Distance – 5, Spread – 0, Size – 5;
Stroke: Structure: Size – 3, Position – Outside, Blend Mode – Normal.)

• Click OK. Here’s what you must have came up with:

Almost done. In the next step, we will add a glossy effect to the text.

• Ctrl+click on your text layer to choose the text only:

• Create a new layer (Ctrl+Shift+N or Layer->New Layer->OK).

• Using Paint Bucket tool , fill the selection with white color:

• Deselect (Ctrl+D) and with the Elliptical Marquee tool make a selection as below:

• Now we need to invert the selection. For that, press Ctrl+Shift+I or right-click over the selection and choose Select Inverse. Press Delete and deselect:

• Set the opacity of this layer to 32:

• Take a look at your now-glossy blog title:

• Let’s add some keywords under the title. Using the same font, size 12 and light-grey color (hex code: #b0b0b0), type something like I did “Internet. Life. Future.” (I don’t know why, just from the top of my head, you use yours of course) just under the main text:

Done!

One tip on saving your logo with a transparent background:

Hide the Background layer by clicking the eye icon on it’s left. Go to File->Save for Web & Devices (it may be “Save for Web“, depending on your Photoshop version, I use CS4) or press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S. In the upper right corner of the pop-up window you will see presets as shown on the screenshot:

Choose PNG-24, check the Transparency checkbox and click Save. Now you can use it on any background in your web design.

As you can see, with a little knowledge, you can create a simple logo for your blog in Photoshop, while waiting for the designer to finish his job on your unique logotype.

I hope you find this a simple and easy tutorial. Any suggestions, ideas and questions are welcome – please feel free to leave them here in the comments.

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 10 Essential Software Apps For Web Development on a Mac (39)
• Write & Develop HTML Offline with First Page (12)
• Top 10 Sites To Download Free Photoshop Textures (11)
• Top 10 Professional Sample Code Websites For Programmers (28)
• The 5 Free Wordpress Templates To Dress Up Your Blog (15)

I haven’t quite settled on what service I’ll use as my main advertising platform but I am going to partake in the Amazon Affiliates program to build a store for my blog, filled with products my readers may be interested in. So I’m going to show you how to add a good Amazon eStore to your blog or site.

Firstly, let me set one thing straight. Your readers aren’t going to read a laptop review you did and suddenly make the decision to buy it in your store. It just doesn’t happen. Sorry. So the answer to the question on the tip of your tongue is no, you won’t earn 15% on a $2,000 laptop from your store.

I want you to to sit down with a pen and paper with your blog open in your browser and really ask yourself – what would I buy having read this blog?  If it’s a how-to blog with cool homemade gadgets, maybe you could have a store that sells cheap tools, LEDs, wiring etc. That people will actually buy because they want to build a project on your blog. If you run a gardening blog, rare seeds or weird tools would be good picks. All of this boils down to three rules.

1. Is it under $10? If not, most people won’t make a split-second decision and buy from YOUR store. They’ll think about it and then buy direct later.
2. Can they get it around the corner from their home? If they can walk into WalMart and get the item today they won’t buy from you. Try to add items you’d only find on the internet.
3. Would you buy it? Honestly – ask yourself. Having read a blog post about a product, would you really want that product enough to buy it?

Ensure each and every one of your products answers yes to these questions.

Now join the Amazon Associates program. It will take them a few days to verify your blog is worthy of bearing their brand. If you post more than once a week and the content isn’t questionable then you should get through no problem.

On the affiliates homepage, click ‘Create aStore‘. This will display the page below.

Click ‘Add Category‘ to add a new section to your store. For example, I entered ‘Electronics’. Then, click on the ‘Add products’ button seen on the right. This will take you to the page below.

Here, simply browse through the products clicking ‘Add‘ next to the products you want in your store. I encourage you to consult the three rules mentioned above while doing this. When you have all the categories and products added, click ‘Continue‘ to bring you onto the design and customization phase.

In the screenshot above you can see the page where you can customize how your store will look. To the left there is a sidebar where you can change the colours of the different aspects of your store using the dropdown menus or, for the more tech savvy, the colour codes (ex. #FFFFFF for white etc…)

You can also name your store and add a logo. When adding a logo, you’ll be required to enter in an image URL. A good idea is to make this the logo of your blog if you have one. Simply right click on the your blog’s logo and select ‘Copy Image URL‘. Then paste it into the appropriate box on the ‘Customize Store’ page. Then click ‘Continue‘.

The next page is further customization of your store. This is merely placement of the sidebar and selecting which widgets (advertisements) you want to appear in your store alongside your ads. You earn revenue from these as well. When you’re finished click ‘Finish & Get Link‘.

You’re then presented with three options.

The first is the most basic. You can simply copy the link to your store and place a button on your blog/site. Preferably in the main menu section. When a reader clicks this button they’ll be redirected to your store on Amazon.

The second is to embed your store using an inline frame. An inline frame is kind of like a mini browser within your website. To do this, select that option along the top of the page. Then, copy all of the HTML code that is presented to you and create a new page on your blog. Then copy the HTML into your blogging platform’s HTML editor and your store should appear when you save the HTML.

The third, and perhaps the most desirable, is to fully place your store on your site. However, this is for more experienced users only. The inline frame will work just fine for most blogs and is a lot easier to do. This is similar to embedding the in-line frame, however it will be wider and take up all of the webpage below the header and menu bars.

Here are the steps:

Select the appropriate option at the top of the page. Then:

1. Create a new frameset page using the code sample provided to you. You can alter the dimensions of this to fit your site better.
2. Place your site’s navigation in one of the frames and your aStore URL in another frame.
3. Add a “Store” link to your site’s main navigation and link it to the new frameset you just created.

Your store should now be live on your website.

Before I sign off – a few tips about integrating a new store on a blog:

• It can be very tempting to make a big announcement to all of your readers and pretty much beg them to buy from you. However, all this will do is turn your great blog into a blog that’s losing readers and annoying people. Nobody likes to be constantly asked to buy things. It’s annoying.
• Instead, make a short post informing your readers about the new store. Tell them it contains some good products and be honest about the fact that it earns the blog some income. Also, the odd link in a post when it’s relevant and actually helps the reader works wonders.
• Finally, resist the temptation to add products that don’t follow the three rules above. You won’t make much sales. Think like a reader of your blog!

What revenue streams do you have for your blog?   We have previously covered a few other possibilities such as e-cards and 5 Adsense alternatives.   Which other ones do you prefer?

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Turn Your Amazon Links Into Affiliate Links (8)
• How To Publish Your Own Book (In Print) Cheaply (12)
• 5 Online & Software Resources For Booksellers (1)
• 5 CPA Alternatives To Adsense On Your Blog Or Website (12)
• You Actually Can Earn Money by Taking Online Surveys (35)

I work on my computer a lot.  I use many different programs depending on my task at hand.  I am constantly monitoring different sources of information, from RSS feeds, several different email boxes, social networking streams, and different blog commenting threads.

All of this means that I have a lot going, computer-wise.  Sometimes all of this going on at once really puts a damper on my productivity because I have a severe lack of ability when it comes to multitasking.

What I finally tried the other day has given me hope that this mass confusion and ill-fated attempts at getting things done can finally have an end!  I finally broke down and tried to set up dual monitors in my home office setup.  While I am still learning to use it properly, I have already noticed a massive difference in my level of concentration and productivity.

As a blogger, there are several ways to use such a setup (which I am still learning) but I think there are many different ways a dual monitor setup can help someone be more productive.  Here are 6 of them:

1. Working and previewing at the same time

While working on a project (or article), you can set up dual monitors to use one monitor to work and use the other for previewing your work. For instance, when blogging using Wordpress, if you hit preview, a separate window (make sure you open it in a separate window as opposed to a tab) will open containing a preview of your article so far. If you set up that window in the second monitor, every time you hit preview the page will just refresh. That way there is no switching between tabs or windows! A similar setup can be useful for a design professional.

2. Testing in multiple types of browsers

You can use a different browser in each monitor.  For instance, I am currently using Firefox on one monitor and Chrome on the other (sorry Microsoft!).

I am doing that because certain sites run better or smoother on Chrome while I still enjoy the extensions and usability of Firefox but a coder or designer may be interested in viewing their work in multiple browsers simultaneously in order to see how it looks in each.

3. Testing multiple screen resolutions (color settings, etc.)

Yes, you CAN have different settings on each monitor.  For designers this could be an awesome help!  It all depends on what you need to see.  If you have a hard time reading, set the resolution a bit lower on the one you do reading from and keep the other one at a more reasonable resolution.

4. Making a lot of phone calls & recording data at the same time

If you are constantly running down a phone list, it may be helpful to have a list constantly open in one monitor while working or recording data in the other one.  Not having to constantly hit Alt-Tab (to switch between windows) or Ctrl-Tab (to switch between tabs) saves a LOT of time, believe it or not.  Also it’s harder to lose your place if the view is never lost.

5. Getting work done while keeping up with what’s going on

I’m currently doing this one!  I like having the ability to work while glancing up to see who’s saying what on Twitter or Facebook.  I also like keeping my email off to the side for glancability without losing my place on what I am working on. Plus I like to keep my RSS reader over there.

I suppose someone could also keep the news on a separate monitor so you can keep up with it while working.

6. Being entertained while working

Today’s Internet allows you to watch many TV shows online.  That doesn’t even count sites like YouTube!  You can also have a movie in your DVD drive.  I suppose you can be entertained on the side while working.  Please note, this could be taken both ways.  You can look at it like it’s stupid because you’ll be distracted and obviously lose any resemblance of productivity OR you can see it as a way to at least get SOMETHING done during down time.

To be honest, I’ve tried having video on while trying to work and I can’t do it, however I am sure there are those of you out there who can pull off some sort of light work while being entertained.

If you have the room, and you can afford it, go ahead and give dual monitors a try.  I’m loving it so far!  AND if you have any more productivity tips using dual monitors, let us know!

Image Credit : unimatrixZxero
Image Credit : Denbow
Image Credit : brykmantra

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Sneak Around & Watch Videos at Work with Double Vision [Win] (14)
• How To Turn Gmail Into A Multitasking Machine (Part III) (12)
• How To Turn Gmail Into A Multitasking Machine (Part II) (12)
• How To Turn Gmail Into A Multitasking Machine (Part 1) (19)
• Get Back your Screen Space: Maximize Firefox Viewing Area (52)

All this changed when YouTube introduced their HQ video streams, and a little time back, HD videos. They even have a YouTube HD page, so you can more easily find that high(est) quality material.

Most YouTube download services haven’t progressed that far. They’ve stayed behind with support for downloading low quality FLV’s and decent quality MP4’s. Today we’ll show you an alternative application to download HD YouTube videos to your computer.

YouTube Downloader HD

YouTube Downloader HD is as straightforward as it sounds.You can use it to download those trailers, movies and holiday YouTube video keepsakes to your computer in just a few clicks with the mouse. The application works more or less the same as most YouTube downloading web applications, allowing you to specify the video by providing the relevant YouTube link.

The biggest difference with YouTube Downloader HD is that you can specify in what quality or file format you want to download the YouTube video. Most people don’t know this, but an FLV converter is usually unnecessary, because most videos can be downloaded in AVI and MP4 format as well. As such, all HD videos are stored as AVI’s and will provide no hassle if you want to watch it on your computer.

As an example, we tried downloading the latest Sherlock Holmes trailer, a movie that has called for a lot of critique, but is one that you should certainly grab when it comes out. The YouTube link is here.

After opening YouTube Downloader HD, we paste the link in the first text field. Because I’m a fervent supporter of eye-candy, we choose AVI HD – High Definition as our download option. Note that AVI HD and MP4 downloads will only work if the video has an HQ or HD relative on the side. If the trailer would only have been uploaded in Standard Definition, we’d be forced to download a lower quality FLV or AVI file.

Pick your destination directory and press download. Wait a few minutes or get a soda while the video is retrieved. Thanks to the fast YouTube servers, the download will nearly only be limited by your own internet connection.

Little more than a minute in and the download has finished. Click ‘open‘ to browse through the relevant directory and open your video file. As you can see, the file plays crystal clear, and nicely fills my screen.

Enjoy the YouTube Downloader HD. Do you often download from YouTube or other video sites? Tell us about it in the comments!

The biggest difference with YouTube Downloader HD, is that you can specify in what quality or file format you want to download the video. Most people don’t know this, but an FLV converter is usually unnecessary, because most video’s can be downloaded in AVI and MP4 format as well. As such, all HD videos are stored as AVI’s and will provide no hassle if you want to watch it on your computer.

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Watch Videos In The Firefox Sidebar With YouPlayer (16)
• vTap – Download videos on your mobile for FREE (10)
• Top 5 Internet TV Players + TV freebies (26)
• Play and Download YouTube Videos On Your Mac with MacTubes (8)
• How To Download Streaming Video with DownloadHelper (17)

For the third and fourth quarter of 2008, the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group reported that approximately 90% of all eMail was spam. That’s an incredible number. It clearly demonstrates how much time and energy must be wasted to receive, identify and get rid of spam.

While spam protection has become quite effective at recognizing unsolicited bulk eMail, it’s still impossible to filter out and stop receiving spam.

Besides regular spam, we receive a lot of advertising in our inboxes. Although these eMails are often personalized, they still classify as spam. However, these eMails were usually created based on information we made available about ourselves, rather than straight forward eMail guessing.

Hence, one way to help stop receiving spam is to control the information you’re releasing about yourself. The best way to do this is to protect and hide your eMail address.

1. Scramble your eMail address

We often have to share our eMail address online. So what can be done to make it difficult for a bot to simply copy the information?

Rather than publishing your eMail address in its standard format, you could scramble and thereby conceal it. It requires an attentive and intelligent mind to recognize a scrambled eMail address and re-assemble it into a functional format.

A scrambled eMail address can look something like this: tina at make use of dot com

And this is the unscrambled eMail address: tina@makeuseof.com

2. Hide your eMail address in an image

A similar solution is to hide the eMail address within an image. There are several tools that will do this for you. One which provides many other functions is EmailCover.

Not only does it produce an image containing your eMail address in a CAPTCHA format, it also hosts the image and provides you with a set of links you can use to embed the image in your website, signature or on social network sites. Using the bookmark feature you can directly share your eMail address with the most popular sites. Finally, the tool records how often the image has been viewed.

Similar tool: E-Mail Icon Generator.

If you want to be sure only the smartest people can guess your eMail address, combine 1 and 2.

3. Encode your eMail address

If you must post an active eMail link, for example to give people a quick and easy way to contact you, you can encode your eMail address in a way that is not readable by spambots, which extracts eMail addresses from websites.

MailTO Encoder will decode your eMail address using Javascript. The result is a rather unsexy gibberish of characters.

Similar tools: E-mail Anti-SPAM Encoder (no Javascript), Hivelogic Enkoder

4. Hide eMail behind a test

With a tool called scr.im, you can protect your eMail address by hiding it behind a simple test.

At scr.im’s start page you enter your eMail address and the site will provide you with an ultra short scrimmed URL, along with custom HTML to share your eMail address on Twitter, Facebook, within HTML documents and in forums.

The link will lead anyone needing your eMail address to a quick test. If they manage to pass the test, they will be rewarded with a fully active link to your eMail address.

Similar tool: reCAPTCHA, tinymail.me

5. Don’t share your eMail address

The last resort is to not share your eMail address at all. Set up temporary inboxes or forms through which you can be contacted indirectly.

For example whspr! allows you to create a temporary form, which will relay messages to your eMail address. Users have to prove they are human by passing a CAPTCHA test.

Similar tools: kontactr, contactify

Summary of tools mentioned in this article:

Hide eMail address in image:
EmailCover
E-Mail Icon Generator

Encode eMail address:
MailTO Encoder (Javascript)
E-mail Anti-SPAM Encoder
Hivelogic Enkoder (Javascript)

Hide eMail address behind test:
scr.im
reCAPTCHA
tinymail.me

Contact forms:
whspr! (temporary)
kontactr
contactify

MakeUseOf has previously reported on how to identify and manage eMail spam. Dean denounced Top 5 Current Email Scams You Should Know About. Ryan explained How To Deal with Spam and Report Email Scams in the US. I outlined how to Get a Grip on eMail Spam Before It Gets A Grip On You.

How do you protect yourself from too much spam?

Image credits: mzacha, ItsMe1985

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

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How to Make Your Hotmail Sign In More Secure (8)
• How To Deal with Spam and Report Email Scams in The U.S. (5)
• 1 Awesome Gmail tip You Don’t Know about. Seriously. (262)
• Quickly Create Temporary Email Addresses with YopMail (21)
• Online Resources To Battle Frauds, Urban Legends & Spam (9)