And sometimes there are software you find irksome and think things could have been better. In any case, I always like to try out a few alternative software choices before I settle with any particular application mainly for two reasons: One, you would never know how good or bad the one you are using is until you try some alternatives and two: a bit of choice and competition can only be for the good of us users! Your motivation might be different: perhaps you want to find a free software that does the same task as the paid software you are using or maybe your favorite Windows application is not available on Mac or Linux.

Whatever maybe the reason, here are some sites that you can use to find alternative software and suggested applications.

LinuxAppFinder

Missing your favorite Windows or Mac application on Linux? Try LinuxAppFinder. It provides a listing of popular Linux applications. Apart from that, it also lists popular Windows and Mac software and the Linux applications that can be used for similar purposes. Clicking on an alternative software listing will show you its description, rating and other related software. LinuxAppfinder is a great way to discover Linux software if you are new to Linux.

AlternativeTo

AlternativeTo lists a large number of Windows, Mac, Linux software. Click on the ones you use or need to find alternative software for, and you will be presented with a list of software with similar functionality. Likes ala Diggs are presented alongside each listed software, that lets you gauge the popularity of the software. Additionally, you can filter the mentioned alternative by platform, likes or recent popularity as well. AlternativeTo also lists webapps like Dropbox and Evernote, just in case you are looking to shift to the web!

Osalt

Osalt is yet another popular site that offers similar functionality. It lists Open Source applications as alternative to popular software that you might be paying lots of money for. Many of the open source software have come a long way in functionality and usability and they cover almost every purpose you can use your computer for. Mostly open source software are also free, so you should definitely check out osalt and see if you can find some good open source software that can replace the ones you are already using.

Wakoopa

Wakoopa takes a somewhat different approach. Wakoopa is a community where people share their favorite software. You can view most popular apps that other people are using on the Wakoopa home page. For personalized suggestions, you would have to signup and create a software profile listing the software you are presently using. In addition, you can also track how much time you are spending using each application.

MakeUseOf

Actually, this one goes far beyond suggesting alternative software! However, we also do our part when it comes to reviewing interesting or new applications. You should always check out the MakeUseOf directory that lists hundreds of useful web and mobile applications that you can use for a variety of purposes.

Do you have any applications you wish to switch over from? Sound off 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/

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It’s hard to tell what people will enjoy or be revolted by. For instance I enjoy gruesome videos, my wife on the other hand like cuddly snuggly bunnies. So choose your videos wisely.

Here are 5 Internet video sites that I frequent to find videos that will entertain me! Let’s check each of them out.

VeryFunnyAds

The first one is called VeryFunnyAds. As you can imagine this website has only very funny ads, as in advertisements. It is a collection of awesomely funny commercials that have either aired on television or were mockups of what should have been aired! I worked for a company called Adforum way back when (10 years ago) and they catalogued advertisements as well -  but long story short – VeryFunnyAds has very funny ads!

From their homepage you can choose to see only the most recent videos or view them by categories. But come on, any Internet video site that has Kevin Nelon doing the introduction video has to be good right?  Just think of his amazing work on Weeds!

Here is a awesome ad with Coke as the subject. You see it plays onscreen in a flash player with the normal options like volume and full screen mode at the push of a button.

By clicking on the most watched tab you are guaranteed to find some awesome videos. Let us know what your favorite is in the comments!

Metacafe

The next Internet video site is Metacafe, located here. They also have similar categories as Very Funny Ad’s (and most other video sites) but here you can find the category Highest Rated and Most Discussed alongside Most Viewed and Most Recent.

Clicking on a video will bring it up also via flash in your browser window. I couldn’t resist the Never Look At Woman ad…when the woman smacks….oh wait I won’t spoil it for you! Let us know what you think of it in the comments.

Funny Video Shack

Funny Video Shack is online here and has – you guessed it – funny videos! The first video at the top of the featured ads is entitled NudeIT – New  iPhone app. The tag line says Do you want to see someone nude? Yeah, there is an app for that! C’mon how could that be bad?! Go waste some time over there viewing their top rated, favorites, popular, most discussed or recently added videos.

Let’s see what the most popular video on here is… Hot Chick Eats Maggots? First off she isn’t that hot and after seeing this I could not scratch that.  I would not want to picture her naked. After turning off the lights you would think there were bugs crawling all over you – and maybe there would be.

I stopped on What’s a HO? Gameshow style as you can see below:

Youtube

And of course we could not talk about video entertainment sites with out Google’s good old YouTube . This is the one site everyone thinks of whenever someone says “video online”. They have been around forever and have been the innovators of the industry. Today I clicked on Videos and the categories listing and chose Comedy.

That brought me to a lot of scary looking videos but luckily one stood out. Good old Family Guy and the Roadhouse parody…

YouTube clearly has the best interface for actually watching the videos.

Break

And last, but certainly not least, is Break which is meant as a video site for your breaks (i think!). I clicked on Videos at the top of the screen and was greeted by some strange ass videos!

Romanian Lady Goes Crazy On Live TV? Maybe things like this are not strange in Romania but this lady is w-a-c-k-o with a capital W!

Checking out their top videos I found some winners. And then I clicked on High School Girls Soccer Brawl….it did not disappoint.

They have options to share the video you are watching via the popular social network buttons below the video.

Where do you go to watch entertaining videos online? Share your sources 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/

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Needless to say, all free personality tests should be taken with a grain of salt, which is to say, not very seriously, and certainly not as a replacement for professional psychologists. With that disclaimer out of the way, we can now present our hand-picked selection of the Top 8 Websites with cool tests that measure your Personality Traits!

#1: Signal Patterns Big Five Test

The Big Five is the leading industry personality model, shown to work across different cultures, geographies, and languages. It is the model most used in psychology and by human resource professionals. In this model, the personality attributes of a person are “measured” in five traits: Extroversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability and Openness/Intellect. The Signal Patterns test extends the model to 45 facets, each mixing two of the Big 5 traits.

The free personality test takes about 10 minutes and you get a nice visual representation of the results. You can also take this test as an application on Facebook or iPhone. From here, you can also take the Parenting Style test to find out what kind of a parent you are.

#2: Human Metrics MBTI Test

The MBTI is the precursor to the Big Five and remains the most widely administered personality test, with about 2 million tests taken every year. This is the granddaddy of all personality tests! According to the MBTI, all people are classified using four criteria: Extroversion – Introversion, Sensing – iNtuition, Thinking – Feeling, and Judging – Perceiving. Your “type” is then made up of four alphabets depending upon your score in these four criteria, for example ESFP or INTP.

There is a lot of typology information as well as several other tests available on the web, including websites devoted exclusively to each of the sixteen MBTI personality types. The Myers-Briggs Foundation site is the authentic source for further information.

#3: The Big Five Test

This site has a free personality test based on 45 questions from the Big Five Inventory, with more background information provided here.

Rate yourself on a 5 point scale from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree to discover your inclination on five personality dimensions.

#4: Keirsey Temperament Sorter

The Keirsey Temperament Sorter (KTS) is closely related to the MBTI, and uses four temperaments extended to eight roles to model your personality. KTS is also a popular assessment test, taken by 40 million people across universities and companies worldwide. The site requires a free registration to take the KTS-II test.

Find out if you are an Artisan, Guardian, Idealist or Rationalist with this test. Wikipedia provides further information about KTS, including a comparison with MBTI.

#5: The Color Quiz

Whether you agree with the results of this color quiz or not, this is surely a fun quiz to take! Simply go on choosing the color you like the most, in a two step process.

In the results, you get an assessment of your existing situation, stress sources, restrained characteristics, desired objective, and actual problem.

#6: TESTdex Personality & Intelligence Tests

This site offers a large variety of personality tests. You can choose from the Big Five, Jungian, Enneagram, Brain Hemisphere, and others.

The nice thing about this site is you can choose your test based on how much time you wish to spend, as you know the number of questions in each test beforehand. Apart from personality tests, you will also find a handful of Intelligence, Amusing, and Compatibility tests here.

#7: Queendom: Land of Tests

Queendom is a website maintained by a company providing psychometric services and psychological assessments. There are tests for everything under the sun on this website – Personality, Love, Health, IQ, Career, etc. Whether you are looking for serious tests for career or relationships, or fun tests for trivia, you will find them here.

Beyond the many tests that make this an attractive site, you will also find that there is an active community, articles, and advice related to all aspects of our life.

#8: Youniverse

This website is run by Imagini, a UK startup, to promote their VisualDNA concept. You can take a series of tests for Personality, Movies, Love, etc. in all of which you choose the best picture that matches a concept like my kind of bedroom, vacation, excitement, etc. It may not offer much psychological insight, but is a pleasant and interesting way to take quizzes.

You need to register with the site to see your results. More than 15 million people have taken the VisualDNA test, which Imagini uses to sell VisualDNA Shops widgets for blog and website affiliate sales.

Want more? See How to Have Fun with Online Personality Quizzes and more fun personality quizzes we covered earlier.

Did you enjoy taking tests on these sites? Any favorite site you like that we missed? Share it 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/

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Before you open up your wallet for expensive software or try to make your own sound effects, you may easily be able to find free sound effects on the Web. There are plenty of great resources available online. Best of all, it doesn’t have to cost you anything!

Have your headphones ready? Here’s the top 5 websites for free sound effects downloads.

Flash Kit

Flash Kit’s Sound FX page is one of the best places to download free sound effects. The site has over 7,000 royalty-free tracks available for download.

You can search the collection manually or browse various categories, like nature or transportation, for the sound you’re looking for.

If you come across a desirable sound effect, all of its information, including length, quality, and size, are available and you can easily preview the track before downloading. All tracks are downloadable as WAV, MP3, or Flashtrak files.

Feel free to also contribute to the archive yourself by submitting your own original sounds.

Soungle

While Soungle may look and feel like just an audio search engine, it really isn’t. The website is touted as a mega online library and it only searches its impressive growing database of sound effects.

Soungle keeps everything easy and straightforward. Search results simply include a preview, description, clip information, and if you like the sound effect, just download it. It’s as easy as that.

Soundboard

Soundboard has a massive supply of thousands of sound effects to choose from. You can either search the collection by keyword or explore the slew of soundboards, with everything from airplanes to circus animal sound effects.

Once on a soundboard page, you can listen to the playlist and download whichever tracks you like. All sound effects are MP3 files.

SoundBible

Offering thousands of sound bites and effects, SoundBible is the encyclopedia of free sound clips. The site divides its content into free sound effects or royalty-free sounds.

All the sounds are plainly listed with a preview listen button and what license each falls under. Royalty-free sounds consist of Creative Commons and public domain works.

Learn more about SoundBible in the MakeUseOf Directory.

Freesound Project

The Freesound Project is a repository of Creative Commons licensed audio samples. It’s a huge collaborative database of just sounds, so you’re bound to find what you need.

You can search through all the content by keyword or browse the popular tags. Of course, you can always contribute to the database by adding your audio samples released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License.

Still can’t find what you’re looking for? Try out FindSounds, a great search engine just for sound effects. MakeUseOf’s Directory of Apps has also got the scoop on SoundSnap, yet another resource for sound effects, however, keep in mind that the site is not entirely free anymore and you’re limited to only five free downloads a month.

Do you have a favorite website for downloading free sound effects? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit: Fe Ilya

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Most people will advise you to power down your laptop while learning and burying it somewhere in your back yard until you’re finished, or at least under a pile of clothes in a dark corner of your dresser. I disagree.

Although you mustn’t venture off to Facebook, or go writing articles (you’re smarter than that, aren’t you?), the internet can prove invaluable with helping you master the substance. Below are three online applications that’ll perform miracles for your study skills and, hopefully, for your results as well.

Create Flash Cards with FlashcardExchange

Flash cards are nothing new, and you don’t need the internet to make them. But if you want some truly random questioning, or simply hate using a pen (like I do), there’s an online alternative to improve your flash card study skills.

A web app does not only spare you a lot of work (and more importantly, time), but opens a ton of new possibilities as well.

I can call FlashcardExchange the best online flashcard tool without a shadow of a doubt in my mind. You can create flashcards online, using text or images, and store them on your account. Study using the online web interface, export it to one of the popular offline file formats, or waste some ink by printing them out.

Create Mindmaps with Web Seavus Dropmind

With most classes, it pays to create a visual representation of the information at hand. Making schemes and mindmaps is a study skill that will not only make some concept easier to grasp, they will be easier to remember as well. Online mindmaps are easier to adjust (put away that rubber, those times are past), and evidently offer a variety of additional features.

Personally, I use Seavus Dropmind. It’s a retail application if you want to access all features, but you’ve got more than enough possibilities with the free version. The main disadvantage is that you can only work with one mindmap at a time, but because the canvas is infinitely big, that doesn’t matter much.

There’s an extended review on MakeUseOf here for those interested. In the comments of said article, our readers also suggested MindMeister as an alternative.

Create Cheat Sheets with PocketMod

When I’m say cheat sheets, I try to use it as a figure of speach. I advise strongly against trying to cheat during an exam, and between you and me, there are smaller, smarter and more practical alternatives if you’re really planning to do so.

Use cheat sheets to condense your study material into smaller packages. Use it to list calculus and physics formulas, and to gather the most prominent definitions on one page.

PocketMod is an incredibly original project. You can create and lay-out small booklets online, with different page styles, and print them on standard A4 paper. After a few scissor cuts and a bare minimum of folding work, you’ve got yourself a pocket-sized tiny book.

True, this might take a little bit longer than using a plain piece of paper, but what is an exam without at least a tiny bit of procrastination?

Do you know any other good sites to use the internet, or your computer as a learning aid to improve your study skills? Tell us and your fellow MakeUseOf students all about it 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/

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Outlook is part of Microsoft’s Office suite. It comes with a lot of extra features compared to Outlook Express, including time/event management, contact management, and Microsoft Exchange Server support to synchronize and share information.

Arguably, Outlook Express is a good enough tool for those who don’t expect a lot of flexibility from their software. But what if you want more without having to spend money? Which free alternatives to Outlook should you look into?

Thunderbird

What is it?

Thunderbird is Mozilla’s desktop eMail client. As such, it’s an open source application and supports various addons, which enhance its functionality.

Like Outlook, Thunderbird supports POP, IMAP, and SMTP. Using the Account Wizard, you also can subscribe to RSS News & Blogs, hook up to your Newsgroup account, and launch a quick Gmail setup.

What makes it a better alternative to Outlook?

Thunderbird is available not just for Windows, but also for Mac OS X and Linux. Localized versions of Thunderbird exist for dozens of the most common languages.

Thunderbird is much better than Outlook, in case you enjoy to customize your eMail client. There is a vast collection of themes and extensions available. These will also cover up for most features that are not integrated into Thunderbird by default.

MakeUseOf has dozens of articles regarding Thunderbird. Below is a small selection:

• Saikat wrote How to Set Up Mozilla Thunderbird to Send Mass Emails.
• Mark explained how to Synchronize Your Google Contacts, Calendar & RSS In Thunderbird.
• Kyle showed you how to Update Your Thunderbird Address Book with Address Crawler.
• I have written articles explaining How to Set Up Message Filters in Thunderbird, How To Integrate Google Calendar Into Thunderbird, and How To Recover Deleted eMails in Thunderbird.

Gmail

What is it?

Gmail or Google Mail is Google’s free webmail client.

Although it is only an online eMail application, Gmail is a very powerful tool that easily rivals most common desktop clients. Gmail supports POP and IMAP and it is fully integrated with the Google Apps suite.

What makes it better than Outlook?

The clear advantage of an online eMail client is its global availability. Wherever you go, whichever computer you use, your eMail is already there.

Gmail provides a complex selection of settings and features. Gmail tracks conversations and optionally compiles all eMails belonging to one conversation into a single thread. Within settings you can create filters, enable Google Mail Labs experimental features, manage multiple inboxes, and switch themes.

There are tons of Gmail hacks that provide interesting options. MakeUseOf has covered them extensively. Here are some of the highlights:

• Mark has compiled a list of Essential Shortcuts to Browse through Gmail faster.
• Saikat covered 5 Ways To Create Custom Multiple Signatures in GMail.
• David shared 7 Tips to Make Gmail The Best Free Email Service For Productive People.
• Sharninder explained How To Access & Use Gmail Offline.
• Karl wrote about How To Backup Your Gmail account To YOUR Hard Drive.
• Aibek revealed 1 Awesome Gmail tip You Didn’t Know about.

Angelina has written a series of posts on How To Turn Gmail Into a Multitasking Machine. In Part 1 she explains how to best configure Gmail, how to consolidate your eMail, and set up labels. In Part2 she provides tips for eMail filtering. Finally, in Part 3, Angelina explores options for the sidebar and the use of multiple inboxes.

Zimbra Desktop

What is it?

Yahoo’s Zimbra Desktop is a desktop eMail client that rivals Gmail, Thunderbird, and Outlook alike. Interestingly, it is powered by Mozilla.

What makes it a better alternative to Outlook?

Much like its Mozilla companion Thunderbird, Zimbra is available in 20 different language versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The design is sleek and Zimbra offers several more theme options. Best of all, it’s easy and intuitive to use with a ton of useful features.

Zimbra supports its own online webmail client Zimbra as well as Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Microsoft Live Hotmail, AOL Mail, Microsoft Exchange IMAP, IMAP, and POP.

Zimbra has a built-in calendar, contacts, task manager, documents, and briefcase.

Obviously, language integration is not yet perfect. Although I selected the US English language installation and confirmed this language preference within options, some tabs and menus are still displayed in the language of my operating system: German. This should not be an issue if you select the language of your operating system.

Zimbra synchronizes eMails, contacts, and calendars with Zimbra, Yahoo! Mail, and Gmail.

Like Gmail, Zimbra offers an optional conversation view, i.e. threaded conversations. It also comes with advanced tagging options.

Contacts can be grouped and tagged, you can add photos, and import/export via .csv files is supported.

Zimbra comes with great search features. You can quickly search your mailbox for all or specified item types or use the advanced search to add several search criteria, such as file size, date and time, tag, status, folder, and more. The best is that searches can be saved as virtual folders.

Zimbra extensions are called Zimlets.

For more details on how Zimbra compares to Outlook and Thunderbird, check out the Feature Comparison list.

Runners-Up

If none of the above alternatives seem entirely satisfying to you, please have a look at the following two clients:

IncrediMail was reviewed by Saikat: Have Some Fun With This Email Client (Windows).
Zenbe received a review from Sam: All Your Emails In One Place.

What is your favorite eMail client and what makes it valuable to you?

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/

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In this article, a follow-on from fellow MakeUseOf author Karl’s post, we’ll take a look at some great sites you can visit to download great, high resolution desktop backgrounds for your computer.

DesktopNexus

As seen on the MakeUseOf Directory, DesktopNexus, with a sample of one of their featured hi-res wallpapers below, features all kinds of wallpapers and encourages wallpaper submissions by visitors to their site. Total, their site has almost 80,000 wallpapers in their directory and includes a wide scope of images from categories like technology, entertainment, people, nature, abstract and more.

DesktopNexus also offers a very useful and creative automatic wallpaper-changing tool called “spinwall”, which can also be used to spice up your desktop background with more than just one wallpaper. Visit DesktopNexus here.

VladStudio

VladStudio, also with a sample featured hi-res wallpaper below, offers a great selection of a more abstract set of wallpapers, including two-screen and some tri-screen wallpapers as well. The site has pictures of more abstract things such as computer-generated maps, moons, etc. It also offers a neat feature – zip downloads of batch sets of wallpapers for specific monitor resolutions. Still, Vladstudio’s selection of offered wallpapers is unique and the site is surely worth a visit. Visit Vladstudio here.

DualScreen Wallpaper

While not everyone has two monitors, for the large amount of people who still do, and even those who have three monitors, I thought I’d point out a specific-niche wallpaper site I also came across: DualScreen Wallpaper. This site specializes in wallpapers for all kinds, with a cropped sample below, of dual-screen resolutions including 2560×1024, 1920×1600, 1680×1050 and a few others as well. While many images are nature photos, some are animation stills, nature scenery, cars and planets. Most wallpapers can be downloaded as a whole picture, or just the right or left segment. You can view it in the MakeUseOf directory by clicking here, or visit the site with the link above.

Hubble Space Telescope Wallpapers

Finally, if you’re looking for an out-of-this-world type wallpaper like the one below, the Hubble Space Telescope website is another great site to look as well. One of my favorite wallpaper sites and a favorite for all astronomers, the website for the Hubble Space Telescope has a great listing of fairly high-resolution wallpapers that you can grab, all taken from the actual telescope itself. There are pictures available of planets, other galaxies, nebuli and more. And each picture can also be embedded into other websites through their easy embed code.

MakeUseOf also has some great other wallpaper articles on Patriotic Wallpapers, wallpapers with calendars, and many, many other sites over at the MakeUseOf Directory on wallpapers.

Let us know what your favorite wallpaper sites or individual wallpapers are in the comments and spread the desktop background joy!

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/

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Image search engines sift through the web searching by type of image, by license or by tags and keywords. There are of course, standalone photo reservoirs like Flickr, Stock.xchng, Photobucket, Morguefile et.al; but your kind of image may just be tucked away in some other obscure corner of the web. Google Image Search is powerful but it always pays to have a few more options up your browser.

This is where these five image search engines come into the picture.

Cyclo.ps

In Greek mythology, it’s a giant with a single eye. As a stock photography search engine, it keeps both eyes on sites like BigStockPhoto, Flickr, Fotolia, Cutcaster, StockVault, Photos.com, ShutterStock and stockx.xchng. The search interface is typically simple and you can search by selecting specific stock photo sites or all of them in one go. A horizontal menu and also a dropdown let you view results by respective site. Clicking on the thumbnail previews takes you to the source where you can see the details attached with the photo.

Cyclo.ps gives the user a Lightbox account where he can save (by clicking the little plus icon), tag, share, and print (only the thumbnail) his selected photos. Visitors can also add comments to your shared images.

Pixsy

Type in your query and you can get what you are searching for amidst millions of images and videos. This search platform delivers both. The web app looks into the RSS feed of variety of news sites and content providers like Yahoo and extracts the image previews. Clicking on the thumbnail preview takes you directly to the source. The source webpage opens in a two frame layout with a Pixsy brief on top and the source page below. You can filter the search by content type (image or video), category and source (BBC, MSNBC, Rolling Stone, Webshots, Yahoo etc).

The site is very neat and uncluttered.

Spffy (Beta)

Ferret out the image or video you want using Spffy’s multiple searches. Spffy checks out a cross-section of sources like stock photo sites, web sources like Flickr, public domain sites and videos from YouTube. You can tune your stock search with settings for royalty-free, rights-managed and news/archival. Web search on Flickr can also be similarly configured for relevance.

Incogna

The Canada-based search engine company looks at the visual shape rather than the meta-data. This gives rather interesting results which are distinct from the others profiled here. The image search is fast though the number of results is not plentiful. You enter a keyword and then select an image from the results to do a similarity search. A moving slider to control the number of images per page is the only preference tool to set.

PicSearch

Picsearch indexes the web for images and is probably the best of the lot. The About Page of the site says that its unique search algorithm is due for a patent. The search engine has indexed more than 3,000,000,000 images. You can set a few preferences like an interface language.

Advanced search options give you several image factors like color or black and white, animation or image, portrait or landscape and more importantly the ability to search by image size. You can also use normal search operators to fine-tune your search. The site also comes with a family filter to keep out you-know-those kind of images away from the mix.

There are two things I really liked about the site. Firstly, its speed; and secondly, the Image Directory which is a vast collection of subject specific images. Oh yes, there’s a third thing to like too – it comes with a Firefox extension.

In listing these five sites, I have tried to go beyond the omnipresent searches provided by the regulars like Google, Yahoo and Bing. When it comes to search, often a single tool does the job; but there are also times when many need to be pushed into action. Along with these five, you can check out two others we have profiled before –

• PicFindr
• Everystockphoto

Do remember that although these search engines may give you the right image – using the image itself is subject to copyright. So do check the sources before you click on save. If unable to do so, what are search engines for…hunt out a few more.

Which is your image search engine of choice? Does your image search go beyond the biggies? Let us into the picture.

Image Credit: Playingwithbrushes

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/

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Regular maintenance is usually required to keep a computer optimized and running at its best. Here are four programs that will make your computer faster, and four trade-offs to help make the best use out of the amount of RAM that’s installed on your computer.

MSConfig

For those who despair endlessly that their computer lags too much at start up yet don’t know how to go about fixing that, taking a look through MSConfig would be the place to start. Msconfig can by accessed by hitting Windows-R, which brings up the “Run” dialog, and typing in “msconfig”. Under the “Start Up” tab, there is a list of programs and executables that are launched when the computer starts up.

Having a lot of programs that start up when the computer boots is one of the main reasons that boot times are so long, for most PC users. Thus, the remedy would be to go through the entire list and uncheck anything that is unnecessary to have on boot up. If there are any entries you are not sure about, be sure to check them thoroughly on the internet before messing with them, as unchecking the wrong entries could potentially mess up the functionality of some of your programs.

CCleaner

CCleaner stands for “Crap Cleaner” and that is exactly what the program is great for. Over time, temporary files bog down your system, and take up unnecessary space in your harddrive. Thus, it is good PC maintenance practice to go through your computer once every while, and delete all the temp files.

It is incredibly simple: just navigate to the Cleaner tab in CCleaner, check everything you want to clean up (it would be best to leave the “Advanced” section alone, unless you know what those entries refer to), and then clean Analyze. You’ll then see an overview of what CCleaner is about to clean up and delete, and how much space CCleaner will free up for you. To permanently erase the temp files off your computer, simply click “Run Cleaner,” and all those temp files will be history.

Temp files aren’t the only junk files cluttering up your computer, however. Broken registry keys also pose a huge problem when it comes to useless files clogging up your system. Fortunately, CCleaner also has the ability to keep your registry clean.

To do this, use the “Registry” tab in Ccleaner. Once again, select all the entries you want CCleaner to prune, and let it do its thing. The only difference between this type of maintenance and clearing temp files is that if you accidentally delete a key that is still being used by your system, your computer can begin to function strangely. With that said, you should back up your registry settings before you give CCleaner the go ahead to torch everything. When you click “Fix Selected Issues” to delete the faulty registry entries, CCleaner will prompt you to back up your registry, and you should always click ‘yes’.

CCleaner was also discussed by Stefan in his article How To Uninstall Applications Efficiently And Remove Obsolete Files.

Revo Uninstaller

Revo Uninstaller is like the on-steroids version of your own Add and Remove Programs option in the Control Panel, but it also scans your computer for any files that the default uninstaller doesn’t catch, and deletes them. Revo’s layout is pretty much exactly the same as the Add and Remove Programs dialog, so it should be simple to navigate.

Revo also has a panel that lists all of the clean up tools that are provided with Windows systems. This menu can be accessed by clicking the Tools icon, and then the Windows Tools tab on the left.

For a more in-depth review of Revo Uninstaller, check out Jimmy’s article Revo Uninstaller Will Hunt Down Your Bloatware.

Defraggler

So once you’ve cleared all of the unnecessary files from your computer, there are now a bunch of holes where the data for those files used to be. While this may seem like no big deal to most people, having random gaps of empty space can also slow down your computer, because the rest of your files are still splintered into many different pieces, and the newly generated empty space isn’t being used efficiently. The more pieces a file is split to, the longer it takes the computer to access that file, so it makes sense to put all these pieces back together, once space has been cleared up to store whole files.

Defraggler is one of the best free defragmentation tools on the market. The visual representation of the space on the computer as pieces of files are being reunited is extremely enlightening, because most people don’t realize the extent of file splintering on their systems.

But cleaning up your computer isn’t the only thing you can do to optimize how fast your computer runs. Believe it or not, the programs you choose to perform daily actions such as chatting, or opening PDFs, can also affect your computer’s running speed.

Best Program Trade-Offs

This section discusses several alternative applications that perform more efficiently and provides your computer with the speed boost that it needs. Especially on slower computers, the difference is quite noticeable. Try it them out for yourselves!

1. Pidgin vs. AIM

If you don’t mind the spartan interface, Pidgin is a great multi-protocol IM client with a light footprint. Unfortunately it doesn’t natively support video chat, but it does have a plug-in for Skype (although you’ll need to have Skype running to use it).

2. Firefox or Chrome vs Internet Explorer

I recommend this switch not just based off memory footprint, but also because both Firefox and Chrome trump IE when it comes to customization and start-up times.

3. Foxit Reader vs Adobe Reader

Adobe Reader is notorious for its slow load times, especially when it comes to huge documents. Being a student, I regularly load 500+ page PDFs (the digital versions of my textbooks), so having to wait ages for them to load would be severely detrimental to my productivity. Foxit Reader, however, is so snappy that a 500+ page PDF loads almost instantly, and the browser integration is much smoother and faster than that of Adobe Reader. Once again, the interface is a bit more spartan, but Foxit definitely packs more features, and is a very worthy switch.

Click here for Guy’s article on more light alternatives to Adobe Reader.

4. VLC Player vs Windows Media Player

VLC is like the Pidgin of media players in that it supports a multitude of different video formats, and has a quick loading interface. Another great, recently implemented feature of VLC is that it can now be skinned to fit in with your windows theme!

5. Foobar2000 vs iTunes

The great thing about Foobar is that it is so customizable: everything from the layout of the interface to the plug-ins to extend the program’s capabilities can be tweaked. Many people worry that without iTunes, they wont’ be able to sync their iPod or iPhone, but Foobar actually has a plug-in to support iPod syncing.

Today, I’ve covered eight of the best programs for de-crapping your computer and maximizing your available RAM. Hopefully you’ve found a few of these programs to your liking, and decide to trade out your slow, sluggish apps for something a bit more snappy. Here they are again:

CCleaner – Download
Revo Uninstaller – Download
Defraggler – Download
Pidgin – Download
Firefox – Download
Chrome – Download
Foxit Reader – Download
VLC Player – Download
Foobar2000 – Download

Try out our suggestions, and let us know if they help speed up your computer a bit. If you have your own favorite programs for speeding up your computer, let us know in the comments!

Image credit: cod_gabriel

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You should know, however, that Microsoft isn’t just about money. They do provide an awful lot of free software that is really cool! So I went digging on their site and sniffing around for some free Microsoft software and here are 3 cool programs I didn’t know Microsoft had.

Scalable Fabric

Don’t let the name fool you. It’s not a fabric of the cloth variety. What they’re talking about is a window management application. Essentially, it replaces the function of the minimize button on the top right of your window.

With Scalable Fabric installed, if you click on the minimize window, the window merely shrinks and moves to one side of your desktop. If you drag that window towards the center of the screen, the window gets bigger until it becomes full size. Vice-versa as well.

The program does make some annoying noises, but those can be shut off.  Really, it’s something you have to try to really understand. However, as always, here are some pictures!

What this shows is how the large window scales down when moved to the periphery and scales up when moved to the center of the screen. You can also set the boundaries for where this scaling begins and ends. That’s what the blue square represents.

The usefulness of this is limited. However it meets a specific need by keeping your window’s content visible on your desktop. Yes, this feature is available in operating systems newer than XP, yet this is a nice add on for XP and earlier versions of Windows.

Microsoft Producer for PowerPoint

If this free Microsoft software was used on all PowerPoint presentations, we might not have the saying Death-By-PowerPoint. People would find it much easier to add audio and video to their PowerPoint through the time-line editing feature.

It works much like any basic movie editing software would, like Microsoft MovieMaker. So you can have music spanning several slides, and have a richer visual experience. This product is also ideal for creating stand-alone presentations that don’t require you to be there talking.

A person could create a kiosk-style presentation and leave it running on a computer or monitor for the public to see. That’s a good thing, because to get someone to develop a presentation in Flash or other methods is terribly expensive compared to doing it yourself in this freeware.

I could see this being ideal for a small-business owner or village, or any other organization with a limited budget. A presentation with this could really raise your profile.

Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2009

This free Microsoft software application is like a mini-version of Microsoft Money or Intuit’s Quicken for free! If you have XP or Vista, you can download this great free app to help you with your small business. It can integrate and share data with Microsoft Outlook, Access and Excel.

What I find really exciting is that I can use this with eBay and PayPal to list items I want to sell as well as create the invoices for the customers. Apparently you can process credit card payments too, but I didn’t venture into that feature. If you need to share your books frequently with your accountant, you can also do that through Office Live with this package. Incredible really, for free software.

Now, think about this. Microsoft, the world’s most successful IT company and creator of dozens of filthy rich people made and distributes this software for free. These programs can increase your productivity, market presence and profitability. Maybe they couldn’t make money off of Scalable Fabric, but certainly the other two could be sold for at least $40. No, Microsoft does give back. So, maybe I’ll back off on the trashing of Redmond’s finest – at least for a little while.

Do you use any other freeware from Microsoft? If you do, I’d love to hear which ones and what your opinions are on them. Drop me a line in the comments below!

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Hidden in dusty attics and in dark corners of your movie rental store, old treasures lie hidden. Of course, a lot of these can also be purchased on a shiny new DVD disk.

These great classics have slipped from under copyright over the years, and can now be found on the internet, entirely legal and 100% free! Watch classic movies right from your browser, or download them to your computer via the following great sites.

Internet Archive – Moving Images

You’ve probably heard of the Internet Archive before, they’re the guys who brought us the Wayback Machine, a tool to watch internet pages from way in the past. But archiving the internet isn’t limited to static HTML. If you take a closer look at the website, you’ll see that they’ve also collected a ton of audio, text, software and – moving images.

At the moment, a stunning 214,402 pieces of film can be found on the website. Once you browse over to the ‘Movies‘ category, you’ve still got 2,855 full-length feature films waiting for you. Of course, Whatever Works and G.I. Joe won’t be found here, but it’s a great place to watch your favorite classic movies all over again. Honestly, with the Internet Archive in the picture, you’ll rarely need to look at another site.

Movies can be browsed by subject, keywords, language or popularity. Once you’ve found your flick, you can stream it directly from the page, or download it in MPEG2, Ogg or MPEG4 – all in incredible picture quality.

Classic Cinema Online

Classic Cinema Online is another place to find your classic flicks. I especially like it because of the site’s interface, and use it to uncover ‘new’ titles that I haven’t seen before. The ‘Now Playing‘ bar shows – in cinema style – some of the newer, featured films. Alternatively, you can browse by popularity or film genre.

Unlike the Internet Archive, Classic Cinema online doesn’t host any of the films locally. Instead, they embed from popular video sharing sites like YouTube or Google Video. This means that – even though the streaming rate is very fine, the availability of classic movies to watch is less stable. If one of the video hosters decide to get rid of a film, you won’t be able to access it anymore on Classic Cinema Online.

Archive Classic Movies

Last but not least, Archive Classic Movies, abbreviated ACM. They’ve also got an impressive film archive, though noticeably smaller than the two preceding sites.

Archive Classic Movies does appear to host most of its movies locally. You can stream them at a decent rate, or download them as a surplus. The videos are encoded as MP4 files, and average around 400 MegaBytes.

As well as classic movies, we have also previously discussed where to get your horror movie fix online, how to choose new movies and where to find old movie trailers.

I hope you’ve had some use of this post and earned yourself a few new bookmarks. Do you know any other sites to watch classic movies? Tell us and your fellow MakeUseOf readers in the comments section below!

Image Credit : MarinaFoto @ deviantArt

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Now think back to when you were a kid and how many pickup games of road hockey, baseball or even cricket that you had. (Do European and Australian kids have pick-up games of cricket? I’m just trying to be more inclusive.) At least once or twice a week? Nothing organized, just a bunch of kids getting together and having fun.

So, where did the kids go? I know there are kids out there or we wouldn’t have Hannah Montana or toy stores. The kids are inside, surfing the Internets, IM’ing their BFF’s, Facebooking and YouTubing. If you’re like me, you know life is to be lived – not watched. So what to do?

How about free software to limit your kids’ online time on the computer?

Here’s a free one to check out:

Romaco Timeout

This is a fine piece of freeware from fellow Canuck, Mark Furneaux (a.k.a. TheUbuntuGuy – no relation). It simply does what it says it will. Perhaps the only caveat is to make sure that when you install it, that you select the Install for Everyone option. That way you can apply it to whichever users are on the computer.

Take a look at the settings window and I’m sure you’ll be able to figure out exactly how to use this software. The beauty is the simplicity.

When the Romaco Control Panel opens, you must enter a password before you can even change any settings. Of course, choose a password that your kids won’t guess. Once you’ve done that, the rest of the Control Panel is accessible.

In order to make the program start counting down, you must check the Enable Timeout checkbox. From there, you can choose the method you want to put healthy limits on the computer usage.

Do you want them to be on the computer for no more than an hour or two a day? Choose the Daily Quota option.

Did you say they could only go on for half-an-hour before supper? Choose the Per-Session Timeout.

With the Per-Session Timeout, you do have to set it for a minimum of  15 minutes. Now, if you set the Warn n minutes before action option in either scenario, there is NO WAY the little goobers can say, “I didn’t know it was going to shut off.” Or the ever-popular, “It’s not fair! I didn’t have time to save my game. I need to get back on and get to a save point!”

Personally, I would only respond to that last statement with my patented, “Did I promise you fair?” accompanied by the arched eyebrow. See that warning below? It scales to whatever size your screen is. They can click the OK button to continue their Twittering.

There are two possible outcomes from setting the timer – Log Off or Shut Down. How you choose is up to you. Log off is good enough for our kids since they know that they’ve had enough time and respect us. Ha! I almost typed that last line with a straight-face.

I’d also recommend checking the Startup Automatically For This User. That way it will startup automatically for that user. That was redundant.

Once you have it set as you want, simply click on the Run Immediately button. The countdown will begin. Then click on the Apply and Close button. That will minimize the Romaco Timeout to the system tray – out of the way.

The only easy way to stop the program now, is to open the Timeout Control Panel from the system tray icon and enter the password. If you’ve done your job right, the kids won’t be able to cirvumvent this. Unless they are more into computers than just surfing. In that case, you may want to look at registry tweaks to disable the Task Manager.

I can’t promise you that your neighbourhood will fill up with kids playing and laughing by using Timeout. What you do with your kids when they step away from the flickering-blue babysitter is up to you.

What other methods do you use to help keep their computer usage healthy? How do you encourage them to get outside and just play? I’m all ears and willing to learn. Just leave me a note in the comments below.

Image Credit : krisandapril

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If you want to attain some order, editing those pictures is necessary. If you’ve got a somewhat decent collection, this can be a long and tedious task – unless you use a batch processing application.

These ‘batch applications’ can process your pictures automatically, editing an incredibly big batch of files with the click of a mouse. These kind of editing macros can save you a lot of effort, and makes the (practically) impossible possible.

Batch Renaming – Rename Master

A batch renaming application will append the same naming structure on all of your files. This is one of the most prominent reasons for batch processing; to change those damn ugly and incompatible filenames into something useful.

Rename Master is the king of the (freeware) rename applications. Not only can it create new nametags for whole folders at once, more flexible naming schemes can be composed to reuse previous parts of the filenames, or even use metadata like the dates those pictures were taken. Too fancy? Just jot down a fancy name with a numbering prefix or suffix.

As a surplus, Rename Master can also be used to rename other types of files.

You might also want to check out Saikat’s post on Renaming Pictures with the Date They Were Shot.

Batch Resizing – Photosizer

Fotosizer will – as the name implies – resize all of your pictures. You can do this by defining a percentage, or by supplying maximum width and height dimensions. Alternatively, you can also use a preset size, to prep your images for custom displays, like a PSP or iPod. A tool like this is especially handy if you’re working with extremely high resolution photography, and want to create some lighter, screen-friendly duplicates.

Fotosizer is nice on the eye, and has an easy to use interface. If you want, you can also use Fotosizer to rename your pictures, although I find it less advanced and more complicated to use than Rename Master.

You can also take a look at Jimmy’s post on Batch Editing Your Images with GIMP.

Mac fanatics might want to check out Jackson’s post on Pixer.

Batch Convert (+ Resize) – PicSizer

PicSizer is actually a resizing application (who would guess?). Nevertheless, It doesn’t offer any advantages over Fotosize – except conversion functionality. In this article, I will regard solely PicSizer as such – a tool to lift images from one filetype to another, because to be honest, it does this better than most other freeware batch conversion applications.

PicSizer supports a few file formats, including about all the popular ones; JPG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, TGA and PNG. The application can also convert images between these formats. If you choose JPG or PNG – which I advise – you can even choose your compression ratio.

With these three tools, you should have pretty much all of the batch image manipulations covered. Note that not all of these applications are excessively present in the freeware world, and we had to look at a resizing app to get decent conversion functionality. If you know of any other – perhaps better? – batch processing tools, you can tell us in the comments section below.

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IMSLP / Petrucci Music Library

Listed by PC Magazine as one of the Top 100 Websites of 2009, this site is a treasure trove of free public domain sheet music, as well as a thriving community of music lovers. There are over 39,000 scores for 18,000+ works and thousands are being added every month. You will find multiple versions of sheets for popular works, all available for download as PDF files. While some PDFs are typeset using software and are clearer, some are scanned versions.

The International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) or Petrucci Music Library has its own forum where you can participate in general music discussion, send score requests, etc. You can also follow the IMSLP on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook. Suffice it to say that if the sheet music of the classical work you’re looking for is not available here, you’re probably a professional musician who should not be looking for free websites to download sheet music!

The Choral Wiki (CPDL)

The Choral Public Domain Library (CPDL), specializes in choral music and has over 10,000 different works. Apart from scores, you can find lyrics, translations, and information about composers. Most scores are available as downloadable PDF files, some are also accompanied by MIDI files, while others are linked to clearly marked external websites.

CPDL supports advanced search so that you can search scores by title, composer, period, genre, voicing, and even lyrics. You can also browse in different ways such as alphabetically, by category, by composer, etc. CPDL is a community driven website, with over 500 contributors, so you can add your own scores and contribute to it.

Mutopia

Mutopia offers free sheet music to print for over 1600 classical works. You will find all the popular composers like Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Mozart and works for all types of instruments like Piano, Violin, Guitar, Cello and Organ. You can browse by Instrument, Composer, or Style. The Advanced Search is very impressive, allowing you to search using various filters.

Again, this is a volunteer-driven project, using the LilyPond software to create beautiful A4 or Legal sized sheets. For each work, you get PDF or PostScript files as well as MIDI files, along with a preview image and basic information about the musical work.

Free Sheet Music.Net

This site is a combination of free sheet music hosted within the site and a searchable directory of links to other websites for sheet music. I suggest you browse the sheet music downloads within that site here, rather than experimenting with the search or clicking the advertisements.

The number of sheet music downloads is quite limited. The reason this website was worth including in this list is because of the free articles available here. This assorted collection of articles ranges from beginner guides for different instruments to information about sheet music, instruments, etc.

Free Scores

Free Scores has almost 15,000 free sheet music scores available for download as PDF files. Their search is quite impressive, as you can search in many different ways: by instruments, composers, etc. For example, within works for Piano, you can search by style (genre), and instrumentation (piano solo, or with specific other instruments). Many music sheets have accompanying MIDI or MP3 files.

If you are a composer or musician, you can register for free on the site to distribute your own music. While most of the sheet music on the site is classical and in public domain, some contemporary composers have added their own music to this site for sharing.

ABC Music.Net

This is a rare website that offers free piano sheet music downloads for popular modern tunes. You will find 270+ tunes from the Beatles to Celine Dion and Justin Timberlake. You can browse alphabetically, or by search by artist or song name. The sheets are clear PDF files, downloaded as .ZIP archives. You can register to become a member and upload your contributions.

ABC Music has their own Twitter account and Facebook fan page as well, but unfortunately there don’t seem to be any updates to the site or these accounts since May ‘09. If you are interested in getting sheets for modern songs, grab it from here while it lasts.

Did we miss any quality site for free sheet music that is your favorite? Did you get the sheets for the works you were looking for? Do tell us in the comments!

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These clip art graphics are always composed of illustrations, sometimes with a little text, but never photography.

If you look at office suites like Microsoft Office (Word, Powerpoint, Excel), you’ll see that it comes with a fair bulk of graphics. Most often, you won’t have to look further than that. Nevertheless, sometimes you do.

Whether your collection does not suffice, or you never had any clip art in your office suite to begin with, referring to the world wide web for free clipart downloads is a logical step. Regretfully, a lot of people try to make money out of – often mediocre – clip art. Today we’ll show you a bunch of sites that don’t, places where you can find great clip art for no cost at all.

Clker

Let’s start off with my favourite – Clker.com. Whenever I need something, this is the first (and often the last) place I’ll look. They have a rich collection of vector clip art, all royalty free and in the public domain. Clip art can be downloaded in PNG (low, med, hi), SVG, or even ODG formats. And if you’re feeling especially creative, you can upload some works of your own.

A little less creative but still want to help out? Notice the green tag in the downright corner of the screenshot. You can help out tremendously by just tagging the images that are already there.

Open Clip Art Library

Open Clip Art Library is something special. They’re continuously collecting user-submitted clip art and publishing it under a Creative Commons license. Their goal is to build an easy to use directory, with free clipart downloads as far as the eye can see, to share and be shared alike.

A really useful feature is the Requests directory, where they try to encourage artists to create new content, but where you can also score a fresh piece of work yourself. Got an idea, but can’t find it anywhere? This is the place to go.

Unfortunately, the site doesn’t lend itself for easy browsing. You can perform a search using good ol’ custom Google, but you won’t walk into a thumbnail overview wherever you go. Click on an item to view an illustration preview.

The site takes a decent second place nonetheless, because the work is often of great quality and well worth the hassle.

WPClipart

WPClipart is your standard clip art directory, currently hosting tens of thousands of free clip art images; a number which keeps on growing. Find the image you’re looking for by browsing through the different directories or perform a search – I advise the latter. While looking through the images, you’ll also encounter a few photographs – unfortunate, because they do not belong on the site.

All clip art (and the occasional photograph) can be downloaded as a PNG image. With the click of a mouse, you can also easily convert them to JPG – whatever you like best.

You can also check out WPClipart’s feature overview @ the MakeUseOf directory.

Artvex

This site has pretty good looks – so why is it so far down the list? Well, the search option is completely messed up. I’m not sure if it’s due to bad scripting, or simply bad indexing, but the majority of search queries will refuse to return any results.

That aside, there is some great clip art imagery on the site, so if you don’t mind browsing categorically, I guess you’re fine. It’s still got over 10,000 free clipart downloads for you to choose from.

Again, the images can only be retrieved from the overview (as seen in the screenshot above). All pictures are in GIF format, and because of the download restrictions, the file dimensions aren’t worth any admiration either.

You can also check out Artvex’s feature overview @ the MakeUseOf directory.

Clipart ETC

Clipart ETC is ‘an online service of Florida’s Educational Technology Clearinghouse’. They supply over 58,000 free clip art images, to be used by students and teachers! Mind, if you are neither student or teacher, the license won’t cover you. Otherwise, you’ll be allowed to embed up to 50 items in a single, non-commercial project.

As the screenshot suggests, all clip art is in black and white – but that shouldn’t be too much a problem in research papers. All images include a more than decent description, and list their source. Because most of these illustrations are scans from (old) books, it can be interesting to track them to the source. Downloads are available in 240 dpi TIFF files, which allows you quite some flexibility.

Hopefully you’ve had some use of this post. If you know any other great sources for free clip art illustrations, be sure to mention them in the comments section below.

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Today, we will talk about the top 5 online radio stations to fit your musical horizons.

(Note: Check out the radio tag for more related web apps.)

Sky.fm

Sky.fm, although not necessarily a “top-dog”, certainly features the best list of online streaming radio stations out of any site.

Sky.fm does not require a “premium” subscription for any of its radio stations, although it is optional and will get you an upgrade to a 256kbps stream (which is high quality) audio. For free users, radio stations can be played at up to 96kbp (which is slightly less than the standard 128kbps). Premium subscriptions are $4.95 per month.

Sky.fm features genres ranging from: alternative rock, classic rock, flamenco, raggea, smooth jazz, and so on. One huge reason really hits home though: commercial free. This is extremely rare among online radio stations and is one of the most annoying things about traditional AM/FM radio.

Shoutcast

The most popular of all online radio directories, Shoutcast picks up streams from all across the web, organized in a number of ways that are extremely helpful. Shoutcast makes it easy to find thousands of streaming alternative rock, jazz, reggae, country, blues, etc. Shoutcast can even show you what is currently playing on any specific stream, what the bitrate is, how many listeners, and the format of the stream. I highly recommend checking it out.

Check out this post by Jason on how to start your own online radio station with Shoutcast.

Soma fm

Soma fm, with an even smaller listening audience than Sky.fm, features a great variety of Indie, Techno, Trance, Ambient, and Lounge music. Like Sky.fm, Soma fm does not feature ads, but does not have a premium feature (their only source of income is donations).

Each of the 18 stations though features a 128kbps MP3 stream for free. Another nice thing about Soma fm is that they place an entire set list/playlist of currently playing and previously playing songs, which is something that is absent on many online streaming radio stations.

AccuRadio

Another extremely popular streaming radio site, AccuRadio has its fair share of pros and cons. Like the previously mentioned shoutcast, AccuRadio offers a wide variety of hundreds of stations of multiple genres, tailored precisely for you (with more of a Pandora kind of tailored radio).

The only con that can be easily determined, is that you must have your web browser open to listen to any AccuRadio station, unlike the more popular and convenient method of downloading a small playlist file and listening through your desktop. Still a very useful streaming site.

1Club.fm

1Club.fm is a relatively popular, multi-genre, radio station directory that will not disappoint. With over 90 different channels, finding your taste is of course not a problem. Simply click a link to any of the radio stations, listen in your browser, or download a .pls streaming audio file for quick access.

The only problem I had when listening to any of the stations was the quality/bitrate of the streams. Of the stations I tested, the only stream rate I could get was 64kbps (which is about half of the average mp3 bitrate). In any case, if your looking for a specific genre you will likely find it on 1Club.

Looking at the related articles MakeUseOf published in the past, I would like to bring your attention to:

- 3 Easy Tools to Record Streaming Music as MP3 Files
- The 3 Best Online Radio Players For Your Desktop

What online radio stations do you listen to? 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/

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In Japan, manga is an everyday thing. People of young and old alike enjoy these comics about romance, action, humor and, sometimes, tentacles — but that’s a genre we’ll be trying to avoid discussing today.

Lately, manga fever has been spreading beyond the country’s boundaries. Since it’s legal to read or download (yet) unlicensed titles in Europe and the States, spending some time to read Manga online is a great way to spend an afternoon. And once you’re in, you’ll never want out!

ATTENTION! Many of these manga’s are uploaded by users. It’s still illegal to read manga online that’s been licensed in English. Check here for a full list of licensed titles.

There are a lot of sites where you can download manga for free, but today we’ll be focussing on websites where you can read these comics online, without having to clutter your computer and from the comfort of your laptop, netbook, or iPhone.

Manga Fox

The first thing you’ll notice about Manga Fox is how great the site looks. Not only that, you can flip through different color themes to make it easier on the eyes or fit in with your room’s wallpaper. The second thing you’ll notice is their amazing collection of manga.

You can view the latest manga on the frontpage, but I recommend you browse the Manga Directory. Here you’ll be able to sort the different titles alphabetically or perform a search. If you really don’t know what to read, or just want some to get your hands on some new reads, sort the titles by rating and start with a blast.

The collection of manga they offer is very decent, and the site definitely stands out with its interface. I really doubt you’d find another manga site with a swifter navigation.

One Manga

One Manga comes second in the list. It’s got a comparable list of manga, but a slightly less pleasurable design and interface. Nevertheless, if you can’t find your manga on Manga Fox, this would be the second place to go.

Again, you can have your pick between the recent updates, or sort the titles by alphabet. Alternatively, and this is a feature you won’t encounter often, you can also browse by category. Say you’re still a little new to this, and want to find some titles that fit your style, this is a great place to start.

Manga Volume

Third comes Manga Volume. At first sight it highly resembles a file sharing site, and there are more similarities than that. Users can upload new manga from the frontpage, contributing to the already huge database of english manga.

Manga Volume misses the great interface of Manga Fox and the categoric view of One Manga, but its active user community make it a vast resource of online manga. Rest assured, if your manga isn’t on any of the three sites mentioned above, it’s probably licensed.

I hope you’ve had some use of this article. If you know any other great resources to read Manga online -  be sure to mention them 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/

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Classic movies are indeed movies that have fallen through the cracks and are now long forgotten by most but still have the ability to captivate audiences with their unique plots and their charm grows with age.

So where does one find old movie trailers for movies that are now long gone from the silver screen? The internet’s a big place and user generated content sites such as YouTube only scratch the surface in terms of the sheer amount of films made since the 1920s. The sites below delve deeper.

ReelClassics

This site is obviously put together by classic movie fans with no real intention of making any money from it via advertisements etc. Basically, it consists of a database of reviews, screenshots, posters and of course trailers. It has not exactly embraced web 2.0 but then databases really are just long lists.

By selecting ‘AV Gallery’ you’re accessing the database of audio and visual material; ‘Visual’ being the key word here. You’ll see a long alphabetical list of films along with their dates (as far back as the 1920s). Some only have soundtracks but most will have a small image of a film reel beside it. By clicking on the reel you’ll download the old movie trailer for the film in.mov format which is playable in Real Player.

Jaman

While this film database site doesn’t only cater to classics it is a worthwhile visit for those in search of classic trailers. My reason? Because it covers classic films from all over the world. Down at the end of the website it lists the countries where the films hail from. These include France, Ireland, Britain, America and Germany. There is also a huge selection of Bollywood films.

In the ‘Classic’ section I found old movie trailers for movies such as King Kong (1973 Remake) and David and Goliath. The trailer player is good although I did find the site to be a bit sluggish overall. I think that whatever technology they used to build the site could do with an upgrade.

All the same, Jaman does have a selection of the most memorable movies to capture audiences although it’s lacking in anything pre-1960, I found.

Chasing the Frog

Despite its odd name, this film site has a huge selection of film trailers. I easily found films such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Stand by Me. Once again, all of the films are listed in alphabetical order and it’s pretty easy to access the database by selecting ‘Trailers’ on the home screen and then ‘Classic Trailers’ underneath the search function.

Most of the trailers originate from sites such as YouTube and MetaCafé. This allows the trailer to load fast as they’re using big companies’ servers which are fast and reliable. They clearly put a lot of effort into assembling all of these film trailers in the one place and it has paid off.

MGM.com

Metro Goldwyn Mayer was one of the most iconic film production companies on the planet with its golden era being between the years of 1920 to 1970. The company’s official motto is ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ – and indeed art is exactly what they created.

Their website has a bank of all of their film trailers. By simply using their Search or Browse function you can look through reams of films dating back to just after WW1 – or ‘the silent era’ as it’s known. Under each film there is a ‘Multimedia’ button which will bring you to all of the media stored about the film. Alongside soundtracks and interviews there are theatrical trailers that you can enjoy for hours on end (I know I did).

Turner Classic Movies

This movie site discusses purely classical movies but it isn’t restricted to trailers. There are tonnes of posters, reviews and soundtracks available here for thousands of films going back into the 1930s.

The trailers are easily found by using the search function to sift through their database of over 150,000 titles. An example I used was the McQueen classic, ‘The Great Escape’. By clicking on the film an image loads along side two options; ‘Movie Clip’ or ‘Trailer’.

Click trailer to be shown the original theatrical trailer for any of the 150,000 classics. The videos load fast and the media player is really good.

These sites should keep you entertained as well as yearning to see the full films. I intended to write this article in just a few hours but I ended up wasting a perfectly good Sunday gawking at old, classic movie trailers. I now intend to spend the rest of the week watching old movies.

So what classic films hold a place in the hearts of the MUO readers?

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/

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There are a number of free parental control software packages and some tools designed to assist parents in this very task. Here are five that are worth a look.

Windows Parental Control Software

Windows has been offering parental control features (or some that are close to the feature) from some time now. Internet Explorer has had a content advisor since ages ago. The recent version of Windows offer even greater control. Barring the Business edition, all other Windows editions ship with parental control. You would have to create a separate account for kids (which is the sensible thing to do anyway), then you can access and manage parental controls from the Windows Control Panel. You can limit the amount of time your kids spend on the computer, the applications they can use and for how long; and you can also get an activity report of what they have been up to.

OpenDNS

OpenDNS not only resolves web addresses quickly. It also offers a host of other interesting features similar to free parental control software which you can use to protect users from phishing attacks of unsuitable content on the Internet. All you need to do in order to use OpenDNS is to set the nameservers for your computer or router. Once this is done, go ahead and create a free web account. This will let you manage what to allow and give you detailed statistics as well.

OpenDNS maintains a list of websites, broken down into categories that you can use to make browsing a little safer. You can also create your own blacklists to restrict access to any sites you don’t want your kids to view.

Kidzui

Kidzui is safe, free parental control software in the form of a web browser for kids. It let’s the children access games, videos and content that have been approved by parents around the world. One really nice feature of Kidzui is that it takes up the entire screen by default, hiding the Windows interface so that children don’t wander off elsewhere on your computer. Kidzui is great if you want to set up a hassle-free, safe and educational window to the web for your young ones. Here is the complete scoop.

Visikid

Visikid is more of a monitoring application with a strong focus on your kid’s activities. It monitors the applications that are accessed and the sites that are visited along with the time spent on them. All this information is presented to you nicely categorized should you choose to know what your kids have been up to. There are graphs, custom categories and much more on the Visikid dashboard that you can access at their website. Here is the complete review.

Pikluk

Pikluk also allows you to create list of websites that you deem suitable for your kids. Similar to Kidzui, it provides a safe means to access educational websites, games and all the usual features. A distinguishing feature is that you can create a Pikluk email address for your children and create a white list of users they are allowed to communicate with. Any email to or from anyone not on the list will be blocked.

Video sites for kids

Videos are generally very popular among kids but allowing access to something like Youtube is fishing in troubled waters. Although they are not strictly parental control tools, sites like ZuiTube and Totlol take a lot of burden off your shoulders when letting your kids watch videos online. These sites list videos that are fun, educational and moderated to be child-safe.

With all the tools combined and a careful strategy, you can be reasonably sure your kids are safe on the computer. However, nothing can match the caring and watchful attention of parents. We suggest you stick to that from time to time as well. Also check out 5 sites that promote internet safety for kids for some serious in depth information on the topic

What do you think about these? Do you know of some other useful tools for similar purposes? Sound off 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/

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So I’m taking this opportunity to share the wisdom that I’ve gained from that experience so that, possibly, I can save the next poor soul the trouble and heartache that I had to suffer through.

Am I being over-dramatic? Maybe. But what you have to understand is that at the very center of my livelihood is the Internet. I earn income, learn and unwind all on the Internet. When I lose that connection to the virtual world – I’m not a happy camper.

Rewind several months to the day when I purchased a new, shiny Sony Vaio laptop. I brought it home, excitedly opened up the box and turned it on, expecting the brand new laptop with a build-in wireless ethernet card to instantly sense my home network and connect almost completely automatically. Unfortunately, it sensed nothing. Many hours later, after an unmentionable amount of coffee consumed, I finally had my new Vista laptop on the Internet and screaming.

To save MUO readers out there who find themselves in this situation countless hours of aggravation, I’d like to offer the most important lessons I learned about Vista during this ordeal. Earlier, Aseem offered applications you can install that will improve your PC performance. However, I’d like to present the top five ways you can tweak Vista itself to get your Internet connection working, and increase your overall Internet speed.

The Most Important Vista Internet Speed Tweaks – Once You Can Connect

New technology is fabulous when it works, but I was quite disgusted to learn that Microsoft implemented IPv6 on Vista and upon install it is set as the default. The silly part is that it simply doesn’t work well with devices that still utilize the IPv4 protocol – and to assume that most home networks are fully upgraded to the IPv6 protocol is a faulty approach to setting defaults.

Many people upgrade their PCs and laptops long before they consider replacing that old outdated router that’s been sitting in the basement for five years and still works perfectly. So, when they bring home that shiny new laptop with Vista installed, guess what – the laptop and the router simply refuse to talk.

So, if you’re unlucky enough to find yourself in this situation – the very first thing you should do before we can even get started speeding up the Internet, is to disable IPv6 so that you can at least get on the Internet in the first place. Here’s how it works.

First, go to Start -> Network -> Network and Sharing Center, and then click on “Manage Network Connections.”

In this screen, you’ll likely have a wireless connection displaying that it can’t connect to any network. Right-click on that icon and select “Properties.”

You’ll discover both IPv6 and IPv4 enabled. Go ahead and uncheck the box for IPv6 and click “OK.” You’ll need to reboot your computer, but afterwards if the protocol incompatibility was your problem (and it very likely was), you’ll find that your computer can now communicate fine with the router. Maybe. There is one other complication Microsoft introduced into Vista just to encourage you that much more to upgrade your router – it’s something called “autotuning,” and it’s also the next Vista tweak.

Vista Connection Tweak #2 – Autotuning

This is another case where the cutting edge technological advances being enabled on Microsoft’s operating system by default is a recipe for disaster for users who have older networks and older network devices (specifically older routers). Vista comes installed and enabled with something called “Receive Window Auto-Tuning.”

On advanced networks, it’s actually a pretty cool technology where the transfer of data is monitored and Vista automatically “tunes” the TCP window field to optimize packet transfer. Older routers simply do not “play nice” when it comes to that kind of window resizing. This spells trouble for home users who don’t know the difference between a packet of data and a packet of sugar. What was Microsoft thinking?

Luckily – there’s a way for you, the home user, to turn this default feature off as well. First, click on “Start” and type “cmd” and right-click on the command icon. You’ll see the following window.

Click on “Run as Administrator.”  Then, in the command box, type “netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled” which will disable autotuning.

Now that you’ve got your new Vista finally communicating with your router (hopefully), you’re ready to tweak Vista even more in order to dramatically boost the Internet speed.

Vista Tweak #3 To Increase Internet Speed – Take Back Your Bandwidth

Another unnecessary default setting that Vista (and actually XP as well) comes with is a 20% “reserve” of your available bandwidth in order to accommodate certain applications like Windows Update. This tweak is a pretty common one most old-school users of XP already know – it’s not at all detrimental and you can immediately gain 20% of your bandwidth back, increasing Internet performance significantly.

This is called the QoS Reserve Bandwidth Limit, and to reduce this on any version of Vista you need to edit the registry.

Go to Start and type “regedit“. You may have to deal with the UAC, unless you’ve read Sharninder’s advice on how to speed up your Vista by turning it off! In Regedit, navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows”

Right-click on Windows and create a new key called “Psched“, then right click on the right and create a new “DWORD” entry. Name it “NonBestEffortLimit” and set the value to zero to disable reserve bandwidth.

Vista Tweak #4 – Modify Your Browser For Optimum Speed

Believe it or not, not only is your Vista operating system not configured by default to blaze the Internet as fast as possible, but neither is your Internet browser! These instructions include how to increase your browsing speed on Firefox and IE.

First, in Firefox type, “about:config” into the address bar (and ignore any warnings).  In the filter field, type “network” and scroll down to “network.http.pipelining” and set it to TRUE, and set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” from 4 to anything from 8 to 12.

I use Firefox almost exclusively, and this one change increased my page-load time by what felt like a factor of 50%. Of course, there’s a similar tweak for Internet Explorer as well, but you have to edit the registry. As before, go to Start and type “regedit.”

Navigate to “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Internet Settings” and find “MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server” and “MaxConnectionsPerServer.” Set these to at least 10, or a little higher if you would like. You should also see an increase in performance for IE after making this change as well.

Vista Tweak #5 – Increase DNS Cache

This tweak is one that anyone should do anyway, as it can significantly save time while surfing the web, especially if you tend to visit the same sites often. What the DNS cache does is store information retrieved from the nameservers (IP information) so that the next time you visit the same site, your browser doesn’t have to waste time retrieving the same information from the DNS servers.

You can optimize this by increasing the size of your DNS cache.  This is another registry edit – so go back in there (Start and type “regedit“) and navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dnscache\Parameters” and then right click on the white space at the right and add four DWORD values: CacheHashTableBucketSize, CacheHashTableSize, MaxCacheEntryTtlLimit and MaxSOACacheEntryTtlLimit.

After checking a list of sites for the optimum setting for these values, the consensus seems to be decimal settings of CacheHashTableBucketSize to 1, CacheHashTableSize to 384, MaxCacheEntryTtlLimit to 64000 and MaxSOACacheEntryTtlLimit to 301.Of course, instead of using those old DNS servers, why not use OpenDNS?  When you’re done making all of the changes above, restart your computer and when it boots back up you’ll find yourself with a Vista PC that screams on the Internet.

Did these Vista tweaks increase your Internet speed? Do you know any other cool tweaks for Vista that work even better? Share your insight 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/

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Some people quickly get a nickname in college, others have to make do. If you’re looking for a cool funny nickname, the internet is a great place to be.

Plenty of name generators out there will give you all you ever dreamt of. But why stop there? Why don’t you get yourself a pirate, dwarf, or Jedi name?

Listed below are four of the funniest online name generators. Want more? – do a Google search for inspiration. If you can think of a naming concept, someone will have made a generator!

The Pirate Name Generator

Earlier this month we celebrated Talk like a Pirate day. If you forgot, just like me, here’s a way to make it up! You might not have a parrot yet, or a wooden leg (don’t worry, not all of ‘em real pirates did) – but here’s a way to earn yourself a real pirate’s name!

Enter your name and sex, and press go to generate one. If you’re unhappy with the name you got, try different combinations of your name, surname and/or nicknames.

From now on, I will be called Cap’n Bernard Bloodbucket. Arr.

Superhero Name Generator

Never had the stomach to conquer the seven seas? How about something a tad more modern?

Most of us grew up with the comic books of DC, Dark Horse and Marvel. All of us dreamed of being superheroes one time or another. Your powers have gone missing, but at least you’ve still got your Superhero Name! After all, the status is enough to scare away most baddies.

Instead of using your own name, you can tweak your feature name using a few of the available options. Choose gender, publisher’s naming scheme, title, adjective, noun and suffix. Not happy with your name? Don’t worry, just hit the button again!

Vampire Name Generator

Vampires merge past and future. As a superior race, they’ll long outlive humanity – but until then, they’ll keep leaching a few more centuries. Although big fangs and long draping capes stand a little out these days, there’s still some more place for bloodsuckers at the corporate top of most ISP’s!

The generator picks names from a number of huge directories of first and last names. You can generate a modern name (and optionally specify gender), or remain retro. Generate 1 up to 25 names, and have your pick!

Music Star Name Generator

Ok, I’ll be honest – the former three name generators might’ve been a bit unrealistic. Vampires and superheroes probably don’t exist, and pirates only do in Somalia.

This one name generator might be a little more within your reach. Have you ever dreamt of a career in music?

Getting a star name isn’t easy, but this site likes to help out. Enter your name and generate a Pop-, Rock-, Rap- or Country Star name. If you aren’t happy with it, you’ll have to try different combinations with your first, last and nicknames, because the site won’t give you another one.

Happy with your new names? Why don’t you post them in the comments section below? Other online name generator suggestions are always welcome as well – I know there are plenty more out there!

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/

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Sure, you can get tons of results from search engines. But most of them turn out to be more annoying than useful. In the end, the results that we can count on are those which come from peer recommendation.

So, to help readers with their web-building experiments (and for my own future references), I tried to compile a list of good easy and free web hosting services. Many of the entries are readers’ recommendations, others are the remainder of the search engine results after filtering out the unqualified ones.

The elimination process

Before revealing the list, let’s look at several factors that made a few services good enough to not be eliminated from the list. Please note that I’ve tried my best not to play favorites, but my personal opinion might differ from others.

First, the features that make these web hosting services easy to use. One service offers different arrangements than the other one. But the ones that we are looking for must have:

• an installer script (usually Elefante or Fantastico) for automatic installation of Wordpress (and other server-side applications)
• access to a control panel for easier web management
• the latest version of MySQL and PHP (at least not too old)
• FTP access to upload and delete files
• the ability to host our own domain (so we can use the CO.CC address or other personal domain).

Second, the free factors. Most of the time, free is not really free. Some services offer free hosting with ads, some take forever for the activation process, some others require users to make a minimum number of posts in some forum before becoming eligible for the service. The ones that we are looking for should be “as free as possible”.

Again, the list is compiled with “newbies” and “experimentations” in mind. For better features, bigger disk space, monthly data transfer (bandwidth), access to customer service and technical support, and peace of mind, you should go and get yourself a paid web hosting service. Try Resellers Panel for much cheaper resellers price.

The Survivors

Here are the ones that still stand after the showdown.:) In no particular order, of course. I’ll only mention the disk space and monthly data transfer for quick comparison purposes. Please refer to each service provider’s website for the full list of features as they will be too long to list down here.

Zymic

Gives you:

• 5 GB disk space per account with unlimited account per users
• 50 GB of monthly data transfer

XtreemHost

Gives you:

• 5.5 GB disk space
• 200 GB of monthly data transfer

Hosting-Engine

Gives you:

• 150 MB disk space
• 4 GB of monthly data transfer

Host-Ed

Gives you:

• 150 MB disk space
• 4 GB of monthly data transfer

Freehostia

Gives you:

• 250 MB disk space
• 6 GB of monthly data transfer

PhpNet

Gives you:

• 350 MB disk space
• 15 GB of monthly data transfer

000Webhost

Gives you:

• 1.5 GB disk space
• 100 GB of monthly data transfer

Footnotes

I hope this list can help you start your first (Wordpress) blog or website (or park some of the domain names that you have).

I’m sure there are more options lurking somewhere out there, but these are the best that I could find within a few days of searching.

I also found out that some of these services don’t last very long. Many of the links that I found are dead. I guess that’s another side of free services that can’t compete with paid ones.

If you know of other good alternatives, please don’t hesitate to share using 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/

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Many are. But then, downloading blog templates and installing them can be time consuming, not to mention expensive right? I recall laughing my head off when I seen the prices that some developers are charging for mediocre themes!

Below are five of my favourite free Wordpress blog templates that won’t cost you a single cent.

Creative Art

This theme is really attractive mostly because of that giant notebook-style posting area. The scrappy style is continued on to the left with a ‘Post It’ lookalike categories list. The background and the oddly placed RSS feed button just make it even better. Greys, reds and little features such as the tape that appears to hold up the posting area are nice touches.

This theme would suite your blog if you have a good following and blog about informal yet popular topics such as art, music, technology and the woes of life!

Modicus Remix

The Modicus theme is a little more plain than the last but it is by no means basic. It keeps the same artsy feel as the theme above but leaves more to the imagination. There is no colour at all with this theme, just a stark contrast between black and white. The amount of plug-ins and features that look good to the right-hand side of this theme is amazing – such as that ‘sign in‘ facility for your readers.

I recommend this blog for the more formal of bloggers out there such as those who see their blog as more of a regular column.

Aspire

An individual looking theme that looks like old parchment and worn manuscripts. It’s basically comprised of many different diluted shades of brown that make for a very attractive blog. Again, the posts go to the left with tags with the calendar and recent comments going to the right along with the categories. This theme is also available to download as a ‘Blogger’ version on the download page for those of you who use BlogSpot.

I think this theme would suit the more factual blogs that tend to discuss subjects within a niche. It wouldn’t do so well for a personal blog as the ‘manuscript style’ points to something entirely different.

Reviews Theme

This theme has curved corners with straight edges – one of my favourite styles for business/professional blogs. It looks good but doesn’t over-sell itself with artwork or over design. It has some good features such as a search bar and good navigation buttons along the top to direct the user to various contact and ‘About’ pages which are essential for a business blog.

The deep blue with the white, as I said, doesn’t jump out at you and do a song and dance like the other themes because they’re separated by different tones and shades of blue. The content sells itself. A professional and practical theme for a company’s site.

Light Weight

To end out list we have an elegant theme that has minimalistic design in mind. The baby blue background and the blue text work well together in this theme. The menu bar across the top is good for simple navigation and it separates the headers from the main attraction: your personal posts.

Given its simplicity yet attractiveness, I would recommend this theme for a personal blog. It has the necessary few buttons such as ‘Contact’ and ‘Subscribe’ with the posts being the centre of attention. It’s wide and as such it’s good for big photographs and screenshots that we all post on our personal blogs.

So, what do the MUO readers think of these free Wordpress blog templates and what themes do you recommend for small-medium blogs?

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

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In this article, let us look at 4 Visual Search Engines that provide a unique and enjoyable search experience.

Bing Visual Search Engine

Bing has introduced a new approach to its visual search by letting you browse topic-specific galleries and narrow the field of your search by selecting filters.

In this approach, you do not need to type anything to start searching. To use the Bing Visual Search Engine, you should have installed Silverlight and set your country to US. From the home page, you can see a set of featured galleries, or choose from different categories like Entertainment, Famous People, Reference, Shopping and Sports.

When you select a gallery, you get an eye-popping display of choices, which you can filter using categories on the left. For example, if I choose Popular Books, I get a nice array of books like in a real bookstore. I can sort books by Title, Author, Sales, or even Length. On the left, I can narrow the results by choosing a sub-category or filter. In this case, subcategories for books are Newest, or the Top pre-order/fiction/non-fiction/paperback lists.

I can also use filters to narrow the results for what I might find suitable for my taste: the subject, author, format (hardcover, etc.), and length in pages. Some of the galleries, like the top iPhone apps gallery for example, are especially useful and offer a unique experience. Once you use it for a while, you might think that this new feature distinguishes Bing from Google to a limited extent, as a decision-making engine.

Spezify

After using Spezify, I felt we do injustice to the web by using an exclusive textual interface to search the rich multimedia of the web. Spezify works like a generic search engine, except that the results are a visual collage of media drawn from different kinds of media sources – textual links from web pages, informative links from Wikipedia, pictures from across the web, tweets with the search term, videos from YouTube, books from Amazon, and so on. You need Flash to use Spezify.

You can browse through the results matrix in both vertical and horizontal directions, and look at the pictures as well as the videos from within the search results page. The links within the tweets will take you directly to the page about that topic. Articles from the web are displayed along with the number of Diggs, which show that Spezify uses Digg to show you popular content. Terms related to the topic are displayed at the top if you wish to explore or narrow your search.

Viewzi

Viewzi, which runs using Flash, is the most customizable and multi-faceted visual search engine. For any search term, it offers up to 19 different ways to view the search results, and you can make any one of them your default. The types of views cover everything under the sun – web screenshots, simple text, photos, music, news, celebrity gossip, recipes, weather, etc.

Videos are fetched from Joost, YouTube, and Viddler, but cannot be played back within the results page. However, the best view is the photo tag view, in which you can explore Flickr photos of related tags just by clicking on them. You can drag the tags around whichever way you want, and the interface is quite remarkable.

Spacetime

We had covered SpaceTime on MakeUseOf back when it was a 3D browser. SpaceTime is now a visual search engine using Flash, which shows search results in cover-flow style. You can choose results from Google or Wikipedia, or search Images, or videos from YouTube. Again, the videos can’t be played back within the search results, however the image search does look very pretty.

While you may not use these visual search engines for routine search queries, they do offer an attractive, unique experience. They can be a great way to introduce children to the richness of the web, or to encourage their curiosity in a certain topic. Even for us, they are a refreshing way to explore the web in a different way.

Last year, we also profiled TinEye which is another possibility – but this one is termed by the site as “reverse search“.   You upload an image to them and they will search for similarities.

Are there any of your other favorite visual search engines we missed? Do 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/

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Not all of us can stay in school forever though, so I present to you some of the great sites for college and university level video lectures. No offense meant to people from other countries with top notch institutes, yet a lot of these sites are from the United States of America. Of course, there’s always the Video Professor too!

WebCast UC Berkeley

Berkeley has a long reputation of being progressive in education technology. I think you’ll love this site due to the sheer number of free java video lectures that are available. Some of the titles that appeal to me, that aren’t ordinary Intro To courses, are the Foundations of American Cyber-Culture and Psychology of Dreams.

Definitely not going to find those courses at my local college. Something else that is appealing is that you can subscribe to these courses via RSS.

MIT Video Lectures (Open CourseWare)

Another legendary university for its contributions to society, especially Richard Stallman’s concept of Freeware, MIT has a plethora of courses and video lectures available to the public.

Of course, there are a ton of technical lectures, otherwise it would be the Massachusetts Institute of Stuff, yet there are many wonderful lectures in the humanities and liberal arts. In the languages, you could learn French, German, Chinese, Japanese and other cool languages.

It’s a bit difficult to determine exactly what courses have video content, since they use a catch-all categorization of multimedia. Either way, access to this knowledge without huge tuition fees is a beautiful thing.

COOL McGill

COOL stands for COurses OnLine. Cheesy? Yes. Cool? Oh yes.

Of course I had to include this since it is a Canadian university, in Montreal, Quebec. McGill is known as one of the premier medical schools in North America, so you’ll find that a lot of the courses there are based in the life sciences – things such as chemistry, biology and physiology. You’ll find other courses in other disciplines here, too.

The University of Oxford on iTunes U

Did you know about iTunes U? I didn’t. Often I’m the last to know though. Even cooler than iTunes U though is the fact that Oxford is on there. Oxford. One of the oldest universities in the world. Illustrious, grand, even regal.

Is it any better than any other top notch university? I don’t know. However it was ranked 4th in the world in 2008. So the ability to access the knowledge of their academia is definitely a privilege. I urge you to check it out.

Oxford also has the number one lecture on iTunes U right now, from Marianne Talbot with her “Romp through the history of philosophy“. Look it up. It’s good.

iTunes U

Speaking of iTunes, this has to be the best collection of video lectures on the Internet. Why? Because there are so many lectures from so many world class institutions gathered under one umbrella. I’ve tried to access the site through my web browser with no real luck, so it seems to me that you will need the iTunes client.

As you can see from the graphic, Duke, Cornell and other great schools are represented here as well as Wharton, Yale, and Stanford. On top of that, there are great lectures from museum personnel and research institutes. I guess I know what I’m downloading this week!

I hope you enjoy this list as much as I did researching it. Go ahead and try watching a few lectures. You know, you tend not to fall asleep as much when you have been at a pub crawl the previous night.

Let me know what your favourite lecture is and why. I’d really appreciate that.

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

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Now, I’ve gained some, but not all, back. I’ve become a little more serious lately and hope to work my way closer to my ideal weight again. As I’m about to doze off into a carb-induced coma, I realize why I’ve gained some of my weight back.

No matter the amount you want to lose, it can be very difficult. A “weight loss” search is likely to yield a myriad of websites trying to sell you gimmicks, pills, powders, or exercise equipment. You rarely find free weight loss sites that are actually free and helpful when it comes to weight loss.

After scouring the internet, here are some of the best free weight loss sites to help you on your weight loss journey. Remember to consult with a doctor before beginning any special diet or exercise regimen.

The Mayo Clinic weight loss website provides some basic, yet useful information. Count on this medically oriented site to guide you reasonably and safely on your journey. If you are a beginner, this is a key place to start. If you have hit a brick wall in your weight loss, this is a place to return to the basics. Sometimes just doing that will spur your weight loss once again.

WebMD has a Healthy Eating and Diet Center, which much like the Mayo site, provides doctor approved tips and tools. There are calculators, galore and a “Diets A-Z” section that includes the low-down on various diets like the Cookie Diet, the Atkins Diet, and the Cabbage Soup Diet (never mind that retching sound in the background – just gimme a sec).

A cool feature of this site is their free Food and Fitness Planner. You enter the basics and the Planner takes you step-by-step through providing a meal and exercise plan to reach your goals. The Planner’s settings only allow you to pick modest goals, but research has shown that slow weight loss equals longer term success.

As a huge (no pun intended) fan of “The Biggest Loser”, I am disappointed in their “official” site. It appears simply a sales and marketing tool. Almost any selection will take you to products you can buy. There are a few free resources, like an occasional recipe here and there, but nothing substantial. However, going to NBC’s Biggest Loser website will provide better results. The site has video, blogs, recipes, exercises and tips – all free!

If you think you need community motivation, try The Biggest Loser League. This is free to join, and requires a simple registration. Complete your profile, set your goals, and track your progress. There are League challenges that you can sign up for and earn points. You can set up your own individual challenges or form a team with family or friends and create challenges for the team. Points simply allow you to move up in rank in the League, but earning points may keep you losing weight. The variety introduced through the challenges will keep your journey fresh.

You can upload your photos, and view a weight loss time-line. The site’s targeted feature is that of creating community, or building a team. The added accountability of partners may be all you need for motivation.

Prevention Magazine is a Biggest Loser partner, so it’s no surprise that their sites are linked. However, Prevention itself offers some additional resources. The coolest thing I found was their Weight Loss Simulator for women. This offers a 3-D comparison of your “virtual” body now versus what you might look like when you lose weight.

You enter specifics about your body, including height, current and goal weight, and you can even change your avatar’s look. To save the profile you have to register with My Virtual Model, which is a free process. Since Prevention is primarily targeted for women, many of the tools, like the Simulator, are geared for women, but there are charts, calculators, food diaries, and many other free resources anyone can use.

Weight loss is about the basics – intake versus output; keep your online weight loss tools basic and you will see results! Remember, when using weight loss tools like calculators, be honest! You have to have a true assessment of where you are now to accurately measure results.

Which weight loss tools or free weight loss sites do you use to plan and track your diet progress? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit : jmacphoto.com

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Well here are some web site traffic tracking websites that can tell you what you need to know.

(Note, these are not web services for tracking traffic on your website. These websites basically estimate the traffic levels of other websites based on a number of publicly available factors. For tracking traffic on your website refer to free traffic analytics tools.)

Google Adplanner

I think that Google AdPlanner should be your first stop to check out any stats about a particular website. As it is mainly for advertisers looking at website statistics to see if it is worthwhile to advertise on a particular site, this makes it a great option to get accurate and reliable data.

Face it, what doesn’t Google know? They have data on nearly every website but that is another issue. As you can see from the stats for MakeUseOf, anyone can tell how many visits we get and what type of people regularly read us. It is also good as you can select to show data from one particular country.

Alexa

Alexa is another popular web site traffic tracking site and it is owned by Amazon. Although it involves a lot of clicking to get your results, it has proven to be useful. As you can see by the image, you have a lot of stats that you can browse through.

Compete

Compete is another great website to see how many visitors go to a website. However, there are a lot of limitations if you do not have a pro account. But apart from that, you can save the graph as an image. Overall, if you want a nice graph of a website’s growth (or decline) Compete is a nice option.

BizInformation

Biz Information is a great website as not only does it provide you with a graph of unique website visitors (from Compete) but it also tells you how much it is worth (although I don’t know how accurate it is).

The other good thing about Biz Information is that it also tells you how many submissions it has in popular social networking websites such as Digg and Stumbleupon.

So do you think the owners of MUO will sell for that price? With nearly 100,000 subscribers, who knows?

Quantcast

With Quantcast, you have a few options to play with. You can change the graph to show by day, week, month and to select a range of dates to show from one week to all time. Another great thing about Quantcast is that it shows you the US demographics of visitors such as age, sex, income, children and education level. But I would think Google Adplanner would be better.

URL Trends

URL Trends has a nice user interface and well placed ads, so be careful what you are clicking. But the web site traffic tracking that they provide is good. As you can see from the image, it shows where users are coming from, and you can find more details as you read from the ‘report navigation’ links. If you have a paid subscription, you can download your report in a PDF format.

Which tracking tools do you use to look for visitor stats for websites you find?   Let us know in the comments.

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

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But please don’t dig out your Christmas decorations. Not yet! Wait for December.

In the meantime however, you can preserve this light and happy feeling of spring and summer and carry it into the dark season.

How about decorating your desktop with a beautiful refreshing wallpaper, for example with images of fresh, green grass. It’s a prime delight!

1. Blueish Grass

The source for this first image is fotocommunity, a website for photographers. As a result the images are not available in typical screen resolutions. However, they are of stunning beauty and high quality. That’s why I use many of these photos, although they don’t really fit my screen resolution.

More excellent grass photos that make beautiful wallpaper from this website: wild grass, grass blades, mixed grass.

Available resolutions: 1000 x 704

2. Darkness Over Grass

One of my favorite wallpapers. Ragged grass under a cloudy sky.

Available resolutions: 1280 x 960

3. Grass field

View of a grass field in late spring.

Available resolutions: 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, 1280 x 1024, 1600 x 1200

4. Lemon Grass

Be different. This highly stylish wallpaper shows lemon grass in straight glass and decoratively spread over a white surface.

Available resolutions: 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, 1152 x 864, 1280 x 960, 1280 x 1024, 1440 x 900, 1600 x 1200

5. Perk

A beautiful textured desktop wallpaper with different shades of blue and green.

Available resolutions: 1280 x 800, 1440 x 900, 1680 x 1050

6. Fantasy Grass

Cute fantasy grass wallpaper from Vladstudio with tiny spiders diving from one blade of grass to another.

Available resolutions: 800 x 480, 800 x 600, 1024 x 600, 1024 x 768, 1152 x 864, 1280 x 1024, 1600 x 1200

Higher resolutions, high quality, widescreen, dual or triple, and iPhone wallpapers are available only for registered users of Vladstudio.

7. Raindrops on grass

Water a grass are a wonderful combination, as seen in this wallpaper. Raindrops collected on a thick blade of grass.

Available resolutions: 1024 x 768, 1600 x 1200, 1920 x 1200

8. Turf

This is a beautiful night shot of turf from the side.

Available resolutions: any

If you’re looking for more stylish wallpapers, browse for more at Desktop Nexus. They have an ingenious feature that sets them apart from most other wallpaper providers: the screen resolution and aspect ratio are determined automatically. Just click the > Enlarge Wallpaper button and wait until your wallpaper is downloaded. Awesome!

9. Liriope Dual

With a dual monitor setup it’s difficult to find suitable wallpapers. Here is one of a few wallpapers that will spread across two monitors.

Available resolutions left: 1024 x 768, 1152 x 864, 1280 x 800, 1280 x 1024, 1440 x 900, 1600 x 1200, 1680 x 1050, 1920 x 1200, 2560 x 1600

Available resolutions right: 1024 x 768, 1152 x 864, 1280 x 800, 1280 x 1024, 1440 x 900, 1600 x 1200, 1680 x 1050, 1920 x 1200, 2560 x 1600

10. Leopard Grass

A dark, artistic wallpaper with wild grass blades covered with raindrops.

Available resolutions: 1280 x 800, 1440 x 900, 1680 x 1050

Did this list hold something for you? We sure hope so.

Otherwise, there are many more sources for beautiful wallpapers and we have previously shared them with you. Karl found the Best Sites to Download Very High Resolution Wallpapers, Ryan covered 7 Websites for Free Patriotic Wallpaper Themes, and I summarized The Best Resources to Pimp Your Wallpaper.

What is your favorite desktop wallpaper?

Photo credits: saeedzadeh

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

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Sites like SparkNotes and CliffsNotes are often hailed as lifesavers for those reading-intensive classes, providing quick, easy-to-read study guides and summaries of books that students may not have even bothered to read at all. Still, these websites aren’t just for lazy bums, as they do make for great tools with understanding and analyzing the text.

If they don’t cover the book you’re reading, all hope is not lost. Check out these seven great alternatives to SparkNotes & CliffsNotes.

PinkMonkey

With over 460 free study guides, book notes, and chapter summaries, PinkMonkey is a great resource for students.

Along with detailed summaries, which include informative notes for further explanation, other helpful features like key literary elements, overall analyses, and study questions are offered.

Shmoop

Shmoop is one of the best sites on the Web for learning about not only literature, but also other school topics like U.S. history, poetry, civics, biography, and even current bestsellers. The website provides a brief “in a nutshell” introduction to books as well as in-depth summaries. Other features include exploring the story’s themes, quotes, characters, and literary devices, along with plot analysis and study questions.

According to Shmoop, most of its writers are Ph.D. holders candidates from top universities, so it’s all top-notch content.

JiffyNotes

If you find the book you’re reading on JiffyNotes, it’s worth looking into. While the website’s design isn’t that great, it’s the content that counts.

The site’s study guides focus on literary analysis and include chapter summaries and other unique pages like “Points to Ponder” and “Did You Know?”

GradeSaver

GradeSaver is another great place for students in need of help. A well-written summary and analysis is provided for the book’s chapters, with other helpful additions like a glossary of terms, character list, and major themes.

You can even test yourself about the literature. GradeSaver features quizzes to assess your knowledge of the book and hopefully prepare you for the real deal in class.

BookRags

BookRags has a sizable collection of free literature summaries and study guides. Along with chapter summaries, the site covers author/context, plot summary, major characters, objects/places, and quotes. Important topics about the book are also tracked and analyzed throughout the summaries.

Keep in mind that all of this is free and you don’t have to pay for BookRags’ premium service.

Bookwolf

Like JiffyNotes, Bookwolf’s design isn’t very appealing, but again, content prevails. The website goes straight to the point, offering full chapter summaries and interpretations of popular books, avoiding additional features that are common elsewhere.

Bookwolf’s literature notes are still worthwhile if you find the title you’re looking for.

WikiSummaries

At just over 300 summaries, WikiSummaries boasts a collection of mostly classic books and novels.

As a wiki, the site isn’t the biggest and greatest, but does offer good content, relying on its community for contributions and continued expansion.

Remember, don’t plagiarize! You’ll get caught. Here are some plagiarism checkers to help you out. Students should also be sure to check out these handy online learning tools and the 10+ Web tools to save your butt in school.

Do you use these websites for your assignments? What are some of your favorites and have they helped you? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit: austinevan

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Have you ever had a problem with your computer and gotten a quote from one of those box stores?  Holy cow! I know this guy who got a virus, took his tower to a store and paid several hundred dollars to have them install an anti-virus program and “save the day.” I am serious, several hundred dollars!  OK, I understand that a laborer is worthy of his hire, but I believe that every single one of us would jump on the chance to save a few bucks if we could.

If there was any possibility to do some of those PC repairs on your own, and therefore save a few buck, is that something you’d learn how to do?  Here are five links that will help you with those DIY computer repair jobs.

(1) Fixing My Computer… 100% free step-by-step guide

If you can get by the pink, blue, and green pastel colors, this site can be a real great resource in you journey to DIY computer repair proficiency. Once you arrive at this site, you’ll easily find, along the left hand side, a nifty menu system obviously designed to look like a file explorer.  On that menu you’ll find categories for almost any kind of fix you can think of.  Check out a few of them and see if a problem you are having is covered.  I’m not sure what’s up with the butterfly, so if you can get to the bottom of that, please tip us off in the comments!

(2) Yahoo Answers Community – Computers & Internet

I know, there are many communities out there on the internet that are ready and willing to give answers to your questions for nothing more than a few kudos.  Yahoo Answers is just one of the communities that I’ve had the most luck with.  For some tips on computer problems you are having, ask the community over in the Computers & Internet section and you’re sure to find some answers!  Do what I do.  Begin by searching through the many questions already answered.  Odds are someone else had the same, or similar, problem that you are having so avoid the fuss of re-asking the same question.

(3) LaptopMag.com – 11 Ways to Fix Your Laptop

I like this article because it attempts to get right to the point with some of the most common problems associated with laptops.  The goal of the article is better articulated by the writer himself:

To pinpoint the most common problems, we picked the brains of senior technical-support officials at Alienware, Dell, Lenovo, and Toshiba. And we’ve provided solutions for getting your laptop back up and running with minimal effort.

You can go through each one of the 11 pages OR you can use the nifty little dropdown menu at the bottom of each page to jump the the topic you need.  This article covers topics such as overheating, battery problems, network issues, and virus or spyware infestation.  Like I said, the basics are covered here. They’re not exhaustive, but a really good start!

(4) Lifehacker’s Top 10 Computer Hardware Fixes and Upgrades

Some of us will never get to the point where we will be wanting to build a PC from scratch, like number 1 on LifeHacker’s top 10 list of computer hardware fixes and upgrades, but some of these fixes or upgrades are easy enough for most of us.  I’ve used my own good opinion to rate the number one’s on this list: Easiest fix on the list?  Changing or upgrading RAM on a laptop (unscrew a few screws and that’s about it); Most creative? Using elastic strips to quiet a noisy hard drive; Most difficult or involved?  Starting from scratch on your own PC.  Good list and a great help.

(5) Fixed4free.com – Computer category

This site is more of an answers community.  It seems pretty exhaustive in the computers category.  The site is fairly easy to use – if you notice, the white speech balloons mean that there is no answer yet and a green speech balloon means there is an answer.  Browse around and see if you can find an answer to your question.  If not, it seems that there is a section that allows you to ask a question.  Check out this post (because I think its funny): i wanna go on bebo but i cant in skwl?.  I already learned a new trick from the site: My computer screen as turned upside down how do i turn it back?. Check it out and see what you can learn!

As a word of warning, there are obviously some repairs that not every person is capable of accomplishing on their own.  If you are over your head, and you KNOW it, seek help, probably even professional help.  The purpose of this post is to save you some dough on some things that you ARE capable of doing, once you know how.

Do you know of any other online sources that help with DIY pc repair?  Feel free to share 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/

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