But how easy is it to actually add gamification to a WordPress blog? As it turns out, it’s quite easy actually – and it needn’t cost a bomb. Here’s 3 plugins, compared and judged.

Captain Up

CaptainUp is a relative newcomer to game mechanics, but appealed to me right off the bat. It has a distinct cartoon-esque visual style that really makes it seem user-friendly – much more “game like” than some other systems, which come across as mere corporate marketing.

Setting up requires a total of 4 or 5 form fields, and starts on the captainup.com website. Click sign up, and enter your:

• email address
• password
• brand name
• domain

Copy and paste your API key from the WordPress install tab, and paste that into the Gamification WordPress plugin setup page. I swear life would be so nice if all gamification systems were this simple.

For the most part, that’s all the setup you need. You can connect to a Facebook page to give points for liking the page, and the plugin automatically detects when something has been shared by a user.

I say for the most part, because we use the ShareThis plugin to provide a share button; it correctly detected a Google +1 share, but not a Tweet. As someone used to dealing with these systems, I know it’s due to the use of “native” buttons vs custom coded ones; Google does not provide any kind of customization or API, so you get the button they give.

ShareThis has customized the Tweet button however, so it’s serving custom code. The easiest solution to make share buttons work with Captain UP then is to just serve native buttons – most plugins will do this, it’s just that ShareThis has a particular style to it. (Digg Digg is a very simple set of share buttons, and works fine). I only mention this because most site owners might just assume it’s broken.

The only thing I’m not too keen about with Captain Up is the basic widget overlay on every screen – not the popup, that’s nice. The overlay just seems a little garish.

CaptainUp has a superb set of features including:

• Points for various actions, configurable values. Focused on sharing, visits, and even watching a video.
• Levels as your points increase.
• Badges for completing set challenges, such as liking 15 things in 2 days.
• Leaderboards and activity widgets for your sidebar.

Creating new badges is also incredibly easy, and can be integrated into your own custom site functionality thanks to a target condition based on “clicking on specific element”.

The only downside to CaptainUp is that it doesn’t appear to have paid plans; whether this is because the service is still in beta isn’t apparent, but this ultimately limits it’s reliability. There’s also no rewards program: just PBL (points, badges and leaderboards).

PunchTab

By far a more established gamification program, PunchTab covers everything from rewards and giveaways to single sign on – though not all in the free package.

PunchTab is separated into 3 sections, each of which is a distinct UI component:

• Loyalty Program
• Achievement Program
• Giveaways

The loyalty program are rewards given for attaining a certain number of points, similar to what we run here at MakeUseOf. On the free plan, you have no control over what rewards are offered – but they’re pretty impressive even so, and offered at absolutely no cost to you.

For example, installing a loyalty program, any visitors who gets 8,500 points will get a $5 Starbucks eGift card. To get your site licence key, visit the punchtab dashboard, create a new loyalty program, and go to developer. Copy and paste your access key from there.

The paid plan for running your own rewards starts at a very reasonable $99/month.

The achievements program is your standard badges, levels etc – “traditional” gamification. It’s not quite as comprehensive as the achievements provided by CaptainUp – you can change badge images and description, but not specify custom actions to be rewarded as easily. Also, if you do want to change anything, you need to disable all the default badges.

Thirdly is the Giveaway program. This is for running a DIY giveaway, and is very comprehensive. Just provide an image and description of the prize (and obviously, the prize itself), specify how users can enter, the time frame, and any additional entry methods you want to provide – “liking” your Facebook page, tweeting the contest.

On the downside, I did find the WordPress plugin to be a little buggy. The widget wasn’t sized correctly, for example, and it didn’t appear to allow for the new bottom share bar option. Therefore, I’d suggest a bit of coding experience so you’re able to add the Javascript snippets directly to the template.

Kazooky Loyalty

This one struck me as a scam initially, especially given their “$100 free promotion” (for your site visitors though, not you, similar to PunchTabs default rewards program).

After signing up, just copy and paste the access key into the WordPress plugin. You should then get a large and kind of obnoxious black bar at the bottom of your site.

Hovering over the present or any of the icons reveals the message that I should sign in to win an Amazon gift card; unfortunately, only the Twitter and email buttons actually worked – Facebook did nothing. Added to which, it’s not clear where adding your email will actually go – I still can’t help thinking it’s some kind of scam to gather emails.

The control panel is decidedly lacklustre compared to the other systems available, so given all of this it’s to recommend anything other than staying the heck away from Kazooky Loyalty.

There’s actually not that many decent gamification WordPress plugin; InCrwd was an exciting contender, but the domain is dead and the plugin developer appears to have stopped last year sometime. Others require BuddyPress, or manual assigning of badges, so I haven’t included them.

My favourite for the average blog has to be CaptainUp – it’s just such an easy plug and plug system that’s it’s hard to fault it. The lack of a premium option and rewards ultimately limits the system though. PunchTab on the other hand is a well developed product and more focused on actionable, business-led objectives – sharing, rewards and giveaways.

Have you had a chance to try gamification on your site, and what do you think? Do these systems just annoy you?

The post 3 Gamification Plugins To Take Your WordPress Blog To The Next Level appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Note: this advice only applies to self hosted WordPress installs. If you use WordPress.com, you generally don’t need to care about security, because they handle it all for you. What’s the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org?

Install Google two-step authenticator

If you already have two-step authentication enabled for your Gmail account or other services, you can use the same authenticator app with this plugin for WordPress.

Thankfully, you can restrict two-step authentication to only be used on upper level accounts so you needn’t annoy all your users.

Login Lockdown

An old plugin, but still working as intended; Login Lockdown checks the IP of login attempts and blocks an IP range for an hour if it fails 3 times within 5 minutes. Simple, effective.

Take Regular Backups

Hackers won’t just change one file, but will place their own control panel hidden somewhere and other hidden backdoors – so that even if you fix the original hack, they come right back in and do it all again. Take daily or weekly backups so you can easily restore back to a point where there was no trace of the hacker – and be sure to patch whatever it was they did to get in. Personally, I just invested in a $150 Backup Buddy developer license – it’s the easiest and most comprehensive backup solution I’ve found yet.

Prevent Indexing of Folders

Check the root of your WordPress installation for the .htaccess file (notice the period at the beginning – you may need to show invisible files to view this), and ensure it has the following line. If not, add it – but make a backup first as this file is pretty crucial.

Options All -Indexes

Stay Updated

Don’t make the same mistake as we did: always upgrade WordPress as soon as an update is available. Sometimes the updates contain minor bug fixes and not security fixes, but get into the habit and you won’t have a problem. If you have more than one WordPress install and can’t keep track of them all, check out ManageWp.com, a premium dashboard for all your blogs that includes security scanning.

Not just core WordPress files, but plugins too: one of the largest WordPress hacks of the past involved a vulnerability in a common thumbnail generator script called timthumb.php, and there are still themes out there which use the old version. Although plugins were quickly updated, keeping themes up to date is harder, of course – WordPress won’t tell you if your theme is vulnerable, and for that you’ll some kind of security scanning plugin – scroll down to the Security Plugins section below for some suggestions.

Never Download Random Themes

Unless you know what you’re doing with PHP code, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of download a lovely random theme from somewhere, only to find it’s got some nasty code in there – most commonly backlinks that you can’t remove, but worse can be found. Stick to premium and well-known theme designers (such as Smashing Magazine or WPShower), or for free themes only use the WordPress theme directory.

Delete Unused Plugins and Themes

The less executable code you have on your server, the better – remove the chance of having old, vulnerable code by deleting themes and plugins you’re not using anymore. Disabling them will simply stop their functionality loading with WordPress, but the code itself may still be executable by a hacker.

Remove Tell-tale Meta In Your Header

By default, WordPress broadcast its version to the world in the code of your header file – an easy way for hackers to identify older installs. Add the following lines to your theme’s functions.php file to remove the WordPress version, Windows Live Writer info and a line that helps remote clients find your XML-RPC file.

remove_action( 'wp_head', 'wp_generator' ) ; 
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link' ) ; 
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'rsd_link' ) ;

Remove The “admin” Account

Most brute-force attacks on WordPress involve repeatedly trying the admin account – the default for all WordPress installs – and a dictionary of common passwords. If you either login with admin or have the admin account listed in your user table, you’re vulnerable to this.

Two ways to fix it: either use wp-optimize plugin – a great plugin that amongst other things, allows you to disable post revisions and perform database optimization – to rename admin account. Or simply create another account with admin privileges, log in as the new user, then delete the “admin” account assign all the posts to your new user.

Secure Passwords

Even if you have disabled the admin account, it may be possible to identify the username of your administrator account – at which point you’re vulnerable to a brute force attack again. Enforce a strong password policy of 16 or more random characters consisting of upper and lower case, punctuation and numbers.

Or just use the reallyLongSentenceThatsEasyToRememberMethod.

Disable File Editing Within WordPress

For those who don’t like to login through FTP, WordPress includes an easy editor in the admin dashboard for theme and plugin PHP files – but that makes your install vulnerable if someone gains access. In fact, this is how someone managed to inject a malware redirection into our header. Add the following line to the bottom of your wp-config.php (in the root folder) to disable all file editing features – and use SFTP to login to your server instead.

define( 'DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT', true );

Hide Login Errors

An incorrect password or wrong username can be identified by the errors given when logging in, which could be used to identify accounts for brute-forcing. This isn’t good, obviously, so kill the errors with this addition to your theme’s functions.php file

function no_errors_please(){
 return 'Nope';
}
add_filter( 'login_errors', 'no_errors_please' );

Activate Cloudflare

As well as speeding up your site, CloudFlare mitigates many known botnets and scanners from even getting to your blog in the first place. Read all about CloudFlare here. Installation is one click if you’re hosted at MediaTemple, otherwise you’ll need access to the domain control panel to change the nameservers.

Security Plugins

• Better WP Security implements many of these fixes for you and is the most comprehensive free solution there is.
• WordFence is a premium package that actively scans your files for malware links, redirects, known vulnerabilities etc – and fixes them. Price starts at $18/year for 1 site.
• Login security solution both limits login attempts and enforces secure passwords.
• BulletProof security is a comprehensive but complex plugin that deals with some of the more technical aspects like XSS injection and .htaccess problems. A Pro verison of the plugin is also available which automates much of the process.

I think you’ll agree this is quite a comprehensive list of steps to harden WordPress, but I’m not suggesting you implement all of them. If I had to do all these to every site I ever set up, I’d still be setting them up now. Running any kind of system introduces a risk, and it’s ultimately up to you to find the balance between the level of security you want and the effort you want to put in securing it – nothing is ever going to 100% secure. The low hanging fruit here are:

• Keeping WordPress up to date
• Disabling the admin account
• Adding two-step authentication
• Installing a security plugin

Doing those alone should put you above 99% of all the other blogs out there, which is enough to make potential hackers move on to easier targets.

Do you think I missed anything? Tell me in the comments.

The post How To Protect WordPress from Intrusion: Your Must-Read Checklist appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Read on to find out what the Oculus Rift is exactly, and to win yourself a free Development Kit.

What is the Oculus Rift?

The Oculus Rift is a virtual reality headset, which I’ve followed religiously since they launched a Kickstarter last year – and right now, every gamer is dying to get their hands on one (with the sole exception of my Technophilia co-host Dave LeClair, who collects retro NES games anyway so he doesn’t really count).

But what is a virtual reality headset anyway? A combination of two things really. Firstly, 3D visuals – just as your eyes perceive the real world. This is more than simple cross-eyed viewing though, and involves a complex series of transformations to wrap the view around and produce large field of vision – 110 degrees in the Rift, in fact. Secondly – and this is where the Oculus really becomes something amazing – head tracking - so that when you move your head to look up, your view of the virtual world adjusts accordingly. You can look around with a full 360 degree of freedom, including right behind you. Though certainly not the first of its kind, it is the first to be made at an affordable consumer price point.

Disclaimer: The device is not being sold or marketed as a finished product yet, but as a development kit for $300. Other products cost tens of thousands of dollars, and are limited to high-end military applications – the Oculus Rift aims to bring virtual reality to the masses. But I must stress that point again – this is not a finished product.

I must admit, I’m a little hesistant to post a review of a development kit. This is not the final product, and it not being marketed as such on any consumer channels. The purpose of releasing it is to mainly get developers on board with creating content for the device and to push forward progress. That said, I think it’s an incredible product even in its current state, and I do want to let you all know as much as I can about it, so I decided to go ahead with a review anyway.

Like all of our hardware reviews, this is also a giveaway; we have placed a pre-order, and it should be with the winner within a few months of the competition ending. We will of course also be reviewing the final consumer version when it’s released next year, but take this “review” as it is: a preview that does not represent the quality of the final product.

Contents

The Rift comes with its own sleek plastic case for transporting the unit and all the bits; and there are a lot of bits.

Here’s what’s inside:

• 3-ft DVI cable
• 3-ft HDMI cable
• 6-ft HDMI cable
• 3-ft USB cable
• Power adapter with 3 plugs for all major countries
• DVI to HDMI adapter
• 3 sets of lenses (more on these in a moment)
• Headset and wired control box; this is not detachable

Hardware, and how does it work?

The headset itself consists of a 7-inch 1280 x 800 (16:10 ratio) screen in a plastic headmount with foam padding. There are small meshed openings underneath to avoid steam from accumulating.

A distorted stereo display must be fed into the Rift, as you can see on the photo below. Each eye receives approximately 640 x 800 pixels, which are then distorted again by the lenses to give the realistic and immersive impression of actually being there.

Don’t ever take the lens off for long, or you’ll get nasty dust inside the main panel – but in the interests of science:

Three lenses are supplied:

• Set A are the largest, used for those with 20/20 vision, whilst wearing corrective lens or glasses, and those with long-sighted vision (for which no glasses are needed – the display is infinitely focussed).
• Sets B and C are for those who are short-sighted, and are smaller in size than set A. C is the strongest correction of the two, but I still can’t figure out exactly which is best for me, so I probably lie somewhere in between the two

The headset is secured by an adjustable strap around and over your head; the total weight is about 380g, and is quite comfortable.

To accomodate for people who wear corrective glasses and different eye projections, the front panel can be adjusted back and forward with the help of a small coin inserted into the slots on either side. I’m not sure why they didn’t just make a little plastic knobs to adjust those without a coin.

Using the Rift

Setup on the hardware side is remarkably simple – the control unit accepts either DVI or HDMI input, as well as power and a standard mini-USB cable. The device is recognised as a display, and must be set either as the primary output, or more typically as a clone of your main desktop. In either case, the resolution must be set to 1280 x 800. That’s it – the rest is handled by whatever software you’re using, which varies from plug and play to hours of tweaking.

What can you play with the Oculus Rift?

Make no mistake, this is a development kit – the whole purpose of which is to generate content – so naturally what’s out there already is somewhat minimal. That said, development is progressing quickly and the amount of content grows daily – you can find a full list of games and apps either released or planned at RiftEnabled.com

First up, we have Tuscany demo – produced by the Oculus team themselves and a good basic introduction to VR. It’s a beautiful little house in the middle of some mountains – that’s it. You can walk around the house and the garden, stand on the balcony, and generally admire things.

The Epic Citadel demo is included when you download the Oculus-ready Unreal Development Kit (UDK) from the Oculus Developer Center (requires registration) – you’ll find it in the “mobile” maps folder. It’s the same citadel that was shown off as a tech demo when Unreal Engine was shown for mobile devices, and it is indeed a stunning environment. Sadly, you can’t enter any of the houses.

Once you’re bored of the Epic Citadel environment, be sure to download RiftCoaster – in which someone adapted the Epic Citidel to include a rollercoaster. Sit down, strap in, and prepare to be terrified. Yes, it’s that real. (Video from John Rollingson)

The official “launch game” of the Oculus Rift development kit is Team Fortress 2, a free to play but ageing first person shooter. It has fully native support, but the menus are less than ideal – a problem faced by many Riftable games at the moment. Though I did enjoy Team Fortress 2 in its heyday, I can’t say I found the Rift-enabled experience is all that compelling.

Half Life 2 was given official support just a few days ago at the time of writing; but even before that, unofficial support could with the help of unofficial third party Vire.io drivers, currently in beta. They work with a handful DirectX 9 games, including Mirrors Edge, Portal 2 and Left 4 Dead.

Cymatic Bruce is the most prolific Oculus owner around, and has produced lots of videos to whet your appetite as well as the occasional livestream.

What’s it like?

In an ideal Oculus Rift experience – it’s incredible. The first time I entered the Tuscany demo, I was stunned at the feeling of “being there”. It’s a beautiful little house, with some trees outside, and a balcony from which you can admire the surrounding mountains. Notice how I said “entered” instead of “played” – it really does feel like you’re being transported to another world, and coming back from it is as disorienting as you would expect.

The field of vision is around 110 degrees; this translates to a slight border around what you see. If you strain your eyes directly downward, you can see out the air grills, for instance. As someone who normally wears glasses, it really isn’t that noticable; imagine only looking through your glasses lenses and blocking out a little of your extreme peripheral vision and you’d be pretty close to the experience. This varies by how far the lenses are from eyes of course; if you have it adjusted to the furthest setting and are wearing glasses, the experience is not as good, yet still impressive.

There are two major flaws with the Rift experience (using the Development Kit) right now – the first being of course the resolution – looking at objects up close is fine, but distant objects are terrible. I don’t personally think it’s as bad as some have portrayed it be, but then I’m the kind of gamer who whacks the resolution down in order to get a smoother experience, rather than upping it for better graphics but lower frame rate. The “screendoor effect” is the second flaw – by which the space between pixels can actually be observed, as if the users were looking at the world through a screendoor. Again though, this disappears somewhat when you’re actually engaged with the world.

Reddit user MHD420 submitted this mock up of how it looks to someone actually using Rift, and I think it’s a fairly accurate depiction.

Using a traditional mouse and keyboard to manoeuvre around the virtual world is particularly annoying; having your arms tied to a fixed position is just uncomfortable, and if you need a key which your finger isn’t already on, you’re either faced with removing the headset or peering awkwardly through the bottom grill to reposition your fingers. Though I don’t have a wired Xbox controller to test with, I have been using the Razer Hydra motion controller – something I’ll be reviewing fully in a few months – and that certainly enhances the experience no end. However, this is a review of the Rift, not the Hydra controller, but just bear in mind a keyboard is not Rift-friendly at all.

Latency has been mentioned by some; this is the time between moving your head and the screen moving, but I haven’t noticed an issue there at all. More of an issue perhaps is the motion blur that occurs when moving.

Motion Sickness

Anytime a disconnect occurs between what your physical body is doing and what your brain is experiencing through its senses, there’s a chance you’ll induce some kind of motion sickness. This can be as simple as walking your character around the virtual world, or bending over (the Oculus doesn’t track movement, only 360 rotation around a fixed point). It varies by person, and by experience level with virtual reality. Right now, I can use the Rift for up to an hour or so. Although the first time I tried it, 10-15 minutes was my limit – after that, I felt a little queasy. My wife, on the hand, spent 10 minutes in the Epic Citadel demo, then collapsed onto the sofa for a few hours; she didn’t take the experience quite as well as I would have hoped.

Summary

For me, the Oculus Rift represents a truly new beginning for gaming – but of course it won’t ever be suited to all genres. If anything, the Oculus Rift is going to spawn a whole new genre of “experiential gaming”, where the focus is not on killing enemies or attaining points, but simply exploring a lush landscape or warping reality, or simulating the extraordinary. And I have no doubt it will rejuvenate a tired “adult” genre of gaming!

The Oculus Rift may not be perfect yet – but at leasts it’s something new in a world where the best Sony can come up with for the next generation PlayStation is “easy social sharing”. Immersion is the future – I’m sold on that – and right now I’m prepared to throw money at this thing.

How do I win an Oculus Rift Development Kit?

We have a new giveaway procedure in place, which will hopefully make participating much easier. You may enter using your Facebook credentials (which will require you to sign into Facebook) or by submitting your name and email address. You’ll receive one entry simply by doing so.

After that, you’ll also be offered various methods to earn additional entries. They range from sharing a link to this giveaway on social networks; to commenting or visiting a specific page. The more you participate, the higher your chances of winning!

This giveaway begins now and ends Friday, May 31st. The winner will be selected at random and informed via email.

The post Oculus Rift Development Kit Review and Giveaway appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Whether it’s on your child’s chat messages or some inexplicably popular item on Reddit, this new language increasingly pervades the meat space of real life. Let me put you a little at ease ease though, as I explain some key terms.

Meme

A term coined by Professor Richard Dawkins in the 70s to describe the way culture spreads, now used in common parlance to describe viral videos and pictures that go on to generate thousands of variants.

A classic example is keyboard cat – a cute YouTube video of Carlie Schmidt’s cat playing an electronic keyboard – which later came to be added on the end of bad videos as a way of saving them: play him off keyboard cat!

LOL, Lulz, and Lolz

All variants of the original acronym for Laughing Out Loud, an abbreviated way of exclaiming ones amusement. A more extreme form is ROFL; or rolling on the floor, laughing; and LMAO, laughing my ass off. Lulz, as a plural of LOL, is often used as a reason for doing something – “doing it for the lulz” – and inspired the name of Lulzsec hacking group, responsible for exposing some incredibly lax security protocols in use by major governments and corporations around the globe.

Lolled, lolling and lollage are all grammatically correct forms of usage. lolwut is a type of bemused lolling, for example:

Dave: Yesterday I forgot to wear my pants.
James: lolwut?

Of course, nothing on the Internet is immune to the influence of our feline mistresses (see the cute cat theory of digital activism); and so it came to pass that some bright spark combined the concept of “lol” with “cat”, to create the lolcat – amusing images of cats, captioned with often grammatically incorrect short sayings. Though by no means the original lolcat, perhaps the most iconic is icanhazcheezburger

… which went on to spawn a network of LOL sites.

Some say the humble lolcat has dumbed down an entire generation so much that it only communicates in captioned photos. I blame Twitter.

Troll

As the Greater Internet F******* Theory states (aka online disinhibition), any normal person when provided both an audience and the anonymity of an internet forum, may undergo a negative personality change – they may turn into a troll. A troll takes many forms, but most commonly posts a deliberate inflammatory comment in order to elicit a response (baiting).

Trollface has become a meme of its own, originating in a webcomic found on Deviant Art. It represents the expression made while trolling.

One particular tactic trolls have successfully employed in the past is to pose the question:

48÷2(9+3) = ?

which results in either 2 or 288, depending on the order of operations you apply (FYI, the answer is 288, stupid). Even calculators will give differing results, but that’s not the point: the argument will almost always divulge into personal insults, and thus the trolling objective is complete. By playing the game, you have already lost.

Flaming is closely related to the concept of trolling, but now refers to more personal attacks; one can troll quite effectively without resorting to flaming.

RickRolled

Rick Astley, an 80′s legend that gave us Never Gonna Give Up, recieved Internet notoriety when the music video for the aforementioned masterpiece became a class Bait and Switch bit of trolling. It goes like this: a nefarious prankster posts an obfuscated URL, which when clicked takes the hapless victim to the Never Gonna Give You Up music video on YouTube. The user is said to have been rickrolled.

Fun fact: during the 2008 Macy’s Day Parade, Rick Astley live-rickrolled onlookers in a surprise appearance.

Even Obama got in on the act..

#hashtag

A hashtag is a keyword denoted by the hash # symbol, used on the Twitter social network to group posts about a single topic. Media events will often establish their own #hashtag, in hopes of trending globally. Trending hashtags are shown on the main Twitter site to all users, and show which are currently the most popular things being talked about, so they’re a highly coveted accolade. According to dailydot, the 10 most popular hashtags from August 2011-2012 were:

1. #moscow, following the questionable election results.
2. #arsenal, because apparently people care more about football than freedom.
3. #takemeout, an ITV dating gameshow.
4. #freedom, a concept difficult to define – but 140 characters is enough for some.
5. #nadarkhani, a pastor sentenced to death in Iran for denouncing Islam.
6. #whatimissmost, a conversation starter for reminiscing about the past.
7. #arabidol, an attempt to duplicate the success of UKs Pop Idol singing contest.
8. #waystogetoffthephone, in which 677000 people suggested tips on how to end an awkward phone conversation.
9. #tweetforyoucef, an example of what happens when more than one hashtag is used for a single topic (in this case, pastor Youcef Nadarkhani).
10. #twalculate, a silly app for calculating various stats about your Tweeting habits.

Some people also use hashtags in Facebook updates, which is pointless, because it doesn’t actually do anything and just makes you look silly. Don’t make the same mistake.

While we’re on the topic of Twitter, retweet deserves a mention too; referring to the act of copying someone else’s amazing Twitter messages, and republishing them to your own followers. Credit is given, and RT is added to let readers know they’re not your own words.

LiveStream and LiveBlog

A live video broadcast of an event or gaming session. Yes, watching someone play video games is a legitimate past time now, and you can have a go at livestreaming or watching too. A LiveBlog is predominantly text-based live broadcast using a blog page that automatically refreshes to show the latest additions – used at events where filming would be difficult, though photos are also posted to the stream.

Further reading

I can’t possibly cover all the new words of the web – I have my own cat pictures that need captioning with mildly amusing phrases – but if you’d like to read more, check out these great resources:

• NetLingo
• Internet Slang
• Urban Dictionary, an NSFW resource for all new words and phrases, not just internet related
• Netymology: From Apps to Zombies: A Linguistic Celebration of the Digital World – an actual book, whatever they are.

I hope you’ve at least enjoyed if not learned something from this, otherwise you’ve probably just wasted 5 minutes of your life. #fail.

Know an essential term you think everyone should know? Add it in the comments!

Image Credit: “The Internet”, CollegeHumor

The post Those Crazy Web Words And Phrases Explained appeared first on MakeUseOf.

But how about for the sellers? If you’re looking to just sell a few unwanted items or start your own store, we’ve got some critical advice to help you sell more.

General Tips

Encourage Feedback & Use An Established Account

If you’re first learning how to sell on eBay and just starting out, you have zero reputation – so don’t go jumping in there trying to sell that $10,000 yacht. No-one is going to trust you – yet.

Start small, selling cheap items that people are more likely to take a gamble on – then gather as much feedback and ratings as you can. Be sure to follow up on sold items with a message to the buyer requesting feedback – and give your own.

Remember: purchasing items will also get you feedback from the seller – and it’s important you reciprocate in kind too. A good mix of both feedback as a seller and buyer is the best. The only exception I would argue for starting a new account is if your choice of username was particularly bad; “IM_A_SCAMMER” for example.

Photos Are Critical

I still can’t believe the number of people who actually put items up for sale without a photo. Only slightly worse are horrendous low resolution blurry photos taken on a very old smartphone, but at least that’s something. The first photo is free - so use it!

If you’re selling something expensive, then more photos may be viable, but otherwise consider making a photo montage with a free graphics app. That one free photo could double up as 4 smaller photos! It goes without saying that your photo should actually be of the one you’re selling, particularly if it has marks or defects – don’t just find a similar one on Google images.

Research

Final selling prices for common items don’t actually vary that much. Do your research beforehand and you’ll have a good idea of what bid your item should end at, regardless of a 99 cent starting bit. Use the advanced search feature, make sure completed listings is checked, and see what turns up. Items in green sold successfully, items in red did not.

Find Packaging Beforehand

There’s nothing wrong with charging the buyer for postage, but to minimize your losses be sure to measure and weigh your package before listing the item – don’t just estimate what it will cost, or you’ll either be shortchanged for low-balling it, or putting off potential buyers for charging more than everyone else. If you use PayPal integration, eBay even allows you to print off a prepaid postage label that you can then drop off at a post office.

Offering free postage and packaging is certainly going to make your listing stand out, and many buyers will specifically search only for listings with free postage & packing, but consider your costings before choosing this.

One thing to avoid is selling an item as collection only. By all means offer collection as well, but give an accurate shipping estimate. It doesn’t matter if you personally don’t think the postage is worth it - let the buyer decide! It’s incredibly frustrating to find “collection only” written on a listing – especially when the guy lives in some remote part of Wales – and gives the impression you’re just too lazy to go down to the post office.

Know Your Fees

For the most part, you can list an item without any insertion fees – this means you pay nothing to just list it, so if the item doesn’t sell you haven’t lost anything. Once you start adding in featured services though, your insertion fees increase – even if it doesn’t result in a sale. These services include but are not limited to:

• More pictures
• Buy it now price
• Reserve price
• Scheduled listings
• Featured status

I’ve never felt the need to use these options, but if your item is particularly niche then you may wish to use reserve or buy-it-now prices, in the event that the auction expires and it is still priced at 99 cents. For most items, these are unnecessary and just eat away at your profits. Then there’s the flat rate final sale fee – 10% of the value. That’s on top of any listing fees you incurred. If you do a lot of selling in one month, these can really add up, and your bill at the end of month will be a lot higher than what you were expecting. Plan for this in advance or believe me, you will get a shock.

Timing

By default, your listing will finish 7 days from when you posted it – but this isn’t always ideal. Sunday afternoons are said to be the busiest time for eBayers, so aim to either post at that time or pay a small fee to schedule the listing.

Technical Advice

Barcodes

Use the barcode / EAN lookup feature. eBay now maintains a huge list of consumer goods, especially electronics, so if you have the original box with a barcode listed – or are able to find the EAN from Amazon – be sure to add it into the listing.

This can be used to pre-populate the selling form with specifications and gives your listing added exposure to users searching for a specific item. It also avoids any confusion when it comes to correct categorization. The easiest way to do this is with the mobile app; use your iPhone or Android camera to scan the barcode.

Offer PayPal Payment

If you don’t have a PayPal account, get one. It offers security and protection for the buyer – and if you refuse to use PayPal on some kind of moral grounds, you really shouldn’t be selling things online. A listing which specifically doesn’t accept PayPal is perceived at worst to be untrustworthy, at best more bother than it’s worth. UK sellers – you don’t have a choice anyway, PayPal is a requirement.

Use a Template. Maybe

For power-sellers and companies, a branded template is a must. For personal users though, it may give off the wrong impression – I would actually not purchase from an individual using a professional template as it makes me think they’re not just “spring cleaning” and perhaps trying to make a genuine business of it.

Even worse, the seller has chosen a nauseating design with comic sans font. If the details are in the slightest bit hard to read, I’ll move swiftly on to other choices.

• Where to find free eBay templates

If you have used a template, at least make sure the images are working. I don’t want to see this:

Become a “Power Seller”

If you sell $3,000 worth of goods in over 100 transactions yearly, and have 98% positive feedback – you’re eligible to become a “power seller”. These are respected, trusted sellers and items sold by them feature prominently in the search results. As a power seller, you also qualify for a reduction in fees. See here for the full requirements.

Make a Storefront

The ultimate in professional branding for your eBay presence, a storefront will make it easy for users to see all of your goods in one professional-looking place. Creating a storefront costs a small monthly fee – from $20 – and comes with a quota of free listings. eBay actually provides a few decent looking storefront templates for you to download – grab one from here - but of course you have full creative control if you want it.

That’s all I’ve got for you – but I’d love to hear your tips on how to sell on eBay in the comments if you think I’ve missed something important.

The post 11 Critical Tips On How To Sell More On eBay appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Today, we’ll take a look at a few different designs for DIY tablet mounts; vote for your favorite in the comments, and I’ll try my best to actually make it, along with full instructions and build photos. Choose wisely!

Swing Arm

A simple, extendable arm design from Tom Gaurmond that uses lengths of 1″ timber with bolts to allow movement; holding the iPad is a fairly pricey mount with a ball and socket joint, but this could perhaps be swapped out for something cheaper.

I like this design, but would need to think of an alternative to screwing it into the wall; an upright timber frame would solve this, but perhaps not be as stable, and would certainly add to the cost.

A similar design is featured here with a built-in charging cable and more solid timber, though it’s not clear what it attaches to at the other end. A nice, matching dark color finish on the wood gives this the professional edge.

Vote “swing arm” in the comments to choose this design!

Swivel Arm

A practical and professional design by Roey Leon – though very little DIY is involved  - that can be easily moved to a variety of positions. It uses an old drafting table lighting fixture and iPad mount bought from eBay, then screws directly to the wall.

There’s quite a few downsides to this design. Unless you have an old swivel light sitting around, this is going to be pretty expensive to source as new; and then there’s the iPad mount part which will presumably be new too. Added to which, not all of us are happy making holes in the wall.

Vote “swivel arm” in the comments to choose this design, but I doubt if it’s feasible on a tight budget, in which case commercial options would be best.

Headboard Boom

A simple “boom” design from eHandyMan which nestles over your headboard, extends and slants down. All parts are fixed, so there’s little chance of things randomly falling. The only weak point here appears to be the bungee cord which holds the actual tablet; I won’t know how weak this is unless we actually try building it – it might be worth integrating a more solid wooden frame than we’ve seen elsewhere in this round up.

This is my personal favorite for a few reasons. First, it’s at a DIY level I think any of us can handle, with standard parts I can grab from any hardware store and no complex wood cuts that you’d need specialized tools for. Second, it’s 100% DIY – there’s no “buy a tablet mount on eBay” steps here, so it’s probably also the cheapest.

Vote “headboard boom” in the comments for this design.

Headboard Easel

From Eduino77, this is a slightly more complex version of the fixed design above, apparently inspired by an artists easel. Affixed behind the headboard (we could easily adjust that), a single thumbscrew nut and bolt allows it to be angled in various positions. The iPad is held in place with a close-fitting wooden frame at the top and bottom.

I like this design too, though the flexibility adds some complexity to the wood cuts needed; and I’m not entirely confident about the wooden clips – it seems like the iPad would slide out or get scratched.

To vote for this design, enter “headboard easel” in the comments.

Hybrid

A number of other designs I found (but without decent photos) make use of a cantilever bracket / wall mount, typically used for LCD televisions and monitors – such as this one from Amazon.co.uk for around £12. It might be interesting to combine one with a wooden frame behind the bed, or epoxy glue a cheap eBayed iPad mount.

Anyway, vote “hybrid” to see what I can come up with, but this is more of an open design option.

Buy one instead?

In case you’re wondering on the commercial side, StandzOut offer a flexible, telescopic iPad holder that would also be suitable for a bedside; it retails for $99 with free US shipping.

Anyway – the choice is yours. Let’s try to keep it as cheap as possible though, and at a level we could all manage. I’m certainly no expert DIYer! Remember to vote in the comments, and add your own suggestions and ideas. Here’s a summary of your options:

• Swing Arm
• Swivel Arm
• Headboard Boom
• Headboard Easel
• Hybrid
• Give up, James can’t possibly do any DIY 

Image Credit: ShutterStock, iPad in bed

The post 5 Awesome DIY Tablet Mounts For Bed: Vote For The Best And We’ll Build It appeared first on MakeUseOf.

The hardest part about these projects is to remember to actually take some videos. Pulling out your phone, bringing up the camera, switching to video – it’s all quite laborious. Hopefully, Google Glass will fix all that, but for now phones will have to do. I’ll be honest here: my life is fairly boring, and I’m pretty bad at remembering to do things. So I missed a lot exciting events, and didn’t do this every day. There’s also an issue of privacy of course; I don’t think it’s always appropriate to just whip it out (a camera, that is) and start filming!

Still, the process is the same, and hopefully the results are somewhat interesting.

1 Second Everyday ($0.99)

This is the dedicated iPhone app that kicked the whole cultural phenomenon off, which Bakari wrote about before. It began life on Kickstarter, after this stunning TED talk.

Usage

Take a video in-app or choose one from your camera roll, but the clip MUST be taken on the right day or you can’t add it – there’s no cheating, so no saying that cool video from yesterday is your pick for today instead. When video is available, the day glows orange, meaning you can go ahead and pick 1 second of footage. The editing interface is easy enough – scrub back and forward until you find just the right second, then tap in the top right to accept that and add it to the timeline.

The interface is slow but pretty; the main view shows thumbnails for days where footage has been assigned.

To create a compilation video, click the create button; you can then choose either predefined month, year, or custom. Tap finish, and your videos will be “mashed up”. You’ll be shown a preview, and can instantly share either to Facebook, YouTube, or simply save the video the device.

If this is the first time you’re connecting, you’ll need to grant permissions, but you need only ever do that once.

Here’s what I could come up with, exported directly to YouTube. Yes, it’s pretty much all chickens, the dog and the ferret. And a fox. What else were you expecting?

Limitations

• Unfortunately, the app doesn’t work with the regular photo and movie library; only the camera roll. This means that if you import the videos to your computer before importing them into the app, it will no longer be available. This is a deal breaker for me, and I ended up missing a few clips because of this silly bug.
• You’re also limited to just one second; this is pretty harsh, and I personally think it’s just too short, which results in a video that’s too disjointed. It would be nice to have the option of using 2 seconds by default.
• You can’t add music unless you do your own editing.
• The interface is obnoxiously locked into landscape, particularly annoying when entering video descriptions and titles with the on-screen keyboard.
• Interface is slow, and the “loading your memories” screen is all too frequent.

FrameBlast (Free)

FrameBlast is a more automated solution that provides more professional results. It doesn’t have any strict restrictions as such, but each style of video uses a different length of clip, different cut and filter. You can also add any music from your library, or use some presets. The app is also completely free – there aren’t even any in-app purchases.

Usage

It’s incredibly easy to use – just add clips, and hit go. You can adjust the sequence of clips using an innovative spinner selection, but there’s no real need.

Once you’ve picked a filter style that you like, hit Save Blast to export the finished file. It’s a nice, speedy interface overall, and the completed percentage is a nice touch beyond the usual progress bar.

Vimeo, YouTube, Tumblr and Facebook share options were provided, so again, I uploaded to YouTube and was required to authorise access to my account first. One nice touch is that the uploading is done in the background, so you can continue to use the app in the meantime if you have other “Blasts” to produce.

Here’s what I made (sorry to Canadians and Germans, UMG blocked the video in your country for my choice of music):

Note: HD isn’t enabled by default, so be sure to turn that on first. And make sure you have a lot of room on your device – these things aren’t small.

Limitations

• There’s no way to select which bits of clips are used, and it refuses to import trimmed video – so if you’ve taken a long video, it’s not going to be particularly useful unless the whole thing is interesting.
• Projects aren’t saved, so if you want to adjust the theme or clips after exporting a blast, you’ll need to re-select all the clips.

One Second Epic (Free)

An obvious knock-off of 1SE, this app is actually better in some ways. Again, you can either capture through the app, but you also have access to your full video library, though sadly this crashed the app for me. The interface is far more responsive too.

You can create a number of “epics” at the same time. These are projects which you can save at any point, edit and add clips to – you’re not limited to simply exporting time periods. This means you can easily separate videos of your kids from everything else, for instance, until you’re ready to export.

Fundamentally then, it’s like 1SecondEveryday, only with less restrictions, a better interface, and free. The concept is somewhat different though, so if you’re actually interested in the arbitrary restrictions placed by the original 1SE, then this app isn’t for you.

Limitations

• I actually couldn’t get it work on my iPhone 4 or iPad 3 – previewing compilations which I’d imported videos into crashed the app. With video taken immediately, it worked fine, but I don’t have enough interesting things around the house to demo that.
• Direct uploading is only supported to Facebook, no YouTube or Vimeo, so you’ll need to export to the camera roll and share from there.

The Winner

FrameBlast gets my vote; for ease of use, automatic handling of video clips and the ability to use your own tunes and existing iOS video library. 1SecondEveryday is an interesting project to take on and perhaps will cause you to examine your life everyday in a new light, but the videos it produces aren’t actually that compelling and getting content into the app is just too difficult in my opinion.

How about you? Have you had a go at documenting your life in video? Post some links in the comments and let us take a look!

The post Document Your Life With Moving Images: How to Make a Video Diary [iOS] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Regardless, we’re sincerely sorry for the risk we exposed you to. We pride ourselves in being a trustworthy site for all of your computing needs, and we let you down. We’ve been targeted many times in the past, and ridden the waves of extreme DDoS attacks to domain hijacking. We thought our defences were sufficient, but they weren’t.

So What Have We Done About It?

• We immediately upgraded WordPress. We had been holding off on the latest update due to concerns about changes to the file uploader, but this left us exposed.
• We reduced the number of editors with admin-level access, as it’s possible one of our editor’s computers was compromised. We also immediately enforced a password change for everyone.
• We removed theme editing functionality from the WordPress admin panel. Any changes will now only be possible over a secure FTP connection.
• We installed 6Scan Security, which identified a few vulnerabilities in plugins and core WordPress files, all of which have since been fixed. If you’re using WordPress on a standard server setup, you might want to try WP Security Scan too.
• We removed the “admin” user, a rookie error we had thus far overlooked.
• We removed the readme.html which exposed our WordPress version number.
• We enforced HTTPS for all logins.

As you can see, we’ve decided to be overly cautious. The hack involved the theme editor within WordPress, so disabling that alone should be sufficient to prevent any future occurrences, but we’ll be erring on the side of caution from now on.

Again, our sincerest apologies. Even the experts get hacked sometimes.

The post An Apology – & A Lesson In How To Secure WordPress Better appeared first on MakeUseOf.

We’ve talked about Rich Snippets before – pieces of meta you can add to a page that Google will understand and potentially include in the search results. Authorship is one example; here’s one of my own search results, standing out nicely on a video game review search.

In short, users are more likely to click on something when it’s not just a bland text result.

What you really want then, is for Google to recognize that your page contains a nice juicy video that you put time into creating, and to rank that page higher or with potentially more visibility. Here’s another result from the same search result, though it’s actually ranking further down the page since it’s less relevant. Still, it highlights nicely rich, video content.

How To Get Video Previews into Google

This is not an easy task, and as ever – there’s no guarantee that your site will benefit from them. However, here are the basic steps needed:

1. Host your own videos. Don’t use YouTube.
2. Make sure they are marked up correctly.
3. Use an HTML5 video player.
3. Submit a special video sitemap to Google.

What’s Wrong With YouTube?

There’s nothing wrong with YouTube per se, but you’ll be in competition with yourself. YouTube is indeed a great inbound marketing tool. Users may stumble across your video, love the content and try to find more at a site address listed, particularly if it’s a viral teaser or “full instructions at the link in the description” type video. But they may also just click through to another related video and never visit your site at all.

The point is that when you make YouTube videos to accompany the page you’re trying to rank with, you’ll more than likely be outranked by your own video as a YouTube result; it won’t be a pretty thumbnail pointing to your page, it’ll be pointing to YouTube. There’s a time and place and a reason to use YouTube videos. Outranking your own content is not one of them.

Hosting & Player

The simplest option here is to upload video content to your own site, so we’ll use that for demonstration purposes. There are ways of using a premium Vimeo account, or some other third party hosts, but since you already have webspace you might as well use it. If you’re expecting a lot of traffic, be sure to have this all cached with a CDN (see my tips on how to speed up a WordPress blog).

Next, we need a suitable player – something that outputs HTML5, but can fallback to Flash or Silverlight when absolutely needed. For this, let’s use MediaElements.js; it’s a capable player for all kinds of media. You can find it directly from the WordPress dashboard.

Usually we would embed the video using a shortcode like this:

[video src="myvideo.mp4"]

However, this won’t result in Schema.org markup being used, so instead we’re going to manually code it like this:

<video width="600" height="400" controls="controls" preload="true" itemprop="video" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/VideoObject">
<source src="http://technophiliapodcast.com/podcast/tech63.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
<meta itemprop="name" content="Technophilia Technology Podcast, Episode 63 - Generic Podcast Listener"/>
<meta itemprop="contentURL" content="http://technophiliapodcast.com/podcast/tech63.mp4" />
<meta itemprop="description" content="Episode 63 of Technophilia Technology Podcast" />
<meta itemprop="thumbnailUrl" content="http://technophiliapodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/tech63.png" />
</video>

Which still results in this:

Warning: Don’t switch back to visual editor or your code will be butchered apart. Yes, not ideal. The best would be to adjust or code your own plugin that would load the MediaElements.js player AND output suitable markup. Nevertheless, this is what we have.

Check your markup using the Rich Snippet Tester, but be aware that it won’t show a video preview in the tool – just check if the markup is correct:

Video Sitemaps

Unfortunately, this is where things get really difficult. If you search the WordPress plugins directory for “Video sitemaps”, you’ll find a few plugins claiming to do this. However, they only work with YouTube links, which for our purposes is completely worthless. There isn’t a free WordPress plugin that will work for our needs, but you can manually code a video sitemap like this (I’m being lazy and not writing a proper description, but you should):

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
 xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1"> 
 <url> 
 <loc>http://technophiliapodcast.com/2013/63-generic-podcast-listener/</loc>
 <video:video>
 <video:thumbnail_loc>http://technophiliapodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/tech63.png</video:thumbnail_loc> 
 <video:title>Episode 63 of Technophilia Technology Podcast</video:title>
 <video:description>Episode 63 of Technophilia Technology Podcast</video:description>
 <video:content_loc>http://technophiliapodcast.com/podcast/tech63.mp4</video:content_loc>
 <video:duration>5204</video:duration>
 </video:video> 
 </url> 
</urlset>

(included above are the basic minimum of required fields, except for duration – in seconds – which optional but recommended)

Alternatively, Yoast – the creator of the famous WordPress SEO plugin (featured on our Best WordPress Plugins) – offers a premium plugin to handle this side of things, and it integrates nicely with the MediaElements.js player. The downside is the price, at a whopping $60 for a single site or $250 for a developer licence. Then again, if you’re putting at least an hour into making each video, they really deserve a little love and attention on the SEO side.

Submission To Google

Finally, log into Google Webmaster Tools and point it toward your video sitemap. Mission accomplished.

It’s a shame there’s not an easier way to do this, but that’s what you get for being on the bleeding edge of Internet developments. Video previews in the search results will give you a competitive edge, but remember – if your accompanying content or the video itself isn’t up to scratch, that effort will have been wasted.

Do you know of a better way to handle this in WordPress? Let us know.

The post Getting Rich Snippet Video Previews Into Your Search Results appeared first on MakeUseOf.

So today, I’m going to try out 3 plugins which can semi-automate this entire process for you. I’ll be migrating data from an old domain of mine, to a new site, both running on a virtual private server.

Duplicator (Free)

Duplicator promises a three-step migration process. After installing the plugin, you’ll find a quick link to the manage page from the plugins list.

It’s probably best to start to checking your servers compatibility with the plugin. Here’s what I ended up with.

Though, I’m fairly certain the Open Base dir restriction isn’t relevant due to the version of PHP I run on this server, so perhaps they need to update. Nevertheless, I will go ahead and create my first package. Packages are the contents of your database and files, all wrapped up in one. Click the create button in the top right, or if your package set is currently blank there should be a link in the center of the screen for you. My test site is fairly small, with only 30 posts and little else – this gave me a pre-zip size of 50mb.

After clicking create, it’ll go to work. You can view the log if you’re curious, but mine was completed within seconds. You’re then presented with two buttons for file downloads, and instructed to grab both the “installer” and the “package”.

There are some advanced options too under the settings panel; you can email when the package is complete, if it’s taking too long. You can exclude directories or certain file extensions; and pre-populate the installer fields (though this is not required). I kept all the defaults.

Upload both to your new site, via FTP. Duplicator aims to replicate the entire setup for you, from databases to core WordPress files, which is clever – I was expecting to have to set up a basic functional WordPress, but apparently not.

On with the testing then, I uploaded the package and installer.php file. Now the fun begins. Launch the installer.php – on the new domain now – from your browser, and you see something like this:

The only details you’ll need to add are the DB access details; while Duplicator can create the individual tables, you’ll still need a mysql user and database set up for it to use. Check the database connection, accept the disclaimer, and proceed with the install.

You’ll even be given the option of re-activating plugins, which is pretty nifty.

Finally, there’s a list of steps you need to click manually. These involve re-writing the permalinks file, deleting the installer, and finally testing the site.

I’m happy to report that everything was 100% working and fine; the site was exactly as it had been before, but with a new domain and title. Fantastic!

Total time to migrate: less than 10 minutes (though this will vary upon the size of the site in question).

WordPress Move (Free)

Once installed, WordPress Move adds a Migration Assistant link under the Tools sub-menu. It present 3 options:

• Change domain (no files will be moved)
• Restore

Before using migrate, you will need to configure the plugin from the settings sub-menu  so I proceeded to do that. this involves adding FTP access details for the new site. The only complicated bit here is the relative path; in my case this was:

httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-move/backup

You also need to have WordPress and the wpmove plugin installed at the other end. This was quite a disappointment considering Duplicator could operate without that, and it added a good 30 minutes onto the process. Sigh.

With a fresh WordPress installed, and the WordPress Move plugin also added, I headed back to begin the transfer process from the old site. Type the ftp password, the new domain name, and hit start migration.

…Error. I try changing the port number, remember that I usually connect using secure FTP (typically port 22) rather than the unsecure regular FTP protocol. Even though both should work.

Again, connection error. At this point, I’m calling it quits on this particular plugin. Maybe your luck would be better, but honestly why would you even try with this when the Duplicator plugin works so well?

Backup Buddy (Premium, from $50)

(Hint: a quick Google search will reveal a 33% discount coupon, but I don’t think it would be fair to republish that here)

The process of backing up and restoring a site is much the same as migrating, so it’s no surprise that a premium and well respected backup plugin such as this has added “magic migrate” functionality to its already extensive feature list. The only setup needed here is to first create a restoration password from the settings pages.

Before migration can occur, an initial backup must be taken. Choose the “complete backup” type, and begin. Then head over to the restore/migrate area, and select automated restore/migration. Hover over the latest backup and an option to “migrate this backup” should appear.

You’ll need to setup a new target for the backup to be sent to. I added the FTP details for the new site and confirmed they were working, but unfortunately it ran into errors along the way when it was trying to access newdomain.com/httpdocs (this was the subdirectory for public HTML files that I had to set, but it shouldn’t be in the URL); I eventually figured out how to get this working by creating a new FTP user which defaulted to the HTTPDOCS directory.

At this point, the process is basically identical to Duplicator; you can choose the manual mode which will actually give you a similar “importbuddy.php” and backup file to download then upload to the new site over FTP, or if you managed to make the FTP work it can all be done from within the old WordPress install. During the process, you enter database information, and everything else is done for you. As a final step, the install files are deleted and some common problems and their solutions are presented.

Essentially then, the migration portion of Backup Buddy is almost identical to Duplicator, just with FTP upload step removed, if you can correctly configure the access details. Of course, Backup Buddy’s real power lies in the backups, but it’s difficult to recommend it purely as a migration tool, especially considering the premium price tag.

Total time to migrate: about 30 minutes, though this was particular to my FTP accounts setup.

Don’t forget to 301 the old domain

It’s almost certain that you’ll want to redirect all traffic and search engine “love” to the new domain – use a 301 redirect for this. Simply replace the current .htaccess file with the following, replacing newdomain.com.

Options +FollowSymLinks
 RewriteEngine on
 RewriteRule (.*) http://newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

If you’re using webmaster tools to inform of the site re-location, you’ll need to add an exception for the Google confirmation file. Replace the googleXXXX.html in the following code with your particular verification URL.

Options +FollowSymLinks
 RewriteEngine on
 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/googleXXXX.html/?$
 RewriteRule (.*) http://newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

That’s it, site migrated, traffic redirected and no search engine love lost.

Verdict: Duplicator wins

I had expected the premium tool to be the superior product in all aspects, but in this case I actually want to give the prize to Duplicator – and it’s 100% free. It lacks the fully automated aspect of BackupBuddy – assuming you get the settings right, that is – but anyone running self-hosted WordPress should be able to download and upload a few files to FTP, so I’m not sure that’s to such a great detriment to Duplicator. The fact that it presents clear advice and instructions at every step is also really appreciated; I was never in doubt as to do what to do next with Duplicator. Stay well away from WordPress Move at all costs though – it’s just far too fiddly.

Do you know of any better solutions? Let me know in the comments, and in the meantime be sure to check out our Best WordPress Plugins page, to which Duplicator will surely be added soon.

The post 3 Plugins For Easily Migrating A WordPress Site, Tried & Tested appeared first on MakeUseOf.

With the Fitbit Aria Wi-Fi Smart Scale, you needn’t waste those extra moments – it’ll sync your stats and store them for you. Now all you need to do is concentrate on actually exercising. We’re giving away a Fitbit Aria, so read on to find out more about it, then join the contest!

The Fitbit Aria Wi-Fi Smart Scale retails at $129.95 and supports up to 8 users. The only competitor on the market is the $150 Withings WS50 Smart Body Analyzer, also supporting 8 users but with the added feature of monitoring air quality and temperature to ensure a good night’s sleep (assuming you place it in your bedroom, which is kind of weird to be honest).

Core Functionality: Weight Tracking and Multiple Users

The core purpose of the Fitbit Aria scale, of course, is to track and sync weight, and this it does well via the accompanying Fitbit service which we covered in our review of the Fitbit One Activity Tracker. The device is also capable of remembering multiple users and automatically detecting them by body weight variance. With myself and my wife, this works fine – but if you have a family of 8 – the maximum number of users it can handle – you may find a few of the weight ranges overlap. When this occurs, the Fitbit Aria will pick its best guess, at which point you can step off and tap the scales to choose an alternative users; then simply leave them alone as the progress bar counts down.

Inviting other users is simple, but you must use the app or website to do so – there’s no settings management on the device itself.

Very occasionally, it has failed to recognise my wife, assigning her weight as a guest. You can correct these from the device management page through the Fitbit online dashboard.

I should note that there can be a bit of variance to the weight tracking, even on a minute by minute basis, of about 0.1 – 0.5 kg. It’s not hugely significant, but if you’re an athlete wishing to rely on precision measurements, this isn’t for you. I can’t explain the variance either – it was placed on a level surface, not carpet, which would normally cause that. Perhaps my bathroom floor is wobbly.

Unboxing

The box is barely bigger than the Fitbit Aria; an inner box provides all the needed padding to protect the scales.

Nothing else is provided, except for a small instruction manual. The Fitbit Aria takes 4 x AA batteries – these are supplied already inserted, with a small pull-tab to activate.

Design

Opting for white – though a black model is also available – the Fitbit Aria scale fits right at home in a bathroom, with smooth corners to avoid nasty accidents.

The top of the device is a conductive glass panel, with a small circular LCD readout. It glows satisfyingly blue, as all good electronics should.

The readout has crisp grey text with blue backlight; long messages are scrolled across a few characters at a time, but weights and user identification (which consists of 3 initials) are displayed in full.

The underside is a curiously elaborate bubble design – odd because you don’t see it at all in normal use.

Setup

I had no problem getting the Fitbit Aria set up in 5 minutes, but I must admit it may be a little too complicated for those less technologically-minded. If the concept of switching Wi-Fi networks confounds you, you’re going to have problems.

There are two methods of setting up the Fitbit Aria. The first method is to use the web-based tool from a mobile device. Head over to http://www.fitbit.com/scale/setup/start to get started. As the walkthrough page explains, to activate setup mode, flip the scales over and remove just one battery. Replace it, and the screen should display “Setup active”. At this point, the Fitbit Aria scale generates its own Ad-hoc Wi-Fi network, to which you must connect your device when instructed. You can then continue with the setup to enter the details of your home network. Be warned, you’ll need to know the type of authentication being used – it’s a laborious process to restart from the beginning if you get it wrong.

The second method is to use a dedicated application for PC or Mac, though you’ll still need a Wi-Fi-capable computer, and it’s basically the same process.

“Smart” Scales: BMI and Body Fat

Apart from the ability to upload and store your weight data over Wi-Fi, the Fitbit Aria scale calculates your BMI and body fat percentage using a common method of measuring electrical conductance – by standing over the four electrical plates on the scales, a very small electrical current is passed through you. You need to be barefoot for this to work, of course. And of course, it syncs the data to your Fitbit account, so you’ll be able to view the trend over time.

However, it should be noted that this method of measuring body fat will churn out dramatically different results depending on the time of day and how hydrated you are. Even testing at the same time everyday would not give accurate results, so the measurements should not be treated as scientifically valid. Rather, you should look at the overall trends over time as significant, not the individual readings from one day to the next. The only truly accurate method of measuring body fat is using a pair of callipers to pinch and measure you skin at different locations.

There are other devices on the market however that offer a greater of “smart” capabilities – just not Wi-Fi syncing. My previous bathroom scales were in fact ones I brought back from Japan – made by Omron and going by the brand name “KARADA Scan” (karada being body in Japanese) – and can be bought in the US for anywhere between $70 for basic domestic model to $200 for an advanced import model from Japan. With an additional set of conducting plates you hold with your arms outstretched, they offer a more detailed break down of body fat in each part of your body, as well as giving you a score based on how old it thinks your body is.

I’ll admit though, the read-out provided by full body scanner was always pretty useless to me – having a record of my weight and BMI changes online and graphed over time is far more useful. Or perhaps it was just being told I had the body of a 40-year-old that made me resent those scales.

Integration with Fitbit

As the name indicates, the Aria Wi-Fi Smart Scale is manufactured by Fitbit, and as such, work best when used in conjunction with an activity tracker like the Fitbit One.

As I mentioned in the Fitbit One review, the site is simple – functional, with easy to use graphing capabilities. In the weight section, you can also track body measurements.

To use the body measurement tracking, you’ll need to scroll down to the manual weight entry section, and click on the link for “log other measurements”.

Durability (and Support)

One month after receiving the Fitbit Aria, the rightmost 1/3 portion of the screen stopped working; the device was otherwise fine – it would still record the weight over Wi-Fi, and I could get the first 1 or 2 digits of the number – but obviously this is a defect that shouldn’t happen. There had been a small amount of water splashed in daily usage – scales are generally placed in the bathroom after all – but nothing that should cause such bad damage.

However, their service is certainly to be commended. I contacted support and received a response back within hours offering to ship a replacement unit out, which I accepted and received within the week. It was well within the guarantee of course, but still – I was impressed, especially considering it had been an internet purchase.

The next unit they sent hasn’t broken yet, so I assume this isn’t a design flaw and was perhaps just a one off. Take that as you will.

Should you buy the Fitbit Aria?

Tracking your weight is essential for weight loss, but tools for manually recording it can be tiresome. The Fitbit Aria Wi-Fi Smart Scale removes that effort and automates the process, and does it well. Though the body fat measurements are not going to be accurate, they are a useful trend to see over time, and the Fitbit site that it integrates with is a competent training tool especially when combined with a Fitbit activity tracking device. That said, I’ve only lost about 1kg in 6 months – but I think that was down to basically hibernating over the winter. Bring on Spring and then we’ll see what happens! (Alright, probably nothing will happen in Spring either)

How do I win the Fitbit Aria?

Step 1: Fill in the giveaway form

Please fill in the form with your real name and email address so that we can get in touch if you are chosen as a winner. MakeUseOf giveaways are open to readers worldwide.
 

Step 2: Share!

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(Note: no points will be awarded.)

Alternative entry method: Use your points!

Exchange your MakeUseOf points for an entry into the competition. First, create a MakeUseOf account, earn points and exchange your points for an entry! Learn more about our Game system and Rewards program.

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By participating in this giveaway, you agree to the giveaway rules.

This giveaway begins now and ends Friday, May 17th. The winner will be selected at random and informed via email.

Spread the word to your friends and have fun!

The post Fitbit Aria Wi-Fi Smart Scale Review and Giveaway appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Here are 10 things you should do or consider when starting your own online store; but most are neither quick, nor easy – eCommerce is tough!

Choose Your System Carefully

Steer clear of specialized custom solutions built on obscure and old code – choose a system that’s popular, well supported, with a good community behind it, and which produces stunning looking shops. If you want to avoid any contact with code, a hosted platform like Shopify is a cinch to get up and running with plans starting at around $30/month for up 100 products.

For full control over the site at a code level, look toward either WordPress with one of the popular eCommerce plugins like Jigoshop (featured on our Best WordPress Plugins page), or a dedicated eCommerce open source solution like OpenCart.

In either case, you typically need to pay for themes and additional functionality, though the base system is free.

Optimize, Optimize & Optimize

Slow page load times mean loss of customers. If you’ve gone for a hosted solution when starting an online store, there’s not much you can do on this front and probably won’t need to – but when you’ve set up shop using WordPress or another self-hosted system, optimizing the page load speed is absolutely essential. Follow these three easy steps to speeding up WordPress.

Be Unique

Unless you’re actually producing your own products, there’s a good chance you’re using product feeds, including descriptions and photographs supplied by the manufacturer. Bad idea. Your content is going to be basically the same as hundreds of other online shops that purchase from the same supplier.

At the very least rewrite all the product descriptions, and put your own spin on them; ideally, take your own product images. If you’re retaking product images anyway, take some from every angle and use this jQuery plugin to make a 360 view that can be rotated.

Check Out The Competition

This doesn’t just apply to eCommerce of course, but any website. Search a keyword you’re hoping to establish yourself in, and compare the results. If the pages are badly designed and outdated, congratulations – you’re in with a good chance of success selling in that niche, but you should still consider how you would be better if someone else decided to enter the space.

If they’re beautifully designed and clearly doing well, think long and hard about whether you can genuinely compete with them. What can you offer that they don’t already achieve?

It’s Not Enough To Just Sell

The choice of where to shop online is just so expansive that consumers really have the upper hand – they can literally choose from any site in the world after all. Unless you’re competing on price – which is again very difficult since anyone can set up shop with virtually no costs and compete by undercutting – your site needs to be more than just a shop. Established brands get around this – and can charge a premium – by the fact that they have a customer base who trusts them and turns to them first for any needs.

As a new seller, you have neither brand, nor the ability to cost-cut any more so than the next guy, so use your unique product knowledge and skills to offer something more than simply a shop. Write high quality blog posts on the topic, link to your own products, and establish yourself as an expert. Share your knowledge, and be a part of the community around the products (if there is one) – don’t just try to sell things.

Pay Special Attention To SEO

Bloggers have it easy – they can develop a persona, write hundreds of words a day of unique content, and if it’s good enough, they will come. eCommerce isn’t like that unfortunately – it’s particularly vulnerable to SEO problems, and many online stores have found themselves struggling in the relegation zone after the last few years of Google algorithm changes. Why?

• Product descriptions tend to be short, leading to a small amount of actual on-page content – which can be considered “low quality” by search engines. Read more below on how to expand page content.
• Product variants such as size or colour can generate unique URLs with effectively duplicate content. These should all be canonical(ised?) back to the main product page.
• Products in multiple categories create duplicate URLs; again, ensure you’re using rel-canonical.
• Product categories often span multiple pages and thousands of products – make sure all the items are indexed with correct use of rel=next and rel=prev tags.

Expand Page Content With Customer Input

Simply having a product image and short paragraph of description text is not enough anymore – but you will have a powerful resource that probably lies untapped – customers. Don’t underestimate peoples desire to share their opinions and actions shots of the product – especially if you offer prizes to the best submissions each month.

Black Milk Clothing, hosted at Shopify, is a great example of this. Each product has a distinct hashtag assigned, and the products themselves are incredibly “shareable” – you want to show them off.

When users share a photo and tag it on Instagram, it’ll appear on the product page. Why limit yourself to one product photo when you can have 20? 

Implement Structured Data & Videos

Structured data or “rich snippets“, is special code added to a page to describe the kind of content – this might include videos, or average customer reviews. Include this markup on your page, and Google may use it (no guarantee) when the page appears in the search results. Look at the example below.

In this case, Zappos has included data about the user reviews; 6pm has included a product video. These are both far more likely to rank well and attract the attention of potential customers compared to text only results. Don’t just be another search result – stand out from the crowd!

Run a Newsletter

Newsletters are the secret weapon of eCommerce – it’s a captive customer base of loyal customers. When you make a sale, prompt the user to sign up for a newsletter and tick it by default. In addition, ensure there’s a clear sign-up area on the homepage or sidebar, and if your system allows it, incentivise with a small coupon off their first order. It works.

Sending a reminder to write a review or submit pictures a week after purchasing is also an effective way to keep them coming back – Amazon and eBay both do this.

Get a Social Presence

A little cliché perhaps – but everyone and their dog has a Facebook, and your store should too. It’s another direct marketing tool that you can and should use: interacting with customers, answering questions in an open and public way, offering sneak peaks into future products that will go on sale soon, and giving discounts.

Also consider pinning your best items to Pinterest, which is increasingly being used to drive sales.

It should also go without saying that a set of social share buttons on every page is basically essential at this point in time. Oh, and our free guide to marketing through social media is a probably a thing you should download, too.

No doubt about it – starting an online store that’s successful is tougher than ever, but these tips should help you somewhat on the path to sales success.

Do you have any more tips for setting up shop online, or do you disagree with something I’ve said? Sound off in the comments!

The post 10 Things You Should Do When Starting An Online Store appeared first on MakeUseOf.

This is the holy grail for how hackers hack, so it’s important to understand how it can occur and what you can do to protect yourself.

Social Engineering

This is the most common attack method, and we’ve given a full account of one such process before, involving a scam technical support call that goes something like this:

• “Hi, I’m from the security team at Microsoft and we’ve detected a virus warning from your Windows PC”
• They instruct you to open the event viewer, where there are lots of warning messages awaiting you, proving there must be something wrong!
• They offer to fix it for you, you just need to go to this remote support site and download the remote control software.
• They gain control of your PC, and proceed to do meaningless fixes, like opening file property dialogs.
• The login details are passed onto a criminal network who now have full access to your PC anytime they wish, and a tidy commission is paid to the guy who made the call.

The fake technical support scam isn’t the only way this can occur of course – if you leave your computer in the hands of someone you can’t completely trust, there’s always a chance backdoor software could be installed. Although there’s no cases recorded, a Best Buy employee was found stealing raunchy pictures from a user’s PC – so there’s nothing to stop rogue repair technicians installing trojan software either.

While rogue technicians are certainly rare – the fake technical support scam is all too prevalent, and I’ve personally had to deal with the aftermath on family machines where they’ve fallen for it. The key to protecting yourself and your family is education – explain to less technically capable friends and family that these support calls are fake and they should simply hang up.

For single user computers, it’s also quite likely they’re using the administrator account by default. The safest thing to do would be to set up a restricted user account for them to use on a daily basis, and ask them to never use the administrator account without talking to you first.

Also, note that while Microsoft will never call you personally, they do sometimes contact home users – but only via their ISP so that they can confirm they are an existing customer, and charges will never be made.  This happened recently in 2010, when Microsoft set about cleaning 6.5 million computers of the botnet they were a part of.

Browser Vulnerabilities – Flash & Java

Modern browsers are themselves rather secure. Chrome and more recently others run website tabs in their own sandboxed environment, where no changes can be made to the local filesystem. However, plugins such as Java operate outside of this sandbox, so these remain a concern.

If these plugins are enabled and not blocked by the browser, malicious Java or Flash code can be run as soon as you visit an infected site, or even loaded through the untrusted ad-network of a trusted site.

Thankfully, most of these problems are mitigated by simply :

• running the latest version of a browser.
• keeping up to date.
• enabling “click to play” (so code doesn’t run automatically).
• uninstalling the Java plugin completely.

Really, no decent website uses Java anymore (note: Java and Javascript are completely different), and the average home user does not run Java applications.

Chris has explained the problem of browser plugin security before, so I’ll point you there for ways of either disabling or checking your particular browser and setup.

Port Scanning

I’m listing this last as it’s the least likely to affect home computers that are connected via a router. If you’ve read our explanation of what port forwarding is, you’ll understand that any application that needs to receive information over the network is required to open a port. Sometimes these are predetermined – such as a web server on port 80 – and other times they’re just random. By default, unused ports are closed, so that’s where the difficulties around port forwarding arise.

If you want to run a web server from your home PC, you’ll need to configure the router specifically to take incoming traffic for port 80 and forward it to your PC. Some applications and devices use uPnP, which handles this configuration of opening ports as and when required. If you have an Xbox 360 for instance and regularly play online, it’s using this to configure ports dynamically.

Port mapping involves a hacker scanning your router from the outside and systematically talking to every single port number, looking for open services. Once the services are found, the hacker is able to check certain characteristics that identify the version of software being run (“software footprints”). The version is then cross-checked against a database of known vulnerabilities, and if a match is found they can proceed with the exploit. Although this sounds laborious, in practice it’s a single tool to scan, cross-check and deliver the exploit.

Unless you’re doing things like setting up your own network servers and performing manual port forwarding, it’s unlikely you’re vulnerable to simple port scanning. However, if you’re curious about what ports are open on your home network, there’s a quick Internet-based tool available here, though you’re limited to the standard ports and 500 others. If you run Linux, check out the nmap tool for a more full test.

The exception to being protected by a router is when you’re connected to public Wifi. You’re placed on the same network as everyone else, and any one of them could be running a port scanner looking for vulnerable services.

Finally, Matt wrote a great PDF guide - HackerProof, Your Guide to PC Security - which should be considered essential reading on the topic.

Have you ever had your computer hijacked, and if so, what happened? Do you know how they got in?

The post How Can Hackers Hijack My PC? [MakeUseOf Explains] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

To use Alfred workflows, you must have the PowerPack purchased for $25; the basic Alfred functionality is and always will be free, but these advanced features cost money. Given the amount of time and keystrokes it saves me in the long run, I have absolutely no qualms about recommending you upgrade too – some things deserve to be paid for, and this is one of them.

In this article, I won’t be addressing the technicalities of coding your own Alfred workflows, though I will mention how I adjusted these favourites of mine.

Should I Watch This Movie?

Included with the PowerPack, Should I Watch This Movie workflow can be found under the examples folder when you click the +. It’s actually one of my favourites too though – finding a movie I want to know more about, navigating to RottenTomatoes to check out the ratings, and YouTube for a trailer – and this simplifies that whole process.

However, I did make one modification – instead of using the default search action on YouTube, I used a custom URL of http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query={query}+trailer in order to only get trailers and not just random clips from a movie.

If you’d rather just trust Rotten Tomatoes for your information, check out….

TomatoTomato

This lets you search and displays results inline, along with ripe red tomatoes and squished green ones depending on the user score. Also uses the “movie” keyword, but you can of course run both these movie workflows at the same time. Results will take a few seconds to appear depending on your Internet speed – like all web based workflows listed here.

Weather

Ok, you could just type “weather” in Google, but this will save you from opening a new browser tab.

Be sure to set your location first using the keyword “weather {location}” and “weatherunit {celsius}”. Then type “forecast” for a 4-day breakdown. Simple, effective, and always raining in England no matter which site I use to check.

Kill

When you have 12GB of RAM, you don’t tend to care that much about the number of open browser tabs or applications. Which is especially useful if you’re both a technology writer and a recovering Windows users who still can’t quite get the concept of closing a window not being the same thing as closing an application. Very occasionally though, something will run away and cripple my machine. In those cases, finding and opening up the Task Monitor is quite laborious.

This Alfred workflow makes it easy. Just type “kill” and the name of the offender. You can also just use this as a text based way to close down an application of course, though this really isn’t recommended since it’s the equivalent of force quitting. Still, a nifty function to have around.

Play

A couple of times a day, I have an insatiable desire to hear a particular song; this makes that easy. Note, iTunes will need to be running for this to work. Type play, a few characters of the song or more, and presto.

Lyric Search

I wasn’t entirely truthful in that last paragraph. I actually have to sing karaoke, not just hear the song. This workflow adds the keyword lrc (which I’ve changed to sing), and allows you to either download, copy to clipboard, or display onscreen via keystroke modifiers, once lyrics are found for the currently playing song.

Now if someone could combine this with the iTunes plugin above, James would be a very happy boy, able to belt out Meat Loaf hits pretty much non-stop.

PirateBay

Everyone’s favourite way to download Linux! This helpful workflow lets you search directly for Linux distros that are hosted on PirateBay (“pb”), or top torrents in each category (“ptop”), as well as copying the magnet link to the clipboard on completion. You can probably use it for downloading other things too, but I wouldn’t know anything about that.

Another bonus to using this is that it doesn’t matter if the PirateBay is blocked in your country, since it uses a third party API through Appify. Superb.

Password Generator

Generating strong passwords is something I do a lot, and usually involves searching for a web generator, tweaking the defaults and then copying out the result. With this handy workflow, all I need to do is type “pwgen” and the number of characters I want. It’s then output as a notification and saved to the clipboard. Small, but handy.

Reddit

A strange juxtaposition perhaps, with a tool designed for super-productivity, and a site designed to waste your life away. But nonetheless, for a quick Reddit fix, this is a useful workflow. Unfortunately, it’s not that effective for pictures, since it doesn’t display inline and you’ll still need to click through to the Imgur URL – hopefully someone will streamline this to be even more useful in future.

Need more? Very well – here’s the Alfred Workflow List (beta), and the Share Your Workflow forum.

To be honest, I’ve been blown away by the power of Alfred v2. It was already an essential app, now it’s just amazing. Alfred Workflows have brought the power of Automator to anyone, and then some (but if you’d rather use Automator, we have a great guide to get you started). Being able to edit the functionality of workflows to suit your own needs is also really nice – they aren’t just plugins where you get what you’re given!

How about you? What are your favourite workflows? Don’t forget to include a link.

The post 9 Awesome Alfred Workflows I’m Loving [Mac OSX] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Today, I’m taking an in-depth look at a mid-range projector, the Optoma GT750, designed especially for gaming; and we’ll be giving this one away to one lucky reader.

Check out the other giveaways we’ve organised this Gaming Month!

The Optoma GT750 (the GT stands for Gaming Time, apparently), retails at around $750 and includes a pair of 3D glasses. There’s a similar model (in fact, they’re identical), the GT750E, which is $150 cheaper but doesn’t include the glasses. We tested the GT750 with a pair of ZD201 Active Shutter 3D glasses, which we’re also giving away.

• Size and weight: 324 x 234 x 97mm, 2.9 kg
• Resolution: Native WXGA (1280 x 800)
• Max resolution: VGA: UXGA (1600 x 1200), HDMI: 1080p
• Brightness and lamp: 3500 ANSI Lumens, 4000 hours
• Contrast: 3000:1
• Throw ratio: 0.72:1
• Image Size (Diagonal): 32.2″ to 322.4″ (0.82 to 8.19m)
• Inputs: 2 x HDMI, 1 VGA (with component adapter), S-Video, Composite, RCA stereo audio in.

Similar products to consider include: Optoma HD20 for $700, designed for home theatre and with only half the lumens value but capable of 1080p; Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 710 for $650, 720P with 2800 lumens output; and ViewSonic PJD5533W 3D 2800 lumens, $530 on sale at Amazon.

Unpacking and contents

After unboxing the relatively underwhelming yet huge Amazon box it arrived in, the Optoma GT750 unit itself was nicely packaged up with thick air cushions plus a carrying case. There were also two power cables provided for both American/European, and UK plugs (this is a UK unit).

Batteries are supplied for the remote, and there’s an component to VGA adapter for older devices. A printed quick guide is supplied, but like most purchases nowadays, an actual manual is only available on disc.

For testing purposes, we’ve bought a pair of ZD201 Active Shutter 3D glasses. The glasses were supplied with a nose adjustment rubber bit, and battery (CR2032); and are designed to work with a new standard of active 3D called DLP-Link, so if you have any devices which conform to that standard, check if they’re compatible before purchasing new ones. Suffice to say, my Samsung 3D TV glasses weren’t compatible.

At the rear, you’ll find two HDMI sockets – both input, so no passthrough is available – as well as VGA, S-Video, analog composite video and audio in.

Although I had no problems getting 3D through HDMI from any devices, a manual sync socket is also provided for analog 3D devices. I should add that there’s a built-in 10W speaker, but it’s understandably atrocious, so let us never speak of it again.

The lens cap has a very shallow lip which it fits over the rim of the lens – it feels like it should fall off any moment, but it doesn’t. Placing the cap back on can be awkward though, as it has to be aligned perfectly.

The design of the Optoma GT750 is nothing to write home about; it doesn’t look particularly out of place in a living room setting, but neither does it scream out for attention as some industrial designs can. The only complaint I have is the gloss black plastic – it’s the kind of surface that loves to pick up dust and really highlights greasy fingerprints. A matte finish would have more appreciated, but I’m nitpicking at this point.

Operation and Setup

Upon first boot, you’ll be asked to select a language. That’s it; the unit will then then go off in search of a video source, scanning until it finds something suitable. The only setting you really need to care about is the image MODE button – this allows to switch between bright, vibrant gaming settings and more subdued movie mode, for example. If you’ve placed the projector such that it’s angled, you’ll also need to perform some further adjustments; however, I strongly recommend you don’t do that to avoid any loss of quality, and instead physically move the device until it’s perfect.

On top, you’ll find a set of basic controls for power, menu, source selection, and keystone adjustment. In practice, I only ever used the power button. To turn off the device, you need to press power twice. There’s a short delay of about 5 seconds during power-down, accompanied by a heavy fan noise as it cools the bulb slowly.

There’s also a blue backlit remote supplied for quick access to other settings; I used this mostly to select the input source, change between picture modes, or activate 3D.

Given the amount of heat produced by the bulb, there is an audible fan noise during normal operation. In most gaming situations, you’re not going to notice this, but for quiet movie scenes it could be annoying. With two computers in the living room anyway, I can’t say it bothered me much.

3D

A lot of you will be put off by the fact it does 3D and might stop reading at this point – with any luck, no one will enter, and I can keep this projector for myself! Before you dismiss the 3D functionality, know that not all 3D is made equal, and the Optoma GT750 gaming projector uses the “good quality” 3D method – with active shutter glasses. You don’t get the same darkened picture that you do with passive displays, and it certainly isn’t one of those atrocious glasses-free implementations. Operation is simple; a long press on the on/off button activates the glasses, While within a 20m range of the projector, the infra-red detector at the front of the glasses will receive a signal, and the glasses will be operational.

It is a full-HD, bright 3D image – and having now watched a couple of 3D test movies on it, the effect is similar to a cinema 3D experience. It works with the 3D output of the Xbox 360 and Playstation (where games are compatible, the PS3 has far more than the Xbox), but I find the lag this introduces on limited console hardware to be quite detrimental to gameplay.

The Optoma GT750 accepts a variety of 3D formats, from SBS to interlaced, so there are no worries about compatiblity on that front. If you have a high-powered gaming PC, it’s compatible with Tri-Def custom drivers, proprietary NVidia or ATI 3D systems (Not sure what that means? Read Can my laptop or computer do 3D?).

Additional glasses cost around $50 each, so it’s quite a considerable additional investment if you’re purchasing for the whole family. They also require a single CR2032 battery, and use industry standard DLP-link technology – my existing Samsung TV glasses (which I already own two pairs for) were not compatible. If you’re not into 3D though, don’t worry because the Optoma GT750 still a top quality projector regardless.

Throw distance, image size and pixellation

Having owned a fair few projectors before, I can tell you that the number one limiting factor has always been how far away you can place the projector from the wall. In the case of the Optoma, I pointed it toward the largest wall in my living room – admittedly, not that large at all, but there you go – optimistic that I could get a reasonably large image from a table about 2m away. It turned out that actually, my wall was too small.

The projected image is huge – I actually had to move the projector closer to the wall to get it to fit. This is technically termed as “ultra short throw distance”, and the secret appears to be in the lens shape and some clever optics.

According to the specifications, the maximum distance from the projection surface is 16 feet. Therefore, using the projector’s throw ratio of 0.72:1, the projection image you’re going to have at that distance is a whopping 22 feet wide. My mind can’t even fathom owning a house with a wall big enough to project that onto.

The image projected is 720P HD, however at this size, you are going to get some pixellation.

This problem isn’t limited to this particular projector model of course – it is simply the nature of having an image that large with that few pixels – but it does illustrate that HD just isn’t enough anymore. Pixellation is most obvious when using the projector as a secondary monitor output; but with gaming and movies you aren’t truthfully going to notice it. Here’s a sample of the text pixellation, zoomed in on a game menu screen – which is about the only situation you’ll be really conscious of it.

Like most projectors, there are keystone adjustments to change the shape of the image, but for the best use of pixels you want to avoid those – same goes for reducing image size, as you’re actually just chopping off pixels.

Brightness and picture quality

In the past, I’ve limited projector screenings to evenings or only with blackout curtains and all the lights off; the Optoma GT750 has 3500 lumens, which translates to “quite ridiculously bright”. Some users have even complained that it’s “too bright” for use in completely dark room, but you can adjust lamp brightness in the menu settings if that’s the case.

While a specialized projection screen is obviously going to give the best possible image reproduction, a plain, matt magnolia wall was more than good enough for me, with fantastic color reproduction in movies and games. There was no moire, no delays and no discernible lag.

Lamp hours and replacement

The only downside to owning a projector is the bulb – they wear out eventually, must be replaced, and are incredibly expensive. The official replacement for this GT750 can be purchased directly from Optoma for around $250, though you can find suitable alternatives on Amazon for around $150.

On the plus side, the bulb is rated for 3000 hours at standard brightness, or 4000 in “eco” mode; assuming 2 hours of gaming or movies per day, that’s going to last about 4 years before it needs replacing. The device will warn you when a replacement is due, thanks to its internal counter.

Should you buy the Optoma GT750 3D Gaming Projector?

If you thought your TV was big, think again – nothing beats a projector for the true home cinema and immersive 3D gaming experience. Not just for gaming, this devices works great for general TV watching and movies in 2D or 3D, though you will need to adjust the brightness as it can be a little blinding with all the lights off.

Seriously though, we’re giving away this review unit, so join the contest!

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