Little did we know, this site actually became a very useful and heavily-relied-on tool. Piazza, which is Italian for public square or marketplace, doesn’t give you the answers to your homework problems, but it can assist in closing the gap that stands between class sessions and confused minds.

Don’t attending office hours and emailing the professors do that too, you ask? Yes, but conflicting schedules and full inboxes may easily get in the way. Facebook groups could probably help too, but professors nor teaching assistants can confirm peer-provided responses. Let’s check out why else professors and students should totally start using Piazza.

Real-Time Discussions

Instructors start by signing up at Piazza and adding their college-level courses. After activating their accounts, they can invite students and teaching assistants to join. Students and instructors (including TA’s) can then connect by posting and replying to questions and notes in real-time, just like Facebook, except Piazza can help you stay productive. You can even see when fellow students are actually replying to a question or editing an answer in real-time.

As you can see in the screenshot, Piazza is not only gorgeous but also absolutely functional, in contrast to many basic classroom websites lacking a commenting system and education boards that look like they could use a revamp in looks and features. The layout of Piazza consists of two panes, one of which is a sidebar containing a list of discussions, and the other one which is a larger area to see the conversation for a specific question.

Questions that have received a student response will have a green “sr” icon, while those that have received an instructor response from the professor or TA stand out with the orange “ir” icon. There might even be checkmark icons on questions that have instructor-endorsed student responses, which are always great since that means students that understand the subject can explain it it to their peers as simply as possible.

Students Can Ask Questions Anonymously

If you’re too shy to ask questions during class, ahem, like this author, Piazza will be a lifesaver as it allows you to post questions anonymously and/or privately. This is perhaps one of Piazza’s biggest benefits.

There’s a reason this site will get more action than your average class website, Blackboard or Facebook group. Students will feel free to engage in the discussion even if they might think their question sounded too “stupid” to bring up in class. Not only can students ask questions freely, they can also respond anonymously as well.

Piazza was founded by a former female CS student, a fact that I adore because only a student could know the pain of being shy and being confused by some obscure topic at the same time. Thus, being able to ask and answer questions anonymously is quite a welcome feature, at least to me.

General Efficiency

Not only is Piazza a great Q&A board to learn from some very lively discussions, it’s also more efficient and/or convenient for both the instruction staff and students, e.g. in cases where students sometimes cannot make office hours due to scheduling conflicts. Piazza is a good supplement (notice that I’m not saying substitute) to office hours because it can also help reduce redundancy. Students might ask a lot of the same questions so it saves time for both the instructor and the student to see a general place where one question can be posted and discussed, instead of emailing back and forth the same questions and answers.

Both sides will still get notification emails, but these are quite adjustable. As a student, you can skip real-time notifications and opt for a daily digest instead, or go with summary emails scheduled to be delivered anywhere from every hour to every 6 hours.

Other neat features include the ability to post notes (like illustrative YouTube videos and general class announcements), and polls. Not only can you post multimedia links, you can also embed images and post code with simple “<pre>” tags.

Piazza also allows you to use LaTeX expressions to type mathematical formulae and the like.

Piazza also has Android and iPhone companion apps for posting and checking answers on the go.

Overall, Piazza is an incredibly useful and well-thought-out product that you, as a student, should definitely request your professor to adopt, or as an instructor, should start using now! It will save you both time and you have nothing to lose by using it (unless of course, neither of you responds to the questions at all).

What are your thoughts on using an online discussion board for college classes? Feel free to share your comments below.

I, for one, needed my PDF slides to review for class so I definitely needed to find a way to sync it to my Acer tablet. Dropbox is my preferred syncing service, which works wonders on computers. However on mobile devices, especially Android devices, it leaves a lot to be desired, mainly because of the lack of support for two-way syncing goodness.

Dropbox may or may not implement this feature soon, but in the meantime, Dropsync does a superb job of uploading and downloading files in real-time (Pro version), or other intervals if you so prefer. If you use Dropbox, this app might just make your mobile life easier.

Dropbox doesn’t just shine for syncing files so you’ll have the same set on different devices that you own, but it’s also great for backing up those same files in case of any emergency. It’s not the only one that does that either. SpiderOak and SugarSync are also excellent syncing services with mobile apps, and while I tried all three services, I stuck with Dropbox because it had virtually no learning curve, it had clients for all three OSes that I’m familiar with, and it synced things without noticeable delay.

There are two versions of Dropsync, free and pro. The version I’m testing here is the pro version that’s available for $5.99 on the Android Market.

Syncing SD Card Folders With Dropbox Folders

When you download and launch Dropsync, there’s not much to see beyond the status and preferences screens. The first screen shows the status of your syncs, how much has been transferred to your device or to Dropbox’s servers, as you can see in the next cropped screenshot.

If you tap on Settings, that’s where it gets a bit more interesting.

You can choose which SD card folder to sync with which Dropbox folder in the Settings.

If you’re using this on a mobile phone and need to set limits on how much data you’re consuming with this app, you can set file size limits for all the files you’re transferring whether they going from or to your Android device.

If you’re watching your limits, it’s probably good to uncheck the Instant Upload option, which uploads and downloads changes in any modified files in real-time (pro version only). You can also set Dropsync to sync every 15 minutes, 1 hour to once a day.

This app is not optimized for tablets. In fact, you’ll notice it allows you to set whether transfers occur via Wi-Fi or your mobile data connection.

Other options include whether to offer notifications on each sync. I’ve used this app for a semester and would recommend to uncheck that option as it gets tiring to have to clear that message on a tablet, where there’s no “Clear All” button, at least not on my tablet as far as I know.

Differences Between Free And Pro Versions

There are several differences between the free and the pro version. First, as I’ve mentioned, real-time syncing is only available for users with the pro key.

There are also more size limits you can pick from so only files up to a certain file size are allowed to be transferred, which is handy especially if you’re on a data plan with caps.

Apart from having no ads, the last benefit of the pro version is that you can sync more than one pair of folders, which for me was the main reason I needed to purchase this version. Having relied on this pro version for over a semester, I think it just allowed for fewer headaches and more efficiency.

There are a number of similar apps that can sync your Android device with your computer. Which are the applications  you prefer? Let us know in the comments section below.

There are other options when it comes to recording your screen, however. Camstudio is a simple open-source screen recorder that’s great for someone who’s starting out his or her YouTube show on software tips and how-to’s. If you’re looking for something that allows you to enhance your videos even more, check out what ActivePresenter offers. ActivePresenter is a screencasting software that you can use to author training tutorials and software walkthroughs. Let’s see what other features ActivePresenter has for us.

Features

ActivePresenter comes in three different versions: Free, Standard and Professional. You can read the feature comparison here, but basically, the Standard and Professional versions allow a bit more interactivity with the final video product and can export to a few more formats than the Free version (e.g. Flash, HTML, AJAX, PDF). The latter has the same capture, editing and audiovisual features that are offered by the Standard and Professional versions. In this article, we’ll be testing the Free version.

Once you download the latest release of ActivePresenter, you can create a new project or capture and start recording your whole desktop, a specific application window or simply in any of the preset sizes, which include HD resolution (1280 x 720) and full HD (1920 x 1080).

After you are done with the recording, you’ll be taken to the editing window, where you’ll see a timeline on the bottom to visualize all the items on your screencast. If you’ve ever worked with Windows Live Movie Maker or iMovie, you’ll know that on the timeline, you can shrink the duration of certain items, move things around, and customize your demo even further.

Basically, this where you can make a montage with all the elements you envision in your tutorial. You’ll be able to insert all types of elements to enhance your screencast, including annotations, callouts, voice-overs, mouse-clicks, etc.

Not only can you add other videos PiP style, you can also edit your screenshots with the built-in image editor, which you can use to crop the image, add text and lines to highlight a specific section, and more.

Once you’ve got all the frames in the desired order, have added all the necessary annotations and overlays, and have the most satisfying screencast with synced audio and no hiccups, you can export your work in several formats.

If you’re on a quest to produce your very own incredible tutorials, you should definitely give ActivePresenter a try. Its interface may look intimidating, but it’s actually pretty painless to create great presentations.

For other ways to build tutorials or even product demos, definitely check out Wink too. It involves a bit more manual work as you’re in charge of every video frame, but it can produce some great video walkthroughs.

What’s your favorite screencasting software? Let us know in the comments section below!

There are a lot of things you can do to protect yourself. You can educate yourself on new potential threats, read on how to keep your computer secure, and what security software doesn’t protect, and obtain the best tools for the job, whether they are anti-virus programs or extensions.

Here, I’ll be taking a look at ClamWin, an open-source anti-virus program that’s been around for a while. Should you get it? Read on to find out.

Getting ClamWin

ClamWin is an anti-virus program based on the only open-source anti-virus solution in the market, Clam AV, which is a toolkit initially designed for UNIX.

As you can probably tell by the name, ClamWin is available as a download for Windows machines only. You can download the installer here, which is almost 40MB, or you can also try the portable app for anti-virus protection on the go.

If you’re wondering about which version to go with, I’m using the portable version 0.97.3 for this review. This latest release has improved bytecode signature matching, in addition to the reigning features that characterize this anti-virus – virus scanner, scanning scheduler, automatic virus database updates, and integration with Windows Explorer and Microsoft Outlook.

If you’re using the installer, be aware that the Ask toolbar might be offered during the installation. Make sure you read what the checkboxes are offering before you click Next. I didn’t see any such thing during the portable application “installation”.

Launching ClamWin

When you first launch ClamWin, you’ll likely need to download the built-in database of viruses.

Doing so will just take a few seconds if you’re connected to the Internet.

Once ClamWin has finished updating its Database, you can see the main window where you’ll have the options to set your preferences, update your virus definition database once again, scan programs currently running in memory and finally, scan specific files or directories.

Running Memory Scan

Selecting this option allows you to scan the programs that are currently running in memory. If you’re as paranoid as this author, t’s probably a good idea to update your virus definition database before running your scans.

Unless you’re running Photoshop, Mozilla Firefox, and many other resource hogs, this scan should be completed in a couple of minutes. Mine took just over 3 minutes and scanned 28 processes in memory.

Running File Or Directory Scan

In the main window, there will be a directory browser where you can select a whole drive (e.g. your C drive), specific folder or even a file to scan.

Depending on what you chose, this scan can obviously last a while. When I was running a scan for my D drive, ClamWin was also working really hard, using almost 109 MB of RAM. Not that it’s a bad sign, but it’s probably a good idea not to multi-task on your PC while you let a scan run through an entire disk drive. After a scan is finished, you can see the report right after, save it or access it in the main window menu.

If a virus is detected during the scan, there are three options you can choose from in the Preferences: Quarantine it, report it, or remove it.

If you’re particular about your scans, you can also filter files to be included or excluded from the scan in the Preferences. You can also limit a file size to scan or not, and also whether to extract files from zipped files in the Preferences window.

If you installed ClamWin instead of using the portable version, you’ll be able to schedule scans right in the Preferences window, increasing security for your PC.

If you’re using the portable version and wish to schedule scans, you could always use Windows Task Schedulerand clamscan.exe which should be under ClamWinPortable/App/clamwin/bin.

ClamWin shines for being an open-source anti-virus program with file and directory scanners, scanner scheduler, automatic downloads of virus databases and more. It does lack a real-time scanner, which could be a big con, but for basic protection and its price, it’s a great product to have on your PC security arsenal.

Have you used Clam AV or ClamWin? Share your experience in the comments section below!

Instead, what you can do to give your machine a breather is use applications that don’t tax its resources so heavily. Here, I’ll take a look at three of such programs that I also consider underhyped.

Billy [Windows]

Foobar2000 is a great project that doesn’t eat up resources, but if you want to take a look at an alternative, check no further than the extremely lightweight and simple player, Billy by SheepFriends. It launches in half a second, in contrast to many of the bloated media players (I’m sorry, iTunes, but I’m totally talking about you). True, it cannot play videos, or access a multimedia store, but it can play a whole directory of MP3, WAV, and OGG files without a hitch.

Do you like to listen to music while you play PC games? You don’t even have to use your mouse, as Billy has keyboard shortcuts for all functions.

The download file is about 600KB and takes about 2MB of RAM while playing a 60-file playlist. You can shuffle and repeat by file and playlist, as well as save Favorites. That may not seem like a lot, but when you’re surfing the web on a browser with 80 tabs and need a bit of music, all you need is this lightweight music player that won’t take up the resources.

Miranda IM [Windows]

Miranda IM is an open-source multi-protocol IM client that focuses on efficiency while still providing many of the features that distinguish Pidgin and Adium, the leading open-source IM clients for Windows, Mac and Linux. Miranda IM is quite low on resource consumption. On my machine, it was taking up 6MB of RAM while it occupies very little of hard disk space, technically nearly 7MB.

Even version 0.9.40, which is the latest one (released in December of 2011) and the one I’m testing, keeps its focus on being a lean, mean program that connects you to your Windows Live, GTalk, Yahoo, and other IM networks.

As you can see in the previous screenshot, you can customize a heck of a lot of options. While it can’t connect you to Facebook Chat and even Skype natively, it can do so when you download one of the many addons available from its official website. Overall, Miranda has a great set of features and addons while it’s also very fast and small.

Puppy Linux OS

Alright, I admit Puppy is not a program, and lots of users have professed their loyalty to Puppy already on this site and on other technology blogs, but Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and other Linux distros still seem far more popular than this tiny gem. Perhaps, most savvy users have powerful enough machines that can use the heavier OSes, but truthfully, Puppy Linux isn’t only for low-powered machines.

It deserves far more attention as a stable OS for all kinds of systems. Heck, you don’t even need a hard drive to run this OS and keep your changes. This OS has very low minimum system requirements and can access the applications that Ubuntu users enjoy, thanks to Lucid Puppy, a version of Puppy that uses Ubuntu-compatible binaries.

For me, this OS has saved my work and files more than once. This summer, one of my laptops died suddenly and while I backed up some of my important files in Dropbox, there was still a number of files that I needed from my dead machine. Thankfully, I had Puppy on an older 2GB flash drive for this type of situation. Ubuntu could also serve the same purpose but Puppy barely occupies 127 MB, while Ubuntu is a bit hungrier. I urge you to try it, even as a virtual machine, as it could come very handy later on.

The 3 programs in this list may be lightweight and simple, but sometimes simple applications works best. That’s especially true when you’re multi-tasking and don’t need another resource hog overworking your computer.

What’s your take on programs that are light on resources? Do you embrace them or do you prefer heavier applications with more advanced features? Let us know in the comments!

Image credit: schollidesign, DaPino

What distinguishes the application presented in this article, Neembuu Uploader, is that it’s open-source and it also allows you to define your account login details so you can upload files to your own account. If you’re intrigued by the sound of that, read on and find out how Neembuu Uploader works.

Installation

You can download the application from the main website, which looks very polished by the way, or you can head to this URL which is the directory for all the zipped files. In case you’re wondering which zip file to grab, in this article I’m reviewing version 2.6 of Neembuu. For either of the versions, you’ll need to make sure you’ve got at least version 1.6 or newer since Neembuu Uploader is a Java application (think of it as a sibling to jDownloader, but with the exact opposite feature set). You can always go and get the latest Java over at Java.com.

Use

Once you’ve downloaded the zip file, double-click on the .rar file to run the program. You’ll get a window to type in all your login information for any of the 30 major file-hosting sites.

If you don’t quite need to upload files to a specific account, you can skip this part and close the window. On the next window, you can drag and drop files or use the browser to select your files. At this point, you can also select your hosts again, a setting which will be remembered for your future uploads.

Once your hosts and files to upload are selected, you can add them to the queue, reorder them and click on Start Queue to begin the upload process.

At any point, if you feel like you need to stop uploading, you can click on Stop Further.

Once the upload process has ceased, right-click options will be enabled so you can copy the download link or delete URLs, if your selected file host supports that option.

After you’ve used the program a few times, if you ever need the download URLs for a file you uploaded previously, you can click on Upload History to see a list of uploaded files and their respective links. You can also export that list to an HTML file with the links for easy backup and/or sharing.

Summary

Here’s a few of Neembuu Uploader’s features that make it stand out:

• Open-source and free: If you’re worried that your account information will be leaked somehow, you can look at the source code and even help modify it.
• Cross-platform: Neembuu Uploader will run wherever Java runs.
• Supports more than 30 file hosts: Dropbox, Mediafire, MegaUpload, ZippyShare, MultiUpload (which itself supports uploading to around 10 file hosts), and more.
• Translated to Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Dutch, French, German, Spanish, Vietnamese, and more.
• You can drag and drop files to add them to a queue and start uploading.
• Can set upload limits in case you have a slower connection or are multi-tasking. By default, the maximum number of uploads is 2.
• You can view your upload history and export download URLs to an HTML file for further backup and/or easy sharing.
• You can save queued files so you can upload them next time you open Neembuu.

Overall, Neembuu Uploader makes uploading to file hosts so easy you’ll wonder why you ever uploaded files on separate websites manually.

How do you upload to file hosts? Let us know in the comments section below!

Among the myriad of DIY tablet stand suggestions on YouTube, here are three that caught my eye because they were extremely simple, with minimal need for complicated setups or modifications.

CD Spindle

If you have CDs lying around, you probably had to buy it in packs of 50 or even 100. If you do, there’s a genius little stand hiding underneath and between those CDs. Your blank CDs will have to go elsewhere, but your tablet will stand nice and tall, just like you see here.

This is a screenshot of the 50-CD spindle case, which will work for either portrait or landscape modes. The grooves in the case that are meant to secure the case cover make great slots to put your tablet on so make sure your CD case has those since certain spindle cases might not have them at all.

The 100-CD spindle case will also work pretty well, but as the demonstrator in the following video says, it’s a bit wobbly since the spindle is higher.

This isn’t the only person who figured out the CD spindle stand. There are many more demos on YouTube showcasing this trick. If you can’t view the video for some reason, just do a search on the giant video portal for ‘DIY CD spindle’ or something similar.

DVD Case

You probably own a library with DVDs of all types of movies, concerts and maybe even documentaries. Then all you need to get a tablet stand is to remove the DVD, take out the movie information slip and cut out the plastic around the case with a  knife. After that, you’ll need some ribbon or some kind of string and tie it around the grooves in the center DVD holder, which will hold the case and prevent it from going down flat when it has the weight of the tablet added.

For full instructions, see this video.

The coolest part of this, even though it’s not demonstrated in the video, might be that you can collapse the case shut, making it quite portable and slim. Since the stand doesn’t take much space, it could certainly make a good travel companion.

Card Holder

A mesh business card holder from Staples is a great investment (around $2) if you’re looking for a tablet stand. It can hold your iPad or other tablet on landscape mode without any problems. However, because of the way it’s constructed, it cannot hold the tablet in portrait mode. It will lose its balance and tip over.

A remedy is presented here by andytraub, who recommends either clamping out or bending towards the middle part, and extending the back side of the card holder. See the video for full instructions.

The result will look something like this.

We’ve also published an article on making your stands for your iPhone/iPod Touch or other smartphone here. Have you seen some other ingenious DIY tablet stand ideas elsewhere? Let us know in the comments section below!

Image credit: someToast

I think you get the idea that there may be unique sources of inspiration for different people. Sometimes, you may find them not just in quotes, but also images and videos. Here are a few select media items that might just give you a bit of the directional boost that you’re looking for.

Photo by Jason Keath

Have your list of resolutions? This simple photo might help you face the potential obstacles coming your way in 2012.

Warhawk Matt Scott In Nike ‘No Excuses’ Commercial

This is an epic commercial, featuring basketball player Matt Scott from the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater, giving a glimpse of the excuses that might set us back when trying to reach your goals.

Henry Ford

This was originally featured in a post from the ever-popular The Chive, which occasionally throws in inspirational quotes and images.

Jason McElwain’s Basketball Story

This inspiring story about a high school basketball team manager with autism shows that a lot of passion can help you overcome obstacles, achieve the unimaginable and lead you farther than you think.

How far, you ask? I don’t want to spoil the video for you, but let’s just say Jason was able to meet the President of the United States after his story went on the news. Passion is definitely key to keeping you motivated in order to complete a task in your New Year’s Resolutions.

Age Is Just A Number

If one of your resolutions includes to exercise more in an effort to become healthier, here’s a cool video that shows you can become a more active person at any time. You don’t need the latest equipment or a personal trainer.The key is to stick to a routine. Watch the following video as the interviewee reveals his age and shows off the body of a 20-year old.

If what you want is to find quotes or inspiring items specific to a theme, we have gathered some excellent sources of inspiration for all types of niches, including creative writers, entrepreneurs and business owners, parents, and even hackers. If perhaps you’re seeking advice to help you accomplish the tasks on your New Year’s Resolutions, here are six useful online tools, and another six websites here.

If you haven’t completed your list of resolutions, here are some more tips on finding manageable and worthy tasks, and here is a simple but effective way to organize those tasks so you’ll have a nice way to visualize your goals for 2012.

How are you keeping yourself motivated to complete your New Year’s Resolutions? Let us know in the comments!

Image credit: Shutterstock

From games to countless humor websites (like our very own Geeky Fun section, which has some great hand-picked items that other sites might not have caught), there’s probably not much you cannot find.

If you don’t quite have plans this break, let us introduce to you some ideas that might enrich your resume, help you improve your existing skills or help you get started on a fantastic project.

Start A Blog On A Topic You Love

Have you always been interested in being a food critic? You could start your city’s very first restaurant review blog (find restaurants with these iPhone apps) and even be featured in local magazines for being a witty foodie and sharing your food knowledge with utmost and serious detail.  I know I have a friend in my home country that did just that. Her high-resolution photographs on her blog also remind me that you might need to awkwardly try to get the perfect dish picture in the best angle while the rest of your party waits, but you gotta do what you gotta do if you’re a serious food blogger.

Another topic you could start your blog on would be a blog to improve your cooking skills.

A cooking blog may be the start of something much bigger (Julie & Julia comes to mind.) But seriously, blogging your way through your dishes might be educational as it is fun. You could record your mistakes or tips for the next time you cook something. It doesn’t even have to be elaborate if you’re not trying to impress anybody. A cooking blog entry may simply consist of one (or more) pictures and some words on what you learned from cooking this time (if you doubled the recipe or made a variation).

Once you have a topic, you must ensure your blog gets updated with consistency. Even the most well-known blogs have only become what they are today because they were updated with frequency, and their entries had consistent quality. If you’re not sure you can take on a blog that you need to update after your winter break, read on to see other ideas we’ve narrowed down for you.

Write Short Stories or A Novel/Do Your Own NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month (there’s also JulNoWriMo) and is a project that can help you get started on your first novel. The idea is that during the month of November, you try to write as much as you can of your novel. There’s a set goal of some thousands of words (50,000 to be exact) that you can choose to follow or if you’ve got the energy, you can write beyond that goal of course.

Most winter breaks are at least 2 weeks in length so if you have more than that (perhaps even a whole month of vacation), you could do your own version of this project. Set a goal of words you want to reach and just type away. Not only can you improve your writing skills, you can also exercise your critical thinking skills to develop a coherent plot and more. It’s also plenty of fun. You can also check out other creative writing projects, such as Six Word Memoirs, OneSentence.org, etc.

Do a DIY project, e.g. Arduino, old laptop hacks, etc.

James has a great series of articles on Arduino blocks that you can use to basically program a little robot to do anything you want without any programming experience. Think of it as Lego MINDSTORMS for adults. As if that doesn’t sound fun enough, you could also try other hardware projects. If you’ve got an old laptop somewhere, there’s always the digital frame hack, which is without a doubt, a great piece of conversation. You could also try a kitchen PC, complete with touchscreen functionality and the looks to kill.

If you have an old desktop PC, why not make a fun privacy monitor? You don’t need many materials aside from paint thinner, a pair of glasses, superglue, box cutter, screwdriver and an old monitor. There are countless fun projects highlighted on our site, as well as the always-interesting Instructables and Make magazine websites.

Learn A Language

We have beginner programming tutorials for several programming languages on our site, such as this one, this one and this one. If you’re not sure which ones to take on as there are quite a few choices, see this article on what you could learn for what environment (Windows programming, web development, etc.)

The official programming language websites are also very good sources to learn the respective language. One fun one is TryRuby. Codecademy is also a great way to learn basic programming in a certain language by doing and passing exercises. One site I haven’t seen anyone list is one that my Java professor had us frequent: CodingBat. There are many exercises on the latter that you can complete in Java and Python, and you can usually get a hint (or the solution even) if you get stuck, though I would suggest taking a break before re-attempting an exercise you’re stuck on to looking at the solution of course.

Perhaps you’re not so keen on learning to program. A foreign language is, without a doubt, a beautiful way to immerse yourself in another culture and expand your language skills. Want to renew those Spanish skills you worked on high school but gradually lost in college and beyond? You can start here, here and here to absorb other foreign languages as well.

Have you had a chance to start a great project you’ve always dreamed of this winter (or another past) vacation? Let us know how you spent your time in the comments below!

Image Credit: Jakub Krechowicz, Robert Kneschke, Hitdelight, berna namoglu, Goodluz, Zadorozhnyi Viktor, ifong, glacial23, darrendean

In case you’re doing the latter, there are many DIY projects that are lengthy and awesome enough to be as good as retail gifts. Here’s a small selection of such DIY gifts.

Kitchen PC

Touchscreen technology in the kitchen to view recipes and check emails? That sounds like you need to buy a new tablet of sorts, but that’s not the case. The Instructable calls for regular PC parts that you can get from your old computers, like a an Intel Atom N270, 2GB of RAM, etc. along with a 17” touchscreen USB kit that you can get from eBay and runs for $70, though there are cheaper 12″ kits.

With such a processor, this beautiful system is meant to be for light tasks, such as web-browsing. On the software side, this PC uses Windows 7, as you can see in the picture, with the Rainmeter theme Omnimo, which aims to bring the WIndows Phone 7 experience to a Windows 7 desktop. For full instructions, visit Instructables.

So the touchscreen kit and Windows 7 (if you don’t have a copy already) doesn’t exactly make this a very cheap gift, but it will definitely be a very memorable one for your spouse at least. Not only that, it will leave guests really impressed. If you want to make something smaller but following the direction of this system, you could also try creating digital picture frames.

Magnetic Spice Rack

This neat project not only organizes spices and condiments, it also adds a touch of sophistication to any kitchen. Magnets are applied to the bottoms of clear-top tins with epoxy paste. Then each tin is labeled and affixed to some metal or magnetic surface. Here’s another way to present a spice rack.

Angry Birds Gifts For Your Child

The popular video game has transcended digital platforms and has made its way into toys of all shapes and forms. If your child has a soft spot for this game, you can make some really great Angry Birds figures using polymer clay, an inexpensive and non-toxic moldable material that can be baked into hardness. If you make enough characters, your child could even have his or her entire little army of pigs and birds.

You can see the instructions on this video. For more Angry Birds crafts, check out this article.

Make A Coloring Book

If your child isn’t obsessed with propelling birds, here’s an idea – a coloring book. This Instructables teaches you how to make black and white coloring pages from your own photos with photo-manipulation software. You don’t even have to use Photoshop if you don’t have it since the instructions actually indicate how to create the coloring pages using Pixlr, a web-based image editor that focuses on speed and features.

A bunch of coloring pages might not be enough for a present, you say. Well, if you want to go further, there are many tutorials that teach you how to bind a bunch of sheets into your own book. A warning: Some Instructables, like this and this, require sewing, but there’s also this tutorial that doesn’t mention sewing at all. With or without sewn parts, the end result could look just like any other retail item.

Giant Fn Computer Key Stool/Chair

This cool stool was made originally for Valentine’s Day, but it can really suit any other holiday. I mean, who doesn’t need a multipurpose stool for his or her feet? And the coolest part is that this stool is completely eco-friendly as it requires recycled box cardboard.

You’ll also need some white paint and paper mache paste, which consists of a mixture of glue and water (or alternatively, flour and water). There are recipes that you can look up for the exact quantities. The stool parts should have a minimum of 3 layers of cardboard to ensure it’s sturdy enough.

For more instructions, click here.

LEGO USB Stick & Other Projects From Our Article Vault

There are many cool DIY gadgets that we’ve discussed previously here. One of the mentioned projects is this epic USB drive with a DIY touch, which you can further upgrade by loading it with lots of office-friendly and open-source portable applications. Beauty and brains, packed in a neat little flash drive. It doesn’t get any better than this.

Do you have any ultra cool DIY projects that could serve as cheap holiday gifts? Let us know in the comments!