Create beautiful maps of your favorite places, then download high-resolution copies of them. Whether you want a water colour outline of the city you recently visited or a detailed grid of your hometown, CityTracking.org’s Map To Image is a simple web-app allowing you to turn your favorite places into art. Sure, you could compile screenshots from Bing or Google Maps to make your own images, but Map to Image makes the process simple.

Set iTunes (or any Mac music player) to pause every time you unplug your headphones and play when you plug them back in. BreakAway is a simple app for Mac that prevents you from filling a room with your music when you unplug your headphones. If this sounds familiar, it should: my iPod shuffle used to automatically pause when I unplugged my headphones.

If you’re like most people, you’ve thought to yourself every day: “Why can’t I set windows to be transparent in Windows, so I can look through them…like actual windows?” What? You’ve never thought of that? Weird. Well, anyways, Peek Through is a program that does one thing: allow you to quickly make any window in Windows transparent. If it’s not apparent why being transparent is useful for you, use your imagination to find a situation where the key is peeking through.

Are you thinking of buying a smartphone, but don’t know where to start? Whether you’re shopping for yourself or someone you love, it’s time to read “Smartphone Buying Guide, Winter 2013″. Written by Joshua Sherman, this manual goes over everything you need to know before you make your purchase. The guide tries to address a broad range of manufacturers and developers of smartphones.

Use Chrome to completely control XBMC. Whether you want to browse and play your media or send a video you’re watching on your laptop to your media center, a variety of extensions and tricks lets you control everything about your media center from Chrome. Are you hosting a YouTube party? You can use your laptop to send videos to your TV, meaning there’s no crowding around a tiny screen or dealing with on-screen keyboards and mediocre search results.

Do you think you’ve thought of every possible use for Dropbox? You haven’t. Neither have I. Writers like me will never get sick of dreaming up new ways to use Dropbox, because this seemingly simple tool can be used to accomplish so much. It’s a program that provides a simple service – sync a particular folder on your computer with all of your other computers and a web service.

Quickly extract practically any compressed file on the planet. If you’re a Mac user, and Apple’s default unzip tool is struggling to open an archived file, it’s time to install the ultimate tool for the job: The Unarchiver. With support for seemingly every compression format known to man – and a couple not yet discovered – there aren’t many files it can’t open.

The world’s most popular productivity suite just got a huge overhaul. Are you still left wondering whether you should buy it? If you’re considering an upgrade to Office 2013, or you’ve just paid for the package and want to make the best of it, this Office 2013 manual is for you. Written by MakeUseOf’s own Christian Cawley, this manual is a great introduction to all of the new Office 2013 features

From your PC to your TV, by way of your Wii. That rhymed and was annoying. I apologize. But seriously, you can play almost any video that’s on your computer right now using your Wii; it’s not hard. Your Wii is hooked up to your network via WiFi and so is your computer. All you need to do is share the video from your PC and open it on your Wii. Sharing the video is easy – Windows comes with that ability built-in.

Obsessively keep track of when your packages will arrive. Delivery Status is a widget for the Mac dashboard that’s actually useful – it tracks as many packages as you’d like from delivery services all over the world. With this simple widget you’ll always be up-to-date about when you should expect a knock on the door. [...]

Turn an aging computer into a kid-friendly machine that’s both educational and entertaining. Thanks to open source software there are a variety of complete operating systems designed to let you hand down computers to kids without worry. Kids love to explore, and computers are a great opportunity for that. Programmers from around the world dedicated to education have built a number of freely available operating systems you can use to set up a computer for your kids, free of charge.

Lock your Mac so you can get up and grab a coffee without fear of some prank derailing your day. QuickLock can be launched from a keyboard shortcut or the notification icon, and is a great way to keep annoyance or worse at bay. In Windows you can press the Windows button and L to lock the screen. You can do this on a Mac, but only if you’ve set your computer to lock every time your screen or computer goes to sleep.

So, you think you’ve got the hang of Gmail, but you’re sure it can do far more for you? Are you certain there are better ways of managing your email than your current methods? If this is your mindset, then you’re ready to read “Beyond the Inbox: The Power User Guide To Gmail” and ensure you’re both proficient and efficient. Your backlog of email will love you for it.

Wind up your knight and slash your way through chickens, spikes and a plethora of other obstacles. Wind Up Knight is a fun game that looks great on your Android phone or tablet. With colorful graphics and simple touch-based controls, it’s worth checking out. It’s easy to get lost in Google Play’s app store, especially when it comes to games.

See real-time Twitter information alongside your Google searches. If you miss Google’s real-time search feature, Hashplug is one way to bring it back – sort of. Once upon a time Google offered real-time search results, using Twitter. This gave any search up-to-the moment context, which was considered helpful by some and annoying by others. Those who found this annoying shed no tears when the service died.