FarmVille is a game by Zynga Games that you can play via Facebook’s application feature. Recently, Zynga launched a stand-alone FarmVille website so Facebook is not required to access FarmVille (ha! so much for the Facebook reputation!).

The FarmVille Facebook game concept is simple. You start out as a lowly farmer with a small plot of ground and a few coins. You have to plow your land, plant crops and wait for them to grow. When they mature, you harvest them and earn coins. You use the coins to plow more land and buy more seeds, and the cycle continues.

Farming

You can also spend coins on trees, flowers, and various farm animals. All of these can be “harvested” as well, earning you more coins.

You can use coins to buy decorations for your farm such as bird baths, mailboxes, hay bales and so on. Plus, no farm is complete without a barn and a farm house, so these items are available as well.

In addition, you can buy a chicken coop to put your chickens in or a dairy farm to put your cows in. Once you have a bunch of chickens or cows in these buildings, it’s one click harvesting of the whole group. All purchases are made through the market.

Experience

Along the way you earn experience points for plowing and planting. Experience points, commonly referred to as “XP”, are how you move up in levels within the game. As you progress in levels you can buy crops that provide higher returns, nicer buildings and nicer decorations.

Currently, there are at least 40 known levels in the Farmville game. Progressing through the early levels is easy but as you move up, it exponentially takes more and more XP to reach the next level. Furthermore, as you plant and harvest, you gain “mastery” points for each different type of crop. It takes approximately 400 plots of an individual crop to be harvested to earn a mastery “star”. Once you earn three stars, you are awarded a sign to post on your farm.

Neighbors

Some items within the Farmville game, including the ability to expand your farm to a larger size, require you to have “neighbors”. Neighbors are nothing more than your Facebook friends who are playing Farmville and accepted your request to be added as their neighbor. You can make visits to their farms to check on their progress and to “help” them out.

This amounts to fertilizing some crops, chasing racoons away and other menial tasks that only require the click of a button. You earn a few coins and XP each time you help a neighbor, and you can only help each neighbor out about once in a six to eight hour time frame.

Gifts

You can also pass gifts back and forth between neighbors. You can send each neighbor a gift once a day. The gifts are basically decorations, animals or items that they could otherwise purchase with the coins they earn. If someone sends you a gift you don’t need or want, you can sell the gift for a few coins. As different levels in the game are attained by you and your neighbors, you may be able to give them a gift of something they may not currently be able to purchase.

Cash

Beyond the coins you earn through your farming “work”, you can also earn FarmVille cash. FarmVille cash takes a lot of time to earn; you only earn a few dollars each time you level up, and it is used to buy premium items or shortcut the system of waiting on levels or specific numbers of neighbors to unlock items. FarmVille is free to play, but you can purchase coins and cash using real money.

Ribbons, Adoption & Sharing The Wealth

As you progress through the game you also have the ability to collect ribbons for your efforts. There are eighteen activities for which you can earn a series of ribbons, progressing from yellow, white, red and blue. Each time you earn a ribbon you are given the option to post a notification as your Facebook status. Usually this allows your friends to “share the wealth”, meaning if they are one of the first few to view your update and click a link, they get bonus coins.

Once in a while a stray animal will wander onto your farm and you can rescue it. This amounts to another status update and your friends can click a link to adopt the animal for their farm.

Why all the fuss? What is all the buzz about? Well, it’s addictive. The FarmVille game currently claims 70 million monthly Facebook users. The game, like the others I reviewed previously, is an idle time game, which means it inherently provides break time where you don’t have to play it continuously. The crops mature in differing amounts of time, ranging from one hour to four days, so you can schedule your game play to fit your lifestyle and play only when you choose to. If a crop matures in one day, you also have about the same amount of time to harvest it before it goes bad and you lose your investment. This adds a little flexibility to the game play as well. Trees and animals do not spoil, so you don’t have to worry about them as much.

With the wide variety of buildings and decorations available, farm customization is easy and fun. You can choose from several colors of hay bales and buildings, so you can use your farm to reflect the spirit of your favorite sports team. You can use the hay bales, flowers, fences and even arrange crops to spell out messages or make decorative designs. Creativity abounds if you are so inclined.

Zynga continuously updates the game, adding new features. Seasonal and promotional items are available from time to time to purchase and add to your farm. Differing crops, new buildings and decorations are added from time to time. One recent modification was the ability to use your barns to store items from your farm. If you purchased some Halloween decorations and they look out of season close to Christmas time, you can store them in a barn and pull them out next year instead of having to sell them.

There are several unofficial FarmVille game “guide” websites out there on the internet which provide information, tips and tricks. If you play but very few of your friends do, you can join forums or sign up on some of these sites and recruit neighbors. Here are just a few of the many FarmVille guide sites available:

Farmville: The Unofficial Strategy Guide
Ultimate FarmVille Guide
FarmVille FaceBook Neighbors
Farmvilles

Do you know of any other guide sites?   Or perhaps you have some games tips you would like to share?   If so, the comments area below is open and ready for your contributions.

Recently, during one of these trips, we found ourselves riding for miles down the beach. We suddenly realized we eventually would have to turn around and pedal back. On the way back, we had a breakdown, and ended up having to walk part of the way back until we found a store where we could pick up the tools to fix the bike. When we got home I decided to go online to see if I could figure out exactly how far we actually traveled.

That’s when I came across the very cool website Daft Logic. Daft Logic bills itself as

a collection of resources, tools and information with no overall theme except to see what can be done with modern web API’s (application programming interface) tools and programming languages. The usefulness or originality is a bit hit and miss but that’s not a bad thing.

Daft Logic is a little odd and quirky but I kind of like that. The website has a clean, simple, and straightforward design. The site is divided into seven primary sections, the three coolest of which are the Projects section, the Sandbox section and the Information section.

Map Projects

The Google Maps Distance Calculator is the reason I stumbled upon the website, and I have bookmarked this page for future use. This is found on their Projects page. If you are a biker, hiker, runner, jogger, or walker, this simple tool can help you plan a route or simply see how far you’ve gone with a few clicks. Mapping my family’s adventurous marathon, I realized we had biked over 11 miles! Pretty good for casual riders.

I like the segment-by-segment function, in that you can click around turns and angles and get a more accurate distance calculation, or you can simply click a beginning and ending point and get an “as the crow flies” distance. The map is simple to use and offers a km, mile, feet, meter or nautical mile distance selection.

Out of curiosity, I mapped out our neighborhood to see how many miles riding each street adds up to and compared this to the estimate I made with my vehicle’s odometer. The result was very accurate. My car showed 2.3 miles and the distance calculator showed 2.341 miles.

There are several other Google Map mashups listed on their Project page, including a Google Maps Guestbook where visitors to a site can click their location and add comments. There is also a Send A Position Map where you click a location and Daft Logic provides a url that you can email to a friend that will link back to the map with the position displayed.

There is also an advanced version of the distance calculator that allows you to save a route on a map. They may not be reinventing the wheel, but having all of these map features on one site is certainly cool. The site authors have provided some code and downloads for you to use some of these tools on your own site.

Other Projects

There are some useful PHP projects to be found here as well. One is a tool that converts an email to a jpg file and there is one that converts text to a png file. These are handy if you want to display an email address, but don’t want the email to be picked up by spammers. Also under the PHP category are a “What is My IP?“, and a “What is My Browser?“ tool.

Included on the Projects page are several Macromedia Flash projects, including a few neat little games like Towers of Hanoi and Tic Tac Toe.

Sandbox

On the Sandbox page are all the projects where ideas are being developed and demonstrated. Users can play around with the projects, provide feedback, and the developers consider whether to continue with the development of the tool.

Many of these are built around Google Maps. One tool will find the nearest Flickr photo from a clicked point on a map, and another tool will reverse look up the nearest address to a point clicked on the map.

Information

Finally, the Information section includes some articles the site authors have penned regarding programming tricks and tips and various KMZ files for finding neat stuff on Google Earth.

Daft Logic seems to be a website done by a bunch of folks sitting around playing with simple programming and ideas, with an extreme interest in maps, time, Google Maps and Google Earth. Yes, some of it is a bit daft but it’s still cool, quirky, geeky and fun!

Now, since I rode the tires off my bike yesterday, I’ll be playing around on Daft Logic when I need a break!

What gets you in a festive spirit? What activities do you do that tune your mood to celebration and enjoyment of the Holidays? I’m sure your answers vary depending on which Holidays you choose to celebrate and which ones you don’t. If, like me, you are strapped to a desk this time of year working and laboring at your job, trying to tie up a thousand loose ends to close out the year for your company, you may not feel very festive. I have to spend hours in front of the computer, scheduling employee vacations, closing projects, and making plans for the coming year, all while planning my vacation and knowing I won’t be at work that much during the holidays. Sometimes the only glimpse of holiday cheer I get is a quick glimpse at my holiday-themed wallpaper or a festive MP3 playing in the background while I work!

Let’s take a look at some safe sites where you can find free holiday downloads like free wallpaper and other gadgets for your computer to help you get in the festive holiday spirit. All of the sites herein have passed my browser’s Web of Trust and AVG security checks. I have downloaded content from all the sites and afterward scanned my computer for any unwanted intrusion and my inbox for slews of unsolicited email and they have all come through clean. Downloading items to dress up your computer can be dangerous and result in a lot of spyware, adware and craplets, so be sure to check out the sites’ reputations before you download!

Let’s get started!

Free Holiday Downloads – Wallpapers and Screen Savers

Blue Mountain, an AGInteractive affiliate, hosts a website that specializes in eCards, but they have sections devoted to wallpaper and screen savers. AGInteractive is the online subsidiary of American Greetings, so both the Blue Mountain and the American Greeting sites are very similar, sharing many of the same wallpapers. The Blue Mountain site showcases specific artists whose work ranges from beautiful to cartoon-like, yet still cool. They state upfront that their free downloads are 100% Spyware and Adware free and as far as I can tell, this is 100% true. Within their free download section their categories include Seasonal and Holidays. The website is kept up to date with the American holiday calendar, with a click on “Seasonal” resulting in Thanksgiving and fall themed wallpapers and screen savers.

Once you select a wallpaper from a thumbnail, you are given choices of screen resolution sizes to download. If you are not sure of your current screen resolution, right-click on your desktop and look for a “properties” or “Graphics Properties” and click the “Display Settings” button or tab. This will vary slightly depending on your operating system.

Simply select your screen size and click “download now”.

For these two sites, you need to go through a free and simple registration process. If you are not interested in receiving offers or updates from these companies, simply deselect the check box. They also offer screen savers and interactive desktop calendars which come with “wallpaper packs”.

Holiday Music Downloads

Free holiday music downloads abound on the internet. Regardless of your musical taste or favorite genre, you are sure to find something you like. However, my taste in music may not be the same as your taste. I did however, want to point out that every day in December, through the 25^th, Amazon will be offering one free MP3 download per day here.

If you are interested in Christmas music, FeelsLikeChristmas offers several “free and legal” MP3 selections in four categories: Contemporary Instrumental, Contemporary Vocal, Traditional Instrument and Traditional Vocal. Each category has several selections of public domain music available from both well known and lesser known artists. Artists are encouraged to submit their recordings of public domain holiday songs for exposure, not payment. I was able to download a Jars of Clay and a Bob Bennett performance simply and quickly with no-registration process.

If you want to simply listen without downloading, you may want to slip over to Last.fm, and do a tag search for “Holiday”, “Christmas” and so on. They have a decent selection of music under these tags, although their free download selection is limited. If you don’t have an account, the sign up is quick, easy and free. If you want more information on Last.fm, check out these MakeUseOf articles.

What are your favorite holiday songs and who are your favorite seasonal performers? You might also want to check out Tina’s recent post on the Top 8 Sites To Listen To Free Christmas Music Online

Themes, Cursors, and Sounds

Themes generally consist of wallpaper, screen saver, specialized icons and cursors, and various sounds based on the theme. You can also download these items individually and mash them together for your own personalized theme. I tend to do that a lot, as I may like the wallpaper but not the cursor or screen saver. I found a neat package of Christmas and New Year related cursors aptly named “Kriss Kringle’s Christmas Cursors” at PC World. This holiday hodownload provides fifteen cursors, three of which are animated.

The download is a zip file that you need to unzip and then create a folder with a memorable name. Move the cursor files to this folder. Next go to your control panel, find the mouse properties selection and click on the Pointers tab.

Just to the lower right of the “Customize” section, click on browse and look for your folder. Select a cursor and it shows up in the “Normal Select”. Now you’ve changed that boring arrow to something festive! If you’ve played around with cursors before, this is very simple, and you can select various cursors for various ‘select’ types (working in background, busy, etc.). Don’t worry, you can always come back here and click the “Use Default” button to return to normal on January 2, 2010!

The neat thing about this time of year is that everyone seems to enjoy different approaches to the various holidays. Some people like traditional, some like contemporary, some like humorous, and some enjoy a child centered approach. Depending on how you choose to celebrate, you can certainly find plenty of items out there to dress up your digital life with holiday cheer. The sites I’ve previewed may not be exactly your taste and approach to the holidays this year, but spend some time searching for what you like, and share what you find in the comments section.

Oh, by the way, Happy Holidays!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

]]> http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-buy-used-stuff-for-cheap-on-facebook/feed/ 8 http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-create-self-updating-excel-charts-in-three-easy-steps/ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-create-self-updating-excel-charts-in-three-easy-steps/#comments Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:01:12 +0000 Paul Coffman http://www.makeuseof.com/?p=27657 If you’re like me, you love the idea of charts and can think of dozens of useful applications for them, but when it comes to creating them, the frustration starts.

Charts often make decision making easy. They’re a nice change from staring at rows and columns of numbers. They add some style and pizazz to your documents or presentations. Creating charts in Excel seems complicated, so you end up settling for simple charts which require a lot of work to maintain.

In my full time job, charts help shorten the decision making process, as we can immediately see our results and where changes need to be made. The difficulty in handling data and charting it is you constantly have to go back to the chart and update it for new data.

Well, no more! I want to show you three easy steps to creating charts in Excel that self-update. All you’ll have to do is add data to the spreadsheet and the chart will automatically graph it. You won’t have to depend on others to manipulate or mess up the chart and you won’t have to do all that extra work either. You don’t need any Visual Basic skills, but you do need to understand the basic fundamentals of Excel charts.

To walk you through the process, I have created a fictional pet store called “Paws n’ Fangs“ and I have begun an Excel workbook titled “pnfinv.xls“. Here is the October inventory of pets as of the seventeenth of the month, along with a basic chart of the dog inventory. This is the starting point and step one ““ a spreadsheet with a basic chart.

The problem is updating the chart for new daily inventory numbers. I may not want store clerks to mess with the charts and I may be tired of doing it all the time as well. I can quickly look at these charts and determine when and how many pets I need to order from my supplier, so I don’t want to abandon the use of the charts.

Step two is to name the column that I want to chart. This is done through the menu bar by clicking Insert>Name>Define. When the “Define Name“ window pops up, we start by clicking inside the text box under “Names in Workbook“. In this blank space, we type in the label for the column we plan to chart.

For our example, we would type in “Dogs“ exactly as it appears in the spreadsheet. Now we have defined a Name, but we have to further define what the name means.

At the bottom of this window is a blank area for “Refers to:“. This is where the magic happens for our chart. In this box we use the OFFSET function. Notice the formula is “=OFFSET(Sheet1!$B$7,0,0,COUNTA(Sheet1!$B$6:$B$37)-1)“. This looks complicated, but let’s break it down.

What we have done in this formula is to define that the name “Dogs“ refers to data in Sheet1, with data starting in cell B7. The “0,0″ pinpoints to B7, as these are “Row, Column“ variables. If we used “$B$7, 1,0″ we would be referencing B8, as the “1″ in the row variable position would mean that we were referring to one row below the stated cell. In our simple example, it is much easier to directly reference the starting point of the data by using “$B$7, 0,0″.

Next, the formula counts the non-blank cells in the entire column, including the header (B6:B37) and subtracts 1 (for the header-necessary for sorting functions). Notice two important points. First, the “Sheet1″ portion of the formula is simply the name of the sheet on which the data is located. Excel’s default is Sheet1. Your charts could be in the same Excel workbook, but on a page titled “Charts”, while you may have various sheet titles such as “Oct 09 Inv”, “Nov 09 Inv”, etc. Be sure to properly reference the sheet title or you’ll have a mess on your hands.

The second point is that for our example, we have a defined number of days in the month (31), so our maximum number of entries at one per day is thirty-one. Thus, our defined range to count extends to cell B37, where the 31^st piece of data will be. You may have hundreds of data points you will eventually want to fill in and chart, or you may have a defined number. The point is to use a large enough reference so that you won’t have to go back and readjust the Names. If your spreadsheet is a defined size, simply use the maximum cell reference here.

Now we have defined the column name and the data referred to by the name “Dogs“. The third and final step is to point the chart to the name “Dogs“. This is pretty simple. Right click on the chart, and select “Source Data“. Click the “Series“ tab and in the text box beside “Values“, simply type in the name of the worksheet and the name of the range in this format – “=workbook name!RangeName“, which for our example will end up as “=pnfinv.xls!Dogs“. The workbook name is used here instead of the sheet name, as the Defined Names from step one are rooted to the workbook.

Click “OK“ and the chart will now self-update! We can test this by entering more data for the next several days. If the syntax of your formulas was entered correctly, your charts should update before your eyes! No more clicking and dragging cell reference outlines all over the place every time you add a piece of data to your spreadsheet. You don’t necessarily have to create a chart to begin with. You can wait until after you have defined a Name, and then begin the charting process.

Finally, for all the other pets in my imaginary store I can go back through the simple three step process and work on creating self-updating charts in Excel  for my entire inventory.

For other tips, tricks and cool free charting applications check out the MUO Charts tag directory and also check out the Excel tag for more Excel posts.

An idle time game is what it says. It’s a game you play in your idle time. The beauty of idle time games is that they are designed to provide you with some down time away from the game too. Certain components require specific time frames to complete with no interaction from you, thus leaving you time to go back to doing other stuff.

When you have a break from email, work, and checking out all the other MakeUseOf tips, programs and websites, log in to Facebook, click “Applications“, and check out the top five most popular idle time Facebook games.

On top of the list is FarmVille, by Zynga, with nearly 60 million “active monthly users”.

A similar game by Slashkey, called Farm Town, ranks fifth, with nearly 18 million users.

These two top Facebook games are very similar, allowing me to kill two digitally rendered, unreal virtual birds with one stone.

Both games provide a chunk of cyberspace upon which to grow “crops”. You’re a farmer (customizable avatar) with a small farm and a few coins to buy seeds with. You plant crops, which have varying times to maturity, and wait for them to grow. Later, you come back and harvest them to earn coins. You then plow the land to prepare for more crops. Harvesting and plowing earn you experience points which help you “level up”.

Barns, pathways, water features, and fences are just a sample of the items available for purchase with your earnings to personalize your farm. As you progress in levels the items you can buy get more enticing and more profitable seeds are available. You can also increase your farm’s size.

There are a few differences in the two games which may determine which you prefer. Take both for a test drive and decide for yourself. You might get addicted to both, like me. Farm Town allows you to earn coins and experience by helping other farmers who aren’t your neighbors and includes chat features. Both games have animals you can purchase, but only FarmVille allows the animals to be “harvested”. Cows give milk, sheep give wool, and so on.

Mafia Wars, another Zynga game, boasts 26 million users. If you’re in the mood for stealing, robbing, or icing someone in cyberspace this may be your game. It’s a dashboard-only game, meaning you do not have an avatar or a character to move around. If you want to do a job, you click a button, and the results are displayed. Many other idle time games are designed this way, and as someone used to Grand Theft Auto action, I personally don’t enjoy this type of game.

You earn money for doing jobs which include robbing a pimp, collecting on a loan, and other mafioso tasks. You recruit friends to be part of your mafia, and you can fight other people’s mafias. Websites outside of Mafia Wars have popped up where you recruit people other than your friends to be in your Mafia. The more members you have, the more successful you are. You can purchase items, and you level up by building experience with jobs and fights.

Energy, stamina, and health are important, as jobs require varying levels of these traits to perform. This is where the game invokes idle time. Once your resources are depleted, a clock is displayed and you have to wait it out until they begin being refilled.

Pet Society by Playfish is a cute game that seems to be designed for the younger crowd, yet it claims fourth place with 19 million users. This game allows you to have a customizable pet that interacts with the environment. The pet has a home and a community to explore. The community includes a home improvement center, a cafe, and a grocery store, among others. You can decorate your home, play with your pet, and feed your pet.

This game has a mini-Sims like feel as it has three status bars you try to keep maxed out to ensure your pet is healthy, happy and clean. The feel is cartoon-like, but it’s is a relatively simple and safe game for children if you allow them to use the computer during your idle time.

Similar to Pet Society, YoVille is an interactive community with people-based avatars, but this game includes chat features. You work at a “job” to earn coins. You can only work so often and at specific intervals, thus the idle time feature. Your character is given an apartment to live in and you recruit your Facebook friends to be your neighbors and coworkers.

All of these games share common traits. You earn coins and experience to purchase cooler items and to level up. They encourage your friends to play as well, as some features can’t be unlocked unless you have a certain number of neighbors, co-workers or mafia members.

Each has a gifting feature where you can choose a gift to send to your friends or neighbors. The gifts are items they could eventually buy within the games, but they may not be at the level where the gift is unlocked. If you just don’t want to wait on a harvest or a job, you can use real money to purchase game money. However, all games are free to play.

Most of the games are beta, so you may have some connection issue or other issues from time to time. The biggest drawback to these games is their addictive nature, turning them from “idle time” to “all the time”.

Which Facebook game takes up all your time?   Let us know all about it in the comments.

How do we use technology to make our driving safer or improve our driving instead of putting us at greater risk for accidents? First of all, MakeUseOf has a Cars Directory which covers gas price sites, trip cost sites, vehicle pricing sites, car wallpaper sites and GPS apps sites. Most of these sites do not directly help with safer driving tips, except one.  This is Risky Roads, which was reviewed here.

Risky Roads

This site is a Google Maps mashup that shows the fatal accident concentration in your selected area. The site is free and doesn’t require registration. How does it improve your driving? Once you review the hotspots for accidents in your area, you can commit to driving especially carefully in these areas. Most hotspots in my area are intersections, and I know the ones that I drive through regularly, so I make absolutely sure I’m not distracted when I’m in these areas. I pay closer attention to driving defensively.

Most fatal accidents happen within 25 miles of the victim’s home. That means we get in a comfort zone when driving in familiar territory. This site demonstrates that our comfort zone can be a dangerous place.

Safe Driving Test

A few years ago, you may have seen the Drive for Life program on television. This program included a National Safe Driving Test which played a scenario, asked a question and then gave you a few seconds to answer. The program has not been shown for several years, and their website has not been updated recently, but it is still up and running and provides some very good free safer driving tips, including clips from the show.

You can still purchase copies of the DVD of the television program as well. I really like the Test Your Wheel Personality survey. This is a free, no registration required, multiple choice quiz which helps rate your stress, aggression and driving style. Once submitted, you are provided safer driving tips to improve your personal driving habits to help avoid accidents.

Many locales provide Traveler Information Systems. In the United States, these are collectively known as the “511″ system. You can simply dial 511 from your phone to access information. Many states and cities also provide an array of online resources as part of their 511 system. These may include listings of traffic backups due to accidents or general congestion, construction zones and times, weather issues, travel times, estimated speeds on major roads, and some even have viewable traffic cameras.

511

Many 511 websites utilize mapping to provide an overview of your location, with a customizable map to allow you to toggle the parameters on and off. The 511 system is a good tool for trip planning, but it also can help improve your driving by helping you avoid areas where congestion and agitated drivers are likely to be. If you are not in the environment, it is less likely the aggression will rub off on you and you may have a stress free ride home. A few seconds to check 511 before leaving the office may save you a stressful hour in traffic. A list of current and active 511 locations can be found here.

Drive Safe with Uncle Bob

Defensive and safe driving requires instruction. The DMV book teaches the rules, but who teaches defensive driving skills without selling you or your company a program? Check out Road Trip America’s Drive Safe with Uncle Bob. “Uncle Bob” lists seventy rules for defensive driving. Each tip is listed with a link to a full length article. Check out Rule Number 5 which suggests four things that every driver should do that could eliminate all traffic fatalities.

Safercar

Finally, make it a regular part of your routine to check your vehicle at Safercar to see if it is the subject of a recall or defect investigation. Keeping your car in tip top shape and ensuring there are no inherent problems can keep you safe on the road.

Check out these other MUO articles for information regarding other sites to help keep your car running well:

- CarComplaints: Common Car Mechanical Problems Shared By Car Owners
- 10 Of The Best Sites To Keep Your Car Running At Top Speed
- CarBibles: Comprehensive Auto Maintenance Guide

Do you know of any other websites?

The first thing that happens when the power goes out is that the food in the refrigerator begins to thaw. The second thing is that the house begins to heat up (or get cold, depending upon where and when). These two things mean very little. Somewhere within driving range the power is on and food is available. As long as the car starts, heat or air conditioning is nearby.

During a long term power outage, you milk every electron for all it’s worth. You keep working on your computer, draining the battery, certain the power company workers will flip the right switch and you’ll be saved. As luck has it, you get the ‘Critical Battery Level’ warning and you curse the weather or the power company, or both. Oh well, your smart phone still has plenty of juice. Another hour playing with ring tones, free pre-loaded games, and sending emails, and you notice the dreaded red-rimmed battery indicator. You look for your charger only to realize the power is still off, and it will do you no good.

Before you end up on the verge of a nervous breakdown and you are found by the rescue squad cowering and crying in a corner with a flashlight in your hand, flicking it on and off; take heart. There is a world out there that is not hard wired to electricity. Here are the top ten power outage activities you can do to maintain your sanity.

1. Take a walk, bike ride, or exercise at your desk. Your neck, back, and posture will be surprised, but will thank you. A power outage is probably a sign telling you to get off your chair and out into the open. One of my favorite wellness websites, WebMD has a great article discussing various office exercises you can do. Just be careful doing these in the dark.
2. Take a nap. Your brain needs a break. If you are at home, no one will care. If you are at work, the boss won’t be able to see you in the dark. Just don’t snore.
3. Play a game of solitaire with REAL cards. Dogmelon has a list of about fifty variations on solitaire, complete with rules and graphical explanations.



4. Socialize. The computers may not work but phone lines do. Pick up the phone and call a loved one.
5. Read a REAL book. Candles or flashlights can aid this effort. And contrary to popular belief, you won’t do permanent damage to your eyes.
6. Raid the refrigerator. The food might go bad. Use it or lose it! How long can food last? Find out at the National Center for Home Food Preservation.
7. Sit by a window and write a letter. It’s like an email only you use a PEN or PENCIL and PAPER and it’s a bit more formal. Someone may appreciate it.
8. Make a shopping list. Do a stock-check around the house. Let’s see, batteries, flashlight, a deck of cards, a board game or two, candles, pencil, paper, more food…
9. Drive to the nearest home improvement center that has electricity. Buy a generator. Check out this Honda power equipment website before the power is off to help determine the size you might need.



10. Grab a pencil and paper and get in your car for a mini-expedition. Map out Wi-Fi hot spots outside your local area where the power might be on when yours is off. (You might also check out, 5 Wi-Fi Hotspot Finders to Find Wi-Fi Spots Near You.) When the power comes back on check out Zeemaps, a free online mapping service that makes use of Google Maps. A simple email/password registration allows you to save and share your maps.

What is unique about Zeemaps is that you can upload your CSV files and map them. If you want to map customers, suppliers, friends, or WiFi spots this site can do it simply by uploading the CSV file with the address. Of course, you can manually locate markers as well, or use GPS coordinates.

So get busy creating a list of your WiFi spots and mapping them before the power goes out again. You can color code markers or use special icons – basic hot spots get a green marker, ones that also have plenty of electrical outlets available get a yellow marker and hot spots with outlets, real books, java, and board games get a red marker!

In addition to the tips I’ve offered, other MUO authors have provided tips like 20 Ways to Increase Your Laptop’s Battery Life and Five Ways to Reduce the Power Consumption of Your Computer. Make sure to check them out as well.

What do you do when there is a prolonged power outage?

My desktop has only the documents that I am working on today, plus the shortcuts I use each and every day. If I don’t use it within 48 hours, I create a folder and file it. Much like the situation with my desk, keeping my computer organized improves productivity. It also helps my less organized co-workers. The moment they can’t find an important email or paper, they ask me for it. I find it ““ quickly.

Let’s look at some simple and basic tips to organize Windows that you may be overlooking and won’t cost you a nickel.

Folder Structure

Many people go through their day to day computing work not even realizing they can create a new folder practically anywhere by right-clicking and then selecting New ““> Folder. You can then rename the folder to whatever you would like. Your desktop, in Outlook Mail, within My Documents, within My Music, and in your browser’s “Favorites” or “Bookmarks” are all places you can create new folders.

If you have all your pictures grouped into one huge folder labeled “Pictures” and you have to spend an inordinate amount of time hunting a specific picture taken on the beach in 2007, you may need to organize your Windows folders a bit. Having a folder within the Picture folder that is labeled “Beach pics 2007″ might save you time.

The key to organize Windows folders is to do a little planning first with pencil and paper. I have a strong preference for the “drill down“ method when it comes to organizing. For example, you may use a folder that is generically named “Music” or “MP3s”. Inside are 857 different songs from various artists and albums. I like it much more organized. Inside my “Music” folder, I have different folders for different genres of music ““ say “Alternative”, “Hard Rock”, “Classic Rock”, “Country”, and well, you get the drift. Inside the genre folders, I have individual folders for each band. Within the band folders, I have individual folders for the albums. Finally, inside these folders are the actual MP3 files. This seems like a lot of work, and it can be, but doing the background work of building the framework secures your organization for a long time to come.

When it comes to free applications out there to help you get organized, there are very few. Fortunately, Windows builds many of these functions right into your operating system. There are plenty of free resources for icons and color templates to organize Windows and dress up your folders, but when I fill up my screen with neat icons and pictures on my folders I find them distracting.

Program Launcher

Enhancements that you don’t want to miss for organization, convenience and productivity include Launchy, which allows you to have files, folders, shortcuts, etc. at your fingertips with a simple Alt+Spacebar hotkey combo. This free utility has previously been reviewed on MUO (See Launchy).

Bulk File Renaming

You may also want to consider any one of many bulk renaming utilities available. These allow you to seek and destroy those nutty “DCIM002354″ file names faster than right-clicking and renaming each one manually. They also give you various capabilities such as changing file names to all caps, all lowercase, capitalize words and many other nifty things. Check out MUO reviews of D-FileMU and Renamer.

File Comparator

Finally, if you do use a lot of folders to keep organized, you need to make use of a file comparator. These normally lightweight utilities allow you to basically replace Windows Explorer with a program that has added functionality of comparing files, swapping directories, and oftentimes renaming. You can find multiple copies of your files that have been hidden away in numerous different directories and consolidate your files, deleting unneeded multiples. I used to love the old Windows File Manager, but now that I am using Commander, it feels like File Manager on steroids.

How do you keep your computer organized? How do you find files fast? What free utilities do you use to organize Windows? Share your ideas.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image Credit : jmacphoto.com