In the past, Google has done a pretty good job helping here.  You do need to know how to search just right and how to sift through the results but the effort is usually worth it.  However, what if there was a site dedicated to view and search through any restaurant menu in your area?  I could then just type in “calzone” and my city/state or zip code and up would pop all of the calzone listings in restaurants in my area.  I have found just that in OpenMenu.

OpenMenu helps to bring restaurants and customers together.  They offer benefits both for the restaurant and the eater.  Let’s look at both.

How OpenMenu Benefits Restaurants

OpenMenu offers several benefits to restaurants.  It’s a place to put your menu for customers to find and search from.  Restaurants should be happy to partake in a free service such as this.

Your Menu In One Place

Are you tired of attempting to maintain a menu in more than one place?  You probably have at least a limited version of your menu on your website and there are also other food sites you may be maintaining your menu on.  OpenMenu tries to become the one place for your menu.  Check out these tools making it easy to maintain your menu in one place:

• If you want your menu on your website, OpenMenu has released a WordPress plugin allowing you to do tasks like putting specials in your sidebar, adding a menu page with your OpenMenu menu on it, and more.

• If you have a Facebook Page for your restaurant, and you should, you can add a tab containing your OpenMenu menu.

Your Menu Searchable

Imagine the publicity you can have if people in your area can search for menu items they want and your food shows up on their list.  Just having the text of your menu online getting indexed by search engines is helpful enough but now you can have your food show up where the people can more easily find what they are looking for.

How OpenMenu Benefits Eaters

Since I don’t own a restaurant, this is the category I fit in and the area that caught my attention with OpenMenu.  I fell in love with the idea of searching for a food item I am currently craving.  They call it OpenMenu Search and it offers several ways to search.

First, you can search for what you want to eat.  Are you visiting Chicago and wondering where you can find a good steak?  Go to openmenu.com/search and type the food item and the city information.

The search results should give you everything you need to find the item you want including the dish, price, restaurant name, and the address.  Clicking the link will bring up the rest of the restaurant information.  Very cool.

You can also search for restaurants which are listed in your area.  Go to openmenu.com/search/location.php, enter your city information, and click Check Location.

It will give you a map and tell you how many restaurants are listed for the city and offer a link to the current list.

Downfalls?

There’s a lot of good things about OpenMenu but there are a few things that need to improve.

• First off, they should design the main site to be a little more intuitive.  For instance, it took some stumbling around to find links to the various search pages.
• Secondly, although there are listings in my area, they are largely chain restaurants.  I would like to see some mom & pop restaurants jump on board.  Often you can find some of them via a Google search but they ought to get on sites like this also.
• The other thing is that most of the restaurants currently participating are in the United States.  Maybe that’s the target market?

Restaurant owners, head on over and create your menu today.  Hungry eaters, try running a food search and see what you find.  Then come back and tell us your thoughts.

If you ever catch yourself in a situation where you need to quickly find a correct spelling, your trusty Android can come to your service!  The next time your pals are sitting around arguing about the spelling of some obscure word (happens all the time, I’m sure), try out some of these Android apps that will help you figure out how to spell a word.

Spell Checker (Voice)

The first app I tried out and loved was Spell Checker (voice).

This app is very quick to access because it sets up a shortcut for you right off the bat.  Once installed, all you have to to is long-hold the search button and up pops the option to open it.

From there, for further ease, you can even choose to speak the word.  How awesome is that?  Alternatively, if you find some text on a website, copy the text and then just open the app and the copied text is automatically entered for you.  With support for nine languages, I’m sure this app is bound to help a lot of people.

ASpell

ASpell is a very simple spell checking app and that happens to be its appeal.  It checks words by the GNU ASpell dictionary.  Its basic function is to tell you if the word in question is spelled correctly and to give you a list of alternatives.

Another helpful feature is that, although English is the only language supported, it has a check box to check for the British spelling.

Aside from spell checking apps, try out these games that make spelling fun.

Speak & Spell

Do you remember the children’s spelling game from the 80′s?  I don’t but perhaps some of you do.  The Speak and Spell Android app is basically an emulator of that game.  They say it’s for nostalgic reasons but try it out, you might like it.

If you don’t know anything about the game, it basically tells you words and you need to spell them.  Being an emulated game from 30 years ago, the graphics seem corny and the voice is a very annoying computer voice.  This is because that was how the original game was so don’t go hatin’!

Seek ‘n Spell

Seek ‘n Spell is a newer game that makes use of GPS technology on your Android phone or iPhone.  The idea is somewhat similar to Scrabble but outdoors.  The game scrambles a bunch of letters across the fields, gives you a map showing their locations, and the players race to collect the letters.  When they make words with those letters, they score points.  This almost looked fun enough for me to go out and try all by myself.

Check out this video to get a somewhat better visual.

What apps on your Android do you use to find out how to spell a word?

Truly the Android is not just any phone.  Yes, you can talk and text on it, but it doesn’t stop there.  Your Android phone works hard to connect your digital life to your real life.

How many awesome articles have we shared with you so far talking about all of the cool stuff you can do with a Google Android phone?  Try some of these on for size:

• The 4 Must Have Android Phone Applications for Students
• 5 Cool Android Apps with GPS Activities For Kids
• Using An All-In-One PDA & GPS For Geocaching [Android]
• Map Your Adventures With a Free GPS Mobile Tracker for Android
• Print From Your Android Phone With PrinterShare
• Post To WordPress From Your Android Phone with WpToGo
• 10 Free Android Apps A Busy Mom Will Love
• 4 Android Phone Applications That Every Programmer Will Love
• 5 Android Finance Apps To Save & Manage Money With Your Android Phone
• And of course Turn Your Android Phone Into A Real Star Trek Tricorder

Sold yet?  If you’re like I was and are in the market to get an Android phone, you need to know some things about the cell phone services offering them with their plans.

What Android Phones Do The Cell Phone Services Offer?

These days most companies offer at least some Android phones.  AT&T offers a few, so does Sprint. You can also get a Verizon android phone. Who should you go with?  Do some research and see which phone you actually want.  For instance, I was originally looking for the Droid 2 and only Verizon offered those at the time (screenshot from the Motorola site).

Then I was looking for the HTC Evo (which I finally decided on) and Sprint offered those at the time (screenshot taken from the HTC website).

My suggestion?  Do some research and narrow down a few of the best services in the area and only look for the phone you’re looking for within their offerings.  Then and only then narrow down the phone you want.  What good is your favorite phone with a bad plan or coverage (we’ll get into those next).

What Kind Of Plans Does The Cell Phone Company Offer?

Price is a big deal for most people.  When you begin looking, you will notice that most companies require some sort of minimum data plan to come with all smart phones.  This, I believe, is because when data-centric phones began hitting the market, people were inadvertently using data without knowing it.  The problem comes when a data plan is not purchased, the as-you-need-it basis is very expensive.  Now, they make you get some sort of data plan to avoid much of the trouble.

Personally, I found a company that offered me the best deal on unlimited data.  This gives me all kinds of room to use and test all the many Android features.  One example is if you are planning on using services that stream music such as Pandora you will be using a lot of data (the app even warned me before getting too far into using it).  Also, think about how much data you’ll be using if you stream or upload a lot of video.

If you are planning on making full use of the Android Market with all of the free apps for downloading, you’re going to want a good amount of data to use.  My advice, do what I did and find a good deal on unlimited data.

Then there’s the minutes and texting.  I also chose unlimited texting because I use it all the time.  If you don’t, don’t waste the money.  You may even be able to find a plan offering free cell-to-cell and considering how many people these days have cell phones this kind of deal could be a decision-maker.  As far as Android phones go, watch the data.  You may talk and text very little but depend heavily on Internet-based apps and services.  Watch… your… data!

Coverage Can Make Or Break A Google Android Phone

You can have the best phone the market has to offer and could have even scored yourself the best cell phone plan on the planet but if you have no coverage where you are, what’s the point?  Look closely at the maps all of the companies  should have on hand.  They ought to be able to show you where you can and can’t get service and whether or not roaming charges will apply.

If you are thinking about adding 4G on your plan, make sure it’s offered in your area.  Don’t waste your precious money on something you can’t use.

My Conclusions From Personal Experience

Before I share my personal opinions, realize they are relative to my own needs and my area.  If something is not true or available in your area, it’s not my fault.

As far as coverage and service goes, Verizon rocks the Central New York world.  Everyone knows that Verizon has the largest strongest reach and the fact is never really argued.  They offer a few of the cooler Android phones like the Droid 2, Droid X and Droid Incredible.  I believe their data plan is one of the most expensive, however.

The other big player, in my opinion, is Sprint.  They offer a good plan that includes unlimited data, talk and text.  The price is very reasonable so they got my attention.  They didn’t have as good coverage as Verizon but they roam off Verizon’s towers for free so all is good.  Offering the HTC Evo sealed the deal.

Do you have an Android phone?  What kind do you have and what kind of service are you sporting with it?  Tell us what you think.

After a bit of research I have some answers.

What Is Lorem Ipsum?

Lorem Ipsum is a group of text that people commonly use as filler text, or dummy text.  It’s basically a bunch of mumbo-jumbo (at least that’s what it looks like) that people use to show what a design layout will look like when the proper text has been inserted.

Why Do Designers Use Lorem Ipsum?

What I kept asking myself is why they would use this jumbled up mess of a foreign language and not some English text?  It all comes down to focus. It’s a known fact that if they were to use actual copy, someone trying to look at only the design would be distracted by what the text says.  That is one of the major reasons people choose to use Lorem Ipsum. With text that is unrecognizable, there’s nothing to read.

Where Did Lorem Ipsum Come From?

As it turns out, Lorem Ipsum did come from Latin.  It’s actually a modified version of it.  What does it actually say?  According to Lipsum.com,

Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC.

Lorem Ipsum has been used since the 1500′s.  It was made popular in the 1960′s and has survived into the digital age with desktop publishing programs like Aldus PageMaker.  As we also know, it is still being widely used among web designers such as WordPress theme designers to show different design elements.

Can I Use Lorem Ipsum For My Projects?

Sure, why not?  It is still widely used so join the proverbial club. In fact there are many tools out there that make using it so easy.  Here are a few of them.

Lipsum.com

I have already quoted from this site because it contains quite a bit of information on the subject.  It also contains a tool to generate a portion of the text.

MakeUseOf’s Directory contains a writeup about it.  Since that time they have released both a Firefox plugin and a Chrome plugin.

Lorem2: “Lorem Ipsum” Text Samples

This isn’t really a software program or tool per se.  It’s really a website containing different sample Lorem Ipsum texts.  It contains short paragraphs, long paragraphs, short list items and long list items.  Web designers should add this site to their tool belt.

HTML-Ipsum

This tool takes Lorem Ipsum usage to a whole different level for web developers.

They offer much of what the last tools offers but with the HTML tags included, making development that much easier.

Tell us, do you use Lorem Ipsum?  If so, in what way?  What tools do you use that we should know about?

There are specific elements that make a site more magazine-isque (if that’s a word). Some of which have to do with the layout of the front page. Another characteristic of a magazine that you can now implement on your WordPress magazine site is that of multiple columns of text in pages and posts.

If you have ever read a magazine, you will know what I mean. A normal WordPress site will typically have only one column of content text much like any blog. If you read a magazine, you’ll notice how there can be multiple columns like in the screenshot below:

Now with the proper plugin you can do this with WordPress in posts and pages. The plugin is called “Magazine Columns” and it can be found in the WordPress plugin directory (author’s blog post). We know though, that for plugins found on WordPress, we can just install them via our WordPress dashboard. If you search for “magazine columns” it should come up as first on the list. Make sure the author is “c.bavota” for this particular plugin.

After installing the plugin, all you have to do to create multiple columns in pages and posts is to insert “<!–column–>” where you want to begin the next column (up to 5 columns):

You’ll also notice that there are added buttons in the HTML tab for easier implementation.  Using the “start columns” and “stop columns” buttons, you can easily have text before and after columns. The result could look like this:

Here’s a full screenshot of how my BloggerDoggie theme looks with multiple columns:

You may be asking, “And that’s all there is to it?” Yes. Really.

Another cool part of this whole topic is that there is actually more than one plugin that does this for you. Similar plugins to try are:

• WP Post Columns – If you visit the author’s plugin homepage, you’ll see that there are quite a few options via short codes.  This could be a positive or a negative depending on how easy you want the process to be.
• WP Columnize – This plugin also has buttons in the HTML tab.  With them you can highlight the text and just hit the appropriate button.  Check out the author’s plugin homepage.

Whichever plugin you use, you’ll find you have quite a bit more flexibility. Using WordPress for other anything other than blogging becomes a bit easier. I know you can mess around with tables in HTML but why would you if a plugin can do it for you?

Do you use columns in WordPress to make it less like a blog? What method do you use?

A while back Damien wrote an article about how to install and run your very own social network using WordPress.  At the time you had to download and install WordPress MU (or WordPress Multi User) in order to install BuddyPress and therefore to have your own social network.

Since the advent of WordPress 3.0, regular WordPress and WordPress MU has now been merged together.  In other words, if you have upgraded your blog to WordPress 3.0, you have the features of MU built right in.  You just have to activate them.

This is good news for someone who wants to use BuddyPress because they don’t have to download and install WordPress MU.  Check out how easy it is now to install BuddyPress now that we have WordPress 3.0.

1. Activate Networking Abilities Of WordPress 3.0.

It’s kind of a mystery to me why the multi-site abilities of WordPress 3.0 are hidden behind a few hacks but they are.  WordPress 3.0 does not act like MU right out of the box.  Check out this article about how to turn your WordPress blog into a blog network using WordPress 3.0.  Do what’s outlined there and you’ll be ready to move on to the next step.

2. Install The BuddyPress Plugin

Installing the BuddyPress plugin (it’s actually a group of plugins packed together) is as easy as installing any WordPress plugin.  Just head to the plugins section of the Admin screen and search for Buddypress.

Just make sure it is the correct plugin and you’re good to go.

3. Activate A BuddyPress Compatible WordPress Theme

After installing the proper plugin, you’ll probably get a message saying: “You’ll need to activate a BuddyPress compatible theme to take advantage of all of the features. We’ve bundled a default theme, but you can always install some other compatible themes or upgrade your existing WordPress theme.”

If you don’t have one downloaded already, click the “install some other compatible themes” link.  For the time being I chose to use the default theme.

That’s all there really is to setting up BuddyPress on WordPress 3.0.  It’s as easy as enabling networking, installing a plugin and installing a compatible theme.  From here it’s up to you to find a niche and users to use this tool.  Take some time and become familiar with some of the features before you get too many users asking for help.  Check out these features:

1. Activity Streams – See What Everyone Is Up To

You can view the activity streams of individuals, groups or even the whole site.

2. Extended Profiles – “About Me” Pages For Users

You have control over what fields users can fill in to describe themselves.  They can upload an avatar too.

3. Private Messaging

Private messaging is like an internal email system.  Send messages to other users that only they can see (image from the BuddyPress homepage).

There’s also other features common to social networking like friend connecting, blogging, and discussion forums.  Check these out at the BuddyPress homepage.  Also try out the test site by going to testbp.org and signing up for an account.

Is BuddyPress the only way to create your own social networking site?  No.  There are what Damien called “3rd party social network providers.”  Check out Groupsite to create a free network without having to handle all of the installation and setting up.  As we know, there are pluses and minuses to both but your needs may dictate which direction you choose to go in.

Do you run a social networking site?  What do you use to do it?  We want to know.

For instance, the other day I wanted to send a 25MB video file to a friend. Most email programs only allow for up to 10MB at a time so email was not an option. Who wants to put it on a USB drive and drive over to their friend’s house?

I wanted to be able to just send it to them. No hassles. No installing funky programs. No waiting to upload to some server in cyberspace and have them wait for it to download again. So what to do?

Let’s narrow down what the file-sending needs (or wants) are:

1. Free – as in no charges whatsoever
2. Browser-based – no installation of some program and, therefore, cross platform
3. Peer to peer – no waiting for uploading and downloading; just the send time
4. The ability to send large files – no file-size limit

When I began to search the Internet for file sharing sites, I wasn’t sure what the easiest solution would be.  What I found out was that there are quite a few file-sending options, but I had criteria. We all have standards, don’t we? Check out these five choices which meet the criteria shared above.

FilesOverMiles

FilesOverMiles does what it sounds like it does: it helps you send files over miles.

Their subtitle “Browser-to-browser Filesharing” tells us that it fits our criteria. When someone sets up a file to send, a URL is created. Just share the URL and stay online for the actual sending.

JetBytes

I like the name “JetBytes” because it speaks to the speed in which peer-to-peer transferring actually affords.

This file sharing site makes it easy referring to “on-the-fly” transfers and all that. Be careful, just as in any of these peer-to-peer tools, don’t try to open the created link yourself. Doing that will only be letting you download the file back to yourself and blocking your friend from downloading it. No too smart.

PipeBytes

From the site: “Instantly send music, movies, presentations or any other files to anybody!” Thanks, for telling us what any of these peer-to-peer tools do for us. OK, I’m just kidding around.

You’ll notice that PipeBytes actually gives some sharing options. You can either send the recipient the URL or a pick-up code which they’ll enter at the home page. Easy-peasy either way.

xFiles

Oh, you have to love the name for this one. Some weird television show is creeping around in my mind now.

All sci-fi weirdness put aside, this file sharing site puts peer-to-peer into easy to understand words: “Exchange big files directly without uploading to a server.” If you are transferring peer-to-peer, the uploading and downloading all happens at once making everything quick and easy.

Dushare

Dushare is a tool not recently mentioned here on MakeUseOf. You can share a file peer-to-peer, password protect it, and even chat while the transfer takes place because who wants to pick up a phone?

Seriously though, out of all of the rest of the file sharing sites mentioned here, I think Dushare has the prettiest looking website design.  Oh, and in case you are wondering what sequence things will happen in, you have some nifty icons showing you.  You can’t beat that.

You’ll notice that there wasn’t much to say about each of these tools. That’s because they all pretty much do the same thing: send any sized files, directly to another person quickly, easily and for no charge. And that’s about all they do. Test them out and see which performs the best and which is the easiest to use. Then come and tell us in the comments which is best.

How do you send large files over the Internet and why do you use that method?

One method of putting this art to use is to hide a message within an image. You can send messages to anyone you’d like to without anyone else being the wiser. This could also be used to put together games and puzzles for website visitors or blog readers by hiding messages in specific images allowing people to hunt for the messages. This isn’t the first time the art of steganography has debuted on MakeUseOf – Tina showcased a desktop client for Windows and Jackson wrote about iSteg for Mac; both of these apps can be used for the exact same purpose.

Whatever your reason for hiding secret messages in pictures, you can now do so regardless of your operating system — thanks to a web-based tool offered to us by mozaiq.

While being a site dedicating to helping people turn images into mosaics, if you head to a subdirectory on the site you will see they offer the ability to encrypt messages in images also.

The process is simple: upload an image, type a message, enter a password, click a button and download the image with the message encrypted in it. Sounds easy enough but let’s take a closer look.

Go to mozaiq.org/encrypt. When you do, you are immediately given the fields to begin the process. Off to the left there is an introduction to the art/science of steganography and mozaiq’s encrypting tool. To the left is where all of the action takes.

Choose a picture to upload.  Make sure it us under 128KB or it won’t work. Once you have chosen the image, enter the message you would like to share.

Before you go and hit the “Hide Your Message!” button, you can enter a password to further protect the privacy of the message.  This is optional and totally up to you.

Once you hit the magic button, you are able to download the image file. Notice that the image will only be available for download for 5 minutes making it imperative that you download it immediately.

Also realize that you can’t change the file in any way other than renaming it. This includes cropping, resizing or even converting it to another file extension.  Once you download it, you are able to send it or post it anywhere you please.  When you do, make sure the recipient knows to go to mozaiq.org/decrypt in order to see the message.

Try out this image for size:

Right-click and save the image of the cell phone and go to the decryption page. I gave it the password “hello” so you can see how it works. See if you can find out the encrypted message. I think you will find it to be both incredibly enlightening and not that surprising (seeing as though it’s also in one of the screenshots above).

So now that we have a way to hide secret messages in pictures, in a way that will not provoke attention, what ways can you think of to put it to use?

In the end it was a lot of fun. It was also nice to share the adventure with our friends and family. If you are interested in live photo blogging your next trip or adventure, check out how I did it and see if it’s the easiest solution for you.

First, find out what you want to accomplish and what you’ll need in order to accomplish it. I wanted to be able to take photographs with my cell phone and syndicate them to several services. I wanted my Twitter followers and my Facebook friends to be able to follow my shenanigans if they wanted to.  I wanted to be able to do it without a cell phone data plan (I know, I’m cheap) so I had to be able to either do it via email (you knew you could text an email address didn’t you?) or direct SMS/MMS.

I could have added Twitter and Facebook directly for each message but Twitter wouldn’t post my photographs unless I used TwitPic or something similar (I don’t like TwitPic because I hate the homepage where they list all of the latest pics).

I finally chose to use Posterous.

Posterous is an awesome blogging tool for many reasons but for this project it had three major perks. One, I could easily set it up to receive and post emails. Secondly, Posterous is easy to set up to post to other services (such as Twitter and Facebook). Third, Posterous accepts several different types of media (ie. photos, videos, sound files, etc.)

Here’s how I set everything up.

Set up either SMS/MMS or email with Posterous

Obviously Posterous works awesomely with your email address. For this mission, we need to be able to send messages to be posted remotely from your phone. You could set up your phone on your account and send messages to 41411.

Using this method will limit you to only 110 characters and you’ll have to enter “post” before the actual message.  You could do that.

I opted for the email method because it doesn’t have the same limit.  My limit is basically set by my text provider which is 140 characters.

Note: Photo-capable phones make sending MMS messages quite simple. With my phone, every time I take a picture the option to “send” it pops right up. When I choose that option, I am taken directly to a new text message and all I have to do is fill in the recipient (Posterous), the message (sometimes I skip this one but it depends on if you have the time) and the subject. Your phone may be slightly different but it should be similar.

Make sure you put something for the subject because it will label the photo for your followers. You can tag the posts by putting the tag in double parenthesis in on the subject line along with the title. For example: “Starting out ((tag: hiking2010))”.

The cool part is that I don’t have to tell Posterous to “post” it; they already know. I just send it to post@yoursite.posterous.com (entering your Posterous site instead of “yoursite”). For security’s sake, Posterous will hold the first post until you confirm it is really a post by you.

Make sure you do this before leaving home. Once the first post is confirmed, you shouldn’t have any more issues. You should be all set to send a text to the email address and have it posted.

Set up the syndication.

Posterous makes connecting to other services a cinch. They call it autoposting and you’ll find a link to the settings in the left sidebar of your manage page.

Then you’ll want to click the make changes button.

There you’ll find the Add a Service button. Choose the services you want your Posterous blog autoposted onto and go through the authentication processes for each. This will get the word out to your followers every time you send an update of your adventure.

Take a few precautions.

Don’t let your phone distract you too much. Yes, take those pics (or even videos) and post them, but don’t miss out yourself on the sites around you. Come out from behind that tiny screen every so often. Personally, I also found myself texting while hiking down a mountain. Not so smart. Be aware of what’s around you and stop moving while you type, etc.

Let your followers know in advance what you’re going to be doing so they know to follow you.

Have you ever live photo blogged with your cell phone?  How’d you do it?