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Think You Can Type Fast? Try These 4 Free Typing Test Sites & Find Out!

Erez Zukerman — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:01:48 +0000

They tell me touchscreens are taking over the world, and Windows 8 is going to be composed mainly of huge brightly colored tiles, easy to hit with a fat finger (or your nose). Until that happens, I’ll stick to my trusty keyboard (and Colemak, my layout of choice). But having a keyboard (and even a nice layout) is just not going to cut it – if you use a computer for a living, you need to type like a pro.

I’ve collected several gems from around the Web, all free, designed to help you figure out how fast (or slow) you currently type, and of course, get even better at this all-important basic computer skill.

Typing Test – KeyHero

To start things off, let’s find out how fast you type. For that, you can try using KeyHero’s Typing Test. It looks like this:

KeyHero presents you with a ready-made text, which you are to type with impeccable accuracy. If you make a mistake, it is marked, and you need to go back and correct it. The texts tend to be complex, and I even caught one that was missing some words. So my advice would be not to judge yourself after just one test; try several tests with a few different texts, and look at the average of your scores. Speaking of scores, this is what they look like:

That’s for a single session. Results for multiple sessions are shown like this:

The top graph shows WPM, words per minute, so you can see I am getting faster just by playing with KeyHero (started at around 81 WPM in the first test, and the last one was 99.2 WPM). The bottom graph shows common types of typing mistakes, so you can analyze your typing habits. I definitely have a case of bad ordering in these three tests – you can see how this type of error just gets worse and worse with each passing test.

Type Fu

Type Fu is another free utility, but it tries to do a bit more than just gauge your current performance. The main screen looks like this:

It’s a tiny screenshot but you can see the general layout. At the top of the screen is a bar showing the current lesson, as well as several buttons leading to different stats. In the middle there’s a phrase you’re supposed to type, and at the bottom there’s a keyboard (multiple layouts supported, including Dvorak and Colemak), as well as a hand diagram showing what finger you’re supposed to be using.

Once you start a lesson, the display looks like this:

You can see your errors in red, as well as your current progress through the lesson. Since I love graphs, here’s what the speed chart looks like:

The whole thing feels somewhat like a desktop app, and there are also cool typewriter-like sound effects played while you type. Lots of fun to use.

Typing Game

This next one is actually a Chrome add-on. If you like retro-style “aliens falling from the sky” games, you might enjoy typing game. Here’s what a session in progress looks like:

There’s not much to it, really. Aliens fall down from the sky, each marked with a short word. Type the word, and then alien explodes. But type it too slow, and then alien drops a bomb (as you can see above under “own”) and starts burning up your city. Once enough fires are lit, you lose. This one starts out very easy, but it does get challenging after a while. No graphs here, though.

Typing Club

Typing Club is, I think, the coolest one of this bunch, so I left it to the end. This is a well-structured array of lessons gradually taking you from novice all the way to typing ninja, with lots of stats along the way, and no ads in sight. It’s really pretty amazing. And if you’re already a ninja, you can always skip ahead in the lessons. Here’s why a typical lesson looks like:

I can’t really convey this in a screenshot, but Typing Club is gorgeous. As you type, the letters fade in beautifully, and the whole thing just feels very slick and well-polished. Once you finish a lesson, you get a score:

You also get a report for each character used in the lesson:

And your performance is recorded in the lesson plan, Angry Birds style:

All in all, Typing Club is superbly executed. If you care about your typing, you should definitely check it out.

What’s your favorite free online typing test? Let me know in the comments!

Image Credit : ShutterStock

Ubuntu Friendly: A User-Submitted Database Of Computers That Work With Ubuntu

Justin Pot — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 19:31:29 +0000

Do you want to know if your computer will work with Ubuntu? Head to Ubuntu Friendly to quickly find out. It’s an ever-growing database of computers known to work flawlessly with everyone’s favorite Linux-based operating system. Do you want to help make that website useful? Run the system test on your computer running Ubuntu right now. You will run tests on your wireless card, your sound and more.

Ubuntu Friendly is a new, beta website allowing users to find out whether Ubuntu will run properly on their computer. All of the information is provided by end-user tests; the software for the test is built into every Ubuntu system. It’s a simple way for everyone using Ubuntu to give back to the project, without the need to code.

Even better though, this is a very useful way for would-be Ubuntu users to find out whether their computer will work without having to actually install the system.

Checking The Database

If you want to know if your computer can run Ubuntu, head over to the site to find out.

Of course, not every computer is in this database yet. That’s where users running their own tests come in.

Running The Tests

Looking for the system tests? Just open up the Unity dashboard and type “Testing“. You’ll see the “System Testing” option come up quickly. Fire that program up and you’ll be ready to start.

The first thing you will see is a selection of tests. Scroll through them and uncheck anything that doesn’t apply to your system. For example, if you don’t have Bluetooth on your computer, feel free to turn off the Bluetooth test.

Once you continue, it will be onto the tests. Don’t worry, it’s not complicated. In all cases you will be asked to do something, then click “Yes” or “No“. It will be the easiest multiple choice test you’ve ever taken!

For example: the test on your graphics card asks you whether or not you can see some colored bars and static:

If you see them, click “Yes” and continue. If not, click “No“. If you think a particular question doesn’t apply to your system, click “skip this test” to continue without corrupting the test’s results.

Another example is testing whether the volume buttons on your computer work:

Working through all of these tests took me about 20 minutes, but your experience may vary. Once you’re done you can send your information out to the world, though you will need a Launchpad account to do so:

Conclusion

This is a great way for non-programers to contribute to Ubuntu. It’s not a huge effort, but anything you can to to help spread Ubuntu is helpful. There may well be someone with your exact computer who ends up using Ubuntu because of your tests. Or if something isn’t working, the Ubuntu team might well find a fix. So running these tests is something every Ubuntu user should consider doing.

I ran a test on my EEE 900a and saw the results go live almost immediately. It’s a rewarding feeling, one every Ubuntu user should feel. Run the tests and submit the results; then come back here to let us know how your system did in the comments below.

Oh, and be sure to check out 11.10, the latest version of Ubuntu, if you haven’t yet. It’s a great one.

How To Install OSX Lion On An External Drive To Test It Out [Mac]

James Bruce — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 17:31:07 +0000

One of the great things about Macs is that the OS is bootable on any Mac machine, regardless of which computer it was originally installed on. This means that if your desktop breaks, you can grab the drive and boot it from your laptop instead, without having to worry about data recovery services and lost work time.

Another powerful use for this is that you can install OSX onto an external hard drive, and have a completely portable OS. Today I’ll be doing just that with OSX Lion in order to test it out, but this applies just as equally to any previous versions of OSX.

What This Isn’t

This has nothing to do with a Hackintosh or booting OSX on Windows machines. This also isn’t about installing OSX from an external drive (if you can’t read DVD’s for instance). Rather this is about installing a working OSX system on an external drive, so that it’s portable and able to be easily moved around and booted from any machine.

The only limitation is that both machines must use the same architecture. This means you cannot install Lion to a USB drive then boot it on your old Power PC – but you could install it from an Intel i5 based machine and boot from an Intel Core2Duo.

You may be thinking this would useful to run a testbed install of OSX to trial new apps or software, but it’s more designed for the portability aspect of being able to boot the OS anywhere, and to test Lion while still keeping everything on your primary machine as it is. OSX Lion will actually allow you to run two additonal copies of the OS inside a virtual machine for testing purposes.

Why Would I Do That?

If you’re a registered developer like myself, you’re often able to download beta versions of the OS ahead of the official release. Or you might have just downloaded it from a torrent. Regardless, installing beta software on your primary machine is pretty silly, so how about making a test install on an old external drive? You can even import all the settings and files from your main machine, and give all your apps a test run to see if they’re still compatible.

Prepare Your Drive

Connect your USB or other external drive and open up disk utility. Click on the corresponding drive on the left hand side, and be damn sure which one it is because we’re going to erase everything on it.

Click on the partition tab, select 1 partition from the drop-down box. In order for the drive to be bootable, it’ll need to be formatted with GUID Partition Table, so make sure that’s selected by clicking on Options. If Options is greyed out, you haven’t chosen to make the drive into 1 Partition yet, so re-read this paragraph and do it again.

Name your drive too if you like, and click Apply when you’re ready. It shouldn’t take too long.

Install

Mount your install image, run the install app, or insert the install CD. Accept the conditions without reading them (whatever, right?), and when asked to choose the drive to install to, be absolutely sure you don’t select your main computer drive. Click show all disks and choose the external drive you just formatted. Proceed to install.

Boot

The install procedure will run through and automatically boot into your new OSX Lion, but when you’re ready to come back to the real world, you can choose the drive to boot from using the Start Up Disk option in System Preferences.

Alternatively, to choose during start-up, just hold down the Option/Alt Key on your keyboard. This might not work if you use a wireless keyboard as the Bluetooth stack isn’t initiated until a little while into boot time. If you have an Apple Remote, holding down the Menu key during boot up achieves the same effect though.

Did you know you can boot OSX on any machine? Just another of the advantages of Mac. Windows installs are tied down to the machine they’re installed on rather than being hardware independent, so if your Windows machine breaks, it’s a long and hard data extraction process awaiting you. Here’s hoping Windows 8 might fix that.

On a side note, have you tried Lion yet? What do you think? Personally, I think the new scroll style is particularly off-putting. On the trackpad I can see myself getting used to it, but on the mouse scrollwheel too? That’s just weird. I am finding the new mission control to be very useful though, especially when I tend to have 20-30 apps open at the same time, but wasn’t ever a fan of spaces. Tying them all together really makes sense.

If you have any questions or comments, I’ll try to respond as best I can but for hardware specific technical questions, you could always try our lively technical support community. We’ve also got thousands of Mac articles in the archives for those of you who are new here.

Put Your Digital, Social & Technical Skills To The Test With Smarterer

Saikat Basu — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 15:31:42 +0000

Success in the modern job market is underlined by one simple fact – the skills you bring to the table. The fresh web service called Smarterer aims to shake our inertia about learning skills and make smarter workers out of us all. Smarterer pits us against the technology, digital, and social tools we use every day and tells us if we are able or inept with them.

Smarterer’s mission is to put a number (or a score) on the skills we write about in our resumes. If you have the smarts, let’s head below and see how Smarterer and its battery of tests validate your digital savvy.

What Is Smarterer?

Smarterer tests your skill level and knowledge in the digital apps you use every day. The web app has developed a proprietary system and algorithm that can benchmark anyone’s skill in just 10 questions and 60 seconds.

The Smarterer blog says – Smarterer’s scoring algorithm validates and quantifies skills using an 800 point scale, similar to the GMAT or SAT, and provides users labels such as “smart”, “smarter,” and “smarterer” to describe their skill level at a glance. Only 5 percent of users score in the top level, which reflects the adaptive nature of the algorithm and their rank against the community of users.

More importantly, the blog also says that Smarterer is designed for professionals within the first 10 years of their careers — college students who have little experience (but a broad set of skills that make them employable) and individuals who are making their first or second career move and need to show skills to get the next great job.

Bring On The Tests…

Register and log into Smarterer. Smarterer allows us to take as well as create skill assessment tests. Just to get a feel of things, I think I will take a few tests and see how I score. There are nearly 70+ tests with the likes of Facebook, Gmail, LinkedIn interspersed in the midst of tests like Dog Training and Literature for Children.

Some of these tests are of course user-created but it goes to show that as the variety starts piling up, you can really put all facets of your personality under the scanner.

Here’s a screen from the Google Search test I opened with:

You can try out the single test question just to get a feel of things and how the system times you through each question. Correct responses are indicated by green, incorrect ones get emblazoned in red.

The tests are rapid and each question needs to be answered in 20 seconds or less. The screenshot below shows how I fared with Facebook (the results from my Google Search test weren’t red hot!):

Your ‘smartness’ gets measured on an 800 point scale. As the screen shows, I am merely ‘smart’ so far, not the smartest one around. You can share your score via Twitter or Facebook. But I think I will make an attempt at improving them before I let the whole world in. You can answer a few more questions to improve your score and graduate up the smartness scale. There are some things which influence the final score. This is where the ‘intelligence’ of the site kicks in.

Smarterer not only allows you to add your own questions to existing tests, but also create a brand new skill assessment test on a topic. You can create the tests, write the questions, and design the answers. If all goes well with the tests and your answers, you can see yourself on the leader board. Moreover, you can ‘show off’ you score with an embedded badge on your blog, website, or email.

There’s lot to like about Smarterer: from its very user-friendly and clean design to the speed of the tests. I liked the scoring system which made picking up the points not just a case of answering correctly. Do you have the smarts? Take a test on Smarterer and let us know your score for this quiz and learning app.

How To Isolate & Test Unsafe Applications On Your PC

Jessica Cam Wong — Mon, 02 May 2011 23:30:00 +0000

When you’re pretty addicted to trying new applications like we are around this part of the web, our machines quickly become victims of heavy digital battery. To safeguard our computers, it’s always a good idea to use portable applications whenever possible. The application in question cannot store program settings or make changes in the Windows Registry so it poses little to no danger to our systems. However, the selection of portable applications may not always include a lesser-known or new application that we desperately want to test out, so the next best thing is to test drive them in isolated environments.

You might think it’s extra work to isolate these applications because you always keep your antivirus software updated and won’t ever think of downloading obscure software anyway. Yet practicing this type of caution by using special isolating software will likely be more beneficial in the long run. Having a computer overrun by viruses will not only be hair-splitting, but may also lead you to spend money to replace a machine that could have perfectly lived longer.

Let’s see then how you can protect your machine by isolating potentially unsafe applications.

Running Programs In Isolated Sandboxes

We first took a good, long look at Sandboxie here, where we discussed how this Windows-only program creates virtual layers upon which programs can operate normally, that is, can perform read and write operations without permanently affecting your hard drive. Sandboxie basically runs your applications in isolated instances, namely sandboxes, so you can safely test drive even new or little-known programs that could potentially be unsafe.

After you install Sandboxie and its system-level drivers, you’ll see a yellow icon on the system tray and you’ll also be offered an online tutorial, which should open up in a web-browser that you can run sandboxed or not. Aside from letting you run a sandboxed web browser, Sandboxie lets you run sandboxed email programs, programs from the Start menu, executable programs or even from Windows Explorer.

Sandboxie might be useful in many cases where you simply aren’t sure of how safe a program is, but you’re still curious to try it. Since it isolates that program from the rest of your system, you’re pretty much safe to install it and dispose of it if you don’t like it or encounter a problem. Destroying that sandbox is a matter of either closing the running programs in that instance or removing the specific sandbox.
Even if you have many programs in that sandbox, the entire session is cleaned up with a one click.

Additional uses for Sandboxie could be loading up a program that you don’t really need to have installed but might need to use it once in a blue moon, like ImgBurn or uTorrent. You could also use Sandboxie to load up additional instances of a running program, like a second instance of, say, Firefox so you can log on to your secondary Google Account and what not. It’s a pretty nice way to use programs safely since they fully work without limitations or incompatibilities. In fact, it’s pretty hard to tell apart from a regular, non-sandboxed running application. The only way to distinguish the sandboxed program is by looking at the title bar of the window.

Sandboxie is free for personal use, but the free version allows not more than one sandbox running at a time. While Sandboxie is pretty popular, there are similar applications that can provide a sandboxed environment for a program. Among these are Evalaze, GeSWaLL, BufferZone Pro, iCore Virtual Accounts, and the former Altiris Software Virtualization Solution (SVS), for which I’ve found no way of obtaining a personal license.

Undoing System Changes After Installing A Program

Returnil System Safe Free is a program for Windows that basically lets your machine revert back to its original system status after a reboot. Download it here. What Returnil does is it clones your operating system, creating a virtual environment, which will be loaded in lieu of your original OS when you restart your system after installing Returnil. This will allow you to run or install even the most obscure programs without getting your computer infected since it will undo everything and return to its original state on the next system restart. Though it uninstalls any program you might have installed in your virtual environment, you can still save documents and files to a flash drive so you’ll have those even after a restart. Returnil might be one of the easiest ways on this list to roll back the system after you’ve tested out potentially unsafe applications, as all you need to do is restart the system, but a drawback is that you cannot install programs that require you to reboot after installation, which will promptly revert back to the original, unadulterated state.

Forget Installing – Just Run Windows Applications From Your Browser

If you don’t want to install another program to help you isolate applications, you might want to check Spoon, a website that runs a type of revolutionary virtualization software to stream desktop applications to your Windows machine. We have covered it in detail before. With Spoon, you can run any of the supported Windows desktop applications using just your browser and the downloadable Spoon plugin. Supported applications include popular web browsers like Google Chrome and Firefox, even productivity apps and games. The selection of supported apps consists of mostly popularly-used applications on Windows, for which you won’t notice the differences compared to a natively-running Windows application.

We also discussed a different type of application virtualization with Cameyo, VMLite VirtualApps Studio, and Enigma Virtual Box, all of which are free programs that let you create portable applications from programs you already have installed. On a related not, see also our homebrewed workaround to create a portable version from Skype, and also see how to build your own portable OS with Slax.

Do you tend to download lots of applications on your primary machine? If so, do you use any of these programs?

Image Credit: Returnil, Everaldo Coelho

10 Free Online Tools To Test Your Website Loading Speeds & Create Faster Webpages

Saikat Basu — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 19:31:09 +0000

Not every website can be a Google. No; not in terms of scale but in terms of the speed with which it loads up in our browsers. Minimalism is great, but it does not go with the need to put more content and animated ads on the webpage. It is sometimes a trade-off which every web designer has to make.

Creating faster webpages is one of the commandments of great web design. A slow loading speed not only indicates poor design but is also a huge turn-off for visitors. Slow loading webpages could also be symptoms of bugs or any other bottleneck.

The first step you can take to optimize your website is to put it through a speed test. These ten tools are few of the many which can help test loading speeds and give cues to create faster webpages.

WebWait

The timer gives you the average loading time of your website. Enter the URL of your site, set the number of runs, and get the results in terms of Average, Median, and Standard Deviation after the runs are through. You can set the number of test runs. While running the website speed test, the app factors in all images, stylesheets, and Javascript. It runs in all popular browsers. (See Directory mention)

Which Loads Faster?

Pit one site against the other and see which one comes out on top. You can benchmark the faster website and use it optimize the speed of your own website. The choice of two modes allows you to control the loading simultaneously in case one site interferes with the other. It could be quite a fun tool too as the ‘epic test’ between Apple and Adobe shows that Apple has bit of an edge. (See Directory mention)

Web Page Test

WebPagetest.org was developed by AOL and then Open Sourced. This web app gives you a long list of server locations to try out the tests on. Another dropdown enables you to set a specific browser (IE9 too). Advanced Settings are for further fine-tuning the test by setting parameters like the number of test runs, connection type, including scripts etc. You can also use a visual tool to compare multiple URLs together. (See Directory mention)

Load.in

This website speed tool is definitely one of the coolest around in terms of visual appeal. Loads.in gives you more than 50 server locations around the world to try out loading speeds on. The first run retrieves the loading speed for a random location. The next ones can be set by country and browser type. As the test completes, you also get snapshots of the webpage at various points on a timeline. The loading time also displays the individual loading times of each site element in a waterfall chart. The data can also be downloaded as a HAR file. (See Directory mention)

Slowcop

This page loading speed tester gives you an instant speed report that also scores your site from 0 to 100. The report displays data like the total number of elements, page size, download time, and the score. With this as a denominator, you can instantly compare it against a competitor site and see the performance. (See Directory mention)

Ping Brigade

Test your website on three scales – ping, page load, and web server latency. The test is quite fast and a colored map gives you clickable server locations in America and the world to test with different servers. (See Directory mention)

Pingdom

Test your page load speeds The Full Page Test gives you a detailed visual report on the load time of each element (images, CSS, JavaScripts, RSS, Flash and frames/iframes). Objects included in javascript are ignored. You can sort through the results with the tools available on the menu bar and diagnose any bottlenecks if any.

BrowserMob

The free website performance test gives a neat visual display of loading times with reference to a few locations around the world. The number of objects on the page are also broken down in a nice colorful pie-chart. Use the waterfall chart to analyze each individual element in more detail.

WebSlug

WebSlug’s site timer gives you a comparative estimate of two websites. With just the URL you can benchmark one site against another. The simple site is pretty limited in scope but can be used as a ‘battle tool’ between two websites.

PageSpeed

Page Speed is an open-source project from Google that’s available as an online app and also as a Chrome extension. Page Speed Online analyzes the content of a web page, and then generates suggestions to make that page faster. The suggestions are graded as low, medium, and high priority. Using this valuable tool you can see the suggestions on each object on the webpage. In an improvement, PageSpeed also tweaks the suggestions for faster mobile browsing.

Webmasters need a bevy of tools to work on optimization of their websites. Along with the online apps, there are quite a few extensions and offline tools as well. Tina’s post shows you – How To Run A Speed Test On Your Website with FireBug and YSlow. If you are looking for a portable app, take a look at Speed Monitor. Which tools would you recommend to speedup websites and blogs?

Image Credit: Shutterstock

10 Music Trivia Sites To Test Your Musical Knowledge

Saikat Basu — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 19:31:59 +0000

Small change, small potatoes, or something of little importance: that’s how “˜trivia’ is defined in the dictionary. But when you take any trivia game and see it eating up time, then the dictionary meaning doesn’t hold much water. Take music trivia for instance. You really won’t be invited to the fan party if you don’t know which track made the charts, or how that band got its name.

Do you know how The Beatles got their name or what was their first chart-topping number one single? If you don’t know, then it’s time to brush up your musical IQ. The best part of your re-education is that you don’t have to burn the midnight oil. Thanks to the number of music trivia websites you can have a rocking time while filling your head with ‘useless facts’. Here are ten of them.

Songfacts

As the name says, the site is about song meanings, lyrics, and trivia. As soon as you land on the site, you will spy a trivia question at the top. The Mighty Songfacts Trivia Quiz asks you 10 questions and getting them right might win you a fashionable Songfacts T-shirt (though I haven’t tested it out to that extent). The site also goes behind the songs and digs out little nuggets of “˜songfacts’ that make this site a destination for trivia buffs.

MusicMini

This site comes up in the first crop of music trivia websites. The Music Trivia Quiz has levels for beginners, experts, and professionals. You have to choose the game you want to play as there are different combinations on the basic idea of listening to a song and naming the song, singer or the group. Most of the trivia rounds have multiple answers and you have to select the right one. Points stack up if you can identify all the details on the song.

Music Trivia Master

Music Trivia Master is a simple game where you can select to answer questions from different eras. You can select categories, number of questions, and genre (pop, rock, country, R&B, hip hop). Each question is timed and a free registration allows you to save your scores and get up on the leaderboard. Music Trivia Master also says it has an iPhone app but I couldn’t locate it on iTunes.

Action Quiz

Go up against the computer and see if you can score in the categories of classical music and pop music. You can start straightaway as there’s no subscription. Music categories are further divided into decades, lyrics, titles etc. The trivia quiz asks you to identify the singers behind the tracks and the album. The trivia game based on classical music has a section on music theory which could be fun for learners.

PopKwiz

Answer three questions a day everyday and by the end of the month you can be more surefooted with your musical IQ. There’s a larger dose too in the form of a 15 question timed round arranged around musical decades. Check out the archives too for previous quizzes.

Trivia Plaza

Along with other topics, you can find quite a few free trivia games on pop music and classical music here. The classical music trivia games are based on composers and their works. The pop music games are more varied with the likes of “˜American Idol’, “˜Real Names’, “˜Christmas Songs’ etc. There are some others on lyrics and title tracks released in each decade. These music trivia games and the two above have been put together by the same man.

You Got Song’d

UGO Network’s online music game gives you a few lives to get the answers right as it throws a succession of identify the song or singer questions at you. At the beginning you get to choose the category you want to get quizzed on. Hear the music and guess the answers to qualify for the leaderboard.

Mighty Quiz

Mightyquiz.com has over 3,000 topics that can test your knowledge. You can also write your own trivia questions and contribute to the site. Music alone has around 1,140 trivia questions to test your knowledge. The trivia questions come with options and you have to pick the right one. You can subscribe to your favorite topics and even follow members who send in their trivia questions. A sign-in allows you to save your progress through the questions.

Trivix

The ten year old site features quality free trivia games, quiz and flash games. Daily you can go head to head against 20 new questions in 5 different categories, music being one of them. The trivia round is timed and you can instantly see whether you answered correctly or not. A percentage figure also indicates how many got the answer right.

The Crazy Cow Music Quiz

The Facebook app takes your knowledge of music and pits it against your network of friends. Each quiz consists of 10 multiple choice trivia questions. You have to put a name to the song that plays in the background. Points are also awarded or deducted according to the time you take to answer. I could not review this Facebook app completely because inexplicably it was getting stuck at 30 percent. The app has quite a large following with nearly 700,000+ active members so my problem could be a temporary glitch.

With these ten websites and others spread throughout the web, there’s no excuse one can offer for a lack of music knowledge. Agreed, you might be looked upon as a musical nerd but armed with a brimful of trivia, you can demand right of place among all the music fans out there. If you have already secured that spot let us know about your favorite music trivia website.

Image credit: Shutterstock

5 Career Tools You Can Use To Pinpoint Your Career Aptitude

Saikat Basu — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 19:31:14 +0000

Very few of us had any real idea of what we wanted to do as a career while growing up. Professional career counselors were an unknown breed and so it was sheer accident or just fate that most of us stumbled into our careers. The right career choice often is the difference between a mid-life crisis and a motivated life. A wise man’s words should be the apt definition for the right kind of career – the supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.

So true! But how do we find out our attitude and aptitude for the right career? Deep thinking or godsend mentors are two ways. Some professional guidance is always well advised. But while you are waiting for all of these, why not take the help of some free career aptitude tests, tools and quizzes to decipher your personality traits and see what you would like to do with the next 30-40 years of your life?

Take them as fun tools or take them seriously”¦they just might reveal some things about the job you are meant to do.

TestQ

This is a nicely designed website that’s all about career quizzes of all kinds. Some quizzes are plain fun (What’s your perfect excuse?) while some tune into aspects of your hidden personality (the Classic IQ Test). An array of quizzes tests you on everything from finding out what you should major in to the fitness of your resume. The site is part of the well known Monster.com network.

Career Path

For some career guidance, start off with finding out what the right career is for you. If you are already into the rat race, measure your level of satisfaction on the job with the Career Vision Job Satisfaction Quiz. Some of the tests like the Color Career Indicator might give you sample reports and not the full one, but even the free sample results give an insight.

Career InfoNet

The site is sponsored by the U.S Department of Labor and has tools which help both the student and the established professional. One of the useful tools is the Skills Profiler which helps you take stock of your skills and connect them to the right kind of jobs or further training. The video section also gives you a peek into the day to day life of a variety of professions.

LiveCareer

The free online career aptitude test takes you through 100 questions that you can tick off in 15 minutes. All questions have to be rated with a choice of what you like the most and the least. The results can tell you your fitness for a particular type of career. The career service gives you the results in both graphical and text based forms. The site says that there are nearly 36,729 possible careers in North America and 284 academic majors you can pick from.

Monster’s Career Tools

The career tools on this international job site aren’t in the quiz form but they help with insights into any career or job you might want to explore. Career Snapshots gives you direct information on what each job entails and important data on things like rate of industry growth, expected size of industry, number of similar profiles on the site etc. Career Benchmarking shows where you stand with regards to aspects like job benefits, work-life balance, and salary etc. Career Mapping is the beta-tool you might be immediately interested in to see how your career path is panning out.

The above five are just some of the tools which can help you define yourself and define the years you are going to spend in a job you want to enjoy. If you want to really know yourself, we can throw a barrage of resources towards you. Here are two ““

How To Have Fun With Online Personality Quizzes – by Ann
Top 8 Websites With Cool Free Personality Traits Tests – by Mahendra

Armed with some self knowledge, you can dive into the job hunt with these -

5 Steps To Successfully Find Your Next Job Online – by Tina
5 Salary Comparison Tools For Your Next Job Search – by Saikat
5 Video Channels For Learning Basic Job Interview Skills – by Saikat

Have you made a deliberate effort to decide on your career or have you surrendered to your gut feeling? Let us know your take on these career guiding resources.

Image Credit : Shutterstock

10 Websites With Fun Tests To Gauge Your IQ

Saikat Basu — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 17:30:56 +0000

Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein are on this list. So are Paul Allen and Bill Gates. Abraham Lincoln is also assumed to be a member. Sharon Stone definitely is. But then so might be the guy or gal sitting next to you on the bus. It is a coveted three digit number, but it is far from an exclusive club.

Intelligence Quotient (IQ) is a term that’s related to the wattage of your brain; in short intelligence and reasoning skills measured across a few standardized tests. Before an inferiority complex starts laying its foundation, remember that I.Q is not a measure of knowledge or its practical application.

To rub our egos the right way, you might take a few serious approved tests and arrive at your IQ. Me? I don’t want to find out where I end up on the dunce scale, so I usually head to these fun tests to gauge my IQ. Even if I don’t ace them, I can have a bit of fun in the process.

FunEducation

Try out the array of tests on this site which include a range of serious self discovery tools and fun quizzes. Majority of the tests are professionally designed for children. Some of the serious tests require a paid subscription, but there are numerous fun tests alongside that are free. Try the free IQ test that measures verbal reasoning and find where your child ranks on the chart. The Spatial IQ quiz helps to test how your child visualizes dimensions in space, arranges objects and develops images internally.

3SmartCubes

If you are looking for a range of tests that measure everything from IQ to your EQ (Emotional Quotient), then this site deserves to be bookmarked. The serious PhD-certified IQ test (Premium test) measures you in 20 minutes with a barrage of 30 questions. But then if it’s too mind-numbingly serious for you, there are many fun tests too. The fun tests lean more towards your emotional health rather than judging your raw intelligence. They are pretty engaging if you want to poke into facets of your hidden personality.

Free IQ Test

Just like the name says, this site is a place for a fast, free, and accurate online IQ test. The tests aren’t timed but you have to wade through four sections (20 questions) before you arrive at your IQ figure. If your score crosses the 100 mark, I suggest you take the blue badge they give you and embed it on your blog or online profile.

IQ League

The 60 Seconds IQ Test on this site is a fun and fast test which pits you against a clock as it countdowns to the minutes on the 10 questions. There are a few questions on general knowledge thrown in too. Points are awarded on the number of seconds you took to answer each question. The site maintains its

own system

to score you, so it’s more of a fun IQ test rather than a scientific one.

Test Yourself

The neat blue site has tests on personality, relationships, career, intelligence, health, and lifestyle. When it comes to IQ, you might be interested in the What’s your real IQ test which is a scientifically validated test. The test gets to a score using images rather than giving a verbal going over. At the end of the test, you get a free summarized report. The full report is available on a payment.

Magic Mnemonic

The Flash-based fun IQ test is a colorful animated way to test your reasoning skills. To solve the 27 questions, you get 60 seconds for each. You can control the colorful timer if you are stuck, but that will eat into your points.

Color IQ Test

It won’t help to be color blind on this page. The Color IQ Test is a fun tool to test your sense of color by rearranging a bunch of color chips according to the shades. Try it; it’s definitely more difficult than it looks.

IQ Test

(Facebook)

This Facebook app tells me that I am a very brilliant guy with an IQ of 140. Pity, that it’s a fun IQ test and not a really scientific one. But if you are on the social site, give the seven questions a shot for some artificial ego boost.

IQ Test European Union

It’s time to wave your country’s flag and go head to head with the world and find out which country is the smartest of them all. As an individual, you also receive information on your intelligence in comparison with others.

Mensa Workout

If you have any ambitions of joining Mensa, then try their entertaining practice quiz. It is not an IQ test in the traditional sense, but a practice arena to loosen up your brain cells and have some fun in the process.

These fun IQ tests may not be professionally administered, so do take their results with a pinch of salt even when it’s on the lower side. There’s nothing wrong with exercising your brain cells once in a while. Before you get to our comments section and let us know how seriously you take your IQ score, read two more probing brain posts ““ 10 Ways to Enhance Brain Fitness Online and Top 8 Websites with Cool Free Personality Traits Tests.

Let these fun IQ and test websites put your brain cells through the wringer.

Image: Shutterstock

Benchmark & Explore Your PC With SiSoft Sandra 2011 Lite

Matt Smith — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:31:36 +0000

SiSoft Sandra has long been considered one of the best PC benchmark programs available. It is frequently used in computer hardware reviews to judge the speed of components such as processors, hard drives, and video cards. It is also capable of benchmarking more obscure things, such as memory bandwidth.

A new version of SiSoft Sandra is released yearly, and the 2011 build was made available recently. As usual, the full SiSoft Sandra software is a paid program – but a free Lite version, which doesn’t seem very lite at all, is also available. Let’s take a look at what the latest version has to offer.

PC Benchmarks Galore

Computer benchmarks are often used by hardware reviewers as a standardized way of determining performance. However, benchmarks can be handy for everyone. They give you a way to determine how your computer’s performance measures up to others. This can point out areas where you need to upgrade, or can give you definitive proof that a certain component is not working right.

SiSoft Sandra 2011 Lite has thrown in a number of new PC benchmarks including GPGPU Cryptology, Media Transcoding, and Blu-Ray. The later two are arguably the most interesting for most users, and media transcoding in particular is a great benchmark to have. It’s common to convert videos from one format to another, usually in order to port them over to a smartphone, but sometimes for other purposes.

The new version of the software makes continued improvements to SiSoft Sandra’s excellent hardware comparison results. Most benchmark software will only give you one result – the result from your own computer. This is useful, but you have to find and compare the result to others manually. SiSoft Sandra, however, provides a huge library of hardware benchmarks. This information will provide you with an instant comparison between the hardware you have and other comparable components. The continued refinement of this feature in SiSoft Sandra 2011 makes choosing a hardware upgrade easier than ever before.

Computer Information Station

Another function that SiSoft Sandra 2011 Lite continues to serve is that of gathering information about your computer. This is a problem that usually evident until you actually try to find out certain information exclusively through Windows. What chipset does your motherboard use? What is the clock speed of your RAM? What builds of Microsoft .NET Framework do you have installed?

SiSoft Sandra 2011 Lite lays out this information in the Hardware and Software sections. There doesn’t seem to be anything of great importance that escapes the grasp of SiSoft Sandra 2011, and the information provided rivals my personal favorite PC information software, PC Wizard 2010. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if some users prefer SiSoft Sandra 2011 for this purpose. It is generally a more intuitive program thanks to large, clearly labeled icons.

Another useful section of the program is Tools. In this part of SiSoft Sandra 2011 Lite you’ll find a few broad utilities including a burn-in test that can be used to see how your hardware manages under heavy usage. The report tool is also handy. This lets you create a text log of a computer’s current specifications, which can be reviewed at a later date. Logging this sort of information is handy if you’re trying to resolve issues on a computer that you don’t always have access to.

Conclusion

I think that SiSoft Sandra 2011 Lite is a must-have download for computer enthusiasts. It can handle a wide variety of benchmarking and PC information needs, and the comparison tools are incredibly helpful if you’re looking to upgrade your computer’s hardware.