About James Bruce
James has a BSc in Artificial Intelligence and is CompTIA A+ and Network+ certified. When he's not busy as Hardware Reviews Editor, he enjoys LEGO, VR, and board games. Before joining MakeUseOf, he was a lighting technician, English teacher, and data center engineer.
Monetization Manual: Your No-Nonsense Guide To Making Money Blogging
Residual income streams from a website have motivated bloggers for years. I will share with you the knowledge and experience I've gained from years of making money blogging.
Use Tunlr to Enjoy Streaming Services Anywhere in the World
While American internet users can quite happily watch Hulu, the fact that I live in the UK means I can't. Likewise, BBC iPlayer is free for UK citizens; but if your physical location says America then you're out of luck buddy. It's a frustrating state of affairs, and we won't stand for it! Neither will Tunlr.net: a new free service that aims to remove region restrictions the world over by way of some magic DNS trickery.
4 WordPress Stats Plugins Compared
With any web project, stats are essential; a blog is no different. You need accurate figures on traffic growth, and you need to know which articles are popular and why. Even the earliest web pages had hit counters. Oddly, WordPress doesn't come with built-in stats, but there are certainly a few plugins you can use to add this.
How to Get Full Access to American Netflix Selections on Your UK Account - With Any Device!
A common complaint about UK Netflix (and it's competitor LoveFilm, though I still maintain the selection and interface of Netflix is far superior) is that the updates are so infrequent that the choice of movies quickly gets tiring. On the other hand, the flagship Netflix service in the US is immense and is regularly updated. Today I'm going to show how you can get access to all the US movies through the use of a VPN.
The Ultimate Triple Backup Solution For Your Mac [Mac OSX]
As the developer here at MakeUseOf and as someone who earns their entire income from working online, it's fair to say my computer and data are quite important. They’re set up perfectly for productivity with my favourite apps and preferences. That’s why when my hard drive ground to a halt yesterday, I got a little bit panicky.
4 Apple OSX Interface Elements That Really Annoy Me [Opinion]
Contrary to popular belief, I'm not a Apple fanboy. I don't think I need to make excuses for advocating Apple as I have been known to do on occasion, but regardless, even us so-called 'fanboys' detest some of the nonsense that Apple comes up with. Here's 4 user interface elements from OSX that really irk me.
How To Make Your Own Little Polarama Planet With Photoshop
Technically called a Polarama (because it uses the Polar co-ordinate system), you can end up with a little "planet" when you wrap around a panorama photo - like you can see on the thumbnail to the side there. Today I'm going to show you how to achieve this effect in Photoshop. This is a quick and easy tutorial anyone can follow.
Reddit Photo Clock for iPad: The Greatest Productivity Killer Ever
Reddit Photo Clock is a typical photo-frame clock app for the most part; but it pulls images from Reddit for your delectation, and that makes it 9000 times more awesome than any other photo clock app out there. Read on to find out exactly why you want this app, now.
5 Great YouTube Videos To Learn About Real Japanese Culture
Japan has always been considered a bit weird when it comes to culture. On the one hand, Western TV would have you believe Ultimate Warrior and Human Tetris are like the Japanese Olympics, up there with classic cultural icons like ninjas and Samurai. On the other you have the Japan-obsessed who believe every anime has artistic merit and nothing is more beautiful than white-faced geisha.
Due: The Reminder & Timer App You've Always Wanted [OSX & iOS]
I'm not a big fan of scheduling apps, and to be honest I haven't had much to schedule until recently. I'm hopeless at remembering birthdays, and sticking notices on my whiteboard achieves nothing. I actually email myself sometimes, treating my inbox as a to-do list. I think Due might have just solved all my problems though. Read on to see if it will solve yours.
9 Apps To Easily Make 3D Printable Objects
One of the problems with 3D printing is getting a hold of things to print. You can of course download pre-made objects from a variety of places like Thingiverse; but if you want something unique and made by you, that's where things get a little difficult. Here are 9 quick and easy apps for making something a little more unique.
The 3D Printing Revolution Leaps Ever Closer to Consumer Level
3D printers have been a reality for some time now, but if we're honest the majority of them are - let's say - for hobbyists. Although it's very impressive and meta to say that one RepRap printer can print off 40% of the parts for another, those parts still need a delicate hand and a good amount of geekery to produce another machine. Until now, these things have very much been out of the hands of consumers like you or me.
Keep Your Blog Readers Engaged & On-Site With The nRelate Plugin [Wordpress]
One problem that faces us as bloggers is how to keep users on the site, how to show them other content they might be interested in. The best way to do this appears to be a "related posts" plugin of some sort; but which to choose? For a long time, I've recommended YARPP (Yet Another Related Posts Plugin), but nRelate is a fairly new contender.
3 Reasons Microsoft Is Losing The Plot [Opinion]
Are we in the midst of the final days of Microsoft as we know it? Feedback from tech professionals about Metro UI has been predominantly negative so far, but that's the least of our worries if recents trends are any indication of the future. Here, dear readers, are 3 reasons why I think Microsoft is truly losing, if not lost already, the proverbial plot.
5 Ways To Bypass The UK Pirate Bay Block
A recent UK high court ruling from a case brought by the British Phonographic Industry (the UK version of RIAA) means that The Pirate Bay is now inaccessible from many ISPs, with BT and remaining ISPs set to follow suit in the weeks to come. It's a similar case in other European countries.
4 Ways to Make Your Blog Pay Real Money
Writing a popular blog, getting famous, and then living off the Internet from a desert island beach are faily common dreams for many aspiring bloggers. With the advent of content management systems such as Wordpress which make it incredibly easy to get a professional looking websites up and running in no time - full of sophisticated features - the only thing really holding you back is your talent.
Make Your Own Monsters & Learn 3D Sculpting With 123D Sculpt [iPad]
Sculpt is specifically made for the iPad - and is free for the time being. Sculpting is a natural fit for the iPad touch interface, and the app is an incredibly powerful way to realize your most horrific nightmarish creature designs, or simply as a fun creative exercise.
Turn Photos Into 3D Models With Autodesk 123D Catch [Currently Only Windows]
With the 3D printing revolution officially under way, the problem remains of how to get actually get a digitized 3D representation of something. You could start from scratch, using something like Google Sketchup, but I'd be lying if I told you it's easy to create anything reasonably complex. Instead, it would be great if you could just take some pictures of a real life object, then somehow auto-magically transform that into a 3D model.
GetMeCooking Recipe Plugin For Wordpress Gets Your Recipes the Exposure They Deserve
Posting recipes on a blog is something many of us do. This plugin called GetMeCooking makes it easy to manage and present your recipes in a nice and search engine friendly format, as well as automatically gives your recipe the chance to be listed on the Getmecooking.com recipe directory too, linking back to your site in the process.
The Various Technologies That Go Into a Website
The Internet is amazing, I think we can all agree on that. But have you ever sat down and thought how on earth a website actually makes its way to your computer?