About Saikat Basu
After removing the grime of an MBA and a ten-year long marketing career, Saikat dabbled in web development, networking, and SAP. He has been a former editor of several MakeUseOf sections since 2008. He is a legacy contributor now with a special interest in productivity methods and iOS. You will also find his contributions in web publications like GuidingTech, GoSkills, OnlineTechTips, and Lifewire.
Latest Articles
Keep Your Life Goals In Sight By Breaking Them Down Into Small Increments On Everest [iOS]
You can think of Everest as a combination of a goal-setting tool, a bucket list, a vision board, and a productivity coach. At its most basic, it is a getting-things-done app that means to track your journey from a definite beginning to a satisfactory end. As the app developers so pointedly say - Everyone has their Everest. We help you climb yours.
Anyone Can Doodle, Sketch, and Paint With Doodle Buddy -- Even Your Grandma! [iOS]
Doodle Buddy is meant to be fun first. A serious drawing application for sketching works of art, second. There’s no binding for the former; the latter needs the little thing called talent. Doodle Buddy is among the flotilla of creative apps that you find for the iOS platform. Doodle Buddy is simple and free. So, can it squeeze a place on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch?
Inspiring Interviews: 7 Websites With Intelligent Conversations To Expand Your Mind
Intelligent picks from the vast web can refresh and inspire our day. And what could be more inspiring than taking a peek into the lives of both ordinary and extraordinary people with insights. Maybe, you can find some sliver of usefulness in the conversations of these achievers. Look upon this as interviews or a talkfest of ideas.
10 Of The Best Tools For Creating Infographics
The history of this visual science (or art) and tells us that infographics is by no means an invention of the digital culture. The only difference between then and now is the amount of information we are swamped with. Infographics gives us a tool to cut through the noise and into the meat. Patterns, trends, and relationships become a bit more understandable.
Physics, Puzzles & A Young Boy Come Together To Play In Amazing Alex [Android]
We talked about Rube Goldberg in a game I reviewed a few days back. Amazing Alex takes off from where we left off in Apparatus. Both involve the basics of physics, both are about building objects from the simplest things around us, both have a goal (a basket here to begin with), but Amazing Alex makes it a tad more fun because it’s all through the antics of a young boy and chain reactions with objects that we see around us every day.
Save & Reload Your Browser Tabs Just The Way You Like It With Layout Manager [Chrome]
Layout Manager in my humble opinion is a feature that Chrome or all browsers for that matter should have as a default. It not a complicated piece of work, it simply allows you to save and maintain the open windows and tabs so that you can quickly reload them whenever you want. More importantly, the selling point for the extension is: It remembers the precise layout of the windows and tabs you have open and it restores them exactly.
Callout With Words: How to Use Microsoft PowerPoint for Drawing Speech Bubbles On Any Photo
Remember the comics of our childhood? What would they be without speech bubbles? In comics, words were calls to action and speech bubbles framed them so well. You never thought they obstructed the illustrations in any way. Speech bubbles turned into callouts when it came to business presentations in Microsoft PowerPoint. They give context to what’s on the slide or a screenshot and help to turn a mundane graphic into something more interesting.
Beat Your Friends at Their Own Word Game in Scramble With Friends
It need not always be about sharpening your vocabulary; though that helps. Word games can be just fun. And when you introduce competitive game play against others in the digital Wild West of the web, the adrenalin surge is a bit more. No more relaxed word plays on a grid – with Scramble with Friends you have to go against the clock and against your opponents, in an arena that’s a jumbled up grid of words.
Tell The Number Of Unread Emails At A Glance With Tab Badges For Firefox
There are boatloads of add-ons available that take on tab organization and give you the power tools to really set up Firefox for your use. So, what’s a 6KB sized Lilliputian add-on doing on our list of Best Firefox Add-ons? At first glance, it seems that Tab Badges is playing David amidst the Goliaths. Scroll a bit up and you will see that Tab Badges is categorized under Custom Interface. Let’s do the explaining here.
Writing For the Digital Age: 5 Free Writing Style Guides Online
English is the language the world speaks and we have to put in our two bits to do it correctly. The web has created a global audience, so if you are among the ones who write in English for a living, you got to be word perfect even you may not be pitch perfect with your accents. As a writer and blogger, I know the pitfalls of a language error. If writing perfection is your calling card, you need a Style Guide by your side.
WinZip 17 Pro for Windows: Redesigned for Social Sharing and the Cloud [Giveaway]
It’s more than two decades since the first version of WinZip was released. From support for self-extracting archive files to AES-grade encryption, WinZip has gone through the cycle of changes. If you are using some other file compression alternative, download the WinZip trial. Even the trial version has enough features to keep you interested. But if you're interested in winning one of the 25 WinZip 17 Pro licenses for Windows that we have to give away this week valued at $1250, then read on!
Super Start Your Day With Visual Bookmarks And A Simple To-Do List [Firefox]
While the Speed Dial is a visual bookmark of recently visited websites, and a permanent home to your favorite pinned ones, it can be made into something more. That comes with the help of Firefox add-ons as usual. Super Start is a simple add-on that can supercharge your home tab on Firefox, and give your day around the web the launch pad it needs.
Go For A Jewel Rush And Try To Beat The Clock On Diamond Dash [iOS]
As you can see, there’s no dearth of ‘time-wasters’ and they get to be quite addictive too. Diamond Dash ticks all the right boxes if you are looking for such kind of games. It is super-simple, challenging, and addictive. The three qualities helped it to make it to our Best iPhone Games list. Diamond Dash (as you might have guessed from the name of the game) is a blitz with jewels and diamonds. It is a 60 second gem rush.
Learn How to Touch-Type With These 8 Top Tools & Tutorials
Learning how to touch type could mean the difference between 10 words a minute to more than 40. That could also mean the difference between adding half a day to your productivity. Or, more than that if you can clock 100 words per minute as most professional typists do. That’s why I sincerely believe that touch typing along with speed reading is one of the sacred arts of the digital age.
Only Book Lovers Need Apply: Go On A Journey Of Book Discovery In 7 Different Ways
I have been a long standing member of sites like GoodReads and LibraryThing, two well-recommended book services for timely book recommendations. But the eyes roam around, trying to pick up new book titles and authors. At most times, it is random browsing; but it has led to some cool discoveries of not only worthy page turners, but also different ways to reach the goal of finding a good book to read next. Here’s a sampling of seven places that a book lover ought to visit.
Think You Know Them All! Challenge Your Brand Knowledge With the Logos Quiz Game [iOS]
Thanks to the tsunami of ads around us, we see logos every day. Sometimes we notice the good ones, sometimes the not-so-memorable ones pass us by. As a business student, a favorite pastime of ours was to quiz each other on logos by covering up the essential details. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised to find a similar game on the Apple Store. The Logos Quiz Game will stretch your knowledge to the hilt, not to mention your memory cells.
Say Open Sesame And View More Than 80+ File Types With Free Opener [Windows]
Which is the very first file viewer or editor you go for after a fresh install? Some asked our wider community the same question - What is the best universal file viewer? A few worthies were mentioned. I found Universal Viewer to be a bit limiting especially when it comes to media files and even PDF. That made me turn to the one ‘criticized’ in the query itself – Free Opener.
The Tiny CoolPlayer Could Be The MP3 Player Of Choice For Your Portable Drive [Windows]
What would you say about an audio player that’s rounds up to a size of an average Chrome extension? What would you say about this MP3 player that is not only tiny in size, but is actually tiny in the space it occupies on a screen’s real estate as well? Well, you can say that good things come in small packages, or you can simply say – CoolPlayer.
10 Tools To Get Kids Excited About Programming
For the average kid, computers and smartphones are fun tools. Education comes much later. Getting a kid excited about programming might take some doing because logic needs a bit of time to develop. It is imagination and creativity which arrive first. That’s where the crux of these ten tools lie…using creative tools to get children excited about programming.
Retire Notepad! Organize All Your Scattered Notes Neatly On ResophNotes [Windows]
Trying out note-taking apps is bit of an obsession. You can make do with the simplest ones around, but can’t avoid taking a look at the next one that arrives with a download link. If you are one of the many like me who still use the humble Notepad (or a Notepad alternative), you could do with some help from ResophNotes. ResophNotes is not a Notepad replacement, but a fast note-taking tool for Windows that offers you organization and backup in a small portable bundle.