Blog Title: Cool Websites, Software and Internet Tips

BREAKING: New Gmail Security Flaw. More Domains Get Stolen!

As many of you already know on November 2nd, MakeUseOf.com’s domain was stolen from us. It took us about 36 hours to get the domain back. As we have pointed out earlier the hacker somehow managed to get access to my Gmail account and from there to our GoDaddy account, unlock the domain and read more..

Codeflux’s Fast and Easy Internet Diagnostic Tools

Many webmasters, network administrators, hackers, and other geek types use diagnostic tools to perform certain tasks. They often use a command line to run programs such as ping, traceroute, nslookup, whois, etc.  Codeflux has an Internet tools gateway that allows you to run such programs from the convenience of your web browser. The following tools read more..

It’s Official - Change The Look Of Gmail With Colorful Themes

Google boffins are starting to play with colors. The good thing is that now we can too! This Wednesday, Google rolled out a much awaited feature to Gmail. Bright, colorful, fantastic themes! I wouldn’t have caught it but for the little feed Google gives on the signing page. And lo and behold, just a little read more..

Make Your Wordpress Blog iPhone Compatible with WPtouch

Automattic, the company behind the Wordpress blogging platform, currently hosts over 4.5 million blogs. According to their download counter, they have served just over 3.1 million downloads of their self-hosted blogging software. With nearly 8 million blogs in the wild, it’s easy to see that many content publishers have embraced the platform’s ease of use read more..

How To Make XP Look Like Windows 7

Just recently Laurence gave us a little preview of Windows 7 . It looks like it is going to bring major improvements, with the benefit of being just as pretty as Vista. Unless you decide to finally go OS or Linux (I put off Vista because I could not decide), Windows 7 will hopefully make read more..

Make Use Of Podcast #39: Gmail Themes

Gmail gave all its loyal users (and even the not-so-loyal ones) an early Christmas present yesterday: themes. You can now customize Gmail to your taste with 31 themes, including “terminal” for all you geeks out there - and you know who you are! Which theme is your favourite?  Let us know in the comments. .muo_af_style { background-color: #B4D0E1; read more..

Cool Websites and Tools (edition #201)

Check out some of the latest makeuseof discoveries. All listed websites are FREE (or come with a decent free account option). No trials or buy-to-use craplets. For even more app reviews subscribe to makeuseof directory. Want to submit your application to MakeUseOf directory ? See how here. (1) Car Performance - Track your car’s fuel consumption read more..

Get More Use Out Of Your RSS Feeds with Snackr

RSS feeds have become the de facto standard for delivering massive amounts of content in a very simple to read and simple to understand format. Any website delivering daily, weekly or even monthly updates, and lacking a ‘Really Simple Syndication’(RSS) feed, just isn’t delivering what is becoming the most popular form of delivery. Along with read more..

Go Green and Get Some Free Magazines

For the environmentally-conscious reader, Digital-magazine store Zinio is currently offering free subscriptions to select publications as part of its “Read Green Initiative.” There are several magazines to choose from in many categories. The sign up process is very simple: just select your magazine and provide an email address, then sign up for a Zinio account read more..

Batch Edit Your Images with GIMP [Windows only]

For my MakeUseOf articles I’m constantly resizing images so that they will fit into our page template.  As a result, I go through a lot of repetitive actions with GIMP, the free image editing program.  After a quick Google search, I found a powerful tool to help me save a ton of time by batch read more..

Revive Old School FPS Gaming With Marathon (Multi-Platform)

New games come out all the time, old games don’t. Seems logical doesn’t it? Well, we tend to lose contact with the old days, the days of the games that brought the genre to what it is today. Days when they didn’t bury you under a ton of shooter games. I’m not going to say that I read more..

3 Easy Ways To Add Borders To Your Photos

There’s nothing quite like a nicely framed photograph. Ideally we’re talking about some classy wood and quality glass.  If your image is heading to Grandma for her birthday, then that’s probably the best option. But for many of us, photographs largely live online, ready to be admired and/or criticised by the masses. For some situations, a read more..

Get Any Online Video to your iPhone/iPod Touch in 2 Clicks [Mac]

We have to admit that we’re mad about watching videos online. It’s because it’s simply so easy to do. Plus, there are so many sources where you can get your video-fix from: YouTube, Google Video, Metacafé, just to name a few. There are even a couple of other sites (which I can’t really mention) that read more..

4 Microblogging Firefox Tools You Shouldn’t Ignore

It seems that the world and his dog now have a Twitter, Facebook, Jaiku or Plurk account. Some of us see these services as an extension of our mobile phone or our blog, some as a way to get into internet communications. Whatever you like to call it, microblogging has propelled itself into the internet read more..

Stick This On Your PC - Sticky Notes For Your Desktop

I used to be addicted to sticky notes. There I said it… The kids in the mail room were bringing me a few new packs daily. I stuck them everywhere. On monitors, servers, laptops even on interns. (Hey I have problems remembering names more than IP addresses!) So when I came across this simple <1MB application that read more..

Send Free Email Newsletters With YMLP

One of the best ways to interact and keep your website, blog, or customers coming back for more is through an email newsletter. If you have a loyal following they are happy to hear from you. But, too often you have to pay for an email newsletter service because sending out an email to thousands of people from your regular email account will brand you as a spammer.

Make Use Of Podcast #38: Yang Quits Yahoo!, iPhone Google App

Today on the show, I’m taking a look at a couple of items in the news over the past little while.  It’s been a while since we’ve done a news show. Here’s what I’m covering : Jerry Yang steps down from Yahoo! Barack Obama to give up the Crackberry Poll: Best Google search operators and tips Google voice and video read more..

Cool Websites and Tools (edition #200)

Check out some of the latest makeuseof discoveries. All listed websites are FREE (or come with a decent free account option). No trials or buy-to-use craplets. For even more app reviews subscribe to makeuseof directory. Want to submit your application to MakeUseOf directory ? See how here. (1) BBsnap - Simple web app that lets you read more..

Five New Useful Portable Apps For Your USB Stick

I am a big fan of my USB stick and so one of my favourite websites is John Haller’s Portable Apps. However, it’s been some time since I last checked the site and when I finally took a look at it again at the weekend, I was pleasantly surprised to see that he has been read more..

How To Create a Ringtone For The iPhone In iTunes

The other day I decided that I should have some different ringtones on my iPhone 3G. Notably, I wanted a separate one for my wife, and several other different ones for my business colleagues. For some reason I had it in my head that making ringtones from the music that I had in my iTunes program read more..