08 August 2013

LinCity-NG for Linux vs. SimCity: Is Free Always Better?



lincity_simcity_intro

I’ve always loved simulation games for as long as I can remember. They can involve so many different aspects of the topic in question and can keep you entertained for hours. However, a common downside to any great simulation game is the price to purchase it. Thankfully, there are open source equivalents which aim to replace their costly proprietary cousins — examples include FlightGear and LinCity-NG as alternatives to Microsoft’s Flight Simulator series and SimCity games respectively. It’s great to be able to play these open source games for frugal fun, but whether they can actually be compared to their...


Read the full article: LinCity-NG for Linux vs. SimCity: Is Free Always Better?



How To Use Google Forms To Create Your Own Self-Grading Quiz



quiz

Are you a teacher or trainer? Someone involved in a hiring process? Do you need to check somehow that other people have the skills or knowledge that you expect them to? Well, you’re going to love what you can do using Google Forms. You can create a self-grading test for whatever your purposes are. That’s powerful! Google Forms are amazing tools, allowing you to do some really advanced tricks with forms as the front-end and spreadsheets at the heart. Once you get started you’ll be amazed at just how much you can achieve with this basic premise. Today we’ll look...


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FullRecall: A Cross-Platform Tool To Remember Everything



fullrecallheader

The human memory can store data for an amazingly long time, but unlike a computer, we have a hard time recalling information that’s not frequently used or obviously important. Barring injury, we’ll almost never lose track of where we live. But we can have hard time digging up important details from a book read just a few weeks ago. Repetition is a great way to work around this problem. By forcing ourselves to try and remember a fact on a regular basis, you can slowly nudge your mind into retaining it. This concept is core to FullRecall, a simple, free...


Read the full article: FullRecall: A Cross-Platform Tool To Remember Everything



FullRecall: A Cross-Platform Tool To Remember Everything



fullrecallheader

The human memory can store data for an amazingly long time, but unlike a computer, we have a hard time recalling information that’s not frequently used or obviously important. Barring injury, we’ll almost never lose track of where we live. But we can have hard time digging up important details from a book read just a few weeks ago. Repetition is a great way to work around this problem. By forcing ourselves to try and remember a fact on a regular basis, you can slowly nudge your mind into retaining it. This concept is core to FullRecall, a simple, free...


Read the full article: FullRecall: A Cross-Platform Tool To Remember Everything



Amazon Adds Fine Art to Its Online Marketplace [Updates]



amazon-art

The leading online marketplace, Amazon, launched on Tuesday, a Fine Art store featuring paintings, mixed media, photographs, pop art and drawings priced from under $99 to $10,000 and above. The fine works of art are sold by individual galleries including Abmeyer + Wood Fine Art, Catherine Person Gallery, Luster, Rise Art, Paddle, the Little Collector, and UGallery. As with other online departments, the store can be browsed by Artists (including Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali), Departments (e.g., Drawings, Pantings, Prints), Subject (including Abstract, Nature, Animals, People) and Style (e.g., Art Photography, Impressionism, Postmodern & Contemporary). Works can also be viewed...


Read the full article: Amazon Adds Fine Art to Its Online Marketplace [Updates]



You Can Now Browse The Windows Store From Your Web Browser



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Up until now, the official Windows Store for Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 was accessible only from the Store app in present in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. Unlike Windows Phone Store and other mobile operating system app stores, Windows Store was not available to browse from previous versions of Windows and other operating systems. [...]

Bittorrent Technology Reviewed-How Torrents Work?



World Wide Web is full of so-called „Torrents“, internet users often speak about “torrent files ” and use different portals to find them. Let’s go a little bit deeper into the past and understand what is really meant under this term.










Bittorrent working model

What is Torrent file and how it works?


Torrent is an unofficial term used for BitTorrent. Bittorrent is a peer-to-peer protocol that works without the need for a central server. This means that not a server is responsible for sending you information, but you connect directly other available network members to get data transferred. In other words, BitTorrent’s “swarm” consists of many personal computers connected to each other directly through BT protocol.

This technology was developed by Bram Cohen in April 2001. Just some years after launching Bittorrent became one of the most popuar ways to transfer huge data between computers. Today it can be used by anyone without limitation by operation system, internet speed and computer knowledge.



Traditionally, a computer becomes a Bittorrent member by loading a file with .torrent extension into his Bittorrent client. After importing the client connects the user with a tracker. The tracker is a special designed server that gathers information about all connected computers from the swarm, files available on their machines, IP addresses etc. The main role of the tracker is to allow the users to connect to each other and to transfer binary data from one machine to another.



Once connected, a Bittorrent client begins to download files from other members in small parts. After some parts are downloaded, the client starts to share with other users connected to the same swarm. The main advantage of Bittorrent is that users share already transferred parts with others directly during downloading. This technology provides a one of the fastest way of content spreading all over the unlimited number of computers. This way of sharing increases the download speed in x times. If 5,000 people download the same file, it can take minutes to download gigabytes of data.



Important: Bittorrent client never downloads a file from a tracker server. The tracker is only responsible for managing the connected users from the swarm and establishing connection between them, not for transfer real files between single members.

What is needed to start torrenting


Primary there are two important things needed to start downloading files using Bittorrent: a Bittorrent client and a torrent file. You can find many different clients for all operation systems by searching in internet with Google – all of them are mostly free of charge. You will need a torrent search engine to find good torrent file. There is a huge amount of different niche related sites that offer torrent files for download. Just search in Google for the site that would suit your needs.

Never ending discussion


It’s well-known that many people use Bittorrent to download pirated movies, music, software, books, games etc. Because of its bad image many voices say that Bittorrent was specially developed to support piracy, that the technology should be declared as illegal and that it needed to be shut down.



Let’s go to the past and see what was the main aim of Bittorrent Inc. to develop this protocol. The motivation was to create a system that would be able to handle unlimited amount of data using the resources of clients’ computers and not of a central server. In this way many companies could save money on expensive server costs. BT protocol should be a an ecological way to save resources of our planet. While one user receives information from another user, he uses resources of his own machine to retrieve the data. This is the main advantage of BT technology.

Some good examples of how Bittorrent can be used:


The games publisher Blizzard uses Bittorrent protocol they have integrated into own client to distribute updates their games like World of Warcraft, StarCraft II or Diablo 3.



People all over the world can use Bittorrent technology to distribute big sized files to unlimited numbers of other people without paying for the server hosting bandwidth. This is a big help for the smaller movie companies, music labels or game publishers cause in this way they reduce their costs. WikiLeaks uses Bittorrent to distribute data, Linux uses it for their ISO disc images. Bittorrent can be also used for synchronizing of files between several computers, for live broadcasting and streaming of videos to the large audience of viewers. There are many other examples that can be mentioned to underline the Bittorrent’s importance for the digital industry.

Conclusion


There could be many opinions about Bittorrent and the ways it is used now for. You can love it or hate it. But the main point and this is also the important one is that Bittorrent can be assigned to the outstanding developments of mankind of last years - technology that opens new possibilities and way of distributing of digital information all over the world without high investments into expensive hardware.




How to Make your Mobile Screenshots Look Awesome



Learn how to capture screenshots of your mobile phones and tablets and then make these captured images look more awesome and photorealistic.



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Digital Inspiration @labnol This story, How to Make your Mobile Screenshots Look Awesome, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 08/08/2013 under Mobile, Screen Capture, Internet.



Google Docs Shows Link Suggestions



I've always wanted a tool that lets you highlight a text and quickly link to the top search results for that text. Now this feature is available in Google Docs and Google Slides: select some text, right-click and select "Link". Then you can pick one of top Google search results, one of your other documents or the headings/bookmarks that match the text selection.









Type something in the "link" box and Google will show results for the new text:






You can also use the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+K) or use the link button from the toolbar.






{ via Google Drive's Google+ page }

Google Showcases In-depth News Articles



If you search for a broad topic like [love], [global warming], [censorship], [North Korea], Google shows 3 in-depth news articles at the bottom of the first search results pages. It's an effort to go beyond promoting recent news articles and reward news sites that write detailed articles and in-depth analyses.



Here's an example for [recession]: 3 long articles from Esquire, New York Times and Forbes.






The results for [amazon prime] include a Gizmodo article.






The results for [startups] include a TechCrunch article from April 2012 about the top startup ecosystems.






"To understand a broad topic, sometimes you need more than a quick answer. Our research indicates perhaps 10% of people's daily information needs fit this category - topics like stem cell research, happiness, and love, to name just a few. (...) I'm happy to see people continue to invest in thoughtful in-depth content that will remain relevant for months or even years after publication. This is exactly what you'll find in the new feature. In addition to well-known publishers, you'll also find some great articles from lesser-known publications and blogs," says Google's Pandu Nayak.



There's a help center article that offers more information about this feature. "While the feature is based on algorithmic signals, there are steps you can take as a webmaster to help Google find your high-quality, in-depth content and best present it to users in the search." Google suggests to use schema.org article markup, Google authorship markup, logos and content that can be accessed without subscription.



Google News has a similar section that's called "spotlight", but it only includes recent news articles. "The Spotlight section of Google News is updated periodically with news and in-depth pieces of lasting value. These stories, which are automatically selected by our computer algorithms, include investigative journalism, opinion pieces, special-interest articles, and other stories of enduring appeal. To access the stories in this section, just click Spotlight on the left side of the page."





Print Vs. Digital: What Is The Future For News? [We Ask You]




Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Internet retail giant Amazon, has bought The Washington Post for $250 million. He has bought it as an individual, not as Amazon. This makes Bezos, a leading light in the digital, online world thanks to his disrupting of the bricks-and-mortar order of things, a press baron who single-handedly owns a famous newspaper. A print newspaper. These are the worlds of old media and new media colliding in spectacular fashion, once again raising the debate over where the future of news lies. No one is yet clear about the motivations behind the acquisition. Bezos...


Read the full article: Print Vs. Digital: What Is The Future For News? [We Ask You]



Cut, Edit, and Convert Your Videos For Free With Avidemux



video-editing

When it comes to video editing, most programs currently available are extremely dense and packed with hundreds of options. And why shouldn’t they be? Video editing is all about control and that requires a lot of features. The downside is the huge inherent learning curve of such complex programs. What if you want to edit videos on a more basic level? I present to you: Avidemux. Now, to be fair, there are a few basic video editors available if you need a quick cut or splice – I’m thinking Windows Movie Maker and VirtualDub. However, those programs come with limitations...


Read the full article: Cut, Edit, and Convert Your Videos For Free With Avidemux



Cut, Edit, and Convert Your Videos For Free With Avidemux



video-editing

When it comes to video editing, most programs currently available are extremely dense and packed with hundreds of options. And why shouldn’t they be? Video editing is all about control and that requires a lot of features. The downside is the huge inherent learning curve of such complex programs. What if you want to edit videos on a more basic level? I present to you: Avidemux. Now, to be fair, there are a few basic video editors available if you need a quick cut or splice – I’m thinking Windows Movie Maker and VirtualDub. However, those programs come with limitations...


Read the full article: Cut, Edit, and Convert Your Videos For Free With Avidemux



Finding the Best PNG Image Compression Tool



smallflower

Whether you’re creating a website, publishing an online photo gallery, or you just want to share your favorite pictures on a social network, the need to compress high-quality images is critical. Any image that has a smaller size will load on a web page faster, fit into an email message more easily, and transfer across the Internet more quickly. Compressed images can speed up the entire page load time of your site, and that’s really important when you’re looking to design a high quality web page that people aren’t annoyed to visit because the images take so long to load!...


Read the full article: Finding the Best PNG Image Compression Tool



Finding the Best PNG Image Compression Tool



smallflower

Whether you’re creating a website, publishing an online photo gallery, or you just want to share your favorite pictures on a social network, the need to compress high-quality images is critical. Any image that has a smaller size will load on a web page faster, fit into an email message more easily, and transfer across the Internet more quickly. Compressed images can speed up the entire page load time of your site, and that’s really important when you’re looking to design a high quality web page that people aren’t annoyed to visit because the images take so long to load!...


Read the full article: Finding the Best PNG Image Compression Tool



Finding the Best PNG Image Compression Tool



smallflower

Whether you’re creating a website, publishing an online photo gallery, or you just want to share your favorite pictures on a social network, the need to compress high-quality images is critical. Any image that has a smaller size will load on a web page faster, fit into an email message more easily, and transfer across the Internet more quickly. Compressed images can speed up the entire page load time of your site, and that’s really important when you’re looking to design a high quality web page that people aren’t annoyed to visit because the images take so long to load!...


Read the full article: Finding the Best PNG Image Compression Tool



What Is PRISM? Everything You Need to Know



eagle-surveillance

The National Security Agency in the US has access to whatever data you’re storing with US service providers like Google Microsoft, Yahoo, and Facebook. They’re also likely monitoring most of the traffic flowing across the Internet. We’ll try to summarize the important revelations about PRISM from the recent leaks and discussions around this important topic. First, an important disclaimer: This summary won’t be perfect or complete. The US government has complained that the discussion of PRISM involves incomplete information that doesn’t paint a complete picture of what’s going on — but that’s all we have available to us. In spite...


Read the full article: What Is PRISM? Everything You Need to Know



8 Google Search Tips To Keep Handy At All Times




Google isn’t the only game in town when it comes to search. Alternatives such as Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Wolphram Alpha also provide the tools necessary to search the Web. However, the figures don’t lie, and the figures suggest that the majority of Internet users choose Google over the rest of the competition. With that in mind it’s important to make sure all of those Google users are utilizing all that Google has to offer when it comes to its search engine. Everyone knows how to conduct a normal search by typing some words and/or a phrase into the box provided...


Read the full article: 8 Google Search Tips To Keep Handy At All Times



Self-Employment Works: 6 Tips To Set Up Your First Online Business From Home



muo-girl-freelance

With the explosion of digital technology and fast Internet speeds, more and more people are looking for a way out of the drudge of the commute and the threat of short-term contracts to work from home, running their own businesses where they can be in greater control of the way money is made and spent. Unfortunately, it isn’t as easy as quitting your job on Friday and booting up your PC or Mac the following Monday. There are various things you need to have in place, steps to take and research to do before you throw away your old career...


Read the full article: Self-Employment Works: 6 Tips To Set Up Your First Online Business From Home



Amazon Sneaks Out Pinterest-Like Collections Feature [Updates]



Morguefile-Caprisco-News-1680x840

Amazon has decided to sneak a new Collections feature into its already wide range of options. This works with a user’s Wish List and allows them to sort items in a way that looks very similar to how Pinterest, allowing users to display the cool things they come across on the web. Like Pinterest, users can see something of a virtual corkboard where he or she can jump in and “pin” things they like. Of course, this is an Amazon service, so it’s not as wide-reaching as Pinterest, which lets users share things from all over the web. The new...


Read the full article: Amazon Sneaks Out Pinterest-Like Collections Feature [Updates]