How Many Social Networks Are You Active On? [MakeUseOf Poll]

Despite (or because of) their popularity, social networks are a controversial subject that’s often a point of contention even on MakeUseOf. Must you be a part of a social network to participate in something? How do you use your social networks? Are you even active on any? Why? And why not? Tell us how many social networks you’re active on.

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8 Websites That Offer Something You’ve Never Read Or Seen Every Day

There are very few questions that the Internet can't answer for you, and that's one of the many reasons that I love it. However, not all of us are curious enough to always know the right questions to ask. In this article, let me show you eight really cool websites that can introduce you to a piece of advice, a picture, a quote, or something else new and interesting every single day.

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Can You Make A Living Out Of Ethical Hacking?

Being labeled a “hacker” usually comes with plenty of negative connotations. If you call yourself a hacker, people will often perceive you as someone who causes mischief just for giggles. But there is a difference between good and bad hackers, as there are also ethical hackers that end up doing similar tasks for good and not evil. But while ethical hackers exist, is it possible to make a living as one?

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Full Google Reader Backup

"Reader is dead," says Mihai Parparita, one of the former Google Reader engineers. You still have 2-3 days to use Google Reader, but the best thing you can do is to export your data.



Google Takeout lets you export some of your Reader data, but not everything: your subscriptions, your notes, starred items, shared items, liked items, the list of followers and the people you were following, the items shared by the people you were following. Mihai Parparita wrote some Python scripts that download everything from your Google Reader accounts, including the entire content of the posts from your subscriptions. You need Python 2.7 and a lot of free storage: my backup has more than 5 GB for about 250 feeds (vs 125 MB for the uncompressed Takeout backup).

Mihai also started to write a script that lets you browse your archive. It's a work in progress, probably because the script for downloading your data is more important right now.



There's also a script for downloading a feed's archive. "Google Reader has (for the most part) a copy of all blog posts and other feed items published since its launch in late 2005 (assuming that at least one Reader user subscribed to the feed). This makes it an invaluable resource for sites that disappear, can serve as a backup mechanism and enables tools to be created." My post from 2007 provides another way to download the history of a feed.



"I don't fault Google for providing only partial data via Takeout. Exporting all 612,599 read items in my account (and a few hundred thousand more from subscriptions, recommendations, etc.) results in almost 4 GB of data. Even if I'm in the 99th percentile for Reader users (I've got the badge to prove it), providing hundreds of megabytes of data per user would not be feasible. I'm actually happy that Takeout support happened at all, since my understanding is that it was all during 20% time," says Mihai Parparita, who spent 5 years working on Google Reader.



If you're curious to know which Reader alternative gets a thumb up from Mihai, his answer is "a toss-up between NewsBlur and Digg Reader."

Lorem Ipsum Google Translate

"In publishing and graphic design, lorem ipsum is a placeholder text (filler text) commonly used to demonstrate the graphic elements of a document or visual presentation, such as font, typography, and layout, by removing the distraction of meaningful content. The lorem ipsum text is typically a section of a Latin text by Cicero with words altered, added, and removed that make it nonsensical and not proper Latin". (Wikipedia)



What happens when you use Google Translate to find the English translation of one of the many lorem ipsum texts? You get this:

"We will be sure to post a comment. Add tomato sauce, no tank or a traditional or online. Until outdoor environment, and not just any competition, reduce overall pain. Cisco Security, they set up in the throat develop the market beds of Cura; Employment silently churn-class by our union, very beginner himenaeos. Monday gate information. How long before any meaningful development. Until mandatory functional requirements to developers. But across the country in the spotlight in the notebook. The show was shot. Funny lion always feasible, innovative policies hatred assured. Information that is no corporate Japan."



Well, Google Translate for Latin is still in alpha and the text is nonsensical. There are many actual mistakes in Google Translate. Statistical machine translation sometimes produces humorous results.



{ via waxy.org }

Cool Websites and Tools [June 28th 2013]

Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. Most of the listed websites are FREE or come with a decent free account option. If you want to have similar cool websites round-ups delivered to your email daily email subscribe here....

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Instant Message Anyone On Your Home Network With LAN Messenger

One of the worst things in a household full of poeple is when conversations consit of shouting throughout the house. More families are turning to instant messaging as a solution for in-home communication. Heck - IM is making paging systems obsolete at most workplaces, so why not in the home? The problem arises for parents of young children, who don't want those kids to be plugged into the Internet on public IM networks - for those parents, LAN Messenger can serve as an excellent solution.

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Scrivener: The Best Writing Program for the Mac and PC

Scrivener has been around since 2006, and it is a favorite application amongst novelists and screenwriters. Scrivener is not a desktop layout application like Word and Pages, but it helps you organize and export your documents to other applications. As a full-time non-fiction tech writer, I can't recommend Scrivener enough for actually starting and drafting writing projects and today I will share my personal workflow and tips for getting the most out of Scrivener.

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Nightingale: A Faster, Cleaner Cross-Platform Fork of Songbird Music Player

I’ve tried so many desktop music players that I’m starting to lose my mind. So far I’ve tried Clementine, Spider, GOM Audio, AIMP3, and a few more. How does Nightingale fare against its fierce competition? Before answering that, you should know that Nightingale is a fork of Songbird Classic. You’ll find a lot of similarities between the two, but also a number of differences - the main one being that Songbird has officially been declared dead. Whether you were looking for a Songbird alternative or a Songbird replacement, Nightingale might have what you need.

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Read full article: Nightingale: A Faster, Cleaner Cross-Platform Fork of Songbird Music Player

Nightingale: A Faster, Cleaner Cross-Platform Fork of Songbird Music Player

I’ve tried so many desktop music players that I’m starting to lose my mind. So far I’ve tried Clementine, Spider, GOM Audio, AIMP3, and a few more. How does Nightingale fare against its fierce competition? Before answering that, you should know that Nightingale is a fork of Songbird Classic. You’ll find a lot of similarities between the two, but also a number of differences - the main one being that Songbird has officially been declared dead. Whether you were looking for a Songbird alternative or a Songbird replacement, Nightingale might have what you need.

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Read full article: Nightingale: A Faster, Cleaner Cross-Platform Fork of Songbird Music Player

2 Tools and Ways to Manage Your Windows Libraries

Microsoft has made some aspects of managing Windows libraries rather difficult -- what if you want to add removable drives or network shares to a library? What if you want to choose a custom icon for your libraries? To do these things, you'll need a third-party tool for managing your Windows libraries. These tools are useful on Windows 7, but they can be even more useful on Windows 8, as Modern apps don't have access to the file system and can only see files in the appropriate library.

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Do More with your Feedly RSS Reader

Feedly is our favorite RSS Reader. If you have just migrated from Google Reader to Feedly, this guide will help get up to speed and learn a few trick in the process.

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This story, Do More with your Feedly RSS Reader, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 28/06/2013 under Feedly, Google Reader, RSS, Internet.

2 Years of Google+

Google+ was launched 2 years ago to fix online sharing. "We'd like to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software. We want to make Google better by including you, your relationships, and your interests. And so begins the Google+ project," announced Google.



2 years later, Google+ grows faster than anticipated, brings cool new features, enables vibrant discussions, makes your photos look better and redefines the word "hangout".



There's a special Google +2 logo:

... and the jingle is now festive:

Here's the animated version:

Is Google+ an upgraded Google? Google+ brought a new consistent design for Google's services, made sharing more straightforward and search more social and personal. Google+ was a necessary tectonic shift for Google. It's now a different Google Labs, where the experiments turn into features that are used by hundreds of millions of people. From auto-enhanced photos to auto-tagged content, from video conferencing to event management, from social games to surfacing useful content, from object recognition to photo editing, Google+ is the place where you can use some of the most advanced features released by Google in the past 2 years.

YouTube's Subscription Reminder

If you watch a few videos from a channel, YouTube's homepage shows a message that recommends you to subscribe to that channel.



"Subscribe to see more videos from this channel. You've recently watched videos from [channel's name]. Subscribe to see their next videos right here on your YouTube homepage."

You can subscribe to the channel or hide the message by clicking the small "x" icon.



Now that you've subscribed to the channel, you can change your subscription preferences when you watch a video from that channel. There's a wheel icon next to the "subscribed" button that lets you enable email notifications and restrict the subscription to new uploads.

If you need more suggestions, check the "recommended channels" sidebar from YouTube's homepage or visit this page. Remove the channels you don't like to improve YouTube's future recommendations.

How to Quickly Compose a New Email Message

Learn how to quickly compose a new mail message in your default email program directly from the address bar of any web browser.

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This story, How to Quickly Compose a New Email Message, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 28/06/2013 under GMail, Mailto, Internet.

Office Document Editor for Chromebooks

Google works on creating a Native Client app for Quickoffice, a software acquired last year. There's an Office Viewer extension for Chrome, which is bundled with Chrome OS.



Now Google experiments with adding editing features to the Office Viewer. If you have a Chromebook, you've switched to the Dev Channel and have the latest Chrome OS version (29.0.1547.2), you can enable these features:



1. open a new tab



2. type this in the address bar: chrome://flags/ and then press Enter



3. use Ctrl+F to search for "document editing"



4. click "Enable" next to "Enable document editing"

5. click the "Restart Now" button to restart your computer and use the new flag.



The editor is pretty basic and it only works for Microsoft Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. For some reason, the document editor only saves documents in the Office 2007 format.

{ via François Beaufort }

How to Embed Instagram Videos on your Website

Learn how to embed any Instagram video or photograph into your website with a click. You may also use the tool for downloading Instagram videos.

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This story, How to Embed Instagram Videos on your Website, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 28/06/2013 under Embed, Html5, Instagram, Internet.

Cool Websites and Tools [June 27th 2013]

Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. Most of the listed websites are FREE or come with a decent free account option. If you want to have similar cool websites round-ups delivered to your email daily email subscribe here....

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Read full article: Cool Websites and Tools [June 27th 2013]

Discover The World Through Food With Cookening: The Airbnb Of Meals

Introducing the Airbnb of food! Cookening doesn't actually have anything to do with Airbnb, but being an Airbnb veteran guest myself, I couldn't help but notice the resemblance between the two services. The only difference is that with Cookening, you don't get a place to stay, you get a home-cooked meal from a local. Or, if you're the local, you get to cook and host tourists in your house.

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4 More YouTube Channels Worth Your Attention

A little over a year ago, I hit MUO readers with a short list of lesser-known YouTube series and personalities worth checking out . This list featured video game commentary, a guy who spends his time eating cat litter and shoes, an attempt at putting an iPhone through a blender, and more. It’s about that time to come up with another batch, this time of four!

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Generate Disposable Email Addresses That Do Not Expire

With Maildrop, you can instantly create disposable email addresses that do not expire and the service requires no logins or passwords.

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This story, Generate Disposable Email Addresses That Do Not Expire, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 27/06/2013 under Email, Spam, Websites, Internet.

So You Think You Own The Books and Games You Paid For? [Opinion]

I've got a shelf full of books. I love them. I read them. I even use them as a backdrop for my wife's science videos. And sometimes, I lend them to friends. It's not complicated, lending out books – you just hand your friend the book. If you're lucky, your friend brings it back (and you get to share a great conversation). If not, your friend has a book – and you no longer do. Since the dawn of human civilization, this is how lending worked.

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Google+ Photos Trash

Did you know that Google+ Photos has a trash section? You can find it by clicking "More" and then "Trash" or you can use this link. Google says that the "items will be permanently deleted after 60 days" and shows a link for manually emptying the trash.

But there's more:



"Photos and videos you move to trash in Google+ are stored for a short period of time before they are permanently deleted. If you move an item to trash, and later want to retrieve it, you can do so by following these instructions: select Photos from the Google+ navigation menu, click More and select Trash from the dropdown, click one or many checkboxes to select photos and choose Restore to return these photos back to Google+. These photos will be restored to the same album(s) they were located prior to being moved to trash. To permanently delete photos, select the items you'd like to delete, and click Delete permanently."

Picasa Web Albums doesn't have a trash section. If you delete a photo from the Picasa Web interface, you can find it in the Google+ Photos trash. When you delete a photo from Google+ Photos, there's a message that says "your photo has been moved to trash" and links to the trash section.



For some reason, Google+ photos from the trash are automatically deleted after 60 days, Gmail's messages are deleted after 30 days, while Google Docs files are never deleted automatically. I wonder why.



{ Thanks, Fernando. }

Secure Your Online Transactions With BitDefender’s Safepay

Anyone who's made a purchase online has had a nightmare about identity theft. Though uncommon, the problem can cause serious financial harm, and victims sometimes don't even know they've become a target. BitDefender Safepay, currently in beta, guards against these threats by providing a secure browsing environment safe from both malware and attacks on unsecured WiFi. Anyone can download the software for free and begin using it immediately, so let's take a closer look.

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Read full article: Secure Your Online Transactions With BitDefender’s Safepay

Secure Your Online Transactions With BitDefender’s Safepay

Anyone who's made a purchase online has had a nightmare about identity theft. Though uncommon, the problem can cause serious financial harm, and victims sometimes don't even know they've become a target. BitDefender Safepay, currently in beta, guards against these threats by providing a secure browsing environment safe from both malware and attacks on unsecured WiFi. Anyone can download the software for free and begin using it immediately, so let's take a closer look.

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Read full article: Secure Your Online Transactions With BitDefender’s Safepay