The Gadgets And Games Of Kickstarter: June 21st 2013 Edition

Each Kickstarter is its own drama representing the hopes and dreams of at least one person. Will it succeed? Will it fail? Will it become a media sensation? It’s impossible to know before the money starts flooding in – or doesn’t. So pop some popcorn and grab your mouse. We’ve got some Kickstarters to watch.

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10 Common PC Maintenance Errors That You Can Avoid

PCs still require maintenance, as much as we wish they were magic boxes that did all the work for us. Unfortunately, many people make mistakes when it comes to maintaining their PC. These mistakes could result in hardware damage, security breaches, data loss, and general system instability. We generally cover lists of things you should do, but knowing what not to do can be even more important. Here we cover some of the most common mistakes so you can avoid them and keep your PC running like new.

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Facebook Now Offering Users The Ability To Comment Using Images [Updates]

Facebook is pulling out all the stops these days to stay one step ahead of Google Plus, with new features such as threaded replies (excellent) and hashtags (not so excellent). The new development this time around is the ability to respond to status updates with images.

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Google Mine

Google prepares a new service that's called Google Mine. It's integrated with Google+ and it's a way to keep track of the items you own and share some of them with your circles. Right now, the service is tested internally at Google.



"Google Mine lets you share your belongings with your friends and keep up to date with what your friends are sharing. It enables you to control which of your Google+ Circles you share an item with. It also lets you rate and review the items, upload photos of them and share updates on the Google+ Stream where your friends get to see and comment on them."

Google Mine lets you organize the things you own, use, wish for, and more: gadgets, clothing, electronics, DVDs, cars, bikes or anything!



It also enables social interactions around them with your Circles using Google+:



* Catalog your belongings, track what you have

* Review your belongings for your friends to see

* Control who sees what, track conversations

* Send requests to borrow or try out friends' stuff

* Share stuff you wish for, get recommendations

* Share stuff you are giving away, find takers

* Follow, browse, search stuff that friends share

There's also an Android app, currently available on Bazaar, Google's internal Play Store.

Here are some messages used by Google Mine. As you can see, the service lets you enter a lot of information about your objects. For example, you can change the status of an object to "lent", "given away", "got it back", "lost it", "had in the past". You can post videos about the object, write reviews, add it to a wishlist and maybe others can buy it using Google Shopping. You can also check popular items and the items others have shared.

After adding an object, Google shows this message: "You have just started using Google Mine and have added some items to your collections. Now, you can let your friends know by posting to your Google+ Stream."



You can ask other people to send you their objects: "You are starting a request for an item. Google Mine will enable you to communicate on this request with the receiver by creating a post to your Google+ Stream, visible only to you and the receiver."



{ Thanks, Florian K. }

A Google Reader Puzzle From 2007

Back in 2007, Google accidentally made public an internal video about Google Reader. The video included a lot of useful information about Google Reader, the kind of details you'll never find in a Google post or presentation.



I'm trying to solve the puzzle and find the number of Google Reader users from 2007. Here are the hints:



1. At that time, Google Reader crawled 8 million feeds.



2. Two thirds of the feeds had only one subscriber, one third of the feeds had more than one subscriber.



3. Google Reader used 10TB for storing all the raw data.



4. The rate of user growth = the rate of growth for the number of feeds.



5. The index size grew 4% every week.



6. 70% of the Google Reader traffic came from Firefox (at that time, Firefox's market share was about 15%).



7. Gmail and orkut were the only Google applications that had a bigger number of pageviews/user than Google Reader.



So, at that time, only 2.6 million feeds indexed by Google Reader had more than one subscriber. Probably many of the feeds that had only one subscriber were used by other Google services powered by Google Reader's backend (orkut, Blogger widgets, Google Spreadsheets, Ajax API). It makes sense to assume that the number of Google Reader users was lower than the number of feeds with more than one subscriber.



Here's a chart from 2010 that shows Google Reader's user growth:







And something else from 2010: "the average Reader user reads about 105 items a day".

Cool Websites and Tools [June 20th 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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Chrome’s Evernote Web Clipper Gets Gmail Clipping Ability [Updates]

Evernote has just become even more useful if you are a user of both Chrome and Gmail, for you can now use Evernote's Web Clipper Chrome extension to store Gmail conversation threads in your account. If there is an important email that you need stored in Evernote, you no longer have to copy and paste everything. All it takes now is one click of the web clipper button and you're done.

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Build A Beautiful Website Without Any Coding Skills Or Design Know-How With Breezi

Not being a coder, I’m always on the lookout for easy ways to build beautiful websites that require no coding skills , and just over a year ago I discovered Breezi . A new service at the time, Breezi caught my attention for both its ease of use and abundance of features, and proved itself a reliable and stable solution for building websites.

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5 NBA Players To Follow On Twitter During The 2013 Offseason

If you're an NBA fan, the offseason is torture for you. It's weeks and weeks of chatter and speculation with nothing interesting to offer, aside from the draft. What can you do to hold yourself over until next season? One of the things that kept me interested in the happenings around the league last season was staying informed via Twitter.

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Facebook introduces Video on Instagram

RedReader: A Better Way To Browse Reddit [Android]

Reddit's the best time sink on the web, with a community surrounding just about any topic (including some hilarious specific things) and a culture that helps spread and spawn some of the web's best humor. Its interface, however, is famously terrible – especially on finicky phones. Try a fast Reddit Android client that looks great, doesn't include ads and is open source to boot. RedReader is an up-and-coming app that's quickly adding features, and it just might be the best Reddit experience out there for Android users.

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The Most Well-Connected Google Service

Many people think that Google Reader could've been more successful if Google promoted it more. The truth is that Google Reader has been the service that connected to the biggest number of Google services. No other Google benefited from so many service integrations.



Here's an incomplete list. Start counting:



1. a link to Reader was displayed in Gmail's inbox when there was no mail



2. for many years, Google Reader could be found in the main navigation bar, next to Gmail, Calendar and Google Docs



3. Google Reader was the first Google service that worked offline and the first Google service that used Google Gears, back in 2007







4. Google Reader integrated with Google Social Search, a feature that allowed you to restrict results to the pages written by your friends or people you follow.







5. iGoogle integrated with Google Reader when it started to add support for canvas view. Maximize a feed gadget and you get the Google Reader interface.







6. Blogger's Following feature was powered by Google Reader. "The blogs you follow in Blogger have been added as subscriptions in Google Reader. Subscriptions can be managed in Reader without affecting your following list in Blogger."







7. Listen, Google's podcast manager app for Android, used Google Reader to store subscriptions.



8. Google Alerts integrated with Google Reader, so you could subscribe to feeds instead of receiving email notofcations.



9. Back in 2008, Google's mobile transcoder displayed the site's feeds at the top of the page and linked to Google Reader.



10. Google Reader was the only Google product with an interface optimized for Nintendo Wii.



11. Google Currents, launched in 2011, allowed you to import your Google Reader subscriptions.



12. Google Buzz's commenting feature was integrated with Google Reader.







13. When Bloglines was discontinued in 2010, Google Reader's team encouraged users to switch to Reader. The blog post includes a graph of Reader users over time.

14. The Google Groups redesign from 2010 was inspired by Google Reader.



15. Google bought FeedBurner to monetize Google Reader and launched AdSense for Feeds.



16. Back in 2007, Google Reader made shared items available to Google Talk contacts and many people complained about this.



17. Google's Power Readers feature from 2008 allowed you to "track the news sites and blogs Barack Obama and John McCain read" using Google Reader. It was a clever way to promote Google Reader.



18. Google Toolbar for IE allowed you to subscribe to feeds using iGoogle or Google Reader.



19. Google Blog Search still has this link below the list of search results page: "Subscribe to a blog search feed for [query] in Google Reader". Google News had a similar link.

20. Google Reader was Google's infrastructure for feeds and the technology was used by iGoogle, orkut, Gmail's web clips, Blogger widgets, Google Spreadsheets and the Ajax API.

The Quickest, Easiest Way To Record Skype Calls For Mac And Windows

These days, almost everyone has a Skype account. It has quickly become the default communication method for long-distance calls and video chats as it is free and easy to use. Once you're in the habit of using Skype regularly, though, you start finding other neat things you can do with it. Like, for instance, recording calls. There are so many great reasons you may have for recording calls on Skype, so whatever it is you need to record; here's how you do it.

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