Make Use On it: August 2013

Saturday 31 August 2013

How Do Webcomics Make Money?

A lot of my childhood was swept up in comics. I don’t mean superhero comics — I never really got into those — but funny strips that often contained subtle commentaries on life that flew over my youthful head. Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes, Dilbert, and comics in that vein. Nowadays, though, a lot of great comics are being published on the web as webcomics. You might be interested in adding to the pool, but what if you want to do it full-time?

The web is full of content ranging from general humor webcomics to webcomics for geeks. Whatever your genre, whatever your niche, you will be able to find an audience as long as you write well and put yourself out there every day. So how do you make money from it? Keep reading to find out how most artists keep their bank accounts afloat with their drawings.

5 iOS Apps To Help You Become An Interior Design Maste

Is there anything an iPhone or iPad cannot help you with? If there is, I have yet to find it. Turns out, you can even use the magical devices to help make your home a more beautiful and comfortable place. Planning an interior design project is hard, and that is why there are people who do it for a full-time job. However, we can’t all afford to hire a professional, and that’s where some awesome iPhone apps can come in and save the day.

I will readily admit that I spend way too much of my time watching shows on HGTV where people make fantastic renovations on their homes. It makes me a little jealous, and even further, it makes me want to learn some of those skills. While I will never be a professional, using these apps has certainly helped me to become more skilled with the planning and layout of my house.

Test Your Hearing Age & Other Fun Science Videos With AsapSCIENCE

YouTube and education goes well together with courses, lectures and experiments from the world’s finest educational establishments, but much of the time videos of kittens outdo solid informative efforts. It’s no secret that the best way to make people learn is to engage them with your subject, but this is easier said than done. That’s particularly true on the Internet, where everything is a distraction.

Striking the balance between education and entertainment (go on, use the word edutainment, I dare you) is difficult, but many have achieved it. AsapSCIENCE is another channel that fuses short bursts of truly interesting knowledge into light, hand-drawn videos that attract millions of views. Best of all you’re guaranteed to learn something, even if it’s the fact that you have the ears of a 70-year old rock star.

Can You Run Your Business Purely From Your Smartphone?

Ah, the smartphone. This device that many would have you believe can literally do anything. Is it even worthy of being called a mere phone? We have so many apps that can turn it into almost any tool that we need, and the word “phone” seems a bit limiting.

Regardless, can your smartphone really do anything? Furthermore, can you run your business from your smartphone? MakeUseOf wanted to find out, so we nailed down the five main cores of business when it comes to basic operations and we’ve take the smartphone approach to these essential needs. Here’s how they compare.

Improve Your English With New And Improved Definitions On Google Search

If Google Search has been standing in as your online dictionary of choice, then the search box will now take you deeper into a word. The latest update gives you sample sentences, synonyms, origin, and translations to go with the meaning of the word you put into the query. Google has updated both desktop and mobile search with the more comprehensive definitions. Unfortunately, for now it’s U.S. only. Knowing Google, you can be sure it will be rolled out elsewhere as well.

Earlier, Google supported natural language queries. For instance, something like “definition Expeditious” or “What’s the definition of expeditious?” gave you the meaning, some synonyms, and a tiny More Info link that connected you to third-party resources like FreeDictionary.com, and a drop-down menu for Google Translate powered language conversions. With the latest update, Google Search cuts through a few steps and saves you a lot of bother by displaying most of the word-related information front and center.

Google Launches Landing Page For Helpouts – A Live Video Marketplace

Why Email Can’t Be Protected From Government Surveillance

“If you knew what I know about email, you might not use it either,” said the owner of secure email service Lavabit as he recently shut it down. “There is no way to do encrypted e-mail where the content is protected,” said Phil Zimmermann as he suddenly shut down Silent Circle’s secure email service. The reality is that email is fundamentally insecure and can never be protected from government surveillance in the same way some other communications can.

Sure, you may be using a different encrypted and “secure” email service that hasn’t shut down yet. But they’re vulnerable to the same US government pressure Lavabit faced — that’s why Silent Circle shut down before it was contacted by the government. Some less principled services will opt to cooperate with governments rather than shut down. We don’t know exactly what demands Lavabit faced, as they’re forbidden from disclosing anything they experienced as a result of backdoor orders from the secret US surveillance court that enables PRISM and other NSA surveillance programs.

Now, let’s look at why email is a poor choice for secure communications, and how it’s an easy target for government snooping.

Are You In A Rush To Make Money From Home? Spot 7 Work At Home Scams.

Wealth, speed, ethics — when it comes to money, you can only pick two. When it comes to working from home, it’s very likely that you won’t get a chance to even pick one of them. That’s because most opportunities to make money from home are simply scams.

While there are some ways to make money from home, there are more ways to get scammed than there are authentic opportunities for profit. Below are seven work at home scams that are quite popular but not always easy to spot. We’ve done the hard work for you, so check them out.

Puzzle Alarm Clock for Android Makes Sure You Never Oversleep Again

Alarm clocks are fundamentally very simple things: They wait until the designated time, and then wreak havoc. Or so the basic concept goes, at least. But these simple alarm clocks all face an age-old problem: What if you switch them off an go back to sleep for “five more minutes” only to wake up hours later? Supposedly, you could use self control to solve this problem. But why use self control when you can use technology instead? So, this is where things start getting creative. The next step up from a mechanical clock is one with a snooze function, of course — something we generally take for granted. But bring smartphones into the equation, and things really start getting wild. We’ve previously looked at several uniqueAndroid alarm clocks, but Puzzle Alarm Clock pulls out all the stops in the snooze department: It’s absolutely determined to get you out of bed. I will be looking at the app’s paid version, which currently sells for about $2.30.

Keep Your Data Private With These 4 VPN Apps For Android

Our readers had a lot of great suggestions for free VPN apps for Android over at MakeUseOf Answers, and I’m here to put some of those to the test. VPNs can be useful for a whole host of reasons, but their main benefits are that they keep your data private even over a public WiFi connection (which are surprisingly easy to exploit) and they allow you to access region-blocked content (although there are other ways to do that).

There are plenty of great VPN options for PCs and Mac, but there is a surprisingly diverse array of options for Android users as well. My favorites include Hotspot Shield VPN,TunnelBear VPN, Hideninja VPN, and Hideman VPN. Today, I’ll be looking at three aspects of these Android apps: speed, user interface, and value. Because what good is a VPN service if it’s slow, ugly, and expensive? Let’s jump right in.

Use Your Expertise: Author Your Own Money Making Course Using Udemy

In the age of the Internet, you can often surpass traditional and expensive college and technical courses and learn practically anything online. And if you have a particular expertise in a subject and want to teach others, there is a large variety of online resources you can use to make money by teaching others as well. Udemy is one such example of a popular online teaching and learning site that can be accessed online and from supported mobile devices.

Udemy has over 8,000 free and paid courses on a wide variety of subjects including technology, business, design, arts, photography, humanities, music, and game creation. The site includes a well designed step-by-step process for creating your own course, which you can publish to Udemy’s growing community of nearly 1 million students and about another million monthly site visitors. Creating a professional online course is similar to authoring a book, which once published, can possibly bring you residual income for years to come.

Facebook Shadow Profiles: You Probably Have One Too

You think you’re not on Facebook? Think again. Facebook no doubt has a shadow profile made just for you.

You may recall that recently Facebook found a bug exposing personal details of 6 million user accounts. What you may not have realised is that this led users to know more about how Facebook stores our data, and shows us clearly that Facebook does indeed have shadow profiles on most of us.

Scary stuff? Well, yes. It’s now clear that NSA and other government spying agencies use tools like PRISM to get data from sites like Facebook, and there is nothing we can do about it. Add to our worries the fact that Facebook may be sharing details about us with spying agencies that we never even shared with Facebook in the first place… Big Brother knows more about you than you may think.

Find Out What Is Slowing Down Your Browser With Guardius [100 Invites Inside!]

Add-ons can slow down your browser. Wouldn’t you like to identify the culprits?

The average MakeUseOf reader has 1-20 browser add-ons installed. Depending on the number and type of add-ons, this can have a significant effect on your browser. So unless you’re one of the rare types, you probably know what I’m talking about.

One solution is indeed to avoid add-ons all together, and use bookmarklets to achieve many of the same effects. But wouldn’t it be great if you could know for sure which add-ons are OK to use, and which ones are slowing you down? You can do this by disabling all your add-ons and adding them back one by one, or you could give Guardius a try.

Guardius? Is That Yet Another Add-On?

Not quite. Guardius is not a browser add-on but an actual desktop program you need to install (fancy, I know). It’s currently in closed, invite-only beta, but the developers were generous enough to provide us with some exclusive invites just for you. You can find out more on how to get yours at the end of this article. But first, let’s see what Guardius is all about.

Before You Get Started

Even before that, though, I’d like to emphasize again that Guardius is still very much in beta. Since this is a service that uses crowdsourcing as its means of operation, it will naturally get more powerful the more users it has. At the moment, Guardius is not as useful as it could be, but the idea behind it is a good one, which led me to trying it out and writing this article.

Don’t expect miracles right off the bat. As with every successful product, we need to be patient here too. The cool thing is that you can start using it right now (if you get hold of one of our invites), and watch as it develops from sort of useful to amazingly useful.

Getting Started With Guardius

The installation process is quick and easy, but don’t get confused by the post-installation instructions. These tell you to look for Guardius on the bottom right corner of your browser window. It’s not there.

Like I mentioned earlier, Guardius is not a browser add-on, it’s a desktop program, and as such, you’ll find it in your system tray, where you can double click its icon and see how your browsers are doing.

Guardius works with Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer, and will display information for any of the three you have installed. For each browser, you’ll see how its speed compares to other users, and what add-ons or toolbars might be slowing it down. This data comes from analyzing what other users have removed and how it affected their browsers.

Using the dropdown menu on top, you can switch between your browsers, if you use multiple ones. For each, you might or might not get recommendations to remove add-ons and toolbars.

The Good

Despite having to restart your browser to get Guardius to detect new add-ons, it will sometimes automatically pop up and tell you that this or that add-on might be slowing you down.

If it does find something, you can hit “More Details” to see the culprits, and get a better understanding of what these recommendations are based on. In this case, it seems that 171,842 users recommend that I turn off Photo Zoom for Facebook.

Saying that these users “recommend” might be a bit misleading; users don’t actually get to say anything in this process, it’s all automatic. You can’t actually recommend anything to anyone, but if you remove an add-on and things get better, it does this for you automatically.

The Bad

See that “turn it off” button on the screenshot above? Well, it does nothing, at least on my system. While Guardius did provide several recommendations, I couldn’t manage to turn off anything using its interface. It would say that it turned it off, ask me to restart by browser, but when I looked at my add-ons, the culprit was still there.

Not only that, but Guardius kept telling me I should remove it and prompted me to do so. After a chat with the Guardius team, I discovered that Guardius doesn’t support Window 8,which is why my add-ons were not getting removed. In fact, it only supports Windows 7 at this time. Not ideal, but at least I have the information and can remove it manually if I decide to.

The other significant problem with Guardius is that it’s pretty bare on information at the moment. I enabled every add-on I’ve ever used or tried, and all Guardius could provide was information on one measly add-on. Not very impressive, but this is bound to improve as the user base expands.

Guardius also messed up some hotkeys on my system, but this might be unique to my setup, or might be due to its Windows 8 incompatibility.

OK, I Want In!

Guardius is not perfect, but it’s still in closed beta, so that’s only to be expected. If you’re comfortable with trying out beta products, this is definitely one you want to check out. Don’t worry, it’s not going to mess up with anything, the worst it can do in its current state is give you no recommendations, but you will be joining the user base, and will help others make good decisions about their add-ons and toolbars.

The normal wait time for a Guardius invite is 1-2 weeks. We have a unique download link for Guardius that will get you the app immediately, no wait necessary. The link is only valid for100 downloads, so hurry up and get yours!

Download Guardius <- Note that this link will start downloading the installer immediately. This is a Windows download, Mac version is on the way.

[Update: some users were having trouble with installation. The developers fixed the issue, and the installer should work now. If you're not running Windows 7, Guardius might still work, but is not yet officially supported.]

How do you deal with too many add-ons? Do you have a good system that helps you discover problematic add-ons? Managed to grab a copy of Guardius and want to share your experiences? Leave a comment below.

Yaara Lancet

Yaara (@ylancet) is a freelance writer, tech blogger and chocolate lover, who's also a biologist and a full-time geek. Find her also at lnct.org.

Friday 23 August 2013

The Best 10 Google Docs Tips For Teachers As They Go Back To School

Back-to-school time is underway, and I’m sure you teachers are already balancing your lives, your classroom, and your pesky administrations. What could make life just a little bit easier for you? Google Docs, my dear educator friend. Google Docs.

Below, we have ten awesome tips to help you out when handling your students and their parents. Some of them you may know, but others, you very well may not. Bear in mind that the only way this will work is if you are already integrating Google Docs into your classroom. Make sure you establish this before you get started! Also, if you are afraid of cloud computing – never fear. The tips below show the benefits of working on the cloud, and most of them outweigh anything negative.

4 Online Courses You Could Take Instead Of Going Back to School

Graduation is the most important part of any undergraduate’s academic career. I expect that in a couple of years, I’ll be standing outside my university wearing an absurd hat, looking like a slightly more rotund teacher from the Bash Street Kids, clutching a degree and ready to take big confident steps into the real world. Oh, and I would have also accumulated an eye-watering £50,000 worth of debt for the privilege. Ouch.

How To Select The Best Educational Apps As Kids Go Back To School

Kids are precocious and know their way around the app jungle. I guess kids will be kids and they will prefer killing zombies rather than downloading a math app to study the Binomial Theorem. App developers have realized it’s the fun element that’s making edutainment such a big deal today. It is.

These Films Will Stop You Texting & Driving For Good [Stuff to Watch]

In 2010 US telco AT&T started a campaign to reduce the number of accidents, deaths and permanent injuries as a result of drivers being distracted by their phones. What began as a campaign for no texting while driving has picked up speed as more and more US states adopt laws that punish and hope to deter this activity.

Recently AT&T got on-board with Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon in a concerted effort to spread the word even further with a new documentary, directed by a rather special German filmmaker. If you drive or intend to one day get behind the wheel then you owe it to yourself, fellow road users and pedestrians to watch this small sample of films and fully absorb the message therein.

You never know, it might even save someone’s life.

9 Ways to Customise the New Tab Page in Chrome

Chrome’s new tab page is serviceable, but a bit boring. Whether you’re looking for a nice background for your new tab page or want to easily create your own visual bookmarks, add custom widgets, and view live information such as the weather or updates from your social networks, we’ve got a list of ways to make Chrome’s new tab page your own.

Unfortunately, many new tab page replacements don’t have the useful “Recently closed” and “Other devices” options that appear at the bottom of Chrome’s default new tab page, allowing you to reopen closed tabs and open tabs from other devices you’re signed into Chrome on. To reopen a closed tab without using this menu, you can always press Ctrl+Shift+T.

Multiple Computers, One Keyboard: Quicksynergy Makes Sharing Simple

Stop jumping from one keyboard and mouse combination to another every time you switch computers. Control multiple computers using just one set – without the need for extra hardware. QuickSynergy for Linux and Mac, working with Synergy for Windows, means there’s no combination of systems that can’t be controlled this quickly and easily. If there’s more than one computer on your desk then you need to check this out.

Multiple monitors are intuitive – you move your mouse from one screen to another and simply continue controlling. But what if your desk has multiple computers on it? Can you move your mouse from one computer to another, then work on that? And what about copy/paste functionality? That, as it turns out, can be just as simple as using multiple monitors – even if you’re using different operating systems.

We’ve shown you how Synergy can bring your computer systems together, but that program totally lacks a GUI for Linux and Mac OS X users – leaving users of both with with the need to create a text file in order to get things up and running. QuickSynergy brings a GUI to those operating systems, and in it’s actually a far easier GUI to use than the Windows one.

In today’s Internet world of booming social networks, it’s easier to find lost friends and colleagues than it ever was before. In fact, the private world of yesterday is now an online world with open access to social networks, government databases, and public records. If you’re looking for a long lost friend, or maybe want to do a background check on someone, consider the following free resources to find people on the internet.

Thursday, 22 August 2013

What Can You Learn From An Email Header (Metadata)?

Did you ever get an email and really wondered where it came from? Who sent it? How could they have known who you are? Surprisingly a lot of that information can be from from the email header, or by using info from the email header to do some detective work.

The header is a part of the email message that most people never even see. It contains a lot of data that seems like gobbledygook to the average computer user, so as email use became a daily tool in everyone’s life, email clients started to hide this information out of convenience for you. These days, it can even be a bit troublesome to unhide the header, even for those who know it is there. There are so many different email clients out there, both desktop and web-based, that to cover how to unhide the email header could end up being a small book. Today, we’re just going to focus on how to unhide the header in Gmail, and then look at what we can glean from the header.

How To Avoid Getting Hacked

Hackers want your information. In 2012, over 12 million unsuspecting internet users fell victim to cyber-security threats. Over $21 billion dollars was lost, 98% of which were contributed by stolen payment data (credit card information, bank account details) obtained by hackers through fraudulent transactions.

In order to better protect yourself against identity theft, you would first need to understand the ways hackers steal your private information. And it couldn’t be easier, thanks to this infograph by Hotspot Shield.

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