Month: March 2013

By Saikat Basu, MakeUseOf – June 25, 2010 at 02:30PM

The number of websites cooking up recipes and dishes is more than you could shake a ladle at. We have a fair sprinkling as well; from recipe suggestion websites to a social network for foodies. There’s even one which lets you conduct a recipe search of the dishes they show in the movies.

Apart from the last, Yummly covers almost all the angles you can cook up for a foodie’s website.

Yes, Yummly goes the same way by indexing recipes from across the web. The number of recipes it is attempting to index is astounding – 500,000 recipes from sources like Allrecipes, Epicurious, Food Network, Chow, Food & Wine, Martha Stewart, My Recipes, Real Simple, and Recipezaar.

But Yummly goes way beyond a cut and dry recipe index. It adds a lot more to the way you cook or as a wannabe Julia Child would like to cook.

Let’s uncover Yummly and see what’s brewing. You can use the recipe search engine without a log-in, but creating your own free account helps socially.

Is Yummly Just a Recipe Search Engine?

Yummly is a semantic search engine. Traditional search engines search on the basis of keywords, often ignoring the sense of the specific word or the context in which it is used. A semantic search is meant to bridge that gap.

Semantic search may be web gobbledygook; in simple terms Yummly gives you so many filters to play around with, that finding the right recipe becomes easy. Here’s a working example with a search for a pasta recipe.

The Yummly recipe search engine reaches into its database and returns 21,915 recipes. But I want to be more specific. So, I take the help of the FoodFinder. The FoodFinder is a set of seven filters which you can use to pinpoint the specific nature of recipe you want.

For example, I prefer my pasta to be a bit on the spicy side. I can move the slider from No Preference to Really Like. The results immediately update to my choice for the Taste Match. A filter like Courses helps to narrow it down to the exact time of my meal. Cooking time and cost are also great for a bachelor like me who needs to cook it fast and inexpensively. All text entry fields come with dropdown suggestions and they are comprehensive.

Nutrition, Diets, and Allergies should appeal to pound watchers. The Allergies part is really helpful to watch out for potential landmines.

Check out the trusted sources that go into these calculations. It’s listed under Nutrition, Allergy, Diet & Price section of the FAQ.

Tweak Recipes to Your Taste

If the option rich FoodFinder was a help, then the individual recipe page takes the guesswork out of cooking. You can tweak any recipe by changing the number of servings and modifying the ingredients. Changing the ingredients as per servings is usually where things go wrong. This is where the web application recalculates the optimum quantities that should go into the recipe.

The preparation steps stay the same though. You can also substitute one ingredient with another. The web app includes the substitutions via a dropdown.

You can check the nutrition facts and other details on the right. The recipe page also gives you the option to upload your own photo of the dish. Make the modified recipe your own with a click on Save.

That’s not the only way you can build your recipe collection.

Yummly allows you to import your recipes from food sites like All Recipes and Food Network. But the feature to upload your own recipe is still missing.

The Good Word from the Curry Crowd

Cooking tips from the social community on Yummly is a great way to discover likeminded souls. Yummly calls them TasteBuds. Think of them as your ‘taste buddies’ with whom you may want to share similar tastes with, or recipes and ideas. You can invite them over from Facebook or check out the Leaderboard.

The easiest place could be the homepage itself which gives a fair inkling of what’s going on in the site. Once you start frequenting the site, getting a gathering of foodies isn’t going to be a chore.

So, polish the pan and hop over to Yummly and let us know if this fresh web service is done just right.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

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By Ryan Dube, MakeUseOf – June 25, 2010 at 12:30PM

I have to admit that when it comes to organizing email, I’m a bit lazy. When I get an email from someone, I usually just fire off a quick reply and leave the email sitting in my inbox. When I used to use Yahoo Mail a lot, this resulted in my inbox growing to about 3000 to 4000 messages. Now, how exactly do you go about fixing a nightmare scenario like that?

The situation becomes even more critical when you start working remotely. Your job tasks and team discussions all occur via email. This makes email organization and streamlining even more important, because it can impact the quality of your work and whether you come across as a well-organized and highly functional person or not.

First of all, MakeUseOf is clearly the place to turn when you need help with your Gmail account. Two of my favorite MUO articles that focus on streamlining Gmail are Angelina’s awesome list of ways to use Gmail as a multitasking tool; and I also really enjoyed Ann Smarty’s article with some examples of how to use Gmail filters to improve your productivity. In this article, I’m going to share three powerful ways that you can get your Inbox to organize itself, rather than spending hours trying to repair the effects of your laziness in one sitting.

Cleaning Up Your Inbox as an Evolutionary Process

Organizing and cleaning up my Gmail inbox is about as appealing to me as doing the laundry or washing the dishes. However, instead of organizing your entire inbox and the entire pile of messages accumulated there, you can make a habit of doing just a few things differently moving forward. These “few things” will eventually cause your Inbox to clean itself up. Sound impossible? It’s not – it’s just a matter training your Gmail inbox to act more intelligently and to sort out your messages for you.

The first step making a promise to yourself to handle incoming emails by telling Gmail how to sort or organize them. By redirecting common incoming emails, you’ll discover that your Inbox cleans itself up very quickly.

For example, I recently set up Google Calendar to issue me reminder emails for the tasks that I’ve planned to do for the day. While this is a nice way to get things done, it’s also a great way to muddy up an inbox in very short order. I’ve let these messages pile up, but now I’m dealing with the notification emails that I’ve just received today and use it to retroactively go back and reorganize all of the ones currently cluttering my Inbox. While you have the message open, all you have to do is click on “More Actions” and then select “Filter messages like these.

This way, you don’t have to figure out what filter criteria you should use to apply to this group of images, the email system already knows the email address that the email came from, and it automatically fills out the “From” field for you.

Remember, in dealing with such emails as they come into your inbox today, you’ll be teaching your email account how to organize your inbox for you. This may take extra time today or tomorrow, but after a while you’ll realize that your Gmail account is keeping itself clean and organized! The real secret to “teaching” your Gmail account what to do with the message comes in the next step of setting up the filter.

If you’ve just started doing this, then you probably don’t have any labels ready for the messages that you hope to organize. Have no fear – just use the dropdown box next to “Apply the label” to select “New label…”  This will allow you to assign a label that well describes this type of email. For example, in this case I called the email type “Calendar_Notifications,” and then told Gmail to apply this new rule to past messages.

This is what streamlines your efforts. Rather than going back and reorganizing your thousands of old emails, you can let your efforts with the new emails that come in result in a cleanup of the existing pile of assorted mail cluttering up your inbox.

Use Superstars to Quickly Flag Emails

If you’re anything like me, you may get emails coming in from all over the place – informational emails from your bank or other organizations you do business with, emails from coworkers or people you manage, or important messages from team members that you’re working with. If you are dealing with a massive influx of email, then it’s a very smart idea to start “flagging” your email messages with stars.

Usually, starring a message means that the message is very important, but it is also a great way to break those “important” emails into subcategories for fast and easy searching later on. You can do this by enabling the “Superstars” Gmail Labs feature.

This feature lets you use up to 12 unique star icons so that you can not only separate important messages from the rest of the inbox pile, but you can sort those important messages into their own special type. You’ll need to know the name of the icon for searching, so in your Gmail settings page, just hover the mouse over the icon for the icon name.  When you’re reading a new email and you want to mark it as important and sort it – you can click on the “star” option and then click multiple times to change star type. In this case, I clicked five times to mark the message as an important informational email about my Orbitz travel plans.

Later, when you want to recall those important messages from within your inbox pile of emails, just conduct a search for the type by typing “has:blue-info” or whatever the name of the icon type is – and only those messages that you’ve flagged will get returned. For example, here are all of the messages that I flagged as important informational emails.

This makes it very easy to quickly find those messages that you used to have to hunt through your inbox for – saving time and avoiding a major headache.

Flag Critical Emails With Quick Links

Another important way to organize and keep track of those critical emails that you know you’ll need to deal with the first moment you can is by enabling the Quick Links feature in Gmail Labs. This sets up a simple Quick Links feature in the left menu pane of your Gmail account.

When you receive an email that you know you’re going to have to come back and find later, just click on “Add Quick Link” and Gmail will automatically record the URL for that image and add it to the left menu listing. You can give the link text any title you like.

This lists the email links in the left menu bar with the titles you chose. This is a very useful way to avoid the need to dig for those emails that have important information like someone’s phone number that they’ve emailed you. When it’s time to call them, all you have to do is click on the link – no need to sift through all of your other emails to find that important information.

Notice that there are “x” options next to each Quick Link. This is because this feature is meant for quickly saving information that you’re going to need in short order. Once you’ve used the information, it’s a very good idea to delete the quick link so that you can keep your list of Quick Links as short as possible. It’s basically a quick scratch pad to keep track of those critical emails that you know you’ll need to go back to again soon.

Do you know of any other useful tips to help organize and streamline your Inbox? Share your own ideas and tips in the comments section below.

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By Karl L. Gechlik, MakeUseOf – June 25, 2010 at 11:30AM

There is a new website called PilotHandwriting that allows you to create a font out of your own handwriting and send emails (or letters as they call them) with it.

I will show you how it works and how to capture the text for use in your own images using a little bit of a workaround. We have to use that workaround because as of now, PilotHandwriting does not allow you to download your font. If you are looking to be able to download the font for use in your word processing application then check out 2 Free Tools To Make Your Own Text Font.

Upon arriving at their website, you will be greeted by a little flash animation which surprisingly is not over the top and compliments the site.

You will then be shown a YouTube video about how it works. When it is complete, you will see a printable chart for you to fill in. That chart is shown below:

Go ahead and hit the Print button, print out the chart and then hit the right arrow on the screen to continue on to the next step. You will then fill in each letter or number in their respective spaces on the chart. Then when you are finished, you will have a few options to get the template back to the website. You can use a webcam, a scanner or a digital camera (cell phones work fine).

Hit the button for the option you want to use and get ready to upload. If you are using the scanner or camera options, you will need to upload your image in JPG form. I chose to snap the picture with my camera phone and upload that JPG.

Here is what my template looked like when I finished it:

Note that where I was not centered or wrote over the black lines, those letters were not recognized. So like they taught you in pre-school – stay in the lines, kiddies! Then get ready to upload your image:

Follow the on screen instructions for your particular method of upload and continue on. The web application will suck in your template and you will see each letter flash across the screen as it is processed like this:

When it is complete, you will see something that looks like this:

Hmm looks like some of my letters were not recognized. The best thing to do is rewrite the template and re-upload. But they do give you options to fix them onscreen. The problematic letters are marked with pictures of a pencil.

Then when you are complete, they will hit you up to log in. If you do not have an account, you can create one here:

When you are finished you will be taken to a text editor where you can compose your message like this:

Type away and when you are finished, use a screen capture application to copy the text as an image and you will be able to paste it anywhere you want using your favorite graphic application like GIMP or Photoshop. When you are finished, you can also email the picture above to any email recipient by filling in the following form:

Hit that check box and they will give you a snarky message telling you to send snail mail. Does anyone really use a paper and pen anymore?

Then the message will come through with the image in the body. It will also come through with a link to view the image on their website if it did not come through properly.

Personally, I think this is great and hopefully this tool to create a font will remain free and they will add an option to download your font. Any chance of getting that application updated, PilotHandwriting guys?

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By Jason Fitzpatrick, Lifehacker – June 25, 2010 at 10:30AM

Earlier this week we sang the praises of a good bug spray, but what if you want to enjoy your backyard without all that bug spray every time you step out? Use these tips and DIYs to make your yard bug resistant.

As we highlighted in our guide to avoiding summer nuisances, nothing’s as effective as good ol’ DEET-based bug spray. We also understand that not everybody likes spraying chemicals on themselves, and even those of us not afraid to lather up with DEET don’t always want to hose on the bug spray every time we’re in the backyard. Photo by Sam Howzit.

The following tips will help you keep annoying summer bugs of various sorts away from your yard and patio, so you can enjoy your outdoor spaces while using less bug spray and shooing away fewer creepy crawlies.

Remove the Bug Attractors

One of the easiest things you can do to cut down on the number of bugs in your backyard is to cut down on the number of reasons those bugs would want to pay you a visit. A few minutes of tidying and rearranging things around the yard and patio can yield a huge return. Photo by edans.

Remove Standing Water: Mosquitoes lay eggs on standing water. Go around your yard and look for any place that water gathers: uneven gutters, kiddie pools, those buckets you left behind the garage, that planter tray you never got around to using. A single five gallon bucket left out in the rain can become a mosquito nursery in single day—the one I just dumped over beside my garage had easily several thousand larva in it.

If you can’t remove the standing water you can do two things to help. For things like rain barrels, buy some window screen and secure it to the top to keep the mosquitoes from landing on the water. For things like large bird baths or garden water features, add a small pump to agitate the surface to discourage mosquitoes from landing to lay eggs.

Move Trash and Recycling Far Away: Put your trash cans and recycling bins as far away from your house as you can, and while you’re at it make sure that the lids on your trash cans fit snugly. Flies love garbage and ants love the sugary residue in recyclables. Moving both away will cut down on the flies buzzing around your patio table and the ants crawling around near your house.

Keep Food Covered: When you’re outside enjoying a summer meal on the patio keep food covered. It won’t stop flies and such from being drawn over, but it will cut down on it and keep them from putting their disgusting little hands on your salad. You can find metal and nylon mesh “food tents” at your local grocer or online.

The Advanced Preventative, DIY Arsenal

While removing standing water and moving your garbage cans behind the garage might have helped, sometimes you have to get your hands dirty and invest a little time, money, and sweat into making your yard extra unpleasant for bugs. Photo by Kevin Briody.

Use Bug-Repelling Essential Oils: The right oils are workable deterrents whether you buy some tiki torches and load them up with citronella-infused lamp oil or make your own citronella-candles. Citronella torches/candles are only effective for about a four-foot radius so you’ll need enough of them to blanket the area you’re in. If you want to make some torches for your patio that don’t have the Tiki-Island-Adventure vibe, check out these DIY oil lamps.

Build a Bug Trap: The number of DIY insect traps that exist is a testament to how much people dislike being bothered by bugs and how much effort they’ll put into keeping bugs away. Earlier this week we shared the Cadillac of fly traps with you, a worthy time investment if you live in an area plagued with flies. Check out this fly trap for fly-snaring on a smaller scale. If the pests have followed you inside, this fruit fly deathtrap will make short work of them. Finally you can build a DIY mosquito trap to lure all your blood-sucking patio companions to their doom—and not to your neck.

Plant a Mosquito Repelling Garden: While having plants that contain mosquito-repelling oil in their leaves isn’t as effective as putting that mosquito-repelling oil on your skin—check out this combination DIY bug repellent and sunscreen to put those oils to good use or this all-natural bug spray here—it can’t hurt to plant some lush greenery that might have the added benefit of warding off bugs. Plants like Citronella grass, Rosemary, Catnip, and Marigolds all have properties that repel mosquitoes. You can read more about that here.

Use Non-Toxic Ant Repellents: Once ants find out the party on your patio is in full swing you can expect a continual stream of them. You can repel ants by putting a chalk line around the area you don’t want them to cross—just like the Smoke Monster!—or if they’re creeping into your house to find the party leftovers you can also use cucumber slices and other natural repellents.

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When it comes to adventures in Malaria-infested jungle backwaters, your best bet is a strong bug spray with proven ingredients. When it comes to surviving your bug-heavy backyard without smelling like bug spray or dousing your patio with harsh chemicals, however, these tips should help get you through without wearing Deep Woods Off! as your new cologne of choice.

Have a handy tip or trick for making your yard bug-resistant? Let’s hear about it in the comments so your fellow Lifehacker readers can enjoy a bug-free summer.

By Cheezburger Network, Very Demotivational – June 24, 2010 at 06:00PM

CHASTITY BELT
Evolved
Submitted by: tekno000 via deMotivational Builder

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By Adam Dachis, Lifehacker – June 24, 2010 at 03:30PM

Apple has strict video encoding guidelines for its devices, and popular encoding tool Handbrake’s default presets are a little out-of-date. So we put together our own presets optimized for creating both iPad and iPhone 4-optimized video in Handbrake.

Note: these presets were designed to work with the new iPhone 4 and the iPad. They may not be compatible with other Apple devices.

Installing the Presets

First, you need to download the presets. To import our presets, choose go to Presets -> Import in the Handbrake menu and select the preset files you just downloaded and unzipped. That’s all you have to do. They should appear in the Handbrake presets panel, available for use.

We’ve had some issues importing these presets in the Windows version of Handbrake (they looked like they had imported and appeared in the preset list, but the settings didn’t actually make the trip), so if you find you have the same problems you should download this file instead. Hit Win+R, then paste %appdata%\Handbrake and add the downloaded presets file. You’ll see two other preset files in the folder: handbrake_presets.xml and user_presets.xml. If you don’t have any of your own presets, go ahead and delete the user_presets.xml file and change the name of the downloaded file (currently windows_ipad_iphone_presets.xml) to user_presets.xml. If you do have your own presets, you can just open both files and copy the contents of windows_ipad_iphone_presets.xml into user_presets.xml. Either way, when you’re finished just open Handbrake and the new presets should now be available.

Choosing the Right Preset

If you’re ripping a DVD you’re dealing with standard definition video, so the SD preset is all you’ll need. If you’re converting HD content, however, you have a choice. You can either convert the content to a full 720p or use the iFrame preset, which will create a file that’s approximately 960×540. This is half-1080p resolution and is a size Apple likes to promote for HD content. It’s nearly full resolution on your iPad and is as close as you’ll get to full resolution on your iPhone 4. This is a good option for saving space if you’re planning on watching your videos mainly on the iPad. If you plan on showing them on your television or want a higher-quality file, using the 720p preset may be a better choice.

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Encoding can be a particular thing, so while these presets aim for both quality and file size you may have your own preferences. If you do, please share them in the comments!

By Jason Fitzpatrick, Lifehacker – June 24, 2010 at 09:30AM

Horse flies putting a dent in your enjoyment of your patio and fruit flies taking over your kitchen were as annoying decades ago as they are today. Use these vintage plans to build a premium and extremely effective fly trap.

Apartment Therapy writer Leah Moss was on vacation in Ecuador when she came across the Terminator of fly traps. She writes:

I came across this contraption at a horse farm in Ecuador where the flies are nearly as abundant as the wild flowers. That mountain at the bottom of the cage is the fly accumulation in one week! Thankfully, our own fly problem is not quite so pronounced in DC, but the pesky little things have still been known to ruin many a good outdoor meal, making this simple trap all the more attractive.

The bait (in this case, “dog manure”, but you could use something less offensive like composting scraps) in the trap attracts flies in through the bottom, leading them up through the screen cone and into the cage. Since flies only fly up, they don’t know how to escape through the cone-shaped screen through which they entered. And voila!

As she notes you may not have a fly problem so bad that require building a mini-fridge sized prison for your local fly population but don’t worry. The site where she found plans to build her own fly trap have several variations including the huge one in the photo, a smaller one roughly the size of a paint can, and a mini-model designed to capture fruit flies in your kitchen. Check out the link below for all the vintage plans.

By Kat Hannaford, Gizmodo – June 24, 2010 at 05:59AM

Get your printer and lamination machines ready, because this Lightsaber comparison chart is definitely worthy of your walls. It sorts the goodies from the baddies, even if there is some contention over the color of Mace Windu’s ‘saber. More »





Star Wars – Science Fiction – Games – Roleplaying – Recreation

By MG Siegler, TechCrunch – June 23, 2010 at 04:30PM

As many Yahoo properties continue to stumble (or worse), one that remains very dear to my heart is Flickr, the massive photo-sharing service. With over 4 billion photos and videos (and about 3 million new ones uploaded each day), it’s one Yahoo service that won’t be going away anytime soon. And luckily the company realizes that — as today they’re previewing an overhaul of the entire photo-viewing and sharing experience. The result is great.

The changes Flickr is making involve the photo pages themselves. The biggest difference that you’ll notice right off the bat is that the actual picture on these pages is larger — 30 percent larger, actually. This makes it very clear what your eye should be focusing on. And that’s important because Flickr has added a number of other new features on the page to enrich the experience.

The second thing your eye will be drawn to is the new map in the right sidebar of Flickr photo pages. Flickr has 130 million geotagged photos, making it the largest collection of geotagged photos on any site on the web. This new map appropriately highlights photos that are — and makes those that aren’t easier to geotag on the spot. Hovering over this map will also zoom you in closer to see where the photo was taken in more detail. And clicking on the map will load a larger map as an overlay that you can manipulate.

The third biggest change about these Flickr pages is that the comment stream has been revamped. Now, you’ll not only see new comments here, but you’ll see when someone “Favorites” a photo as well. “Favorites have always been kind of the conversation on Flickr. We feel it’s natural to move favorites into the conversation,” Flickr Head of Product Matthew Rothenberg tells us. And new comments appear in the stream in realtime now.

Another big change is the ability to quickly view photos in their own in a lightbox overlay. Clicking on the new magnifying class icon will allow you to do this. And finally, keyboard arrow keys work work on Flickr to navigate through photos. (You can also play through photos this way in a slideshow.)

Other new features include simplified drop-down menus for actions such as tagging photos, editing them, and viewing different sizes. And a revamped flimstrip area in the right sidebar allows you to more quickly move between photo pages, sets, and collections. Individual privacy settings for photos are now more accessible as well.

But the biggest change may be something you don’t actually see on the screen. Each of these photo pages has been gutted and rebuilt from the ground up, Rothenberg notes. Despite main page photos being bigger, and all these new features, pages should load “greater than 50% faster in almost all cases,” he says. A quick scan over a preview of the new site confirms this to be true.

“Our core mission is letting users share photos with people who matter to them,” Rothenberg says. “We decided to go back to the roots — try to figure out what we’re trying to convey on these pages,” he says. This redesign is the first step — Rothenberg hints that the next steps involve improving actual photo sharing functionality. We’re already seeing a part of this thanks to Flickr’s most recent partnerships with Facebook and Getty.

When I specifically asked about Facebook — the site which is now the largest photo sharing site in the world thanks to their nearly 500 million members — Rothenberg notes that they don’t really see them as a competitor. In fact, he views them as beneficial to Flickr, as the new partnership opens Flickr images to people who might not otherwise use the service. “We want to offer the best place for your photo to be no matter where it’s going,” he says.

(As a side note, he also says that a bug which can currently dump hundreds of Flickr photos into your Facebook stream if you do a bulk import will be fixed shortly — a problem I had recently.)

Rothenberg also notes his excitement for devices like the new iPhone and all the new Android devices as those will only continue to push photo sharing and geotagging.

This new Flickr photo page design will be rolling out to all members in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, people can opt-in to test it out today.

Some other key stats Yahoo is sharing about Flickr:

• Monthly unique visitors worldwide: 85.6 million (comScore, May ‘10)
• Registered members worldwide: 50 million members
• Visits per month: 198.5 million (comScore, May ‘10)
• Engagement: 707 minutes spent (comScore, May ‘10)
• Average daily visitors: 5.3 million (comScore, May ‘10)
• Unique tags: Over 40 million
• Numbers of Groups: Hundreds of thousands

By Rich Whittle, Business Opportunities Weblog – June 23, 2010 at 03:32PM

Inventors Digest is reporting that at the Association of University Technology Managers annual meeting, two medical innovators unveiled a draft of the “Academic Inventors’ Bill of Rights.”

Although billed as a “collaborative work in progress,” the initiative highlights ongoing tension between academic and student inventors on one side, and university administrators on the other. At stake: who ultimately controls and profits from intellectual property developed on campuses across the country.

Association of University Technology Managers or AUTM, citing the groundbreaking Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, say universities should own and control IP developed by professors and students when they use federal funds and facilities.

Kaswan’s and Bentley’s bill of rights proposes, among other things:

* Students and faculty have a right to freedom of expression; the right to teach and publish their research shall not be abridged by intellectual property policy.

* Inventors shall be entitled to timely disposition of their inventions and to obtain access to inventions for which the university elects to discontinue commercialization effort, without onerous restrictions or obligations to the university that would act as disincentives to commercialize.

* Universities must establish and publish transparent practices and procedures comprising their commercialization processes.

* Inventors have the right to due process, conducted in public with public access to all records as they may request.

Continue Reading: “Inventors’ Bill of Rights?”

Photo by yves_guillou.