Month: April 2013

By Leena Rao, TechCrunch – March 17, 2010 at 11:59AM

There’s no question that Google is setting its sights on taking some of Microsoft’s marketshare in the productivity suite space. Last year, Google announced a new plug-in that syncs Google’s enterprise versions of Apps, including Gmail, contacts, and calendar, with Microsoft’s Outlook. And Google just acquired Docverse, an application lets users collaborate directly on Microsoft Office documents. Today Google is taking another swipe at Microsoft with a new tool that makes it significantly easier to make the switch over to Google Apps from Microsoft Exchange.

Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange is a new server-side tool that migrates a company’s email, calendar and contact data from Microsoft Exchange, an email server software product from Microsoft, to Google Apps. Google promises ease with the tool, allowing IT administrators the ability to select the mail, calendar and contact data to move in phases and migrate hundreds of users at the same time. Plus, employees can use Exchange during the migration without any interruption. The tool works with Exchange 2033 and 2007 for both on-premise and hosted applications and is available to the enterprise and education versions of Google Apps.

This is clearly a play at showing businesses how simple it is to move from from Microsoft products, such as Exchange, that may not be hosted in the cloud to the cloud-based Google Apps product. Google product Manager Matt Glotzbach told me that the search giant wants to make it as simple as possible for potential customers to make the switch to Google Apps, and many potential Google Apps’ clients are using Microsoft Exchange to host and power email, calendar, and contacts. Google also launched Google Apps Migrator for Lotus Notes and a Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

Google Apps has steadily been growing; already 25 million people are using the Apps product. And that also includes over 2 million businesses ranging from startups, to small businesses, to Fortune 500 companies. And Google is developing a compelling ecosystem around Google Apps, recently launching the Google Apps Marketplace, which is an an app store for enterprise apps in the cloud.

By Kristin Wemmer, Smashing Magazine Feed – March 17, 2010 at 10:06AM

So many articles explain how to design interfaces, design graphics and deal with clients. But one step in the Web development process is often skipped over or forgotten altogether: content planning. Sometimes called information architecture, or IA planning, this step doesn’t find a home easily in many people’s workflow. But rushing on to programming and pushing pixels makes for content that looks shoehorned rather than fully integrated and will only require late-game revisions.

[By the way: The network tab (on the top of the page) is updated several times a day. It features manually selected articles from the best web design blogs!]

Your New Project: How It Goes All Too Often

On day one things are great. You’ve landed a new job, the client is excited, you’re stoked and the project will be great. First things first: you have to collect the main materials to begin the design. You send the client an email asking for what you need.

On day two you get the following:

• A TIFF logo (in CMYK) via email;
• A set of logo standards that include the RGB values, via email (separately);
• A disc full of photos with various names (like “DSC09080978″);
• A fax that labels the photos according to their file names;
• An email that lays out the top and second-level navigation, as the client sees it;
• A phone that makes last-minute changes to the top-level navigation;
• An email with a DOC attachment full of text for various pages (but not all of it).

And on day three you get an email that makes half of the junk you got yesterday obsolete.

You’re only three days in, and the project is already no fun. You got into Web design to make great layouts, solve problems and create functional art that breathes through programming. It never occurred to you that cleaning up your client’s disorganization would be a part of the gig.

We know that a great website relies on all parts working in harmony. To achieve this, you have to start on the right foot at the beginning of the project. You need an organizational system that does the following things:

• Allows you to organize deliverables from various media;
• Lets you rapidly make changes when needed (it’s called planning for a reason: things change!);
• Helps you collaborate with all stakeholders;
• Shows how the project is developing and what’s left to do;
• Ideally launches you into the actual design and building phase.

The Architecture: Every Brick Counts

Your website’s users will have to “live” inside your website for a period of time. Because of this, some real-world architectural principles apply to website planning. A sense of context and “place” helps users find what they’re looking for. When we talk about the architecture of a website, we’re talking about the hierarchy of its navigation and its structure. We’re not talking about graphics, text or anything cosmetic.

You can plan your architecture in many ways.

Card Sorting

Card sorting is a way to organize content based on hierarchy. To try it, simply put all of the pages for your website onto index cards. Ask stakeholders to sort those cards into logical stacks that represent the hierarchy of your website’s navigation. It’s a great exercise to make sure that the content on your website can be found in the most logical place and that like-minded content is grouped and named appropriately.

• What’s it for?
  To gather feedback on what pages should go where on your website.
• What’s good about it?
  It’s a great way to learn the assumptions of multiple users.
• What’s bad about it?
  The results should be taken with a grain of salt. Your participants will be making a lot of guesses and assumptions.
• In sum
  One major task in website development is making people feel included. Card sorting is an interactive process that helps people feel like they are contributing.

A few resources to learn more about card sorting:

• Card Sorting: A Definitive Guide
• Card Sorting According to the US Government (official .gov website on usability)
• Card Sorting: Mistakes Made and Lessons Learned
• Word Matching

Content Inventories

A content inventory is a great way to understand the breadth of your website and the purpose of each page. Simply create a spreadsheet of all your pages and their corresponding URLs. But a content inventory gets much more useful when you add things like page notes and single-sentence summaries of why a page exists. Use a content inventory to quickly understand topography and figure out what should fit where. It is a great way to think through a redesign but may not be the best way to plan new websites.

• What’s it for?
  To understand the context and purpose a website’s pages.
• What’s good about it?
  Once it’s complete, dragging things around and playing with alternate navigation schemes is easy. It also makes it easy to see the topography of your website.
• What’s bad about it?
  Laborious to create. It’s not of much use during the development phase, and it gets out of date pretty quickly.
• In sum
  A content inventory is a great way to find unnecessary pages on your website. Forcing yourself to look at each page in turn and summarizing its usefulness nearly outweigh the disadvantages of this method.

A few resources to learn more about content inventories:

• Content Inventories as described on Usability.gov
• Content Inventory (Boxes and Arrows)

Paper and Sketchboards

Sometimes paper just feels good. The free form allows for incredible expressiveness, and nothing is faster for capturing ideas. Unfortunately, the drawbacks are tough to ignore. Paper is easy to lose, hard to share, wasteful and not very useful past the early stages of a project. Eventually, everything for a website becomes digital, and so going digital as soon as possible is best. Use paper to capture thoughts in a meeting to brainstorm and to explore. But do yourself a favor and transcribe or scan the information as early as possible.

• What’s it for?
  To quickly and collaboratively sketch out a website architecture.
• What’s good about it?
  You can move pieces of paper around. And drawing with markers is fun. It’s also great for energizing a group and quickly scanning a lot of ideas.
• What’s bad about it?
  Once your big sketchboard is complete, it has to be transcribed into another format to be useful.
• In sum
  Beware the feel-good meeting! Sketchboard meetings are fun and seemingly productive, but you’ll often wonder afterwards what you actually achieved. Ideas come quickly, but the real work comes in deciding whether any of them are appropriate for the project.

A few resources to learn more about sketchboarding:

• Sketchboarding (Adaptive Path)
• Sketchboards + Prototypes (Slideshare)
• More links on Brandon Schauer’s website

Site Map Diagrams

A visual site map is quick to make, fairly expressive and easy to change. People have all sorts of methods for building site map diagrams. Whatever your tool, the diagram is a useful way to demonstrate hierarchy. It clearly shows the relationships between pages and tells you where your website is too shallow or deep.

• What’s it for?
  To visually explain the relationships between pages on your website.
• What’s good about it?
  Nothing better illustrates the hierarchy of a website than a diagram with lines and arrows indicating the relationships between pages. Clients naturally understand it.
• What’s bad about it?
  The actual relationships between pages can be hard to grasp. What looks good on a chart might not work well on a website. And a site map diagram is not really useful during the development phase, quickly becoming a dead documents.
• In sum
  A site map diagram is a quick way to sketch navigation and hierarchy. Don’t try to cram in other bits of information that just don’t fit.

A few resources to learn more about site maps and diagrams:

• A Visual Vocabulary for Sitemaps
• The Lazy Information Architect’s Guide to Making Sitemaps

Which to Choose?

There is no one right way to plan the architecture for a website. Depending on the size of the website, you might use all of these techniques. They’re not opposed or mutually exclusive—just different means to similar ends.

When picking your method of architecture planning, consider these things:

• How big is the website?
  The sheer size of some websites makes some of these methods cumbersome or impossible.
• What type of website is it?
  The card-sorting method, for example, is perfect for e-commerce websites but overkill for blogs.
• Who is your client?
  The less Web-savvy the client, the more elaborate your descriptions and plans will have to be. If your client understands websites, then you can be a bit more brief (but not too brief!).
• Consider your workflow.
  Try out all of the ideas, and then pick a lightweight, simple process that you and your clients can understand. If you find yourself filling in information that isn’t useful or illustrative, then you’ve gone off track. Adopting a process that allows you to do the bare minimum is good in this case.

A few tips on architecture planning:

• Organize content according to user needs, not an organizational chart or how the client structures their company.
• Give pages clear and succinct names.
• Be sympathetic. Think of your typical users, called personas, and imagine them navigating the website. What would they be looking for?
• Consider creating auxiliary way-finding pages. These pages would lie beyond the main navigation of your website and structure various pages according to specific user needs.
• If you can’t succinctly explain why a page would be useful to someone, omit it.
• Plan the architecture around the content. Don’t write content to fit the architecture.
• When dealing with clients, especially clients at large companies with many departments, keeping egos in check can be tough. Keep everyone on point with constant reminders of the true goals of the website.
• Not everything has to be a page. Use your hierarchy of content as a guide. Some items might work better as an FAQ entry or as sidebar content. Make sure your architecture-planning method does not blind you to this.

The Architecture Is The Home, Not The Content Itself

Like the website itself, each of your pages has a structure and hierarchy as well. The architecture helps users find the right page. The hierarchy and semantics help users find the right content on that page. Too often, copywriting is an afterthought in Web development. No matter how attractive, clever or interactive a website is, its main purpose is to convey information. A great website is designed around the content.

Most of the tools that are great for planning architecture are not so good for planning content. This causes many people to skip the process of content planning, to abandon their copywriters and to use their CMS as a content organizer (i.e. leaving it as an afterthought).

HTML Wireframes

Making your own wireframe is a smart way to demonstrate your plans to collaborators. It’s a great visual tool and very expressive. The drawback of using manual wireframes is that they are… well, manual. You’ll end up spending time on the front-end getting everything just so and more time on every revision. While manual wireframes are the perfect tool for many DIY coders, keep things simple! If you over-design your wireframes, your client will focus more on cosmetics than substance.

• What’s it for?
  HTML wireframes are a natural extension of other architecture-planning methods. They fill in the architecture by showing the content and markup on the pages.
• What’s good about it?
  They’re illustrative and easy to understand. Clients immediately grasp them and how they translate to the next step.
• What’s bad about it?
  Getting a structure that works can be tricky. You have to manually mark up content. And they’re not a great way to work with multiple collaborators.
• In sum
  HTML wireframes are a great way to envision and plan website content. If you’re a freelancer or on a small team, they’re a great option.

A few tips on manual wireframes:

• Once you get a good style sheet and structure, leave the wireframe alone. It’s not supposed to be elegant or beautiful. In fact, the fewer the distractions and the simpler, the better. The point is for people to concentrate on the content.
• Work on naturally transitioning from wireframe to development. A simple script or some find-and-replace magic can put all that useful markup into your working product.
• For simple websites, use wireframes in the first stage in development. If you mark up your content properly, you may only need CSS after that.

Plain Old Text

Many copywriters reach for MS Word or Apple Pages when starting to write website content. The simple tools are often the most useful and powerful. In this case, that’s only partly true. While text editors are a great way to quickly organize text, they have their drawbacks in website planning.

• What’s it for?
  Text editors are a quick and easy way to organize text for a website.
• What’s good about it?
  They’re readily available, and almost anyone can use them. Their ubiquity and revision-tracking features make them great for collaboration.
• What’s bad about it?
  The mark-up created by text editors doesn’t translate well into the Web world. Clients often don’t understand how a linear document translates into a free-form website architecture. Embedding images and attaching files to pages can make the document cumbersome and not great for migrating to the development stage.
• In sum
  Text editors are useful for planning the actual text of a website. What’s missing is the navigation and how the attached files will be organized. Don’t prevent collaborators who are comfortable with text editors from working this way, but move the content into a more workable format quickly.

A few tips on using text editors for website planning:

• If you’re using a text editor to organize website content, use RTF format instead of the proprietary file format of the editor. It will make a lot of things easier for you later.
• Create a simple numbering system that makes the pages in your document correspond to the more visual architecture you have created separately.

Slides

As with text editors, many people already own a tool that creates slides, such as PowerPoint or Keynote. In fact, for many office professionals, it’s the only layout tool they own. Thus, many websites are planned in PowerPoint. Its availability and relative ease of use make it a good option for some workflows.

• What’s it good for?
  Slideshow creators are used to easily sketch the structure and to link pages.
• What’s good about it?
  They’re readily available, and almost anyone can use them. Their basic layout features liberate many people who would otherwise struggle to convey their thoughts.
• What’s bad about it?
  Slideshow creators are great at getting information in but poor at getting it back out. Their graphic creation abilities often complicate the goal of the process. (Plus, a lot of cute icons will suddenly start to appear in your content!)
• In sum
  Slideshow tools are a great makeshift wireframe creator. They use a familiar process in a new way. But you’ll face a trade-off when you begin building the website.

A few tips on using slideshow creators for website planning:

• Don’t get too creative with “designing” your pages. Avoid color, graphics and anything else that does not specifically illustrate the hierarchy of content.
• Keep your system very simple. The goal is to make it illustrative and quick. The more complicated it is for you to drag pages and update links, the more reluctant you will be to explore new options for the layout.

Jumpchart

Jumpchart lets you make simple and quick HTML wireframes. Whatever planning method that works for you is a good one. But in our studio, we find that no tool gives us as much flexibility or momentum as Jumpchart, and that’s why it’s our tool of choice. It simply organizes content hierarchically, compiles feedback and exports to the next stage of the development process.

• What’s it good for?
  Jumpchart is a natural extension of manual HTML wireframes.
• What’s good about it?
  It automates some of the most important parts of the manual HTML wireframing process, with the collaboration and formatting options that many people want. It also exports.
• What’s bad about it?
  Jumpchart requires a paid subscription to plan larger websites.
• In sum
  Jumpchart is a great way for small teams and remote collaborators to visually organize content. The ability to export to XHTML and WordPress (WXR) makes for a rapid transition between the planning and development stages.

A few tips on using Jumpchart for website planning:

• Use Jumpchart as a single spot for all the deliverables in your website project. Images and documents can be attached to individual pages.
• Use the permission system to control who can see and who can edit.
• For those who plan the content before the architecture (like us!), Jumpchart is a great way to ease into the site map.

Putting It All Together

Finding the right combination of tools and processes is an important part of planning a website. A lot of thought should go into even the smallest website. This can be daunting for even the best developer, but we’ve yet to cover one of the biggest obstacles to the development process: the client.

Calling the client an obstacle is not fair, of course, but it feels that way occasionally. Clients can throw a wrench in the cogs of the best process. Take pity on them, though. They have jobs and lives like the rest of us. This “website” thing is usually just another line on their long list of action items. To create a planning process that embraces the human component, consider how you can better accommodate their needs.

The Inevitable Revisions: Being Fleet of Foot

Clients change their minds. It’s in their genes to be indecisive and difficult. If they knew what the heck they were doing, they wouldn’t need us. Our job is to turn their mess into perfection. Despite the mess, budget and timeline, your work will be judged on its own merit. You either got it right or you didn’t, and there’s no passing the buck.

This Scylla and Charybdis are no reason to stop trying. What you need is a workflow that embraces change rather than resists it.

• Make sure your planning method is not tedious. If updating a simple page title in PowerPoint takes you 10 minutes, rethink your method.
• Follow the order of the steps. Starting on later steps before previous steps are approved is tempting. Don’t!
• Bundle revisions. You’ll kill your budget if you make individual changes as they come.
• Encourage your client to take time in the planning stage. No matter how close the deadline, this is the one part you shouldn’t skimp on.
• Make sure your contract specifies consequences for revisions. Be explicit.

Collaboration: Bring Stakeholders Together or Die Trying

If you plan in a vacuum, you’ll only end up with a pile of lint. The secret to efficient planning is to include those with authority in the process. If you spring architecture and content on stakeholders late in the game, expect far-reaching changes that require backtracking.

Get architecture, content and deliverables approved before moving on to the next steps. Modern CMS’ have templates that can accommodate a wide variety of content, and this might make it seem as though content organization and architecture aren’t your problem, but they are! If you write the CSS and programming without understanding what exactly you’re building, you will be forced either to backtrack or to fit content into a template that isn’t ready for it. Content comes first.

• If you’re planning online, email everyone when you can. If you plan on paper, print multiple copies in the hopes that more stakeholders will see the plan before you move on.
• Get clear, direct approval of major steps in writing. If your client is hesitant, they may be hiding that they’ve failed to get approval from higher-ups. Asking for an email or signature forces the issue. It may sound confrontational, but most clients will understand and appreciate your thoroughness.
• Ask for meetings. Most creative people hate them, but a successful project requires collaboration. You would be surprised what comes out of a 10-minute phone call.

Explaining: Heel Meet Arrow

You may be a great designer, programmer, architect or manager, but if you can’t show progress and convey ideas to clients, you will fail. Clients need feedback. They need to see where you are heading with the project. Telling them is one thing; show them another. Many potentially great websites were derailed because the designer did not effectively explain what was happening to the client.

• Show, don’t tell. No matter how much head-nodding you see, if you only tell your clients what you will do, they’ll be confused later. Either poor memory or communication will sink your ship every time.
• Don’t format content too much. Keep it simple. Some people start pushing pixels right after planning. Others start working on interface wireframes. Whatever you do, empower yourself or your designers to make primary decisions about font, color and layout. If your content wireframe or diagram is too elaborate, it will impinge on the design. Let the decision-makers focus on the content, navigation and what-goes-where, rather than muddying the process with filler graphics.

Moving On: The Button That Launches a Thousand Ships

So you’ve dodged all potential problems so far. The die is cast, and the plan is laid. It’s time to start designing and building the website. Do you have to start over now, or will your plans accelerate the process? It’s been said before, but a plan that has no momentum is wasted. If you have to retype, reorganize or re-explain your plan in order to start the next step, you’ve been wasting time.

A great design process builds on the website’s content. A great process allows you to build on the last step. To be cost-effective and efficient, the process should include only the critical steps. An awkward transition from planning to building a website is a common roadblock. Frequently, the people who plan a website and communicate with the client aren’t the people who actually build the website. This means that the planning documents have to be expressive and comprehensive in conveying the process that has been followed to date.

Avoid costly revisions and staff frustration by having a process that slingshots you into development rather than requires backtracking and further investigation. Sure, the process should be fluid, but a good plan ensures momentum.

A Few Parting Practical Tips

• Be specific about your wants with clients. Ask for digital text, Web-sized images, etc.
• Keep all deliverables in one place, and put them there as soon as you get them!
• Ask for written changes, preferably via email so that they’re time-stamped.
• Use Google’s advanced site search to quickly learn about the current website’s size and shape if your project is a redesign.
• Ask your client for access to old stats. Learning how people have been accessing content is important if you will be planning a new website.
• Avoid being too specific in the early stages. Work from general to specific, and don’t get bogged down in details until they become important.

Wrapping Up

As professionals, we need to embrace better planning methods in our projects. Being agile is great, but don’t outrun your client or the goal of the project. True agility is about being adaptable and reacting quickly. Planning a website is a daunting task, but it can be done if you stick to a process that works.

• Understand the goals of the website.
• Gather resources.
• Organize resources at top level and then at page level.
• Assess your work based on user profiles.
• Demonstrate your plan.
• Get approval.
• Move on.

So many of us design too fast. You need to make so many decisions before working on a visual wireframe or pixel-based mockup. If you start designing before understanding the breadth and depth of the content that your website will contain, you’ll inevitably have to cram stuff into places that it doesn’t fit.

Building a website is like telling a good story. It starts with a cohesive outline and clear plot. No matter how fantastic your website looks or works, eventually someone will read it. Someone will have to navigate it. Truly great websites pay attention to content and organization. There’s no way to fake that late in the game. Greatness comes from a solid plan.

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© Kristin Wemmer for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | 75 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: ia, planning

By The Business Insider, Gizmodo – March 16, 2010 at 03:40PM

One of the more interesting things you can do with the iPhone is use it as a remote control for other devices. Since the iPhone App Store launched almost two years ago, developers have created hundreds of remote control applications. More »

By Saikat Basu, MakeUseOf – March 16, 2010 at 03:31PM

What is the longest movie ever made?

Got the answer? Well, I will put the answer at the end of this article but I hope you got the point behind the quiz. If you get it correct, you have the taste for trivia that probably goes with your taste for good movies.

The word ‘trivia’, literally stands for something which is of not much importance. But as trivia buffs know, in such trifling details lie oodles of fun. A heap of trivia knowledge on movies gives a movie buff a whole lot of bragging rights. It’s the same with sports as it is with movies.

There’s a broad line that separates a weekend watcher from a true cinema lover and that’s the cinematic general knowledge you carry along with your popcorn. Movie trivia is not only fun, but it is a slice of moviedom history as well. It is through movie trivia we get to know a lot more astonishing facts and surprising tidbits that add to the magic of movies.

When we brought out our Internet Guide for the Movie Freak, we missed out on giving cool movie trivia games and quizzes a spot of the limelight. A film and movie freak can dig out all the usual – and unusual – details of a movie without help, but to give movie lovers some heads up here are ten websites or webpages where you can find a bucketful of trivia questions.

Expand your knowledge or just have some fun testing your grey cells.

IMDb GameBase

The Internet Movie Database is the ultimate reference for movies released around the world. But it is not just loads and loads of data. You also get to chill out with some cool games like Tile Slider where you arrange the tiles to make scenes from your favorite movies. There are levels too, from the easy to the super difficult. How fast can you solve it?

If that’s a bit too much then check out the trivia quiz, or The Hangman Game where you have to guess the answer or swing.

UGO – Star Wars Trivia Quiz

You won’t become a Jedi master, but you will be able to hold your head high in the council of Star War fans if you manage to conquer this cool movie trivia game. A little video pops up and a fan just like you asks a question. Get the answer before the light saber beats you to the time.

Screenplay

The two games featured here took me back to my school quizzes. Given a frame from a movie, you have to get the name. That’s the Frame by Frame game. If you think watching a 5 second clip and guessing is easier, think again because you might get a lot of answers wrong when you play Gone in 5 Seconds. Screenplay also has a puzzle game called Movie Madness and a normal quiz for those who like their games simple.

Triviala

Play against the community and find out how well you know a movie. The questions are put up through a host of Flash quizzes. The challenge is to get on the leaderboard.

Filmwise

Visual and text quizzes and its trademarked Invisibles quiz are the hallmarks of this movie trivia website. In the Invisibles quiz, you are given a screenshot from a scene but with just the costumes of the characters. The characters are all invisible. How cool is that!

Check out the Filmwise forums too for a lot more content and contests.

Moviefone

Follow the link and get into the site’s Movie Quizzes. You can sort the quizzes that are collected or browse them according to the genres given in the sidebar. The quizzes are of similar Q&A types but the sheer variety of topics makes them interesting challenges.

Popcorn Quiz

Play a clip and answer from the multiple choice answers given below it. Some of the clips really call upon your attention to detail while you are watching a film. For instance, watch a clip from Rocky IV and answer – The character Apollo Creed is known by all of the nicknames listed below except for…

Flixster Fun & Games

Just like IMDb, Flixster too is a movie info site. So it takes fun seriously too with its Fun & Games section. You can register and log in to share all the fun with the community or just play it alone. There are cool movie trivia games like The Never-Ending Movie Quiz, where users submit questions and keep the game going by answering those submitted by others.Play a round of Personality Tests and you can find out which Hollywood star you resemble the most. Then there are a host of user submitted quizzes to keep you busy if you get ditched by your date on a movie night.

3SmartCubes

Entertainment quizzes galore. These are a mix of trivia and tests. For instance, the question in the screenshot above will give you an inkling. But nearly all of them will test how much you really know about the movies.

TCM’s Fun Stuff

Go into this trivia game if you really know your ‘Maltese Falcon’ from your ‘Casablanca’. Turner Classic Movies can really test your knowledge by asking you 15 trivia questions daily. Get yourself on the leaderboard or better still, ask your grandparents to play this game for a round of Sunday fun.

So, we come to the end credits for this post. In listing these ten sites for movie trivia, I hope the film buffs will really like the picks. Also, keeping the list to the number 10 meant leaving out a few more which I am sure are out there.

Heck! That’s what the comments section is for. Leave a mention of your own favorite movie trivia game or website. With movies, even many ain’t enough!

And the answer to the trivia question asked at the beginning? Here it is you movie buffs – Cinematon, an experimental film that was 151-hours long. You get points for getting it right.

Image Credit: photine

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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By Simon Slangen, MakeUseOf – March 16, 2010 at 02:31PM

You really need an avatar or profile picture in your day-to-day online life. They add a certain personality to your online identity and allows you to distinguish yourself from the rest of the flock.

You need them on Facebook, in your instant messaging application, and you can even use Gravatar to personalize your comments on MakeUseOf, and a ton of other sites.

A lot of people are too shy, or paranoid, to use a ‘real’ profile pictures. It’s understandable. You just don’t want to have your face next to everything you say and do on the internet. That’s why you build your own avatar: a digital caricature to represent the online you.

Below are four highly diverse online services that allow you to build your own highly personalized avatars, ranging from black-and white sketches to animated 3D.

Build Your Wild Self

Build Your Wild Self is that one-in-a-million avatar tool. It draws your kiddy self in rich colors and imaginative features. Inner adults do not exist. You should still find a remnant of the kid in you. The resulting avatars have that grainy pencil-drawn look about them. Talk about character.

Sure, you can use the tool to draw some normal arms and buttocks, but how boring would that be? Rather put in a little octopus, lying, or arachnid. Consider it a conversation starter.

When you’re done, click on ‘Get a Wild Desktop‘ for a big wild-you picture. Crop the image, or just take a screenshot of the part you want to keep. Easy as that!

Avatara (3D Animated)

With Avatar in our wake and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland on the horizon, you’ve got two very good reasons to get excited about 3D. And don’t forget Heavy Rain. While you’re at it, why not build your own 3D avatar? With a bit of tweaking, it’s like looking in a 3D mirror. The only downside of Avatara is the need to sign up to render your avatar.

Once you’re satisfied with your avatar’s appearance, you can choose an animation. Use breathing for a simple mugshot, or have yourself dance around on the screen.

The easiest way of ‘extracting’ the avatar is to mail it to yourself after signing up. This will give you an animated gif of your 3D character. Not a lot of sites still allow for animated avatars, but even in the worst case scenario, you can still use the 3D you as a still.

Digibody’s Caricature Maker

Back to pencilwork, Digibody’s Caricature Maker is for those of you who aren’t looking for the most realistic depiction. Draw yourself in caricature with a few heavily exaggerated facial features. There’s things little more personal than enlarging and making fun with your own characteristics. After all, it’s the quirks and imperfections that make you… well, you.

The tool is sometimes a little slow to respond, and seems to reload the page with every customization, but the result is often hilarious. I give you my word, you’ll have a hard time finding a lot of normal facial features on that page.

Once you’re done, save the image to your desktop in png, gif or jpg, or extract the HTML to embed it on a web page or in a forum.

FaceYourManga

One of the best avatar (I should say, mangatar) creators. Whip up a funny manga-style profile picture in a whip. It’s one of the avatar creation services that’s used a lot with Gravatar.

Where the above caricature makers really focuses on facial features, FaceYourManga takes on your character by exaggerating facial expressions. It’s easy to make a smart-, angry-, energetic-, or happy looking avatar. Throw in some crazy accessories, and you’re all set.

What avatar creator do you prefer? Tell us your personal picks in the comments section below!

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By (author unknown), The Onion – March 16, 2010 at 11:00AM

Buying a house is one of the biggest decisions a person can make, so when I set out to purchase my first home, I didn’t take the matter lightly….

By Ben Blanquera, Techlife – March 15, 2010 at 10:55PM

By Ryan Dube, MakeUseOf – March 15, 2010 at 03:30PM

I love Google, Bing and Yahoo just as much as the next Internet user, but sometimes you really want to dig down into a particular subject.

In order to do that, you really need access to those underground search engines that may not be quite as well known, but they dig much more deeply into specialized areas of the Internet than the general search engines are capable of.

In many cases, these search engines are tapped into what is currently termed the “invisible web,” which is the information available on the Internet that standard search engines don’t have access to, because they are buried behind query forms or directory requests.

The following 6 underground search engines that I chose are not porn sites, illegal piracy sites or anything else that could get you in trouble with the law, or with your significant other. Instead, I term the following as “underground search engines” for two reasons. First, because they are so specialized that, although they are extremely useful, these search engines remain hidden from the general Internet population.

Second, because they provide a search service to a select community of Internet users who are interested in the specific subject matter that the search engine covers. So, in this article I’ll be covering seven “topical” search engines that I consider that best in that topic area.

#1 – The Best Torrent Search Engine

If you are a Torrent enthusiast, and you find yourself pouring through the hundreds of search engines that are available online for shared torrent files, then search no longer. Torrent Finder is one of the most impressive meta-search engines for Torrent files around. It methodically searches through over 170 torrent sites to identify the results that pertain to what you’re looking for.

The available list of Torrent sites that are plugged into this meta-search is impressive, and even more impressive are the search results. Now, I did say that I would stick to underground search engines that are not illegal, and many Torrent searches are done for the purpose of downloading copyrighted software, but the truth is that there are thousands of legitimate and legal Torrent files available. Torrent Finder is clearly the king when it comes to accumulating and presenting an aggregate of search results.

Here is a search for “classical music,” with over 300 results. Some keywords searches turn up a thousand results or more. The nice thing about the results from Torrent Finder is that you get a view of positive and negative comments, so you can get a hint that a file may not be legitimate before you attempt a download.

#2 – Free Bargains and Deals

At MakeUseOf, you’ll find a lot of excellent resources for how to find awesome deals, such as coverage of the great bargain search engine FreshBargains. FreshBargains aggregates results from 15 top websites, which is excellent. However, another fantastic and barely known website to find freebies is called Prospector.

Prospector is based in the Czech Republic, but the list of free stuff that you can find here knows no borders. We’re talking stuff for the home, free computer software, free educational supplies and tons more. In all fairness, the site is more of a directory of content, but with over 3300 categorized and reviewed links to freebies – it’s a body of information that deserves greater recognition.

#3 – House Sales and Sales Foreclosures

Earlier, I wrote an article about the best websites to find foreclosed homes. Public government sources seemed to provide the most information without requiring a paid membership. However, somehow I missed AOL Foreclosures. This foreclosure search engine sifts through various sources of foreclosure listings from all across the country (U.S. only), and unlike the paid sites – it offers price, address, and as much information about the property as is available. AOL Foreclosures is one of the unsung heros of free foreclosure search engines.

An even better as-yet unknown search engine that also deserves mention is Trulia. Trulia is yet another young search engine that provides collected real estate information from various sources, and offers it to you, the homebuyer, completely free of charge. No longer is it only for those who are “rights” to the information. With Trulia, you can see the current asking price, the address (most paid sites will leave that out for free members), square footage, and even whether the price was recently reduced or increased, and by how much.

Most importantly, the site also shows recent sale prices – which is information previously very difficult for buyers to obtain without a realtor. When you’re searching for a house, knowledge is power, and the knowledge that the Trulia real estate sales search engine offers will give you that power.

#4 – Public Records Search Engines

Another very common sought-after search engine that isn’t always very easy to find are those that offer free public records information. Nine times out of ten, if you try to find such a search engine, you’ll end up with results from one of the major commercial companies trying to sell paid public records search results to you. However, the Public Record Center is different.

While it is more of an underground “portal” than a search engine, it is actually a portal to some of the most obscure, yet useful, public information search engines on the Internet. Starting at this one site, you can find the government search engines where you can search for court judgments and liens, conduct asset searches, and even look up copyright and trademark information. With so much demand on the web for free access to public records – this is the perfect centralized location where you can access virtually everything.

#5 –  A Legal Search Engine

Ever hear of a search engine that lets you dig up legal information from the web? Neither did I, until I discovered Cornell’s Legal Information Institute. This amazing little search engine digs through the Institutes extensive legal library and pulls out any information that you might need. This could include family law, criminal law, labor law and much more.

For those of you who feel that you have what it takes to defend yourself in court, there’s also a very useful search engine where you can extract opinions from the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal.

There are similar search engines buried throughout this excellent legal resource. If you have any interest in law at all, take some time to check this one out – it’s a diamond in the rough.

#6 Paranormal Search Engine

Of course, if we want to go really underground, we’ve got to go paranormal. And there’s really no better underground paranormal search engine out there than UFO Seek. Don’t let the name fool you, this particular niche search engine isn’t just focused on UFOs and aliens.

UFOSeek covers just about anything out there that’s paranormal, as well as new age, alternative health, science, the occult, ghosts and just about anything else that you might consider “fringe.” It’s one of my favorite search engines on the net.

Now that I’ve gone over a few of my favorite hardly-known, niche search engines, offer some of your own! What are your favorite underground search engines that you wish more people knew about? Share your insight in the comments section below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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By Lee Mathews, Download Squad – March 15, 2010 at 03:00PM

Filed under: Photo, Windows

Downloadr in action from Jan-Gerd Tenberge on Vimeo.

Fire up a download task, and Downloadr asks you where to save the images and spawns a progress window. It also supports Windows 7’s Superbar progress indicator, so you’ll see a bright-green background when the job completes.

A few things worth noting: Downloadr is considered beta, so you’re probably going to encounter the occasional bug here and there. I had a few error boxes pop up, but no actual crashes — searching, authenticating, and downloading all worked just fine.

The .Net 3.5 framework is required — download it from FileHippo if you don’t have it installed already.

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Creative Commons – Flickr – Downloadr – Windows 7 – FileHippo

By Saikat Basu, MakeUseOf – March 14, 2010 at 08:27PM

No, it’s not Spiderman’s latest web slinging tool but something that’s more real world. Like the World Wide Web.

The Invisible Web refers to the part of the WWW that’s not indexed by the search engines. Most of us think that that search powerhouses like Google and Bing are like the Great Oracle…they see everything. Unfortunately, they can’t because they aren’t divine at all; they are just web spiders who index pages by following one hyperlink after the other.

But there are some places where a spider cannot enter. Take library databases which need a password for access. Or even pages that belong to private networks of organizations. Dynamically generated web pages in response to a query are often left un-indexed by search engine spiders.

Search engine technology has progressed by leaps and bounds. Today, we have real time search and the capability to index Flash based and PDF content. Even then, there remain large swathes of the web which a general search engine cannot penetrate. The term, Deep Net, Deep Web or Invisible Web lingers on.

To get a more precise idea of the nature of this ‘Dark Continent’ involving the invisible and web search engines, read what Wikipedia has to say about the Deep Web. The figures are attention grabbers – the size of the open web is 167 terabytes. The Invisible Web is estimated at 91,000 terabytes. Check this out – the Library of Congress, in 1997, was figured to have close to 3,000 terabytes!

How do we get to this mother load of information?

That’s what this post is all about. Let’s get to know a few resources which will be our deep diving vessel for the Invisible Web. Some of these are invisible web search engines with specifically indexed information.

Infomine

Infomine has been built by a pool of libraries in the United States. Some of them are University of California, Wake Forest University, California State University, and the University of Detroit. Infomine ‘mines’ information from databases, electronic journals, electronic books, bulletin boards, mailing lists, online library card catalogs, articles, directories of researchers, and many other resources.

You can search by subject category and further tweak your search using the search options. Infomine is not only a standalone search engine for the Deep Web but also a staging point for a lot of other reference information. Check out its Other Search Tools and General Reference links at the bottom.

The WWW Virtual Library

This is considered to be the oldest catalog on the web and was started by started by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the web. So, isn’t it strange that it finds a place in the list of Invisible Web resources? Maybe, but the WWW Virtual Library lists quite a lot of relevant resources on quite a lot of subjects. You can go vertically into the categories or use the search bar. The screenshot shows the alphabetical arrangement of subjects covered at the site.

Intute

Intute is UK centric, but it has some of the most esteemed universities of the region providing the resources for study and research. You can browse by subject or do a keyword search for academic topics like agriculture to veterinary medicine. The online service has subject specialists who review and index other websites that cater to the topics for study and research.

Intute also provides free of cost over 60 free online tutorials to learn effective internet research skills. Tutorials are step by step guides and are arranged around specific subjects.

Complete Planet

Complete Planet calls itself the ‘front door to the Deep Web’. This free and well designed directory resource makes it easy to access the mass of dynamic databases that are cloaked from a general purpose search. The databases indexed by Complete Planet number around 70,000 and range from Agriculture to Weather. Also thrown in are databases like Food & Drink and Military.

For a really effective Deep Web search, try out the Advanced Search options where among other things, you can set a date range.

Infoplease

Infoplease is an information portal with a host of features. Using the site, you can tap into a good number of encyclopedias, almanacs, an atlas, and biographies. Infoplease also has a few nice offshoots like Factmonster.com for kids and Biosearch, a search engine just for biographies.

DeepPeep

DeepPeep aims to enter the Invisible Web through forms that query databases and web services for information. Typed queries open up dynamic but short lived results which cannot be indexed by normal search engines. By indexing databases, DeepPeep hopes to track 45,000 forms across 7 domains.

The domains covered by DeepPeep (Beta) are Auto, Airfare, Biology, Book, Hotel, Job, and Rental. Being a beta service, there are occasional glitches as some results don’t load in the browser.

IncyWincy

IncyWincy is an Invisible Web search engine and it behaves as a meta-search engine by tapping into other search engines and filtering the results. It searches the web, directory, forms, and images. With a free registration, you can track search results with alerts.

DeepWebTech

DeepWebTech gives you five search engines (and browser plugins) for specific topics. The search engines cover science, medicine, and business. Using these topic specific search engines, you can query the underlying databases in the Deep Web.

Scirus

Scirus has a pure scientific focus. It is a far reaching research engine that can scour journals, scientists’ homepages, courseware, pre-print server material, patents and institutional intranets.

TechXtra

TechXtra concentrates on engineering, mathematics and computing. It gives you industry news, job announcements, technical reports, technical data, full text eprints, teaching and learning resources along with articles and relevant website information.

Just like general web search, searching the Invisible Web is also about looking for the needle in the haystack. Only here, the haystack is much bigger. The Invisible Web is definitely not for the casual searcher. It is a deep but not dark because if you know what you are searching for, enlightenment is a few keywords away.

Do you venture into the Invisible Web? Which is your preferred search tool?

Image credit: MarcelGermain

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