Taking A Closer Look At Windows Resource Monitor

Of course, we need to open Windows Resource Monitor before we can do anything. Windows Resource Monitor is a feature that was added in Vista and carries over to Windows 7. As far as I can gather, the only way to open it is through the Windows Task Manager - so press CTRL-ALT-DEL and open it.

Once Task Manager is open, go to the Performance tab. In the lower right hand corner is a button labeled Resource Monitor. Click it, and you’re ready to go!

Windows Resource Monitor will, by default, open up to the Overview tab. This provides general, but useful, information about your computer. The best way to start becoming acquainted with Windows Resource Monitor is probably the graphs on the right side of the Overview tab. There are graphs here for your processor, hard disk, network and memory. These graphs will tell you how much of each is being used.

A computer at idle should display each graph as nearly flat. There may be minor spikes in usage, typically due to background processes, but these spikes should be few and they shouldn’t significantly consume system resources.

Other usage scenarios will result in distinct patterns.  For example, it is normal to see high disk activity and high network usage when you are downloading a file. It is also normal to see high disk activity while your virus scanning software is operating.

Sudden (or not-so-sudden), unexplained spikes are not normal. They may be the result of bloatware (unwanted programs that come pre-installed in your system), an inefficent antivirus program, a program that did not close correctly or even malware.

Open the CPU tab of Windows Resource Monitor. When you do so, the graphs on the right will change. You’ll now be shown a graph for each core Windows detects (or two graphs for each core if you have an Intel processor with Hyper-Threading enabled). The total CPU usage graph remains, as well.

But the most important informaton here is not the graphs. What you’ll need to take a closer look at is the text information under the labels of Processes and Services. A process is an active application, while a service is a background application that conforms to special rules (it can run automatically on boot, it can run when no user is logged on, etc).

When it comes to checking out processor usage, however, you’ll organize both using the same tactic. Simply organize the processes or services by the average CPU value. Tada! You now know what programs are taking up your processor’s power. Please note that common processes and services can sometimes appear under odd names in Windows Resource Monitor. Be sure to Google an unknown program and identify it before you close it.

The way your computer uses its short-term memory (RAM) is important to overall performance. If you’re running low on available memory you’ll find that your computer’s performance becomes sluggish.

RAM usage can be found under the Memory tab. A new, useful line graph appears at the bottom of Windows Resource Monitor. This graph shows you how much memory is in use, how much is on stand-by (containing active data, but not actively in use) and how much is completely free.

Ideally you’ll want to see some free memory on this graph. The real problem, however, comes when your in-use memory fills up most of the graph. This means you simply don’t have any RAM left to use! You can free up memory by organzing processes by their Working memory share and shutting down memory hogs. If your system has limited memory, however, you may simply need to add more memory to your PC.

Most users underestimate the effect their hard drive can have on overall system performance. The speed with which you can download files, install programs, transfer information, and open programs can all be affected by your hard drive’s performance. Sometimes a program, such an anti-virus scanner, will bombard your hard disk with requests for information.

Opening up the Disk tab will show you the Processes with Disk Activity display. This shows you all the active processes that are consuming your hard disk’s time. You’ll usually see a few common Windows processors, like System and svchost.exe, listed here. But you may also see other programs. This may clue you in as to why programs are loading slowly.

Finally, take a look at the Network tab. You will again see a Processes with Network Activity display, which is very useful for tracking down programs that are making unwanted network connections (although nasty malware is often programmed to dodge Windows Resource Monitor or disguise itself as a more innocent process). You can also analyze your active network connections using the TCP connections display.

Familiarzing yourself with Windows Resource Monitor is a great idea. It is a very effective program that can tell you a lot about why your computer is behaving well or poorly. You can track down runaway programs and close them, and you can also see if a hardware upgrade is necessary to use the programs you prefer.

(By) Matthew Smith is a freelancer writer from Portland, Oregon. He enjoys PC hardware, software and gaming. His blog, Smidgen PC, covers the latest development in laptops, netbooks and other small computers.

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5 Fascinating & Unique Recipe Sites To Brush Up Your Culinary Skills

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Chow and Epicurious. Those sites may be really well-known but there are many more that you shouldn’t miss out on.

Whether you can’t resist a restaurant’s dish or want to try your hand at making your own version, or whether you really want to keep a budget for your meals, the next couple of sites may just be your cup of tea.

Top Secret Recipes contains a large collection of clone recipes for a variety of chain restaurants, from T.G.I. Friday’s, Outback Steakhouse to most fast food restaurants. The recipes are the food creations of Todd Wilbur, a self-proclaimed “food clone freak” who goes out of his way to uncover the recipes behind many popular dishes in chain restaurants in his lab kitchen.

Since he’s been doing this for a really long time, some of his recipes are now behind a pay wall ($0.99) or only found in his books, but you can also find some of his restaurant-inspired recipes on his official YouTube channel, where he features a mixture of semi-homemade techniques so users don’t have to spend forever attempting a recipe.

Here’s a video where he clones Chili’s Molten Chocolate Cake.

Wilbur has a passion for coming up with these recipes in a super easy-to-follow way so that you will lose all fear and try the recipes yourself pretty soon. In fact, they’re so easy, he even made a video of his Snickers clone recipe while blindfolded, where of course, hilarity ensues.

On his site, you can find ratings to some of his recipes, which are always helpful and aren’t available for clone recipes on other sites.

This site offers an impressive number (1,500!) of articles and full recipes in written form, from monthly menus where she lays out many links to her own recipes to her versions of restaurant clone recipes, such as Olive Garden’s Pumpkin Cheesecake, (which only has original recipes on the official site) only available in the fall in the restaurant (but now you can try it any season!).

Check out the Copykat restaurant recipes category for more.  Copykat’s YouTube channel has some good videos that don’t rush into it. Here’s one where author, Stephanie Manley narrates over how to make KFC’s Buttermilk Biscuits.

Like Top Secret Recipes and CDKitchen’s Copycat & Restaurant Recipes, Copykat offers recipes without process photos, which may not always help newbies so that is why the sites in the next section are such gifts to humanity. But recipes without photos aren’t always a bad thing, because at least in written format, they may be more accommodating than cooking videos which are sometimes too fast-paced.

A true gem, Budget Bytes is a hard-not-to-love recipe blog that provides not only step-by-step photos (something I really wish Allrecipes would implement as it seems to hold the largest recipe collection), but it also provides recipe costs, serving costs as well as cooking time  in an extremely thorough way, which is more win for readers!

The site was initially featured on the MakeUseOf Directory for being a handy site with inexpensive recipes, but the scope of the recipes on here are far and beyond budget meals.

As the motto of the site says (“On a mission to save money and eat well!), the number-crunching author also gives a variety of recipes for the health-conscious and/or vegetarian. There is no rating system as this is a blog, but the response is very positive as you see in the comments, so this site is definitely worth a look or even a spot in your bookmarks.

I guess I’m not the only that thinks that AllRecipes should allow step-by-step photos because another incredibly handy recipe website called Visual Recipes has emerged, focusing on providing stunning photo slideshows in user-submitted recipes for the visual learner.

Like AllRecipes, it has a video section and ratings, as well as cooking time and serving sizes.

Did you see Ratatouille and know what kind of food it is? MovieRecipe will let you know what was eaten in your favorite movie and even provide you with the recipe! The selection of movies isn’t very large, and some contain obvious items, but it’s an entertaining website for recipe ideas.

There a myriad of recipe sites on the net today. Share your favorite sites on the comments below!

Photo credit: Allrecipes’s Favorite Photos 11/9/2010

(By) Jessica holds a bachelor's in Psychology and loves to write about useful applications and hacks in plain English. Check out her articles or contact her on Twitter.

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Protect Your Mac With Sophos Anti-Virus For Free

Once the scan is complete, if any threats are detected, they will appear in the Quarantine Manager. With one click, you can delete the file from your computer. If you’re not sure that you want to delete it immediately, you can leave it in the Quarantine Manager until you decide what you want to do.

You can create custom scans, to scan specific files and folders at the click of a button, as well as scan specific files through the right-click menu.

You can choose how Sophos will deal with threats when they are found – choosing to log it only, to clean up, move or delete the threat.

What Sophos Anti-Virus doesn’t do is allow you to schedule scans. Instead, Sophos works in realtime detecting threats as they appear. This means no annoying popup windows reminding you to do a full scan, and Sophos is so lightweight it doesn’t affect the speed of your computer at all.

Want to see some Mac threats in action? Check out SophosLab’s video that should convince you, if nothing else does.

How do you protect your Mac from viruses? Let us know in the comments.

(By) Nancy lives in Cairo, works at a publishing house, is half poet, half geek, and suffers from a heavy dose of techno-joy. You can find her on Twitter at diptychal

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ioSafe SoloPRO Giveaway Winner

email.

(By) Jackson Chung is the Assistant Editor for MakeUseOf. You may get in touch with him via email. Outside of MakeUseOf, he is the Chief Buggler at The Daily Buggle. Follow him on Twitter @aenon1mus.

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Hot Tech Deals [Nov 18th]

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FluffyApp, A Painless Drag-&-Drop File Uploader [Windows]

FluffyApp has been quickly reviewed on the MakeUseOf Directory for being very intuitive among countless ways to upload files. It allows you to drag and drop any file (or a number of them) of 25MB or less to an icon in the system tray and copies the URL to your clipboard as soon as it has finished uploading the file.

FluffyApp is actually a Windows version of CloudApp, a Mac-only application for sharing files by drag-&-drop, so it uploads files to CloudApp’s servers, which means you get the benefits of CloudApp, namely, file view count, copyable embed code for images, extensions and a library of your uploaded files by type.

That also means you’ll need an account, which only requires an email, password and for you to click on the email verification link. Free accounts can upload up to 10 files per day.

What’s also unique about FluffyApp is that it can take screenshots of a region with a keyboard shortcut. FluffyApp doesn’t come with an installer, which may a good thing for anyone that just wants to run the application without having to modify their registries. FluffyApp displays a history of uploaded files when you right-click on the system tray icon, and puts multiple files uploaded at once in a zip folder automatically.

In summary, what makes FluffyApp a lifesaver is that you can:

Some cons are that:

You need an account to upload to CloudApp.There is no installer (but this may be seen as a pro by users not looking to install more programs!)You can upload up to 10 files (25MB or smaller) per day (which is a limitation for free CloudApp accounts).URLs aren’t shortened (this is also tied to how you set your items by default in your CloudApp account settings).

While Dropbox users can drag and drop files to the Public folder and copy the public link, not everyone has Dropbox, (which is great for anything from image hosting to even writing) for whatever reason. Thus, FluffyApp could be an unbelievably easy-to-use alternative to share files in a few seconds.

There’s no need to head to a file hosting website, such as MegaUpload, which generally impose ads and waiting times (although you can get plugins to bypass these times) on whomever you’re sharing your file with.

CloudApp and FluffyApp aren’t the only tools for fast file sharing. There’s also Droplr for Mac (which was featured in a “battle” with CloudApp) and its Windows counterpart, windroplr, as well as the open-source Zscreen for Windows (here‘s a quick review). However, if you are just looking for a dedicated screenshot program that puts the link in your clipboard in a flash, there are also options such as SPGrab, Gyazo,Lightshot and Jing.

What are your favorite ways to share files in a flash?

(By) Jessica holds a bachelor's in Psychology and loves to write about useful applications and hacks in plain English. Check out her articles or contact her on Twitter.

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Vaja ivolution Top iPhone 4 Case Review and Giveaway

The box also serves as some protection during shipping and transit. Since you’ve paid $80 for the case, it should arrive in mint condition, am I right?

Although I’m not a “lime green” kind of guy, the colour wasn’t that bad, to be honest. This Black Series case follows the Vaja tradition of offering a selection of customisable colour schemes — black on the outside and choose from 30 colours for the interior. They are then stuck together using an adhesive. Customising takes a droning 35 days.

The leather used for the exterior is a grainy cowhide that’s wonderfully textured but I found it to be slightly thin. I was able to feel the construction of the frame beneath the leather. It also grips the iPhone very tightly as it slides down from the top to fit into the case. As you can clearly see, access to the volume controls and mute switch are completely unobstructed. The front cover flips downwards, revealing the dock connector. This may be a bit annoying because the case has to be left opened when charging the phone. It also won’t fit into a dock with the case on.

A small flap holds the front cover in place when closed, even allowing access to the headphone jack and sleep button. The upper right back panel has a section cut out for the iPhone’s camera, leaving it exposed. This may be a deal-breaker for some.

All in all, the Vaja iVolution Top Black Series iPhone 4 case is luxurious and offers better (more complete) protection than other cases on the market; and manages to be stylish while doing so. However, it may prove to be cumbersome when charging and docking.

The good: all-round protection, stylish, prevents iPhone’s screen from collecting dust.

The bad: iPhone’s camera left exposed, cannot be docked with the case on, front cover must be left open when charging.

Buy it from Vaja’s online store for $80 and if you’re not too picky, several colours are currently in stock for immediate shipping.

Oh and we’ve got one to give away. You guessed it, a black and lime green one. Interested?

It’s simple, just follow the instructions.

Join our Facebook page by liking us. If you’re already following us, you may skip this step.

If you can’t see the fanbox, click on this link.

Here’s our giveaway form. Please fill it in accurately. Be sure to enter your real email address so that we can get in touch if you are chosen as a winner. Click here if you can’t view the form.

You’re almost done. Now, all that’s left to do is to LIKE the post. This step is optional but why not spread the love?

And that’s it! You’re done!

Giveaway eligibility
You must be a fan of our Facebook page to enter;
Individuals who are over the age of 18. If you are under 18, get your parents to participate on your behalf;
Individuals who reside in a country embargoed by the United States; Belgium, Norway, Sweden, or India are not permitted to enter.

This giveaway begins now and ends after 300 submissions. The winner will be selected at random and announced via email.

Spread the word to your friends and have fun!

(By) Jackson Chung is the Assistant Editor for MakeUseOf. You may get in touch with him via email. Outside of MakeUseOf, he is the Chief Buggler at The Daily Buggle. Follow him on Twitter @aenon1mus.

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What SSH Is & How It’s Different From FTP [Technology Explained]

Technology Explained series aims to shed some light on the two protocols and their differences.

Let’s get some basic terminology out of the way. To understand the purpose of SSH, you need to be familiar with some of the underlying elements.

The shell of a computer is a piece of software that allows users to directly communicate with the kernel, the very core of an operating system. The shell can have either a graphical or command-line interface (read: text input), or both.

A shell account, on the other hand, is a personal account that gives the user access to a shell on a different computer. They used to be commonplace and supplied by the Internet Service Providers, used to work with file storage, email accounts, newsgroups and more. The common denominator is that a shell account is used to enter commands on a remote computer.

Just like a web browser uses the HTTP protocol to talk with websites, a shell account needs a certain protocol to enable data exchange (read: communication) between the two networked devices. Meet SSH - Secure Shell Protocol.

SSH uses a public key encryption and was developed to replace Telnet and other insecure shell protocols. The two major versions, SSH-1 and SSH-2, are now the dominating protocols to access shell accounts.

These days, SSH is used to log into and execute code on remote hosts, browse the web using encrypted proxy clients, and transfer files – even setting up a Virtual Private Network.

SSH clients are available for all major operating systems. Unix-based systems, including Linux and Mac OS X, can use OpenSSH. Also check the OpenSSH website for Mac OS and Windows alternatives. PuTTY is one of the most prominent Windows clients.

File transfer and VPN applications don’t run on SSH by default, but make use of SFTP – the SSH File Transfer Protocol. Mind you, SFTP is not the FTP protocol running over SSH, but a different file transfer protocol developed as an extension for SSH-2. SFTP is always used to transfer files over SSH, but it’s actually designed so it can be used in compliance with other protocols. That’s not for this article, though.

Although not in the letter, for the end-user, SFTP can be seen as a secure relative of FTP. The latter transmits all data in plain-text. Packet intercepts can thus reveal crucial and private data, including your user name and password! SFTP, being an SSH-2 extension, uses public key security. This means the data is encrypted when it is being transmitted and potential intercepts are relatively useless.

SFTP as such is included in most popular FTP suites, albeit often without other SSH functionality.

I hope you’ve learned something from this article. If you’ve got any questions or suggestions, head to the comments section below!

Image credit: Shutterstock

(By) Simon is a student and tech enthusiast from Belgium. On MakeUseOf, he's one of the staff writers. Check Simon out @ http://meme.yahoo.com/slangen/

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Facebook Integrates Deals Into Their Mobile Places Platform [News]

Foursquare. That was until recently, when Facebook announced the addition of Deals to their Places platform. Now it would appear that Facebook is in the driver’s seat when it comes to the geolocation market.

With Facebook Deals, you can locate daily deals at your favorite spots around town, as well as cash in on specials and giveaways featured by businesses. A lot of people see this as a revolutionary step in the adoption of “check-in” services and geolocation apps, and I’m inclined to agree with them.

Here’s a picture-perfect example from Facebook’s blog:

Everyone likes getting a good deal, but it’s not always easy to find the right one at the moment you could use one. Imagine that while you’re looking for a new place to try for lunch, you could see offers from restaurants nearby on your phone. On the other hand, I already love Zachary’s Pizza, so imagine if I were rewarded for coming back there every week with my friends.

Facebook Deals allows local businesses to offer you deals when you check-in to their “place” on your phone’s Facebook app (iTunes link). When you are browsing places nearby, you will see a yellow icon next to the places that are currently running deals. You can also share those deals with your friends.

When you check-in to claim a deal, just show your phone to the cashier to get your gift or discount. There are different types of deals:

Individual Deals – Discounts, free merchandise, etc. just for you.Friend Deals – You and your friends (who must be present) claim a deal together.Loyalty Deals – For being a frequent visitor to a place.Charity Deals – Where businesses pledge to donate to a cause when you check-in.

To see how this works, watch this short video by Facebook:

If you are a local business owner who wants to begin offering deals to your customers, it’s just as easy. Just watch this video and you’ll be well on your way:

What do you think of Facebook Deals? Are you going to be checking in?

Source: Facebook Blog

(By) Steven Campbell - a Project Manager at VaynerMedia, Steve focuses his time on social media, marketing and brand-building. Follow him @Steve_Campbell and check out his Social Branding Blog.

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The 10 Toughest Tech Questions [MakeUseOf Answers]

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5 Cool Data Apps & Mashups Provided By The US Government

a few cool apps that mash up Craigslist data with other information, as a few good examples.

Believe it or not, the U.S. Government is now taking on the role of building interesting tools and data mashups. The datasets available within these apps are pretty impressive, and allow researchers to dig up statistics and correlate information in ways that were never before possible without a lot of very hard work. I’m going to introduce the five best Data.gov tools and show you some of the cool things they can do.

If you liked the Data.gov app we previously mentioned called DataMasher, you’ll love what the Apps Showcase at Data.Gov now has to offer. The site now offers hundreds of datasets and mashups that you can use to visually and mathematically correlate information. The Apps Showcase is the page where you can find the best of those apps.

If you want to see everything the site has to offer, click on the “Tools” tab at the top and you’ll find yourself in a search engine featuring over 600 tools. The majority of these apps are simply RSS feeds for the latest alerts or trends, such as weather advisories, health estimates, and much more.

All five of the best tools that I want to highlight are featured on the Apps Showcase, so if you like any of them, you can find them there. The first app is the National Obesity Comparison Tool, which you can use to examine information about obesity levels by state. Just type in the state and you’ll see comparisons between that state and national averages.

If you travel a lot and you’re sick of getting held up at the airport, then this next app is just for you. It’s called FlyOnTime.us, and it lets you check recent statistics for airports or airlines that you’re planning to travel through. These statistics can really help you streamline your trip.

Airline data shows you how that airline has performed historically, as well as which airports where delays most commonly occur. For example, if you’re planning to fly Delta out of Boston, the odds are pretty good that the flight will be on time.

If you select Airport Security information and type in the airport where you’re planning to travel from or to, you’ll get another set of historic flight data for that airport. This data includes real-time information (within the last 30 minutes) of the full last seven days worth of “wait time” at security lines for that airport. Plan ahead and you’ll find short lines through security. Isn’t it nice to have the ability to predict the future?

If you’re unemployed and looking to move to a better part of the country where there’s more chance of work, then you’ll want to check out the Employment Market Explorer app. This is a very useful Google Maps mashup with unemployment trends displayed underneath. To check and compare local differences from one town to the next, just click on the map marker and the data below automatically updates.

Of course, I can’t list the five best apps without mentioning DataMasher. DataMasher is easily the best of all of these apps, because it gives you the flexibility to select from a long list of datasets covering a really wide range of national information. It lets you perform mathematically calculations on those datasets, and then displays them in a graphical format.

For example, here I’m creating a mashup of states with the highest combined elderly population and driving accidents. The datasets that you have to choose from are between 100 to 200 items covering a wide range of topics.

The resulting maps are color coded, and if you click on the “table” tab, you can actually see the real data broken down by each variable by state.

Finally, the last app that I’d like to share is the Health Data Visualizer. This is a lot like DataMasher, except that it’s focused on Health data, and the entry form isn’t quite as visually appealing. You have to type in a text command, formatted correctly and listing the variables that you’d like to see.

The resulting graph can be either sortable tables, scatter plots or blot maps depending which you choose. The available variables are listed at the bottom of the page, and number at least three dozen topics. The information you can gather and visualize using these tools is pretty impressive, and could be an invaluable research tool for any academic or student researcher.

Have you ever used any of these Data.gov tools? Do you know of any other countries that have similar tools as well? Share your own resources and insight in the comments section below.

(By) Ryan, an automation engineer on the East Coast (U.S.) who enjoys discussing the latest trends of online writing and freelancing. Visit his blog at FreeWritingCenter.com to read up on the latest online writing trends and freelance money-making opportunities.

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7 Amazing, Yet Overlooked, Wikimedia Projects You Should Check Out

Image Licenses You Need To Be Familiar With Before Using Someone’s Photos, the Wikimedia Commons is a great place to find royalty-free images, charts, videos and audio recordings of just about anything.

The Commons is more than a great resource for mankind. It’s also the media backend for the entire Wikimedia project, including Wikipedia. It’s the database of pictures that end up in all of Wikimedia’s other projects.

You’re pretty sure Stephen Colbert said something clever about the subject of your blog post, but you’re not sure of the exact wording. Check WikiQuotes.

This massive database of quotes cover everyone from Churchhill to Plato to Sun Tzu. Whether you’re looking for a particular anecdote, or just want to read the words of a certain person, WikiQuotes is a great place to check out.

Every species on earth, indexed. That’s the goal of the wiki species, which acts as a biological counterpart to Wikipedia. You’ll find information about the classification of millions of species, and in most cases a photo. With around 300,000 species indexed there’s certainly a lot of work here to do yet, so if you’re a biologist join in and provide some information!

Wikisource: Massive Library Of Free Books

The slow march of time brings thousands of works into the public domain, and numerous books with open licenses are in production right now. WikiSource serves as a repository for this free information, and a really complete one at that. Similar in a way to Project Gutenburg, WikiSource is a great place to look for some classic literature or for public domain texts.

Free textbooks. That’s the goal of Wikibooks, and it delivers. Featuring over 30,000 English textbooks on subjects ranging from literature to atomic physics, Wikibooks is a huge resource for educators and the self-educated alike. Browse it to brush up on a particular subject, or contribute what you know to help others.

Alternatively, if you’d prefer a collection of Wikipedia articles on a certain subject, check out the Wikipedia community books project for PDF downloads of entire categories.

Making use of the free textbooks created by the Wikibooks project, Wikiversity aims to create entire courses. This includes everything from homework assignments to lessons to textbooks to supplemental material. This could be a great way to teach yourself about a given subject, but is also a pretty fantastic resource for educators looking for ideas or even an entire curriculum. Courses range from elementary school to university, so just about anyone could benefit.

Wikinews: Journalism, Wiki-style

Why not? Wikinews is a shocking experiment in how quickly a volunteer-only team can keep up a newspaper online. You’ll find up-to-the-minute summaries of the day’s big news stories, and even the occasional exclusive interview. Sure, the language is occasionally clunky, but Wikinews is a remarkably useful way to keep up with current events worldwide.

Is there a service I missed? Highlight it below. Also feel free to share how these projects have benefited you recently.

(By) Justin Pot is a Boulder, Colorado based journalist and IT professional. His private corner of the web is JustinPot.com

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MakeUseOf Team Spotlight [November 15th 2010]

Posted on Blueglass by Ann Smarty

Are you sure you know everything about making the most of the YouTube embed code? The post lists some advanced tips on what you can do with Youtube embed player: “classic” code parameters and options, “new” HTML-5-friendly player and its features, as well as some other tips: how to add a clickable link to your Youtube video, how to embed videos in presentations and forums, etc.

Posted on Net Savoir by Angela Alcorn

Have you ever found yourself frustrated by a website which automatically made decisions about how you’d prefer to see it?

On behalf of all travellers and expats everywhere, Ange is making a clear case against websites which automatically update language settings based on your location, rather than asking.

If you’re a web designer, an expat or a traveller then you should read of this rant.

Image Credit: RockCohen

Posted on TheDailyBuggle by Jackson Chung

Aside from professionals, most of us (or at least a large majority) only use image editors for minor edits; say for cropping, resizing, adjusting colour balance, sharpening, etc. So why use a system hog like Photoshop? Why even bother searching for a crack and downloading over 1GB of data for simple image editing that can be done through your browser?

Jackson takes a quick look at 5 web-based image editors that you can use anywhere, anytime on your browser as long as you have an active internet connection. No downloads necessary. And they’re all free!

If you would like to follow the MUO staff yourself on Twitter, check out this Twitter list, which is updated on a regular basis, as staff are hired or fired. From there, you can click through to each writer’s Twitter profile where you can subscribe to them for all their latest updates.

Image Credit: Visualogist

(By) Jackson Chung is the Assistant Editor for MakeUseOf. You may get in touch with him via email. Outside of MakeUseOf, he is the Chief Buggler at The Daily Buggle. Follow him on Twitter @aenon1mus.

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Google Launches Instant Preview To Make Searching Easier [News]

It’s only been about two months since Google launched their latest search engine feature, Google Instant, making it faster and easier than ever to get the results you’re looking for.

A few days ago, they launched yet another small but handy feature that will make it easy to filter through those results and determine which one is right for you, using Instant Previews.

On your search results page, each item is accompanied by a little magnifying glass. Clicking on the icon will activate the Instant Preview feature, and you will need to activate the feature for each search instance.

A small screenshot of the website will be displayed on the Google search page, displaying the general layout of the page, simply by hovering over each search result.

Anywhere the search word or phrase is displayed on the page will be highlighted in the preview.

In an attempt to make things as easy as possible for you, Google has implemented keyboard shortcuts for accessing Instant Preview. Use the up and down arrow keys to navigate between search results, and the right arrow key to display the preview.

To see Google Instant Previews in action, check out the video below.

Are you using Google Instant Preview? Let us know what you think of it in the comments.

(By) Nancy lives in Cairo, works at a publishing house, is half poet, half geek, and suffers from a heavy dose of techno-joy. You can find her on Twitter at diptychal

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