class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/transformice.jpg" alt="transformice" />It took nearly two months for a friend to convince me to give href="http://www.transformice.com/">Transformice a shot. The game looked too childish, uninteresting, and casual. After finally giving the game a fair chance, I’ve been disappointed that I didn’t listen two months sooner. This is one of the most unique browser games that you’re going to find.

It’s hard to put Transformice into a genre. It’s a strategy game, but it’s something more than that. Transformice is the most individual team-based game I’ve played. That’s weird, I know. It’s also the only game that I can think of where trolling is almost integrated within the gameplay.

On any given school night, Transformice touches over 10,000 players online. I say school night because this game is targeted more towards a younger audience. The objective of Transformice is to proceed through each map and collect the cheese. After collecting the cheese, you must bring it back to the mouse hole. By collecting cheese, you gather points towards becoming the next Shaman. The Shaman is the designated mouse who builds and casts objects so that their fellow mice can more easily get to the cheese. Shamans are rewarded for the number of mice they are able to save and help bring back the cheese.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/500x_transformice_Transformice-s500x285-116489-580.jpg" alt="transformice" />

Gameplay

As a Mouse, Transformice can be played using only one hand. You’re a mouse, but you don’t need your mouse! The left and right directional keys move you across the map. Up jumps, and down ducks.

As a Shaman, things begin to get tricky. You can click on your list of objects (using your cursor) and drag them to the screen. Using the mousewheel will allow you to rotate your object. To place them, left click and hold. That’s not all though: there is object anchoring. To anchor an object, you press a certain key after clicking the object.

B creates a solid base anchor, primarily used for planks. This anchor will make the object completely solid and basically unmovable. C creates a connector anchor, which will allow you to chain together planks and other objects to each other. V will create a solid teal anchor, in which N can be attached to and make objects motorized. It is a little bit confusing, but you’re able to get used to it pretty quickly. It’s a nice variety that makes for fun building. You have objects like planks, boxes, balls, and balloons at your disposal.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/transformice_game.png" alt="transformice review" />

Being a Shaman actually requires a lot of practice and strategy. This video can help you with the basics:

src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/vE9oMFUhI_I" frameborder="0" width="570" height="320">

Achievements

Transformice is chock-full of achievements and unlockable goodies. There’s a sort of a prestige system, depending mostly on the amount of cheese you’ve acquired and mice you’ve saved. These are called Titles and displays, like ranks, beneath your username. There is also the Shop, where you can buy hats and other accessories to customize your mouse and stand out from the rest.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/transformice_shop.png" alt="transformice" />

After saving 1,000 mice, you’re given a Totem. Your Totem allows you to create a huge chain of objects all at once in any shape that you desire. Your Totem can be incredibly useful or very damaging in getting the mice to the cheese. It all depends on how you create it.

Tips & Tricks

Transformice is the type of game that you learn from as you go along. The longer you play, the better you’ll become. It’s that simple.

As a Shaman, there are dozens of little things that even I haven’t managed to grasp yet. As a Mouse, there is one extremely important skill for you to learn: walljumping.

src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/AGqMaXfA0-g" frameborder="0" width="570" height="320">Walljumping is basically an essential skill if you ever plan to play Transformice at a higher level or plan to ever get your little mouse into the hole first. It’s a trick, but it’s an integral part of this game.

Transformice can be played by href="http://www.transformice.com/">browser or standalone client ( href="http://exe.transformice.com/Transformice.exe">Windows or href="http://exe.transformice.com/Transformice.zip">Mac). This makes it easy to play at home, work, on the go, or wherever else you shouldn’t be playing it.

This game is fun for both kids and adults. I’m an adult and I’m not even ashamed to admit that I enjoy it, right? If you have kids, the in-game community is moderated and very friendly. Play it with your kids, even. We’ve got more articles on href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-cool-games-to-get-your-kids-interested-in-mathematics/">kid-friendly games also, if Transformice isn’t your thing. Let me know what you guys think of the game in the comments!

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Avant Browser is a standalone application designed to expand features provided by Internet Explorer. It adds a bunch of features and functionalities to IE and its user-friendly interface brings a new level of clarity and efficiency to your browsing experience, and frequent upgrades have steadily improved its reliability.

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Avant Browser is a standalone application designed to expand features provided by Internet Explorer. It adds a bunch of features and functionalities to IE and its user-friendly interface brings a new level of clarity and efficiency to your browsing experience, and frequent upgrades have steadily improved its reliability.

View full post on FileHippo.com

Comodo Dragon is a Chromium technology-based Browser that offers you all of Chrome’s features PLUS the unparalleled level of security and privacy you only get from Comodo. Including a greater level of privacy than Chromium technology offers.

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/creader-icon.png" alt="text only google reader" />Do you want an immersive, text-only Google Reader? Try going through your reading list in the terminal. It’s easy to do with terminal web browser elinks and Google Reader’s mobile interface.

href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/google-reader/">Google Reader‘s interface is famously minimalist, but browsers hardly make ideal reading platforms. They give you convenient access to a plethora of distractions, from social networks to pictures of kittens. Avoid such distractions and focus on your reading by doing your reading in the command line. Besides, the command line is just plain cool, so you should be using it anyway.

eLinks is a text-only browser you can run from the command line. It is easily installed on Linux and Mac systems alike, so this idea works on both of those systems.

Installing eLinks

The first step, of course, is installing eLinks. Using Linux? Installing eLinks is simple, then. Just check your package manager of choice for it. Using Ubuntu? Simply href="apt:elinks">click here to install.

Are you a Mac user? Congratulations, most of you aren’t awesome enough to be interested in the command line. You think different. href="http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/26416/elinks">Find a Mac download for eLinks here. You’ll find the Terminal in your Applications folder, under “Utilities“.

Once you’ve got the program working, you can open it in the terminal by typing “elinks” and hitting enter.

Launching Google Reader

Want to get to Google Reader quickly? Type this command into the terminal:

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/creader-command.png" alt="text only google reader" width="580" height="119" />

elinks google.com/reader/m

Just like that, you’ve opened a web browser straight to Google Reader’s mobile page. You will need to log in now. Use the arrow keys to get to the entry fields, then hit enter to add text. Log in and you will see your reading list:

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/creader-list.png" alt="text only rss reader" width="580" height="199" />

Use your arrow keys to open up your article of choice. You will then see a text-only version of the article in question:

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/creader-content.png" alt="text only rss reader" width="578" height="192" />

I highly recommend pressing the space bar to scroll down; it will “turn the page” completely.

Of course, this all assumes that the RSS feeds you subscribe to are full text. If some of them aren’t, Google will do what it can to convert links to a mobile version if you click a link. Alternatively, you can href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-ways-view-full-rss-feeds-google-reader/">convert any RSS feed to full text with these tools. FullTextRSS in particular worked wonderfully for me.

Do you want a completely immersive reading experience? In most Linux distros, including Ubuntu, you can switch to terminal-only by hitting “ALT”, “CTL” and any of the “F” keys from 1 to 6. Pressing “ALT”, “CTL” and “F7″, for example, will bring you back to your graphical environment.

Alternatively, you could simply go full screen or maximize the terminal. That works too.

Other Potential Sites

eLinks doesn’t just work with Google Reader, of course – it’s a full blown web browser. Just about any site should work, but mobile versions of famous sites tend to work best, like the href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/i/">BBC Mobile version.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/creader-mac.png" alt="text only google reader" width="580" height="205" />

Can you think of any other sites you’d like to read in this way? Share them in the comments below, as always! Also feel free to share any other simple command line tricks you use to keep yourself from being distracted.

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Avant Browser is a standalone application designed to expand features provided by Internet Explorer. It adds a bunch of features and functionalities to IE and its user-friendly interface brings a new level of clarity and efficiency to your browsing experience, and frequent upgrades have steadily improved its reliability.

View full post on FileHippo.com

class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/300300sign.png" alt="360 degree tour" />Some people love to travel. They love hopping on an airplane and seeing the world. However, traveling is expensive, and it is not something everyone can squeeze into their budget. After all, there is the cost of airfare, luggage, accommodation, food, activities and everything else involved with getting up and going. If travel was cheap, everyone would do it. Sadly, it isn’t, so some of us are stuck seeing the world from a computer screen.

Thankfully, this is not always so bad. With cool websites like href="http://www.tourwrist.com">TourWrist offering full 360 degree panoramic photographs, it feels almost like you are there anyway. Maybe you can’t feel the warm breeze flowing through your hair, or taste the salt water at the beach, but you can at least get a great view. Okay, nothing really substitutes actually getting out there and experiencing the world first hand, but at least if you can’t experience it with your other senses, you can at least see it in all its beauty with your eyes.

Browsing 360 Degree Tours

Getting started on the site and browsing all the beautiful tours is a snap. There is no need to register on the site if you are only there to browse. Simply point your web browser of choice to href="http://www.tourwrist.com/">TourWrist’s website, or download the app on the href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tour-wrist/id335671384?mt=8">iTunes App Store.

The next step is to click on any of the “Browse Tours” links on the front page.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/browse.png" alt="360 degree tour" width="274" height="402" />

Once you are in the browse screen you can sort the tours in any number of ways, and since they are all geo-tagged, it is easy to tell exactly where the photo is in the world. The default screen is “featured tours.” The tours are shown neatly on the map based on their place in the world.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/map.png" alt="360 degree website" width="570" height="356" />

If just looking at the featured tours doesn’t tickle your fancy you can click the “Categories” link and view pictures tagged in one of the many categories such as Real Estate, Arts & Entertainment, Dining, Retail and many others. You can also browse tours by photographer to find the particular people whose work you really enjoy. In addition you can also view the newest tours, so you can support the photographers who just uploaded their stuff.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/zoom.png" alt="360 degree website" width="341" height="211" />

When you decide how you want to browse tours, they will show up on the map as green bubbles. From the far zoomed view it may look like there is only one tour in an area, but make sure to zoom in once you find a part of the world that interests you because there are usually many more. Click the bubble of the tour that interests you to find out some more information about it. If it looks interesting click on the box that pops up to view the 360 degree photo.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/popup.png" alt="360 degree website" width="417" height="267" />

Once you start looking at a picture, you can manually scroll to move it around, or set it to slowly pan around for you. You can also zoom the picture in or out to get the angle you really want to see.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/pic-e1317753050685.png" alt="360 degree tour" width="580" height="313" />

Conclusion

href="http://www.tourwrist.com">TourWrist is an awesome way to see the world, even if you can’t leave your house. People from everywhere are uploading 360 degree tour of everything from historical places to beautiful homes for sale. Some of the places on there are breathtaking, and this article took me way longer to write than it should have because I couldn’t stop looking at photos when I should have done this article.

Have you tried TourWrist? What was your favorite place to “visit?” Let us know in the comments!

Image Credit: href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&searchterm=travel&photos=on&search_group=&orient=&search_cat=2&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&commercial_ok=&color=&show_color_wheel=1#id=5847808&src=b52ad6027a89606e93de7763e80a066d-1-43" rel="nofollow">ShutterStock

href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/tourwrist-view-360-degree-tours-web-browser-iphone/">Use TourWrist To View 360 Degree Tours From A Web Browser Or An iPhone is a post from: href="http://www.makeuseof.com">MakeUseOf

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