class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/welcome-applet.jpg" alt="facebook page welcome tab"/>This always makes me wonder: Why would a social media giant like Facebook give us an optional feature without ever caring about its usability?

It’s nice to have Facebook pages. They let you build more social media visibility for your blog or small business. It’s also nice to have the option to customize your Facebook page to maintain a brand identity.

But why is there no easy way to actually do that? The Internet has moved far beyond the old days of MySpace when the only way to customize your profile was to submit a custom HTML code in hopes it will look OK. Nowadays, one need not necessarily have HTML knowledge to build an online presence.

Anyway, enough for that rant. What Facebook is not offering as default has been implemented by the developers of href="http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=202641663099561&sk=info">Welcome Applet Facebook application (we have previously reviewed href="http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/welcomeapplet-custom-facebook-welcome-tab/">Welcome Applet for customizing your Facebook profile).

Authorize the App

The first step to using the application is authorizing it for the specific page you want to run it for: choose the page from the drop-down (you’ll need to authorize the app for each of your pages separately).

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/welcome-applet-01.jpg" alt="facebook page welcome tab" width="387" height="194" />

3 Ways to Create a Customized Welcome Page

The welcome Applet gives you three options of creating your own customized “Welcome page” for your Facebook page:

1. Graphical

This one is the quickest method provided you have a ready-made image for your custom welcome tab – then all you need to do here is to upload your graphics and then save and preview the changes.

Note: Your image should not exceed 520 pixels in width and 800 pixels in height:

You can also link this image to your website Facebook landing page:

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/welcome-applet-02.jpg" alt="facebook welcome tab" width="469" height="279" />

2. HTML

This method is perfect for a bit more advanced users that seek more freedom and flexibility. Just submit your HTML code here (most standard Web coding HTML, CSS, JavaScript is supported) and click “Save”.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/welcome-applet-03.jpg" alt="facebook welcome tab" width="550" height="365" />

3. Basic

If you don’t have a pretty graphic for your welcome page and don’t want to mess with any coding, try this option. It offers a visual editor for you to submit, format and style your welcome message:

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/welcome-applet-04.jpg" alt="facebook welcome tab" width="550" height="336" />

What’s more it lets you customize the background to make it more appealing:

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/welcome-applet-05.jpg" alt="facebook welcome page templates" width="550" height="205" />

Tip! You can always go back to the app to introduce any changes from “Manage Your App” link on your Facebook page (to the top-right in the screenshot above).

Here you go!

Create a Fangate Page

One more cool option inside is the ability to create a “fangate”.

A Fangate is a page for people who have not yet “Liked” your Facebook page (which means the main purpose of the fangate is to call to action, i.e. invite to “Like” the page).

Once someone “Likes” your page, the Fangate gets replaced with the Welcome page you set up.

When you turn “ON” Fangate, a new tab appears that allows you to create a Fangate page the same way you would create your Welcome page.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/welcome-applet-07.jpg" alt="facebook page welcome tab" width="434" height="266" />

One thing to keep in mind is that your custom Facebook page Welcome tab will have “powered by GOSO” at the bottom of it (in case you have any problem with that).

I guess it’s a nice and very user-friendly app. I wonder why Facebook doesn’t still have such functionality in place. What do you think?

Don’t miss these two solid tips on customizing your Facebook Page Welcome tab:

• href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/customize-facebook-fan-page-welcome-tab/">HOW TO: Customize Your Facebook Fan Page With A Welcome Tab
• href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/easily-build-edit-facebook-pages-static-html-wysiwyg-editor/">Easily Build & Customize Facebook Pages With Static HTML WYSIWYG Editor

href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/easily-create-custom-tab-facebook-page-applet/">Easily Create A Custom Tab For Your Facebook Page With Welcome Applet is a post from: href="http://www.makeuseof.com">MakeUseOf

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/featured-wordpress.jpg?54167" alt="custom post types in wordpress"/>Last time I showed you how to title="How To Make Your Own Events Listing Using Custom Post Types [WordPress]" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/events-listing-custom-post-types-wordpress/">create a simple events listing using perhaps the most powerful feature of WordPress 3.0 – custom post types. After some requests to develop this further, today we’ll be creating a product review database to tie together everything we’ve learnt so far.

You’ll be able to maintain a separate list of products using custom post types, each with an associated image, as well as some meta-info such as price, rating, specifications – and we’ll finish it all off with a way to display them in a sidebar widget and an index page.Sounds good? Read on.

Requirements:

You’ll need a working WordPress 3.0+ self hosted install, and this will make use of extensive PHP coding. I’ll give you the code, but you’ll need to be relatively comfortable with PHP and XHTML to adjust variable names to your needs or change the style. If you need a quick beginners course on CSS and XHTML, may I suggest our wonderful free href="http://www.makeuseof.com/pages/download-learn-to-speak-internet-your-guide-to-xhtml">beginners guide to download. I’d also suggest you use a cleanly coded but basic theme – the default Twenty-Ten or Twenty-Eleven theme is actually quite complicated to edit, so try this first on something simpler before trying to integrate with that.

href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/events-listing-custom-post-types-wordpress/">Create Post Types

If you read last weeks tutorial, you should be somewhat familiar with creating a custom post type in WordPress. Copy and paste href="http://pastebin.com/bVLNagJT">this base code into a new plugin, activate it, and begin adding some new products so we have a dataset to work with. (Note: If you’d rather just download the complete and full code now without trying to add things along the way, href="http://pastebin.com/g1zYiZN5">use this finished code instead. You can still follow along with the tutorial and customize it as we go)

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/customposttype.png?54167" alt="custom post types in wordpress" width="170" height="111" />

It’s also wise to decide now what kind of meta-info you want to associate with each product. A database of digital cameras for instance might need:

• Retail Price
• Resolution
• HD Video
• Purchase Link
• Rating

Rather than adding this info directly to the description of the product (the ‘post content’), we’re going to create custom fields to hold this info. On the add product screen, make sure you’ve enabled custom fields, then create a new field for each info set. You’ll only need to create new fields once – the next product you add you’ll be able to select the name of the custom field from the drop down box. Don’t forget to add a featured image, as well be using this to display alongside the info product later on.

Single Product Template

If you try to view one of your products now, you’ll probably get a 404 – Not Found error. To fix that, head into the permalinks settings of WordPress and just hit Save Settings once. Now when you view one of your new product entries, depending on your theme, you might see something a little plain. The title and description text are there, but what about all our custom meta info and the image?

To customize the single product views, we’ll need to customize a new template file called single-products.php – do this by duplicating your existing single.php so we have the groundwork in place and aren’t starting from scratch.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/single-productsphp.jpg?54167" alt="custom post types" width="177" height="122" />

At this point, I’m going to make a very small change to the line that displays “Written by (author) on (date)”, so instead it just reads “Added to the database on (date)”. This is just so I can be sure template is working, and refreshing the single product page should show this change instantly.

Now, to add the featured post image we attached to the product, this one line should do it (I included style info too, in case you need it). I’ve posted the href="http://pastebin.com/5ZiKHFrg">full code to my own single-products.php here, but remember it’s unique to my theme so simply copying that into your own theme directory may produce unexpected results.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/code-2-thumbnail.png?54167" alt="custom post types" width="510" height="35" />

The simplest way to add the meta info anywhere is to use:

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/code-3-meta.png?54167" alt="custom post types" width="199" height="37" />

…but this will only give us a very basic output list of key-value pairs. In order to do anything more complicated with the returned values (such as display a star-rating graphic), you need to grab all the values then iterate over them. [ href="http://pastebin.com/PteVKCVc">View the code here]:

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/code-4-custom-field-iteration.png?54167" alt="how to custom post types" width="500" height="331" />

In the example above, I’m checking each custom field name (the $key) to see if it’s called ‘Level’. If it is called level, instead of just echoing the value of the field back, I’m displaying a different graphical element based on the content. For any other custom fields, I’m echoing the value as it is, along with the name of the field (which is exactly what the_meta() does). Now my single product page looks like this:

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/single-product-view.jpg?54167" alt="how to custom post types" width="580" height="395" />

I’m going to leave it there for single product views, as it really depends upon your own theme and what you want to achieve with it. For now, let’s move onto a sidebar widget to display… the 3 highest ranked products in the database?

Widget

To do this, I’ve slightly adjusted the code I gave you before in the post href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-create-wordpress-widgets/">How to Write a Basic WordPress Widget, but instead of showing a single random post, I’ve adjusted it with the following [ href="http://pastebin.com/kNAgkekH">view the full code here]:

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/code-5-widget.png?54167" alt="how to custom post types" width="580" height="169" />

This will give me 3 posts laid out similar to the example screenshot below. If you’re not seeing any of your products displayed, check very carefully the section that says &meta_key=Rating to make sure you actually have a meta key of that name. Notice how I also chose to display the meta info associated with that product along with the featured thumbnail, but you can edit that particular code block to show whatever you like.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/widget.jpg?54167" alt="" width="300" height="300" />

Product Archives or Listing

Finally, I also wanted to make an index/archives page, so that visiting http://yourdomain.com/products/ would show a simple list of all the products, similar to a blog index. The basic excerpt + post thumbnails style I showed you how to make in the title="How To Jazz Up Your WordPress By Adding Featured Images" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/jazz-wordpress-blog-adding-featured-images/">How To Add Post Thumbnails To Your Theme article was mostly sufficient, but in order to customize it I duplicated the archive.php file in my theme and renamed it archive-products.php.

If you don’t already have an archives page, just duplicate index.php and rename it to archive-products.php. Again, by adjusting the article meta-info line and adding a call to the the_meta() somewhere, I got this:

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/archives-and-widget.jpg?54167" alt="custom post types in wordpress" width="580" height="406" />

Obviously, it looks a bit silly with both the archives and sidebar, and it could do with a bit more style adjustment, but I’ll leave that up to you!

That’s it from me today. You can view the href="http://pastebin.com/g1zYiZN5">complete full code online here – just copy and paste or download the entire thing into a file called products.php, and place it in your plugins directory. You should be able to potentially expand your WordPress blog into a database of anything now! It’s difficult to answer individual problems you might be having, but do please post in the comments if you’d like some help or would like to show your appreciation – a tweet or Facebook like would very much be appreciated, or even a mention on your blog if you decide to implement this. Thanks for reading, and don’t forget all the other href="http://www.makeuseof.com/service/wordpress-tutorials/">WordPress tutorials we have! />
/> Hey Facebookers, make sure to join href="http://www.facebook.com/makeuseof" target="_blank">MakeUseOf on Facebook and get access to some exclusve stuff. Over 105,000 fans already!

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href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/product-review-database-wordpress-custom-post-types-custom-fields-featured-images-widgets/">Make A Product Review Database With WordPress: Custom Post Types, Custom Fields, Featured Images & Widgets! is a post from: href="http://www.makeuseof.com">MakeUseOf

More articles about: href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/blogging-tips/" title="blogging tips" rel="tag">blogging tips, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/coding/" title="coding" rel="tag">coding, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/custom-post-types/" title="custom post types" rel="tag">custom post types, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/database/" title="database" rel="tag">database, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/event-listing/" title="event listing" rel="tag">event listing, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/php/" title="php" rel="tag">php, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/widgets/" title="widgets" rel="tag">widgets, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/wordpress/" title="wordpress" rel="tag">wordpress />

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/suse_studio_intro.png" alt="linux installation disc" />We all know that class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/service/linux">Linux is very flexible, and you can do so many things with it. One of its advantages is that it can run on virtually any hardware. Linux is also extremely modular, so parts can be added and removed as you please. In fact, it is this ability that makes Linux a great pick for many users, no matter what environment. It is also this principle of modularity that allows class="vt-p" href="http://www.susestudio.com">SUSE Studio to exist.

About

SUSE Studio is a website that takes the base of the latest versions of class="vt-p" href="http://www.opensuse.org">openSUSE or class="vt-p" href="http://www.novell.com/linux/">SUSE Enterprise (you can choose), and lets you customize a number of different aspects of your distro. It’s a very easy process. Just go through the screens, clicking on whatever you would like to add, change, or remove. There are actually a handful of things you can do that you might not have expected from a web service. When you finish with all the configuration, the service will build your very own custom class="vt-p" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_image">ISO of openSUSE/SUSE Enterprise with all the settings that you chose.

Getting Started

To start off, you’ll need to sign in or create an account. You can also sign in using a different service (like class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/google">Google), and it will automatically create an account on their server for you. These accounts are important because you’ll receive 4GB of free storage to be used for this service.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/suse_studio_signin.jpg" alt="linux installation disc" width="590" height="210" />

Steps

The next step is to choose what version of SUSE you would like to base your Linux installation disk off of. Currently the options are openSUSE 11.4, SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP1, and SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 SP4. If you do not have a specific need for either of the Enterprise versions, I suggest you select the openSUSE option.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/suse_studio_base.jpg" alt="linux installation disk" width="590" height="381" />

In no time at all, you’ll be able to start customizing your distribution. First off is the software selection page, where you can choose to include certain software packages with your ISO so that you do not have to download and install it later.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/suse_studio_select.jpg" alt="linux installation disk" width="590" height="379" />

This is a handy feature to customize your experience right from the start. Simply search for the packages you want and add them. You can also add additional repositories if you so desire or upload your own class="vt-p" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPM_Package_Manager">RPM files to include.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/suse_studio_sofware.jpg" alt="linux installation disk" width="590" height="278" />

The Configuration tab lets you tweak a large amount of system settings such as locale, time zone, network settings, firewall settings, and users. You can also choose different appearances and logos from the Personalize section, change the default run level and add EULAs in the Startup section, and edit other server, desktop, and virtual machine related settings.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/suse_studio_appearance.jpg" alt="" width="590" height="443" />

In the Files category, you can add any overlay files that you wish. These are applied after all packages are installed.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/suse_studio_overlay.jpg" alt="linux installation disc" width="590" height="198" />

Finish With a Build

You can now build your “appliance” in the Build category and download when it is finished. Then simply burn the ISO onto a CD/DVD, USB stick, or try it out in a virtual machine. You can do whatever you want with that ISO file as you can with a more generic one.

Conclusion

SUSE Studio is an amazing tool for those who want to build custom ISOs for their own unique needs. I’ve heard a handful of people use this for everything from server setups to media centers and beyond. Only your imagination can come up with the perfect combination of packages and settings to make your Linux experience one of the best.

Do you think SUSE Studio is a great idea? Will you maybe try it out for your own needs or just to get a better experience with Linux? What else would you use it for? Let us know in the comments! />
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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/suse_studio_intro.png" alt="linux installation disc" />We all know that class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/service/linux">Linux is very flexible, and you can do so many things with it. One of its advantages is that it can run on virtually any hardware. Linux is also extremely modular, so parts can be added and removed as you please. In fact, it is this ability that makes Linux a great pick for many users, no matter what environment. It is also this principle of modularity that allows class="vt-p" href="http://www.susestudio.com">SUSE Studio to exist.

About

SUSE Studio is a website that takes the base of the latest versions of class="vt-p" href="http://www.opensuse.org">openSUSE or class="vt-p" href="http://www.novell.com/linux/">SUSE Enterprise (you can choose), and lets you customize a number of different aspects of your distro. It’s a very easy process. Just go through the screens, clicking on whatever you would like to add, change, or remove. There are actually a handful of things you can do that you might not have expected from a web service. When you finish with all the configuration, the service will build your very own custom class="vt-p" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_image">ISO of openSUSE/SUSE Enterprise with all the settings that you chose.

Getting Started

To start off, you’ll need to sign in or create an account. You can also sign in using a different service (like class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/google">Google), and it will automatically create an account on their server for you. These accounts are important because you’ll receive 4GB of free storage to be used for this service.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/suse_studio_signin.jpg" alt="linux installation disc" width="590" height="210" />

Steps

The next step is to choose what version of SUSE you would like to base your Linux installation disk off of. Currently the options are openSUSE 11.4, SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP1, and SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 SP4. If you do not have a specific need for either of the Enterprise versions, I suggest you select the openSUSE option.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/suse_studio_base.jpg" alt="linux installation disk" width="590" height="381" />

In no time at all, you’ll be able to start customizing your distribution. First off is the software selection page, where you can choose to include certain software packages with your ISO so that you do not have to download and install it later.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/suse_studio_select.jpg" alt="linux installation disk" width="590" height="379" />

This is a handy feature to customize your experience right from the start. Simply search for the packages you want and add them. You can also add additional repositories if you so desire or upload your own class="vt-p" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPM_Package_Manager">RPM files to include.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/suse_studio_sofware.jpg" alt="linux installation disk" width="590" height="278" />

The Configuration tab lets you tweak a large amount of system settings such as locale, time zone, network settings, firewall settings, and users. You can also choose different appearances and logos from the Personalize section, change the default run level and add EULAs in the Startup section, and edit other server, desktop, and virtual machine related settings.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/suse_studio_appearance.jpg" alt="" width="590" height="443" />

In the Files category, you can add any overlay files that you wish. These are applied after all packages are installed.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/suse_studio_overlay.jpg" alt="linux installation disc" width="590" height="198" />

Finish With a Build

You can now build your “appliance” in the Build category and download when it is finished. Then simply burn the ISO onto a CD/DVD, USB stick, or try it out in a virtual machine. You can do whatever you want with that ISO file as you can with a more generic one.

Conclusion

SUSE Studio is an amazing tool for those who want to build custom ISOs for their own unique needs. I’ve heard a handful of people use this for everything from server setups to media centers and beyond. Only your imagination can come up with the perfect combination of packages and settings to make your Linux experience one of the best.

Do you think SUSE Studio is a great idea? Will you maybe try it out for your own needs or just to get a better experience with Linux? What else would you use it for? Let us know in the comments! />
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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/cyanogen.jpg" alt="custom android rom" />Whether you’ve had your Android phone for a long time, or you’ve just bought a new one, there is no moment quite as sweet as when you finally get around to “ href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/root-android-phone-superoneclick-2/">rooting” that phone. It’s like a “coming of age” for Android users. Not only can you install a whole family of apps that you couldn’t run on an unrooted phone, but you can also install a whole new ROM to your phone.

What’s a ROM you ask? It stands for Read Only Memory, but what it means within the context of an Android phone is that it is essentially the style, theme and organization of the operating system. Thanks to the Android OS being open source, this is possible. There are a huge number of programmers out there working diligently on creating some of the most impressive custom Android ROMs – far better than the stock ROM that comes with your phone.

If you’re just starting out with an unrooted Android, you’ve got some work to do before you can install a new ROM. First, set up the SDK as described in my href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-capture-screenshots-with-your-android-mobile-phone/">USB screenshot article. Next click the link above to learn how you can root your phone with SuperOneClick. Finally, you’re ready to take the next big step and replace your ROM.

Installing A Custom Android ROM

If you’re not sure whether you see the point of installing a custom ROM, consider it like you’ve just purchased a new Honda Civic. Now, a Honda Civic is a great car. Better gas mileage and reliability than most other cars in its class, but that doesn’t stop car enthusiasts from making that great car even better by “tuning” it. Well, ROM programmers are essentially Android “tuners”.

First things first – safety. When you root your phone and install a new ROM, it should go without saying that you run the risk of turning your phone into an expensive paperweight. The popular approach to installing new ROMs to an Android is by installing the ROM Manager off the Android Market. Once you do – and I can’t stress this enough – choose Flash ClickworkMod Recovery from the menu before you do anything else.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/ROM1.jpg" alt="custom android rom" width="281" height="500" />

This completely saved me when a couple of ROMs didn’t install correctly. ClockworkMod Recovery lets you make a backup of your current ROM before installing a new one. If you need to, you can reboot into recovery mode (holding down the power button and the “X” key at the same time) to recover your old ROM.

When you’re ready to search for and download a brand new custom ROM for your phone, click on “Download ROM” in the ROM Manager menu.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/ROM2.jpg" alt="android rom manager" width="281" height="500" />

Now, there are lots of Android users with lots of opinions as to which ROM is best. Favorites seem to be Bugless Beast, Gingerbread and of course CyanogenMod. After a couple of failed attempts with Bugless Beast and Gingerbread, I went with the tried and true CyanogenMod.

When you go to install a ROM, you’ll see the pre-installation pop-up. Always select backup existing ROM. Nine times out of ten you should also wipe data and cache for the installation to work correctly.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/ROM3.jpg" alt="android rom manager" width="281" height="500" />

Once the installation was done, my Droid rebooted and when it came back up, I had a fresh installation of CyanogenMod running on my rooted phone. I have to say that I really like the layout, but the default background is definitely a bit “bleh.” So that’s the first thing I changed.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/ROM4.jpg" alt="android rom manager" width="281" height="500" />

One of the coolest things about these ROM’s is that you’ve got live wallpaper available. You can’t see it too well below, but my background now has very cool high-tech lights zooming around. Most of the apps shown below came standard with CM.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/rom4b.jpg" alt="cyanogenmod" width="281" height="500" />

If static backgrounds are your thing, CM has a pretty decent selection to choose from with some really high-quality artwork. I was impressed – of course I eventually opted for one of the live wallpapers instead.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/ROM6.jpg" alt="cyanogenmod" width="281" height="500" />

When you go into the menu and view the settings, you’ll see that there are a few unique options from the standard ROM. Obviously, CM settings and options, but you’ll also see ADWLauncher available (if you opted for it during download). This is a very cool tool that lets you download and install some amazing themes from the Android market.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/ROM7.jpg" alt="cyanogenmod" width="281" height="500" />

Most of these themes aren’t free, but the quality is very good. Ultimately the theme is what creates the “feel” of the interface, which you’ll be dealing with day in and day out, so buying and downloading a theme probably isn’t a waste of money.

Of course, last but not least is the ease with which you can enable or disable your network connections like Wi-Fi, GPS or Bluetooth, straight from the status drop-down. Toggling these networks was always a pet peeve of mine with the standard ROM. With CM it’s just a couple of finger-swipes away.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/ROM51.jpg" alt="custom android rom" width="281" height="500" />

Whether you choose to go with the popular CyanogenMod, or any one of the other ROMs, just make sure to make a recovery backup of your current ROM so that you’ll have a way out if anything goes wrong. Once that’s aside, you can feel fairly confident installing and test driving the different ROMs available for your device, and you can decide which one is perfect for you.

Did you install a new custom Android ROM? Which one did you choose and what do you like about it? Share your Android insight in the comments section below. />
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class="align-left" style="border: 0px none; margin-left: 20px; margin-top: 5px; float: right;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/youtube_logo1.jpg" alt="custom youtube player" />If you have your own website or blog, and you’re looking for ways to offer even more interesting content to your visitors, there’s nothing like a high-quality embedded video that applies to the topic or theme of your site. If you impress your visitors and keep them coming back for more, then provide a video of the day, week or month that applies to the information that you’re covering at that moment in time. Videos make awesome supplements to any site.

A while back I offered you class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-free-tools-video-website/">three ways to add video to your website. Ann introduced you to class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/embedly-wordpress-plugin-embedding-content-easier/">Embedly, an awesome tool that helps you embed anything on your website, including videos. However, YouTube is still the king when it comes to online video content, and they’re offering new tools for users all the time, such as the new class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/youtube-video-editor/">YouTube Video Editor that Matt covered. I’d like to introduce you to another awesome YouTube tool that helps you embed YouTube videos on your website or blog with very little effort and without the need to mess around with embed codes and correctly sizing the video. That tool is called the class="vt-p" href="http://www.youtube.com/custom_player">YouTube Custom Player.

id="more-59900">

Embedding YouTube Videos

YouTube is an amazing resource, filled with content that covers just about any topic you could imagine. If you have a website that covers a certain product or service, the odds are pretty good there are countless YouTube videos about it. If you have a blog about a specific subject, you’re almost guaranteed to find YouTube videos covering that topic.

Wouldn’t it be nice to let your visitors watch that video content from the comfort of your website, without the need to visit YouTube? That’s where the custom player comes in. I used to embed new weekly videos into my blog using the standard YouTube embed code and carefully choosing the correctly sized video that fit into my sidebar, as shown here.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/youtube1.jpg" alt="custom youtube player" width="386" height="435" />

As you can see, I could never get the size just right and placement is a nightmare, especially if the new video that I want to embed has slightly different size parameters from the last video. However, with the new custom player from YouTube, you can put all of that headache behind you. You can create custom players – and in my case I simply create a uniquely named player for every blog I own.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-59903" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/youtube2.jpg" alt="youtube player" width="572" height="395" />

You can choose a color scheme and layout that suits the design and structure of your particular site. The way I’m going to set it up here is so that you can change the video content on all of your websites on one page – your My Players page on YouTube. You do this by creating Playlists named the same as the website where you’ll embed the player. Then find the video you want to display on your website and add it to that playlist.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-59904" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/youtube3.jpg" alt="youtube player" width="528" height="474" />

On the lower part of the Custom Player setup page, you’ll see where you can use the content from that playlist for the source content of your new custom video player.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-59905" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/youtube4.jpg" alt="youtube player" width="569" height="283" />

Then click on the button to generate the code. Then you can insert that code to embed the player into your website. In my case, on my WordPress blog I embedded the player into the sidebar.php page. This places the player into your sidebar, and you can edit the width and height of the player to whatever works for your site.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-59906" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/youtube5.jpg" alt="youtube video player" width="387" height="282" />

If you’re using WordPress, you can just embed the player code into an HTML widget for a sidebar player.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-59907" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/youtube5a.jpg" alt="youtube video player" width="416" height="290" />

Once you’re done, the content you loaded into that particular playlist will display on your website inside the customized video player that you configured above.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-59908" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/youtube6.jpg" alt="youtube video player" width="510" height="464" />

Your custom video players all show up on your class="vt-p" href="http://www.youtube.com/my_players">My Players page. You can create a unique player for every site you own.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/youtube9.jpg" alt="" width="493" height="407" />

The beauty of this app is that once you set it up one time, all you have to do to update the content on all of your websites is to log into your YouTube account and change the video in your unique playlists to a different video. That new video will automatically display on your website. Now, there’s no more need to waste all of that time going around to all of your sites to update the video with fresh content – just do it all from your YouTube account and all of your sites are updated.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-59910" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/youtube8.jpg" alt="custom youtube player" width="505" height="356" />

Try out the YouTube custom video player on your own website and see what you think. As far as I know there’s simply no easier way to stream custom content to your own site with such little effort. No more copy and pasting embed codes – just add videos to your playlists and you’re done.

Do you use YouTube’s custom video player? What do you think of it? Do you know of any other useful tools to quickly embed YouTube videos on your site? Share your own insight and resources in the comments section below.

Image credit: class="vt-p" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1031158">Manu Mohan />
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class="align-left" style="border: 0px none; margin-left: 20px; margin-top: 5px; float: right;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/googlelogolego.png" alt="google custom search" />No matter what topic you are interested in, Google can only go so far in providing you with the search results that you need. You have to remember that Google is searching through the entire Internet in order to offer you relevant results about your unique topic. The more unique or specialized the topic, the more difficult it is for Google to identify useful sites.

However, within every subject there are usually giant repositories of information – directories or portals where you can find volumes of valuable information about what you’re interested in. Just take a look at your own bookmarks, collected after a few years of exploring the web. Do relevant pages from your favorite sites always come up in Google?

id="more-54560"> /> The answer is no. Even if a website features thousands of pages of information related to a topic you’re interested in, if that site isn’t perfectly situated or optimized for Google to find it, then it may never even show up in your normal Google search results at all. However, for years Google has offered the ability for website owners to utilize a Google custom search engine on their own site.

That isn’t news – third party apps have been doing this all along, like class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/groovle/">Groovle or class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/search-all-craigs-search-through-entire-craigslist-at-oncey/">Search All Craigslist.  What is news is the fact that you can make use of the class="vt-p" href="http://www.google.com/cse/">CSE tool to build your own topical search engine from the ground up. And, if you have friends who are also interested in the same subject, you can make the search engine a collaborative effort.

Create A Google Custom Search Engine In Three Steps

For years, bloggers and website owners have tossed Google’s custom search engine on their sites with the default “full web” enabled and simply used the on-site search field to produce revenue. However, this tool is so much more useful than that. You can completely transform the CSE into your own personal research tool. Even better – you can offer that research tool to your readers.

The three step process is fast – just make sure you have your own web page somewhere where you can embed your final search engine.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-54561" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/customsearch1.jpg" alt="google custom search" width="487" height="511" />

style="text-align: left;">The important part is “Sites to search.” This is where your specialized knowledge of the subject matter comes into play. Put all of those directories, websites and portals you’ve accumulated into this field. In my case, I’ve stockpiled Freedom Of Information Act reading room sites – and I’m loading up my specialized search engine with those directories.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-54669" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/cse1.jpg" alt="google custom search engine" width="499" height="428" />

style="text-align: left;">You can pretty much customize the search field and results to look however you like, right down to modifying link and text colors, the colors for search controls and everything else (even fonts!)

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-54670" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/cse2.jpg" alt="google custom search engine" width="502" height="354" />

style="text-align: left;">That’s it for the basic setup. You now have the start of a specialized search engine that uses Google’s superior website search capabilities combined with your inside knowledge of the best websites for this topic area.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-54564" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/customsearch4.jpg" alt="google custom search engine" width="492" height="479" />

style="text-align: left;">You’ll notice at the bottom, there’s a whole lot more you can do with this customized search engine. I’ll get to a few of those features below. Here is what my customized search engine looks like on my site.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-54565" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/customsearch5.jpg" alt="internet custom search" width="473" height="336" />

style="text-align: left;">The results are returned right on the page. The free CSE requires Google ads at the top of results, but for a yearly fee you can remove those. As you can see from the results, the information gathered doesn’t include erroneous results. In my case, I wanted to only search official documents, and that’s exactly what Google has done – returning results that are crawled from those pages only. No garbage, spam sites or erroneous data.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-54566" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/customsearch6.jpg" alt="internet custom search" width="449" height="553" />

style="text-align: left;">The real power of this tool comes out when you start digging into the settings. You can go into the “Sites” section of the control panel and keep adding more resources – building the strength of your search engine as you discover and save new, relevant sites.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-54567" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/customsearch7.jpg" alt="" width="551" height="553" />

style="text-align: left;">You can also enable the “Promotions” feature, which triggers stand-out listings at the top of the results when people type in certain keywords. So, if there’s a new section of your site about “sports cars” that you really want to promote – you can have your own page at the top for that keyword (or keywords).

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-54568" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/customsearch8.jpg" alt="internet custom search" width="562" height="391" />

style="text-align: left;">The Synonyms feature is also an excellent way to strengthen your customized search engine even more by adding similar words that have the same meaning. In many industries or subjects, there is a certain terminology that Google can’t possibly know. By customizing the synonyms search, you’ll strengthen the power of your search engine even further.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-54569" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/customsearch9.jpg" alt="" width="515" height="363" />

style="text-align: left;">Then of course, there’s the awesome collaboration section. Just enter in an email and a message to your friends how share your common interests, and invite them to join with you in strengthening your search engine with their own research and insight. You can have up to 100 collaborators building your engine with you.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-54570" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/customsearch10.jpg" alt="google custom search" width="411" height="541" />

style="text-align: left;">In time, your CSE will become known throughout your specific industry or online community as being a valuable resource that returns much better results than the standard Google search engine. A custom search engine is a really powerful and useful tool that you can offer to your visitors to make your website even more valuable.

style="text-align: left;">Have you ever played around with the Google Custom Search Engine? Did you find that it’s effective? Share your insight in the comments section below.

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Want to Convert MP3 to M4R?

Recently I bought the Iphone 3Gs and was really excited, however, I was extremely disappointed with the selection of ringtones. I wanted to use a mp3 as a ringtone, so i searched on the internet and tried, Iringer and changing the name of the track converted from m4a to m4r and neither work. So is there an easy way to convert mp3 to m4r for my iPhone Ringtone?

How to make free unique M4R iPhone Ringtone from MP3, convert mp3 to M4R?

This is a quick tutorial about how to convert mp3 files to iPhone M4R Ringtone with iPhone Ringtone Maker, it works easy and awesome, and it adds sepcial effect on ringtone that can make your iphone m4r ringtone more unique and customizable.

Now let’s start:

What we need is:
iPhone Ringtone Maker
iPhone/3G/3GS
Your own MP3 Music files

Step 1:Free Download Wondershare iPhone Ringtone Maker Step 2: Import Media files

Import MP3 songs from the specified folders on your computer.

After you choose the mp3 file you want to make as iPhone Ringtone, click “Import Content” to import your source file to editing area. Or double click the file.

Step 3. Edit, Specialize your iPhone Ringtone

After you import the file, you can see a waveform displays in the editing area.
1. Drag the cursor to select the segment you want.
2. Wondershare iPhone Ringtone Maker lets you perform simple editing operation, zoom in, zoom out, trim, delete, undo and redo, so you can make iPhone Ringtone easy and convenient.
3. You can also apply special effects to your iPhone ringtone, like amplify, fade in, fade out, echo, delay, phaser, chorus and normalize.

Step 4.Creat iPhone M4R Ringtone from MP3, Convert MP3 to M4R

After finishing all the necessary steps, you can click “Start” to start creating your own iPhone ringtone from MP3.

Note:Check the item “Export to iPhone” to transfer the m4r ringtone to your iphone automatically; check “Export to iTunes” to transfer it to iTunes library.
And click “Ringtone Manager”, you can remove, delete, clear ringtone from your iphone or load more files from the local folder with this ringtone manager.

GTA IV – Custom Race Track – “1/2 Pipe Loop!” – Four 3 Lap Races! Here’s a few races on my new custom track, the 1/2 pipe loop. I had to place like 70 ramps together 1 by 1 to make this! Thank god/satan for the “clone” feature! People in this vid: GTAmissions- www.youtube.com C0linWii- www.youtube.com Mitchell Maniac- www.youtube.com AltF4Destroy- www.youtube.com c44xfriedgatos- www.youtube.com GUSSI11- www.youtube.comVideo Info: PC Version of GTA IV, Recorded using FRAPS and edited with Sony Vegas 7.0. PC Specs: AMD Phenom 9550 Quad-Core Proc., 6gb DDR2 Dual-Channel RAM, 640 gb HD, GeForce GTS 250 GFX Card, 650Watt Power Supply. Running Windows Vista Home 64-bit OS. Please visit: www.gtamissions.com to find complete playlists of all my videos!

This is a new custom fitted touch screen installed by myself: P.. Connected to my car pc , if you see my previous video you will see my old motorized screen. My car pc is a 2.5gz Celeron D , 512mb DDR ram, 80gb hard drive(upgrading soon), USB touch screen , external DVD rom, Wi-fi and running Window Up professional with 3 party software called roadrunner which makes it easier to access the music and movies.

All files included. READ THIS IT’S IMPORTANT! WATCH IN HIGH QUALITY. MAKE SURE YOUR IPOD IS UPDATED TO 2.2.1 BEFORE STARTING. THIS WORKS ON VIRGIN AND TETHERED JAILBROKEN IPODS. This will also reset your ipod…sorry. This is the long awaited untethered jailbreak for the ipod touch 2nd gen. Awesome work iphone dev team: blog.iphone-dev.org Subscribe if you liked the tutorial. Anyways, just watch the video and then go to my other video www.youtube.com to see what to do when you do actually jailbreak it. 2.2.1 update file (save to desktop) : outgoing.ipodtouchfans.com C++ 2008 pack (Install if you have issues creating a custom ispw) : www.microsoft.com .NET Framework 2.0 (Install if creating an ispw doesn’t work) : www.microsoft.com LibUSB for windows (RUN IN COMPATIBILITY MODE IF YOU ARE ON VISTA!!!!) : www.mediafire.com Finally, Quickfreedom jailbreak helper: www.megaupload.com FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER: twitter.com

ok, so are you not sick of the random icons that appear in your stacks becaus eof the not so nice contense. make your own icons andout them in the stacks to customize them,.

Here is my new gaming and video editing computer for 2009. Enjoy! please subscribe.

The Wallpaper: tinyurl.com InterfaceLIFT: interfacelift.com Iconfactory: iconfactory.com CandyBar: www.panic.com

Comp A add B effect (see first answer): answers.yahoo.com Detonation Films Webstie: www.detonationfilms.com Quick Media Converter Download Website: www.download.com

How to set any custom settings you want to allow full use in public ranked games! Domination of Rust with 18 people and 750 score limit? No Problem! **PATCHED** XD Please Subscribe! Steps – 1. Invite your friend to a lobby 2. Search for a game and when it asks you to go to game chat don’t and then immediately leave back to the lobby 3. Set up a private game with the settings you want 4. Start the game Download here: onlinecyberhost.com TAGS /!\ Microsoft, Internet Explorer, Windows and the Windows/ IE logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Microsoft Corporation in no way endorses or is affiliated with All other products mentioned are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of their respective companies. Diagnose computer issues, Disable Spyware from Auto Restarting. Boot Up Faster. Increase Systems Performance by gaining back resourcesMicrosoft, windows, hack, trick,network, repair, troubleshoot Make your computer Faster. Using MSCONFIG to speed up your PC. Make your computer load faster. Diagnose computer issues, Disable Spyware from Auto Restarting. Boot Up Faster. Increase Systems Performance by gaining back resources How to make “Start Menu” menus to open real fast!!! XP Hack Change your start menu get the vista start menu on windows xp,Changing your Windows XP Start Menu Text,Hack any Site Funny Windows XP trick,Get out of freezeups in xp,How To” #2 Making WinXP run faster,Tricks- Make …