Nowadays, we are all signed up for so many different services, it can be hard to keep track of them all. We all have Gmail, Google Apps, Twitter and so many more accounts. When you need to find something specific, it can be a real hassle. CloudMagic is a service that is designed to help you search Google Apps, Gmail and Twitter, all from one convenient place. With one simple search query, you will be able to find results from these services, without having to check each one individually.

CloudMagic is available as an application for Android and iPhone, as well in your web browser via their website, a handy Google Chrome extension and a Firefox add-on. Basically, if you are looking for a way to make searching for stuff easier, there is a one hundred percent chance that CloudMagic offers a way for you to use their service. We all want to make our lives a little easier, and CloudMagic could be just the solution you need.

What Does CloudMagic Do?

CloudMagic allows you to import your Gmail, Google Apps and Twitter account so they can all be searched from one place quickly and easily. With CloudMagic, you can type in a search query, and it will scan all three of the accounts for that term.

Therefore, if you typed in the name “John”, for example, it would find any instances of John appearing in your Google Apps, any emails with the name John and tweets. This makes it much easier to find something that could be on any of the accounts.

Setting Up Cloud Magic

Of course, if you are going to be using the Chrome, Firefox, iOS or Android version of the app, you will need to download and install them. If you are using the browser-based version, you can simply point your browser to cloudmagic.com.

Setting up Cloud Magic is a breeze. Whether using one of their mobile apps or doing it from your browser, the first step is creating a new account. Creating an account only requires an email address and a password. It literally takes about two seconds.

Once you have created an account the next step is to link your account with your Google and Twitter accounts. To do this, you will need to click on “Settings” on the mobile app and “Services” on the browser-based app. From there you will need to click “Add New Service” and log in with whichever service you would like to add.

If you log in with your Google and Twitter accounts on your phone, these accounts will be there when you log in on the computer, and vice versa. This makes it easy to use your mobile app while on the phone and your computer when you are at home.

Using Cloud Magic

Using CloudMagic is a snap. Once you have your accounts synced, simply click the search bar and enter what you are looking for. It will quickly scan all of your accounts to find items matching the term you entered. The search is blazing fast; it is quite impressive.

You can narrow your search to only specific things. If you only wanted to find calendar events that match your query, you can simply click the “Events” button. This way, if you wanted to find a doctor’s appointment without seeing tweets and emails about it, you could do so.

Of course, simply showing you the results would be useless. That is why you can click any result to be quickly directed to the proper application, either from your phone or from your computer.

Conclusion

This is a great application for quickly finding what you need from select services. I hope that they incorporate other services such as Facebook and other email clients (but let us be honest, almost everyone uses Gmail). As it stands, it is a great solution for organizing your Google and Twitter account, and I definitely recommend checking it out on your platform of choice.

Web Link
iTunes Link
Android Link
Chrome Link
Firefox Link

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Last week we asked you if tablets will eventually replace laptops. We got all sorts of interesting opinions in the comments, but at the end of the day, most of you thought that tablets will never replace laptops, and that they will always have different niches to fill.

Out of 415 readers who voted, 48% think tablets will never entirely replace laptops, 32% think it might actually happen, but that today’s tablets are still missing some key components, 20% think it’s a sure thing, and is only a matter of time, and 1% think that the iPad will replace laptops, but other tablets won’t.

Full results and this week’s poll after the jump.

As you can see, 3 voters thought that Apple’s iPad will manage to replace laptops, while other tablets won’t. Would be interesting to know the reasons behind these votes!

This week’s poll question is: Do You Use Social Recommendation Apps To Find A Good Place To Eat?

Social recommendation apps for restaurants are all the rage lately. Apps and websites such as Yelp and Urbanspoon are highly popular, and many people use them as a gauge when deciding where to have dinner. These apps can be a great source of information when you’re looking for a good place to eat in a new town, and can also be used to find new places in your own local city. This method is not foolproof, however, and you can find yourself in a place you would not otherwise go to, just because you trusted a stranger’s recommendation. Some people still prefer asking their own friends for help, and thus reduce the chance of falling on a dud. So what is your view on the matter?

Have you had good or bad experience with these social recommendation apps? Or maybe you never even tried them? And if so, why? Share everything in the comments.

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Through the caverns of the Internet, I’ve managed to get put on rather quickly to some of today’s hottest Internet startups such as ifttt, Instagram, and turntable.fm. Startups and betas are as popular as they’ve ever been, and I can promise you that every single day a brand new startup is launched that will garner attention and is probably worth joining.

Until recently, it’s been pretty tough finding these little guys in the wide space of the Internet. Luckily, we’ve got a few sites that aggregate the best of them and show them to you, so you can be the first of all of your friends to get invited. Maybe you’ll even get a vanity username.

Where in one of my last posts I only dangled the meat in front of you, you’re getting it all this time. I’ve put together four really great sites that not only act as directories for startups and betas, but very often also have exclusive invites just for you. No more rabid comments.

Beta Li.st

Beta List was really the one to start it all off and really popularize beta indexing. Maybe it wasn’t the first, but in my opinion it is definitely the best. It’s a simple paginated directory that does nothing more than update daily with (usually) anywhere in between two and ten brand new startups and betas per day.

Arguably the biggest perk about Beta List is that they often have very exclusive, sometimes very limited, invites that are special to their users only. As new betas develop, a lot of them go right to Beta List to get their first batch of test users, and you can take advantage of that if you’re quick. These guys are the alpha of betas. See how I did that?

The Museum of Modern Betas (MoMB)

MoMB is a very simple, very quick way to get your daily fix of betas. MoMB is more of a blog style vs. Beta List, and the entries are separated by type: invite-only, beta, etc.

MoMB tends to carry the more obscure betas (though they also cover the mainstream ones as well). You’ll see MoMB and Beta Li.st overlap in listings quite often, but I’ve noticed that both seem to pick up the slack of the other and push out interesting new ones that you won’t see if you’re browsing just one of the two. Good listing, easy to read, fast, etc.

StartupLi.st

StartupLi.st seems to be fail-proof, meaning if that your startup is destined to flop within the next couple of months then you won’t be listed on this directory. That can’t be said about the others. StartupLi.st takes a more white collar approach to betas.

Good list here, not updated quite as often as those aforementioned, but for good reason.

Go2web20

Web 2.0 is becoming an extinct phrase as Web 1.0 is put far behind us, but Go2web20 does a good job at reminding us what fits the Web 2.0 mold. Like StartupLi.st, Go2web20 only posts tried and true services that have a good shot at escaping beta and reaching a respectable state of development.

On the front page right now, I’m seeing names like ifttt and Pinterest (which we gave out 100 invites for way back in January of last year) so you can see that it’s a pretty tough list to squeeze on to. Great list if you don’t want to waste your time and you’re looking for mainstream startups that are eventually going to break into the vocabulary of thousands.

Startups are just about as popular as personal websites were back in the day, so jump on this! Like I said, I’ve found some very cool services, very early in their development and you can also.

If you’ve got a startup of your own, maybe you should check out Upstartly or BetaBait. Both services can help you get up off of the ground and on to one of these great lists!  Where else do you get your beta fix from?

View full post on MakeUseOf

Through the caverns of the Internet, I’ve managed to get put on rather quickly to some of today’s hottest Internet startups such as ifttt, Instagram, and turntable.fm. Startups and betas are as popular as they’ve ever been, and I can promise you that every single day a brand new startup is launched that will garner attention and is probably worth joining.

Until recently, it’s been pretty tough finding these little guys in the wide space of the Internet. Luckily, we’ve got a few sites that aggregate the best of them and show them to you, so you can be the first of all of your friends to get invited. Maybe you’ll even get a vanity username.

Where in one of my last posts I only dangled the meat in front of you, you’re getting it all this time. I’ve put together four really great sites that not only act as directories for startups and betas, but very often also have exclusive invites just for you. No more rabid comments.

Beta Li.st

Beta List was really the one to start it all off and really popularize beta indexing. Maybe it wasn’t the first, but in my opinion it is definitely the best. It’s a simple paginated directory that does nothing more than update daily with (usually) anywhere in between two and ten brand new startups and betas per day.

Arguably the biggest perk about Beta List is that they often have very exclusive, sometimes very limited, invites that are special to their users only. As new betas develop, a lot of them go right to Beta List to get their first batch of test users, and you can take advantage of that if you’re quick. These guys are the alpha of betas. See how I did that?

The Museum of Modern Betas (MoMB)

MoMB is a very simple, very quick way to get your daily fix of betas. MoMB is more of a blog style vs. Beta List, and the entries are separated by type: invite-only, beta, etc.

MoMB tends to carry the more obscure betas (though they also cover the mainstream ones as well). You’ll see MoMB and Beta Li.st overlap in listings quite often, but I’ve noticed that both seem to pick up the slack of the other and push out interesting new ones that you won’t see if you’re browsing just one of the two. Good listing, easy to read, fast, etc.

StartupLi.st

StartupLi.st seems to be fail-proof, meaning if that your startup is destined to flop within the next couple of months then you won’t be listed on this directory. That can’t be said about the others. StartupLi.st takes a more white collar approach to betas.

Good list here, not updated quite as often as those aforementioned, but for good reason.

Go2web20

Web 2.0 is becoming an extinct phrase as Web 1.0 is put far behind us, but Go2web20 does a good job at reminding us what fits the Web 2.0 mold. Like StartupLi.st, Go2web20 only posts tried and true services that have a good shot at escaping beta and reaching a respectable state of development.

On the front page right now, I’m seeing names like ifttt and Pinterest (which we gave out 100 invites for way back in January of last year) so you can see that it’s a pretty tough list to squeeze on to. Great list if you don’t want to waste your time and you’re looking for mainstream startups that are eventually going to break into the vocabulary of thousands.

Startups are just about as popular as personal websites were back in the day, so jump on this! Like I said, I’ve found some very cool services, very early in their development and you can also.

If you’ve got a startup of your own, maybe you should check out Upstartly or BetaBait. Both services can help you get up off of the ground and on to one of these great lists!  Where else do you get your beta fix from?

View full post on MakeUseOf

I’m definitely not a fashion guru, for my wardrobe typically consists of halfway-open plaid flannel shirts and a pair of old Chuck Taylors, and on a good day, I’ll actually wear pants. However, I recently discovered a site called Wanelo (pronounced “wah-nee-lo,” for want, need, and love) that brings together a ton of rare and unique clothing options in one place. The catch is quite simply this – the clothing is primarily for women.

I took into consideration that quite a bit of the blouses, skirts, and shoes on this site look fairly similar to the stuff in my girlfriend’s closet, so I figured that it has to be good. As far as I know, she has taste, so ladies, this post is for you.

Find Rare Items And Accessories

I’d liken this site to being a fashion aggregator, utilizing a social networking type of system to bring its users together so that they can share links of clothing and accessories from all over the Internet. What I noticed was that quite a bit of the site includes either hand-made or not-very-well-known items (and yes, a great deal of mainstream products), so if you’re into appearing unique and different, then this site is for you. Granted, there isn’t only clothing on this site, but it’s safe to say that it’s the main selection.

What I did like about the site was the fact that it offered a system of collections in which users can find similar items. It was through the collections that I discovered that there were a few men’s items on the store as well as places to buy candy. In addition to this, there are collections of apartment furnishings, iPhone accessories, and even bridal adornments. Honestly, I think it’s pretty cool that you can find all this stuff online.

Build Up Your List Of Fav Selections

Since Wanelo is primarily user-generated, you can trust that it’s not just one solitary person or company throwing what they think looks good at you. Chances are that there are a few individuals on Wanelo who think like you do (albeit this concept of appearing unique), and one of the features of the site gives you the option to follow them and stay updated on their top picks. Furthermore, if you fancy a certain merchant’s products just as much as your friends’ selections, you can follow the stores themselves on the site.

One of the cool options that Wanelo has to offer is its toolbar button, and this is used in the same exact way that you would use StumbleUpon. If you find something, just click the toolbar button, and voilà – you have successfully contributed to the community clothing melting pot. Alternatively, you can just punch in the URL on Wanelo itself, but really, what fun is that?

Share Your Finds

Based on what I found on the site, Wanelo is also used as a means to share your style with your friends. What does that mean? Well, as they say, this means no more ugly Christmas sweaters as gifts (bet you wish I had written this sooner). Furthermore, you can find out what your friends like, so when a proper time to give gifts comes around, you can get what they want with no awkward questions asked.

Conclusion

I’m not going to veer away from my standard flannel shirts, but chances are you might find something pretty nice on here (and yes, that goes for the men, too). However, all in all, this site is very well made, and it does exactly what it is designed to do. That’s the best thing that a site really can do – just keep it simple.

What kinds of things have you found using Wanelo? Do you know of any other sites like Wanelo?

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/gaming.jpg?323f2c" alt="" />Though possibly the most popular, the world of MMOs spans far beyond the realms of Everquest and href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/world-of-warcraft-now-free-to-play-to-level-20-mac-windows/">World of Warcraft. There are hundreds to thousands of well-developed and even free online games for you and all of your friends to enjoy. You’ve just got to know where to look.

It could take forever to go through each individual website of every MMO you may be interested in to check out screenshots and gameplay. However, I’m here to share five MMO directories that I’ve had plenty of luck with in narrowing doing the choices.

These directories do all the work for you and present the most enjoyable, sustainable, and free games to the user. All you’ve got to do is make the decision on which to play or download.

href="http://www.freemmorpglist.com/">Free MMORPG List

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/freemmorpglist.png?323f2c" alt="" width="556" height="216" /> /> Despite the name, Free MMORPG List features much more than just massively-multiplayer online roleplaying games. It’s first on the list because it’s probably my favorite. The site features categories for href="http://www.freemmorpglist.com/games_rpg_mmorpg/">free, href="http://www.freemmorpglist.com/games_action_mmofps/">action, href="http://www.freemmorpglist.com/games_strategy_mmorts/">strategy (or RTS), href="http://www.freemmorpglist.com/games_kids_games/">kids, href="http://www.freemmorpglist.com/games_multiplayer_simulation/">simulation, href="http://www.freemmorpglist.com/games_sports_games/">sports, href="http://www.freemmorpglist.com/games_browser_based/">browser-based, and href="http://www.freemmorpglist.com/games_social_mmorpgs/">social games. The site features 28 pages of games in total with a dozen of games displayed per page. The listing of each game offers a high-quality description, screenshot, and immediate links to download and visit the game’s official website. /> class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/freemmorpglistexample.jpg?323f2c" alt="" width="580" height="465" />

href="http://www.whatmmorpg.com/">What MMORPG

If you’re specifically searching for a MMORPG, What MMORPG is the absolute best resource you’re going to find online. What MMORPG takes this MMO genre and breaks it down into subgenres of href="http://www.whatmmorpg.com/fantasy-mmorpg-games.php">fantasy, href="http://www.whatmmorpg.com/horror-mmorpg-games.php">horror, href="http://www.whatmmorpg.com/modern-mmorpg-games.php">modern, href="http://www.whatmmorpg.com/space-mmorpg-games.php">space, href="http://www.whatmmorpg.com/superhero-mmorpg-games.php">superhero, href="http://www.whatmmorpg.com/historical-mmorpg-games.php">historical, href="http://www.whatmmorpg.com/racing-mmorpg-games.php">racing, and so many more. /> class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/whatmmorpgcategories.jpg?323f2c" alt="" width="580" height="429" />

You can also narrow games down to their cost (free included), their play style (PvE vs. PvP), their developer, and their artistic style (2D, 3D, etc.). This is a very extensive resource. Game listing pages also include ratings of every game, contributed by players like yourself. /> class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/whatmmorpgexample.jpg?323f2c" alt="" width="580" height="418" />

href="http://www.f2p.com/">F2P Games

F2P Games is 100% dedicated to bringing you MMOs that are completely free. This directory also separates href="http://www.f2p.com/content/2-MMO-Browser-Games">free browser-based games. F2P Games also includes a very interactive and informative href="http://www.f2p.com/forum.php">forum where you can go to get all the latest user-contributed F2P news.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/f2pgames-c.jpg?323f2c" alt="" width="580" height="477" />

This directory contains a little over 100 games for you to choose from. It’s got a simple list style: not as descriptive as the rest in this list, but you can browse and choose what you want quickly.

href="http://mmogames.com/">MMO Games.com

This directory has the benefit of having one of the better eye-pleasing designs compared to the rest. Not much sets MMO Games.com apart from the rest, but they do have specific categories for href="http://mmogames.com/android/iosgames">mobile and href="http://mmogames.com/facebookgames">Facebook games. /> class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/mmogames.jpg?323f2c" alt="" width="580" height="146" /> /> The site features MMOs in general with a slight bias towards the MMORPG genre.

href="http://db.tigsource.com/">TIGdb

The Indie Game Database is a lot different from the previous directories we’ve mentioned. This website currently features 757 games, all created by indie developers. Not all of them are free and not all of them are MMO. You will be able to narrow down your selection using their filters though. /> class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/tigdb.jpg?323f2c" alt="" width="580" height="464" /> /> This directory is really cool and unique and a refreshing change from the rest. I managed to find one of my favorite indie games ever, href="http://db.tigsource.com/games/altitude">Altitude, using this very website.

We’ve wrote before on href="http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/mmohut-downloadable-mmorpg-games/">MMO Hut, a similar directory. We’ve also whipped up a nice little article showing you href="http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/mmohut-downloadable-mmorpg-games/">three of the very best MMOs to try out. Got any more suggestions on where we can go to find these games, or fun and free MMOs in specific? Share them with us in the comments!

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href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/xiah-rebirth-martial-arts-themed-mmorpg/" rel="bookmark"> width="125" height="125" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/0311-150x150.jpg?323f2c" class="with-border wp-post-image" alt="Xiah Rebirth – Martial Arts Themed MMORPG" title="Xiah Rebirth – Martial Arts Themed MMORPG" style="width:125px;height:125px;" /> class="title">Xiah Rebirth – Martial Arts Themed MMORPG

href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/dungeons-dragons-online-mmorpg-re-releases-for-free/" rel="bookmark"> width="125" height="125" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/ddo-150x150.jpg?323f2c" class="with-border wp-post-image" alt="ddo" title="ddo" style="width:125px;height:125px;" /> class="title">Dungeons & Dragons Online MMORPG Re-Releases – Free!

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/books.png?323f2c" alt="iphone book reviews app"/>One of the coolest uses of the iPhone is the fact that the internet is always on, and when you are out trying to make a purchasing decision, you can turn to your iPhone for advice. Buying books is one situation where you will seek the opinions of others before you take the plunge. After all, reading a book can be a serious time commitment, and you want to make sure it is good before you dig in and start reading.

All that said; searching the web would lead you all over the place. It is much easier to have applications dedicated to book reviews, this way you do not waste time with all that other stuff. That is where these applications come in.

They are dedicated to book reviews and nothing else. They will always be on your phone, ready to lend you buying advice before you throw down your hard earned money for the next great read. Best of all, they are all free!

href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/goodreads/id355833469?mt=8">Goodreads

Goodreads is an awesome application for getting book reviews and recommendations. Average people, not haughty book reviewers, leave the reviews. Let’s be honest, most book reviewers don’t look favorably on popular fiction, and even if you enjoy reading it, you may find it hard to find a professional review that isn’t biased.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/goodreads1-e1323358677506.jpg?323f2c" alt="iphone book reviews app" width="386" height="580" />

You can explore books based on genre. This is great if you know a genre that interests you but aren’t sure of a particular book. You can also view the most popular books overall, so you can get a feel for what the community as a whole is enjoying.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/goodreads2-e1323358716842.jpg?323f2c" alt="iphone book reviews" width="386" height="580" />

In addition to book reviews, Goodreads has their href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/track-book-goodreads/">bookshelves, where users can keep track of the things they have read. This feature is available on the iPhone application and their website. You need to create an account to use this feature, and registering for an account takes only a couple of minutes. You can view the books on your virtual bookshelf as well as add new one right from the app. You can add a book under the each books page, or use the apps built-in bar code scanner.

href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bookyap/id431669122?mt=8">BookYap

BookYap is similar to Goodreads, but it lacks the bookshelf. Their recommendation engine is very good though. The top of the browse screen says “Find a book fit for a…” and shows a whole bunch of types of people. Some examples are a CEO, an alpha male, a wizard and a foodie. There are many more categories, and this is a cool way to narrow down the millions of books out there and find some that fits in with what you are in to.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/bookyap1-e1323359048446.jpg?323f2c" alt="iphone book reviews" width="386" height="580" />

Once you are in a type of book, you can click the filter button on the top right of the screen and trim the results even more. There are keywords that you can remove, as well as deciding if you want fiction or non-fiction and a slew of other parameters.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/bookyap2-e1323359071383.jpg?323f2c" alt="iphone book reviews" width="386" height="580" />

Once you find a book that interests you, click on it and you will be able to see what other BookYap users are saying about it. You can sort the reviews either by newest, oldest or most helpful.

href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/amazon-mobile/id297606951?mt=8">Amazon Mobile

Amazon may be the online giant that sells everything under the sun, but they started as an online bookstore, and the fact is, they still are one of the best booksellers in the world. If you browse and buy many of your books on Amazon, it gains an insight into what you like, and it will show you books that suit you.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/amazonbook2-e1323359102597.jpg?323f2c" alt="book reviews app" width="386" height="580" />

Even if you don’t buy your books on Amazon, you can still use the mobile application’s search function to read the thousands of user reviews left on there, and find a description and plot synapses. In addition, you can use the Amazon Kindle Store to order a free sample of any book and read it right on the Kindle iPhone app.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/amazonbook1-e1323359135787.jpg?323f2c" alt="iphone book reviews app" width="386" height="580" />

Because Amazon is a retailer, when you read the reviews and see something you like, you can easily purchase it right from your iPhone.

Conclusion

With these three iPhone applications, you will be ready to head to the bookstore and decide which books are best for you. Before you commit hours to reading a book, make sure to find out if it’s worth your time. These apps will do exactly that!

Have you found some great books through these applications? Let us know in the comments!

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/holiday-gifts.jpg?323f2c" alt="holiday gifts" />One of the most wide-spread traditions in this world is gift-giving. This is an especially hot subject during the holiday season, but is stays highly relevant throughout the entire year. Birthdays, weddings, births, anniversaries, new houses, dinner parties, and of course holidays, are all occasions that usually require us to search, decide on and buy gifts.

There is no lack of holiday (and other occasions) gift guides, and there are plenty of places to find ideas or buy gifts online, but even when you finally make that decision, how do you know if it’s the right one? Wouldn’t it be awesome if your friends could choose their own gifts, without it losing its festive “gifty” feeling?

What Is Wantful?

href="https://wantful.com">Wantful is a beautiful and original gift giving service. It learns about your occasion and the recipient of the gift, offers a list of gifts which you can customize until perfect, and then sends the catalogue to the lucky person who can choose their gift from their own personalized gift catalogue, and get it delivered to their doorstep.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/wantful-1.jpg?323f2c" alt="holiday gifts" width="446" height="197" border="0" />

Sounds too good to be true? It gets even better. The service will only cost you as much as you choose to pay for the gift. No service charges and no fees. For now, the service is only available for shipping in the US (the buyer can be from anywhere), but the developers promise international shipping in 2012.

Getting Started

To get started with Wantful, you’d have to either log in using a Facebook account, or create a Wantful account through the website.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/wantful-2.jpg?323f2c" alt="top holiday gifts" width="407" height="225" border="0" />

If you log in using Facebook, you’d have to authorize Wantful to access your Facebook account. Wantful will then pull birthday information from your Facebook friends, and insert them into your Wantful account automatically. You can, of course, not use Facebook, and create your own events.

Once you’re signed up, simply click “Get Started Now” to create your gift catalogue.

Helping Wantful Choose Right

According to the information you give it, Wantful will present you with a list of gifts your friend/family member/colleague should love. The more questions you answer, the better those recommendations will be.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/wantful-3.jpg?323f2c" alt="top holiday gifts" width="558" height="469" border="0" />

Start by giving it some basic information, such as the occasion, the person’s name, age and gender, and how he or she is related to you. Wantful will then launch into a set of questions which you are not obliged to answer. Answer as much as you want or know, and continue onto the next step. I went through the process with an imaginary recipient whom I appropriately dubbed “friends”.

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For example, Wantful would like to know about Friends’ living conditions.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/wantful-6.jpg?323f2c" alt="hot holiday gifts" width="580" height="161" border="0" />

What kind of home would they find attractive?

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What do they think about music, food and technology?

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/wantful-8.jpg?323f2c" alt="hot holiday gifts" width="498" height="397" border="0" />

What range of styles are they more likely to go for?

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The questions are easy and fun to answer. When you’re done supplying all the information you know and wish to give, you can continue to the actual gifts.

Creating The Gift Catalogue

Now it’s time to really get into it. The first crucial thing you need to decide is how much you want to spend. You can’t choose any amount; you need to decide between the 7 possible amounts Wantful offers ($30, $50, $75, $100, $150, $250 or $500).

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/wantful-9.jpg?323f2c" alt="wantful-9" width="579" height="353" border="0" />

You can then browse the list of gifts Wantful recommends, read about them, view more pictures and decide whether they should be on the list or not. If you decide a certain item shouldn’t be included, simply click on the “Replace This Item” button.

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If you do this, you will be presented with a nice list of substitutes, from which you can choose a new gift for the catalogue.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/wantful-11.jpg?323f2c" alt="hot holiday gifts" width="418" height="387" border="0" />

After you’re done customizing it, and you feel the gift catalogue is perfect, all that’s left is to design it and send it!

Finishing Up

A personalized gift is not the same without a personalized holiday gift wrap. Wantful offers a good number of design options for your catalogue. Choose a cover, add names and a short message, and voila!

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And here is the cool part. If you wish, you can pay only the gift’s cost for the whole thing. Simply have the catalogue emailed to your friend and you’re done.

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If you want to take it one step further, you can mail a nice printed catalogue via regular mail for ~$10 extra. The mailed catalogue will arrive after no more than 7 days, but during the holiday season the catalogues are rushed, and may take as little as 2 days to arrive.

Wantful Dashboard

While Wantful is a very useful service for the holiday season, it can and should be used year round. When you log into your Wantful account, you can access your dashboard where you can create new gift catalogues, add events to remember and view your in-progress gift catalogues.

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Receiving Gifts

When you or your friends receive a Wantful gift catalogue, all you have to do is go to the href="https://wantful.com">Wantful website and enter the code from the gift book.

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If you already have an account, the gift you received will also appear on your dashboard.

Bottom Line

Wantful is one of the best designed and most original web apps I’ve seen in a while. The idea behind it is fantastic and using it is a delight. The service is relatively new, and more gift options will be added with time, as well as additional shipping options.

Have you tried Wantful and want to share the experience? Do you know of some other helpful holiday gift-choosing services? Let us know in the comments!

Image credit: href="http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/121381/121381,1314537848,4/stock-photo-closeup-of-colorful-gifts-box-on-white-background-83559760.jpg" rel="nofollow">Shutterstock

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/games-for-change-intro.jpg?323f2c" alt=""/>The impact of video games on children has been debated. It has veered towards both extremes. When you find yourself on the losing side of an argument, you can point towards the social and educational impact of games on children. But why are we dumbing it down, when game playing is as much a part of the adult world.

From education to politics…from business to the environment, games are being tailored to promote awareness of social issues.  Remember the post that showcased href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/7-free-online-news-games-based-world-affairs-news-events/">7 Free Online News Games That Are Based On World Affairs & News Events? The games there serve to remind us of the potential that exists beyond the blood-spills and Martian colonization’s of games meant solely for fun.

A website that’s doing some work on highlighting the link between social impact and games is href="http://www.gamesforchange.org/">Games For Change.

Supporting games for social good

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The gaming site has existed for quite some time (2004) and its mission statement says it all – Catalyzing Social Impact through Digital Games.

What’s unique is that it is a non-profit organization. It is a community/movement of many creative people who are committed to social issues through the way of gaming. It is not simply a curation site for the best social games that are out there…but a full-fledged organization that is involved in bringing together the best ideas from across the globe, and taking in  the resources to turn those ideas into social games.

Here is an example…

Just to cite one example, href="http://www.halftheskymovement.org/">Half The Sky is a combined multi-million dollar project on the best-selling book by Pulitzer Prize winning authors Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. The project’s theme is the moral challenge of oppression of women around the world, and to give equal rights to them in order to promote economic development and combat fundamentalism – to “hold up half the sky,” in the words of a Chinese saying.

Games For Change is working with partners like Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), USAID, the Ford Foundation, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and ITVS to develop a global Facebook game and mobile games for India and Africa.

You can read more about their global activities here on the href="http://www.gamesforchange.org/services/">Services page of the website.

The Games Arcade – Let’s Play!

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Games For Change has a games arcade where you can play some really cool games and see for yourself the powerful mix of education, social awareness, and entertainment.  Games are curated from many sources but each addresses a social issue. Some are free and some are commercial. You can also recommend social games using the submission form on the site. You can browse games by age and subject (for example – Civics, Conflict, Environment, Human Rights etc.).

Let’s check out three games featured on the site that shows us the potential of these types of gaming tools:

href="http://www.gamesforchange.org/play/codeacademy/">Codeacademy

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The cool programming ‘educator’ and online learning game teaches you the basics of programming without tutorials. It does so by engaging you in an interactive game right from the start. For instance, you can create an account only after completing a few rounds of coding. As you progress, you learn and earn rewards.

Read our full review on href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/codecademy-hands-easiest-code/">Codeacademy – Hands Down The Easiest Way To Code.

href="http://www.gamesforchange.org/play/the-curfew/">The Curfew

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The game for the young is based on political themes of our times (Britain 2007). The game challenges the player to them to examine the freedoms he enjoys and the potential consequences if he does not protect them. The game is played over four episodes and involves role-play with four characters.

href="http://www.gamesforchange.org/play/one-ocean-interactive/">One Ocean

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One Ocean is an environmental game that lets you design your own 3D underwater habitats. You learn not only about the oceans and its creatures, but also about how to save it from this century’s challenges. You have to download the Unity Web Player to play it on your desktop. The game is playable on both Windows and Mac.

I have just scratched the surface of the games arcade here. Browse through the games. Let us know which ones is your favorite. Also, drop an appreciative note if you find the idea of games for social change and the href="http://www.gamesforchange.org/">Games For Change website compelling enough.

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/exfm.jpg?323f2c" alt="find new tunes" />Music is a beautiful part of life. While most of us don’t make music (I envy those who do), we all listen to it. But having music play in the background while you’re working on something else is probably not the best way to listen to it, especially if it’s music you’ve never heard of before. href="http://ex.fm/trending">Ex.fm is a music discovery service which we’ve href="http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/exfm-ex-fm/">covered before, but at the time, it was strictly web-based (with an optional Chrome add-on).

The service has recently released an href="https://market.android.com/details?id=fm.ex.android&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImZtLmV4LmFuZHJvaWQiXQ..">Android app, so I figured it might be a good idea to take it for a spin.

Starting The App

Upon launching the app, you are greeted with a registration/log-in screen:

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This is a bit surprising (disappointing, even), because the website itself ( href="http://ex.fm">ex.fm) doesn’t require an account to use. Once you create an account (or log in with your existing one, like I did), you are presented with a quick tour:

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Main Interface

This is what the “body” of the app looks like:

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The “Tastemakers” button shows a stream of users throughout the ex.fm universe. This is a good starting point for hunting a song to listen to; let’s try The Moth And The Mirror:

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So this is what an individual song looks like while a song is playing. Pretty slick! And it’s a good song, too, so I tapped the “heart” button on the top left, to “like” the song and save it for future listening. For some reason, the “Share” menu doesn’t use Android’s built-in sharing option, but instead shows a trimmed down menu containing just three ways to share the current track:

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The “Buy” button simply opens up a mobile browser to Amazon, and the Shuffle button mixes up the current playlist. Speaking of playlists, you don’t have to actively create those. When I tapped the first song, the app simply launched into a playlist and proceeded playing smoothly. You can also look at the current playlist:

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To skip to a different song, simply tap it. You can’t drag songs around to rearrange the playlist, though.

Following Users

Sooner or later, you’re going to stumble onto an awesome user with great taste with music. When that happens, you should stalk them. Or maybe just “follow”, which is something you can easily do from their profile page:

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The profile page also shows you a user’s activity, as well as who else is following that users (and who that user is following).

Your Own Profile

Your own profile page looks quite similar, only you can’t follow yourself (that wouldn’t make much sense now, would it?).

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/exfm22.jpg?323f2c" alt="tunes for android" width="300" height="500" border="0" />

Listening In The Background

Needless to say, playback continues even when you turn off your screen. But what’s nicer is that it also continues when you leave the app and use your phone for other things; when running in the background, ex.fm shows a handy notification with the name of the current song:

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Tapping to notification pops you right back into the application.

What Doesn’t Work Right

In a word – search. Searching for artists was an absolute fail when I tried it.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/exfm9.jpg?323f2c" alt="find new tunes" width="300" height="500" border="0" />

No matter how many times I hit Enter, the screen would refresh for a split-second, and stay just as blank as you see it above. Needless to say, the href="http://ex.fm/search/mumford">same search executed on the website works without a hitch, yielding a lovely playlist featuring mellow Mumford & Sons music.

Also, when I switched from Wi-Fi to mobile data midway through a song, the application crashed. It is quite new on the Market, though. Mobile data performance was reasonable for me, but your mileage may vary (depending on your carriers).

Final Thoughts

Ex.fm shows a lot of promise, and it is already a very good way to listen to music on the go without burdening your device with gigabytes of music files. Once they fix the search, it’ll be even better.

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/image93.png" alt="" />The holiday season is the best time to catch up on your culinary aspirations, whether you’ll be cooking, eating, gift-giving or all of them combined. Now that Thanksgiving is over, you can set your mind on the next step of the holiday season.

Cooking and eating the same things every year can get rather boring. True, holidays are all about traditions, but this doesn’t mean you can’t innovate! So check out these 5 fantastic recipe websites which will provide you with all the inspiration you need for this holiday season.

Epicurious

href="http://www.epicurious.com">Epicurious is a a true foodie heaven, be it a holiday or not. But when it comes to holidays, Epicurious has you covered no matter what you are celebrating. The href="http://www.epicurious.com/recipesmenus/holidays">holiday index includes almost every holiday you can think of, and for each one you can browse recipes, menus or a complete holiday guide.

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When you choose “recipes” or “menus”, you can then browse them by popular ingredients, by dishes (when browsing recipes), browse only vegetarian recipes and so on. The complete guides also include entertaining tips, gifts and wine.

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The recipes are not all from Epicurious itself, but come from a variety of different sources. You can view everything without being a member of Epicurious, but if you sign up for a free account you can save recipes, share them, rate and review them and create personal notes.

Pioneer Woman

I have written about The Pioneer Woman Cooks href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-awesome-food-blogs-tantalize-senses-inspire-cook/&sa=U&ei=a8zMTqblGISLhQfml8zkDQ&ved=0CAQQFjAA&client=internal-uds-cse&usg=AFQjCNHyNDexwh8c27e_1D1PXG_HNGzNHw">in the past, but I could not write a recipe article without mentioning this wonderful blog again. href="http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/">The Pioneer Woman Cooks is a beautifully crafted blog for your everyday cooking needs, which also boasts a fantastic href="http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/category/holidays/">holiday section.

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While not featuring as many holidays as Epicurious, if you’re celebrating Christmas or Thanksgiving, you’re all set. The recipes include entertaining stories about life in the rural United States, and are accompanied by plenty of good photos.

Definitely a place to visit if you’re looking for something with a bit more of a personal touch.

SheKnows

href="http://www.sheknows.com">SheKnows deals with much more than food and recipes. In fact, it deals with all the things they believe women should like. Despite the unfortunate name, SheKnows features a great href="http://www.sheknows.com/food-and-recipes/holidays-and-parties/articles">holiday recipe section.

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The recipes do not include a huge amount of images, so if you’re the visual type, you might find this recipe collection to be a bit too “texty”. There is no easy way to screen certain types of recipes, but there are a lot of them. So put on your cooking hat and start scrolling for your next awesome holiday dish!

Martha Stewart

href="http://www.marthastewart.com">Martha Stewart is one name that’s been rather hard to miss in the past two decades. And when looking for good recipes, it’s still a name you can’t ignore. Martha’s website includes a big href="http://www.marthastewart.com/holidays">holiday section featuring all your usual holidays such as Christmas, Hanukkah and Mother’s day.

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You’re not going to find only recipes here, but also decorations, gift ideas and activities for kids. One of the most inspiring sections is the href="http://www.marthastewart.com/274972/homemade-food-gifts/@center/307034/christmas-workshop">food gift ideas. If you’re a foodie, or if your friends or family are, you know there’s sometimes nothing better than a holiday gift which is also edible.

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Here you will learn how to make cookie compotes, fancy fruitcake, foolproof fudge and much more. They all comes with wrapping and decorating instructions, so you can try to mimic the beautiful little gifts you can see in the picture. There’s even a whole section for gingerbread houses!

Taste Of Home

href="http://www.tasteofhome.com">Taste of Home is another large food & recipe magazine, which provides everything from recipes, videos, and forums to an actual cooking school. But today is all about holidays: Taste of Home features an impressive href="http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Holiday---Celebration-Recipes">holiday & celebration section, which includes all your usual holidays, and adds celebrations such as graduations, bridal showers, etc.

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The holiday section features the most relevant holidays at the top, but if you scroll down you can find a list of other holidays you can choose from. Once you choose a holiday, you will be able to browse recipes according to dishes and meals: breakfast, dinner, side dishes, main courses, desserts, and more. Each category includes a volley of recipes to choose from.

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And again, I must recommend the href="http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Holiday---Celebration-Recipes/Christmas-Recipes/Food-Gift-Ideas">food gift section, which is a sure way to make the foodie in your life much happier this holiday season.

Bonus: MealPlanningMagic (& More)

If all these huge websites are not really your thing, and discovering smaller more intimate food blogs is one of your hobbies, this is what you’ve been waiting for. This Christmas, many food blogs are holding a “12 weeks of Christmas cookies” blog hop. This means that when you enter one food blog, you can find links to recipes from numerous other food blogs, all about Christmas cookies.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/blog-hop-1.jpg" alt="blog-hop-1" width="478" height="364" border="0" />

The blog hop seems to be led by the blog href="http://www.mealplanningmagic.com">MealPlanningMagic, and is very widespread among food blogs. For example, if you go to this blog and scroll all the way down (after you browse the mouthwatering cookie recipes, that is), you’ll find numerous thumbnails to recipes from many other blogs.

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If you click one of those, you’ll be taken to a different blog, where you can browse some more Christmas cookies and then find your way to even more blogs. This is a fantastic way to discover great food blogs, and to expand your Christmas cookie repertoire.

Conclusion

Cooking and baking is one of the best parts of the holiday season. Don’t let it be a chore; find some exciting recipes you just can’t wait to make, and surprise your family and friends with small presents that don’t take up precious room in the house (except for the room they’ll take up after eating it all!).

If you know of some more places to find fantastic holiday recipes, we’d love to hear about them in the comments!

Image credit: href="http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/83052/83052,1280474611,1/stock-photo-christmas-ice-cream-with-chocolate-and-cinnamon-58203304.jpg" rel="nofollow">Shutterstock

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/guysittingatdesk.png" alt="iphone no life"/>Some people like to tell me that I have no life. I spend too much time sitting around, playing video games and writing articles about nerdy things. I tend to disagree, and I have found an application that proves that I do have a life.

How can an application tell me that whether or not I have a life? By having a scientifically unproven method that is approved by 1 out of every 497000 doctors, of course. Seeing as I passed the test I am about to teach you all about, I can say with at least eleven percent certainty that I have a life!

The free application for iPhone called “The No Life Test” aims to tell users whether they truly have no life. It is a simple app, which does not have a lot of bells or whistles, but it does one thing, and it does it well.

This is an important app; it could change the lives of millions of iPhone users, and possibly the lives of everyone around them. After all, how can someone know if he or she has no life if an iPhone application does not tell him or her?

Downloading the Life Changing Application

Before your life is turned around, you first need to download the application to your iPhone. Don’t worry; downloading the application is not part of the test. Just go to the iTunes App Store on your iPhone and search for “The Ultimate No Life Test” without the quotes of course. Alternately, click this href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-ultimate-no-life-test/id475221291?mt=8">handy link and download the application to your computer.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ultimatenolife1.jpg" alt="iphone no life" width="387" height="580" />

Before you go any further, pause for a second, and think about the implications of what you are about to find out. Do you truly have no life? Are you ready to learn such information? If you feel you are ready, then it is time to venture forth, and find out just how little life you actually have.

Taking the Test

The parameters for this test are actually simple, and of course, it is all one hundred percent scientific. In fact, I heard from some guy in an alley that a team of high paid scientists from Antarctica spent the last 50 years researching this iPhone application. Obviously, when you are determining if someone does or does not have a life, you want to be accurate, and I am slightly confident this app is as good as it gets.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ultimatenolife2.jpg" alt="no life test" width="387" height="580" />

At this point, you have to be asking yourself just what the application actually is. It’s actually just a red button on a screen, and the aim is to see how many times you can press the red button without getting bored and moving on to something else. It sounds like a pretty easy test to beat. After all, you just need to put your phone down and walk away. However, if you have no life, then you would have nothing to walk too, thus you would fail.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ultimatenolife3.jpg" alt="no life test" width="387" height="580" />

This thing is a real killer for ‘completionists’ and achievement junkies (the people who arguably have the least life of all). The highest-level game center achievement asks you to tap the red button one million times. This whopping one million times is not over a lifetime, oh no, once you close the application, the counter resets. What it comes down to is this; if you get that achievement, you unequivocally have no life.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ultimatenolife4.jpg" alt="no life test" width="387" height="580" />

There are leaderboards, but I think this is the one leaderboard where ending up at the top is not a good thing. Maybe they should call it a loserboard instead?

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ultimatenolife5.jpg" alt="iphone no life" width="387" height="580" />

If you find you don’t have a life, don’t fret! Just close the application, go outside, and meet some people and do some stuff. Then you will have a life. You might even be able to get a job as a motivational speaker or something. Imagine yourself going around and sharing your story to the downtrodden about how you turned your lack of a life around.

Conclusion

This application will change the world. All the lifeless people of the world will now know they have a problem and they will take steps to rectify the situation. Maybe they will go out and become astronauts, or at the very least accountants. Maybe they will make an awesome href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/add-nyan-cat-progress-bars-awesome/">Nyan Cat progress bar for windows? Maybe they will preach the good word of having a life to others, and before we know it, everyone in the world will have a life. All of this can come from a free iPhone application. It sounds like a winning proposition to me.

Do you have a life? Well then, tell us about it in the comments!

Image Credit: rel="nofollow" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=77905540">ShutterStock

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/0_foodie.jpg" alt="" />Food makes the world go round. Whether dining out a few times a week, exploring new recipes, or simply taking pictures of your food and sharing it with others (which is called foodtography), there are a lot of people out there who love enjoying a good meal. If you consider yourself a foodie, you probably take advantage of a few key apps to document everything you’ve eaten.

Even apps like href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/foursquare/">Foursquare and href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tech-fun/search/?cx=009717636731598800244%3Aqhe4rh7wuxs&cof=FORID%3A11&q=instagram&sa=">Instagram, which weren’t necessarily intended for sharing just food items, have been getting used that way for quite some time. In Instagram’s case, I would argue that foodtography played a major role in why the app became so popular amongst iPhone users.

So what’s next for foodies? In this article, I’m going to show you some more apps which should help you locate places and meals you’ll like, as well as document those meals you’ve eaten and enjoyed.

1. href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ness/id454869181?mt=8">Ness

The first iPhone app I’d like to share with you is called Ness. Ness is a visually appealing food search engine that enables you to discover places you’ll love based on the types of foods that you like to eat. Just tell Ness what you like – and what you don’t – and it will get smarter over time, recommending to you new places to try.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/1_foodie.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="416" />

Ness is also social. The app shows you the places your Facebook and Foursquare friends have rated, reviewed, or checked into, and allows you to share the things you like with them. Ness’ Likeness Engine incorporates your ratings/reviews and recommendations from friends to suggest new places that meet your tastes.

When you start using the app, Ness asks that you rate 10 restaurants that you’ve visited in the past. It will use this information to learn about your tastes when you rate your dining experiences and follow friends whose opinions influence your decisions. Results are tailor-made just for you.

2. href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/alfred/id447020280?mt=8">Alfred

If you’re into recommendations, Alfred is another great app for you foodies out there. Alfred is your personal food butler/robot who recommends places based on your favorites. When you select a few of your favorite places for lunch, dinner, nightlife, coffee, brunch, etc. you will begin to receive custom results in the form of restaurants you will enjoy.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/2_foodie.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="437" />

Connect Alfred with your Facebook account and you will be able to select the friends that you are out with. Alfred will then “tune” his recommendations to match everyone’s taste. The app is pretty intuitive and you do interact with Alfred as if he’s a real person. He asks you questions and even lets you ask your friends where they think you should grab a bite to eat.

3. href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/foodily/id475603520?ls=1&mt=8">Foodily

If you’re not interested in going out to eat, you should check out the Foodily app for iPhone. Foodily ( href="http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/foodily-learn-to-cook-recipes-for-friends/">directory listing) gives you daily recipe inspirations from your friends, food experts, and people you follow. It even lets you utilize your phone’s camera to pair your own food pictures with recipes from across the web.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/3_foodie.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="437" />

Foodily has a recipe news feed that updates every time you open the app, giving you new recipe ideas, photos of what your friends have made, and search options to help you discover meals to make.

If you are eating out, you can take a picture at a restaurant, type a few ingredients into Foodily’s search bar, and get a similar recipe for you to cook at home. The photo functionality is also great for pairing a dish you’ve personally made with the recipe you found on a food blog, from a magazine, or wherever.

4. href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-eatery/id468299990?mt=8">The Eatery

The Eatery is another great food-related application that takes advantage of your phone’s camera. With this app, you can snap photos of your food and The Eatery will give you a second opinion on the healthiness of your meal. The idea behind the app is that documenting the meals you eat is the first step to building awareness around healthy eating.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/4_foodie.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="436" />

The Eatery will help you discover how well you eat from week to week, where you eat your best and worst meals, and what factors into potentially bad habits. Personally I think it’s pretty cool how information is presented to you upon simply snapping pictures of your food (which you probably do anyway).

As a bonus, I also recommend you check out href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/rate-share-discover-meals-restaurants-forkly-iphone/">Forkly, which I covered a couple of months back. When you’re done experimenting with these foodie apps, come back and tell us what you think!

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/reddit.png" alt="subreddit" />Since its surge in popularity in 2006, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/reddit/">Reddit has truly become the epicenter of social news and information. We’re in an age where the newspaper is gradually inching towards extinction as more and more people are turning towards RSS feeds and social media. Reddit is a community that is completely powered by their users and that’s why it is such a success today.

Just as newspapers have sectioned categories, Reddit contains subreddits. Each subreddit is narrowly targeted toward a specific idea or interest, and by adding a particular subreddit to your frontpage you are opting in to receiving the latest and most popular content from that section. If you’re interested in topics like href="http://www.reddit.com/r/apple">Apple, href="http://www.reddit.com/r/diy">DIY, or href="http://www.reddit.com/r/food">food then Reddit has a home for you. But what about the deeper and more obscure topics?

Maybe you want to href="http://www.reddit.com/r/tonightsdinner">see what people are cooking for dinner tonight? Or perhaps you want to href="http://www.reddit.com/r/mashups/">find new and inspiring mashup tunes to listen to?  These subreddits may be buried deep within the community, but I’m going to show you how to find them.

Using Reddit Itself

Coincidentally enough, you’re able to find great subreddits using the simple features provided by the website. It’s nice to be able to down two birds with one stone – improving Reddit while enjoying it.

href="http://www.reddit.com/reddits/">Official Subreddits Page

This page may be the very best resource, and it is so often overlooked.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/subreddits2.jpg" alt="subreddit" />

The page aggregates all of the current subreddits that you have active on your frontpage and combines them with the most popular subreddits overall to offer you relevant suggestions. There should be hundreds of suggested pages shown as well as a complete list of your currently frontpage’d subreddits in the menu to the far right (or only 50 if you have more and are not a Reddit Gold member).

href="http://www.reddit.com/r/subredditoftheday">/r/subredditoftheday & href="http://www.reddit.com/r/newreddits/">/r/newreddits

Just as the names entail, you can follow these two to get a consistent flow of new and interesting subreddits pushed directly to your frontpage. As an added bonus, you can find lots of additional subreddits just by participating in the community and checking out comments that are posted. It’s almost like Inception at this point – finding subreddits within comments inside of a subreddit while on Reddit.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/subredditoftheday2.jpg" alt="subreddit search" />

Third-Party Services

If Reddit itself doesn’t offer enough for you, there are a whole slew of third-party sites that parse and index subreddits to search through. Here are my two personal favorites.

href="http://metareddit.com/">Metareddit

Metareddit is generally considered to be the best and most user-friendly way of hunting for your new favorite subreddit. If there was a way to authenticate this as the official third-party subreddit service, I’d do it.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/metareddit2.jpg" alt="subreddit search" />

Metareddit offers lots of functionality, some of which is completely unrelated to subreddit-searching. It’s a true way to archive and categorize subreddits, not just find them. You can search through subreddits by keyword, tags, or logo. At the time of this post, more then 90,000 subreddits are indexed in the Metareddit database, so that’s pretty impressive.

They also offer a href="http://metareddit.com/monitor">monitor feature, which is basically the equivalent of a service such as href="http://www.google.com/alerts">Google Alerts. You can search for a keyword trigger in Reddit posts and comments and it’ll return the freshest results to you. This is a pretty unique way to find new subreddits, also. href="http://metareddit.com/stalk">Stalk is just as good, with a little side of creepy. If you’re obsessive over a particular Redditor’s posts or interests, you can use the feature to find exactly what subreddits they are frequenting.

href="http://subreddits.org/">Subreddits

This site is incredibly easy to navigate and utilize. Right on the frontpage, you’re presented with the most popular subreddits and respective categories.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/subredditsorg2.jpg" alt="subreddit" />

Across the top menu, you’ll also notice links for you to href="http://subreddits.org/search.html">navigate the top 3,000 subreddits and href="http://subreddits.org/sorter.html?sort=cloud">sort them from a tag cloud.

If you weren’t able to find exactly what you were looking for in this post, I’m willing to bet that you can find it in href="http://www.makeuseof.com/pages/download-best-of-the-web-delivered-the-reddit-manual">The Reddit Manual.  Or if you know of another good resource we haven’t mentioned here, be sure to let us in on the secret in the comments.

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Find-my-iPhone-icon.png" alt="find my iphone app" />Long story short: my wife had her iPhone stolen when she misplaced it at work the other day. I was instantly able to log into her iCloud account and follow the device all the way back to a residential address, saving her the trouble of searching around the warehouse. We locked the phone and sent a polite message asking the ‘culprits’ to return it for a (very small) reward, but failing that we had their address to cross-reference on the employee database.

The next day we saw the phone travelling back to her workplace in the early morning, and when she arrived she found the phone had been anonymously returned with no reward asked for.

This story has a happy ending of course, but Apple’s free Find My iPhone service is also able to deal with the less happy outcomes in a way that minimizes your risk for greater losses. Let’s look into the app and see how you can ‘MakeUseOf’ it when your phone is lost or stolen.

So What is Find My iPhone?

Find My iPhone has been a part of Apple’s Mobile.Me service for a while now, and is now upgraded and included in the standard, free iCloud account. You can title="From MobileMe To iCloud: It’s Worth The Move" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/mobileme-icloud-worth-move/">read all about iCloud here. The most recent update means that Mac computers can also be tracked. Here’s my wife’s iPhone, in the process of being stolen (this isn’t their home address, this was on the way).

class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-90757" title="being-stolen" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/being-stolen.png" alt="find my iphone app" width="580" height="468" />

I must have it! How do I enable It?

1. Make sure you’ve signed up and enabled iCloud on your device. From Settings > iCloud you can sign up for, or if you’ve already got an account connected, scroll down and ensure Find My iPhone is enabled (by default it isn’t enabled).

2. Location service must also be enabled – from Settings > Location Services > On

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/location-servies.png" alt="find my iphone" width="580" height="435" /> /> 3. Scroll down on the same screen to Find my iPhone at the bottom of the list and click through to enable it specifically there.

To set it up on your Mac, you need to have the latest OSX, iTunes and iCloud specific updates installed. There should then be a new iCloud control panel icon in your preferences screen.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/icloud-imac.png" alt="find my iphone" width="580" height="435" />

What Can I do When My Phone Is Stolen:

Open up the Find my iPhone app from either any other iOS device (you need to href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/find-my-iphone/id376101648?mt=8">download it from the app store first), or log on to href="http://icloud.com">icloud.com from a computer.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/icloudcom.png" alt="find my iphone" width="580" height="368" />

You should see a list of devices registered to your account, and location discovery will begin. Click on the device once it’s been located correctly.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/my-devices.png" alt="" width="314" height="275" />

You should now see it on a map, but clicking on the device, then the small blue “i” will open up the menu of actions you can take. There are 3 choices:

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/found-location.png" alt="find my iphone app" width="404" height="358" />

• Play Sound or Send Message: This allows you to send a quick “this message is lost/stolen” type message as well as sound an alarm which works even if the phone is in silent mode. Note, this is also a great way to find your phone at home!
• Remote Lock: This places the device into a locked mode exactly as if you had setup a regular lock screen before it was stolen. You choose the 4 digit code now, so make sure you don’t forget it.
• Remote Wipe: This is final and more drastic option – it will initiate a low level format of all your data, leaving it like a fresh iPhone straight from the factory. Be very careful when using this, as you will no longer be able to track, lock, or message this device if you use this option.

Your first move should be to lock the device and prevent any calls from being made. This isn’t going to stop anyone from reformatting the phone, but it will stop most thieves from getting at your data for now or making random expensive calls.

Second, follow the device via the GPS signal. If you’re the daring type, you could try chasing it down. It is probably best not to try anything crazy until you know it’s been stolen though, at which point calling the police with a residential address is definitely an option.

Next, send a message offering a reward and contact details.

At this point, you’re going to have to gamble. If it was indeed stolen, and the thief knows what they’re doing then your personal data is definitely at risk. Use remote wipe as a last option only if you’re confident you won’t get the device back.

Lastly, be sure to phone your mobile provider and lock out the SIM. This will prevent them making calls/texts and prevent any further expenses, but it’s not going to get your phone back.

It goes without saying that you should also call the police and get an incident or report number – you’ll need this to claim on insurance. Most contents insurance usually comes with the option to cover devices while they’re out of the house, so if you’re lucky then you can get a new phone.

A Solution for Android Users

Not wishing to exclude those inclined to the other mobile OS – title="How To Prepare Your Laptop For A Case Of Theft" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/prepare-laptop-case-theft/">Prey is a free service able to track up to 3 devices, and even has the ability to take photos of the thief using the laptop webcam or front camera. Sadly, Find My iPhone doesn’t let you do this, and I’m unable to find a similar app that does. The Prey page states they’re currently working on an iPhone version, but it’s been saying that for years. Looks like Android users have a one-up on us here!

I do recommend you enable some kind of service now as a precaution as you’ll never be able to do it when you’ll really need it. Find My iPhone is free, and if it saves you the $400 on a new phone, it’s more than worth it. Do you have any experience using Find My iPhone to get your phone back, or even a computer? Let us know in the comments, I’d love to hear how it worked out for you.

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Icon3.png" alt="free clothes" />It’s a scary world out there, and the best way to go through it is by title="Do You Have A Photo Of A Great Fashion Item? Here Is How To Find Out Where To Get It!" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/photo-great-fashion-item-find/">wearing clothes. Sure, there are a few exceptions to this statement, but we’ll leave those alone… However, you may be looking for some places to pick up some free href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/t-shirts/">t-shirts or something a little on the higher end of things.

Today, I’ve got five websites that you can find some free clothes on, and the best part is that each of them are totally free of charge (I know, I know – you’re on the edge of your seat).

href="http://www.freecycle.org">Freecycle

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/FreeCycle.png" alt="free clothes" width="580" height="300" />

We’ve talked a little bit about href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-websites-recycle-reuse-stuff-protect-environment/">Freecycle on MakeUseOf before, so I just wanted to get it out of the way since you might have already heard about it. The site was developed as a way for people to get rid of their unneeded items in a much more environmentally-friendly way than dumping them in a landfill. However, along with recycling used computer gadgets and such, you can actually grab free clothes from Freecycle.

Essentially, href="http://www.freecycle.org">Freecycle is all about giving away what you don’t need and getting stuff that you do – for free. About the only thing that somewhat frustrated me with this site was the lack of a legitimate search function, but after a few clicks, I found a few dress shirts near my town that were being given away free of charge! Furthermore, you can post “Wanted” ads for clothing that you may need.

href="http://www.ilovefreegle.org/">Freegle

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Freegle.png" alt="find free clothes" width="580" height="300" />

So you may have noticed that Freecycle is US-only. Well, good news my UK friends. href="http://www.ilovefreegle.org/">Freegle is a site that is… well… it’s just like Freecycle. I could actually copy and paste the above two paragraphs here, replace each mention of Freecycle with the word “Freegle”, and it would be a perfect description. Unfortunately, my editor Mark wouldn’t appreciate this very much.

From what I understand, Freegle actually used to be a part of Freecycle, but something went down and the UK crew split. However, both sites are wonderful (but as a note, Freegle’s web design is much cleaner and more user-friendly).

href="http://www.craigslist.com">Craigslist

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Craigslist.png" alt="find free clothes" width="580" height="300" />

Oh hey, href="http://www.craigslist.com">Craigslist! How did you get on this MUO article, too? Yes, we’ve covered the href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/craigslist/">list of Craig quite a few times here on MUO, but there’s one item you should take note of on Craigslist’s front page. Right under the “For Sale” section of the site, you’ll see a link that simply says “free”.

Well… I bet you’re wondering where that’s going to lead you, right? This section of the site is full of free stuff just ready for you to take. After a quick search in my area, I found shoes, baby clothes, and even adult-sized clothes. One pretty nice item was an advertisement by a title="3 Cool Online Thrift Stores To Save Yourself A Fortune" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-cool-online-thrift-stores-save-fortune/">thrift store that was giving away a ton of free clothes for one day only. Make sure you take a look at the ads in your location.

href="http://www.freestuffchannel.com/clothes.html">Free Stuff Channel

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/FreeStuffChannel.png" alt="find free clothes" width="580" height="300" />

The site mentioned here is a whole lot like a site called href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/ease-stress-bank-account-hey-free-usonly/">Hey, It’s Free! that I reviewed a few weeks ago. Basically, the creators of the site go around the Internet in search for magical items such as free promotional products and special offers coupons. Pretty cool.

However, if there’s anything that businesses like to make, it’s t-shirts, right? (We even have a href="http://splitreason.com/makeuseof">few on MUO.) It also seems as if companies love giving away their t-shirts. Fortunately, in addition to everything else the site has to offer, the href="http://www.freestuffchannel.com/clothes.html">Free Stuff Channel goes around looking for promo items such as these. The site is updated daily, so you could have quite a large wardrobe before the year is over.

href="http://www.coolfreebielinks.com/Apparel_Freebies/">Cool Freebie Links

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/FreebieLinks.png" alt="free clothes" width="580" height="300" />

href="http://www.coolfreebielinks.com/Apparel_Freebies/">Cool Freebies Links looks like a site from the nineties and it also uses my least favorite font – title="Combat Chronic Comic Sans Font Misusage With These 3 Sites" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/combat-chronic-comic-sans-font-misusage-3-sites/">Comic Sans – but it has quite a bit of free stuff that is collected in the same fashion as the Free Stuff Channel. It’s a lot of text to read, but each bit of it is very valuable.

I’m not entirely sure how often the site updates, but they had quite a collection of promo clothing for you to grab if you’re lucky. Look through their listings, and you may even find other sites for other free materials.

Conclusion

Well that’s that, my thread-mooching friends. If you’re low on cash, you definitely have quite a few options to choose from for free clothes. Sure, with some of these you may have to put up with a company logo but that’s better than running around naked, right?

What other sites do you use to find free clothing? Did you find anything pretty cool on the ones shown here?

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