It seems that every year a promising new video service emerges (most recently, perhaps Vevo) and another hits the dust (most recently, MegaUpload/MegaVideo). As the trend continues, we storage junkies must adapt. We’ve talked a lot on this subject in the past, but I’m confident that you’ll find my ways to be the easiest and most effective. Storing remote video content locally is a challenge no more, and I’ve got three tried and true methods to tip you on to.

If you’ve ever been to a website, watched a hilarious clip, and thought to yourself, “Wow, I wish I could keep that one forever. What if it gets deleted?”, you’re now looking at the correct article.

Downloading Flash Files Using Your Browser

Saikat wrote an awesome article nearly three years ago that still works like a charm. This method is still my favorite as it can be performed in every browser available. Although the method still works like a charm, exactly as it’s described in Saikat’s article, let’s go back over the process for Firefox.

Start by going to a page with a Flash video on it. YouTube is a good example. You can tell if a website is using Flash to power their video front-end by right clicking on the video itself and looking at the context menu. If Flash is mentioned, there you go.

After you’ve found your video, right click on the page (not the video) and select “View Page Info“.

Now, click the “Media” tab across the top. Scroll through the list until you find the content with the “Type” matching “Embed“. Click on it, and then “Save As…“. A download prompt will come up and you’ll be saving the SWF file right to your drive.

Using Offliberty

Offliberty is my best-kept secret when it comes to pulling video content off of the web. I’m not sure if it can get any more easier than this solution.

There are a lot of ad-filled websites that extract videos from YouTube for you. There’s also a lot of sticky, bad adware that you can download to get it done. With Offliberty, you just paste the URL and then wait for it to crunch some numbers, then download.

It’ll take a few seconds and then your results are in. You can actually rip the MP3 or the entire video from YouTube with this service, but for the sake of this article, let’s go with the video.

Offliberty supports a lot of the most popular video and music websites. Just plug a URL in and give it a shot, pretty good chance that it’ll be able to instantly convert and spit out what you’re looking for.

Just a little warning: Offliberty uses a script to randomize their page background. I refreshed anywhere between 10 and 15 times and one of the backgrounds was set to a very faint image of a male and a female, the female being topless. It was nothing explicit or hardcore and I’d classify it as “artsy,” but don’t use this at work. You shouldn’t be, anyway!

NetVideoHunter for Firefox

NetVideoHunter Video Downloader is one of my favorite Firefox add-ons. This page explains the usage of the add-on better than any, but let me give you a quick rundown.

Download and install the plugin. Restart Firefox. Go to any website that streams video. Start the video. Look at your Add-ons Bar for the NVH icon and click on it.

Here, you’ll see a list of every video that you’ve loaded this browser session. From this menu, you can watch the videos or download them. If using a site like YouTube where many formats are supported, every format should be available in the menu (as you can see it is in the screenshot). Can’t be much simpler than clicking “Download” and saving the video locally.

If these three are less than what you want, check out some of our other related posts:

• Capture Streaming Video From Any Website With These 5 Tools
• How To Download Videos From Hulu The Easy Way
• 4 Quick Ways To Download YouTube Videos Off The Net

What are your preferred ways of downloading videos off the web? Let us know in the comments below.

View full post on MakeUseOf

It seems that every year a promising new video service emerges (most recently, perhaps Vevo) and another hits the dust (most recently, MegaUpload/MegaVideo). As the trend continues, we storage junkies must adapt. We’ve talked a lot on this subject in the past, but I’m confident that you’ll find my ways to be the easiest and most effective. Storing remote video content locally is a challenge no more, and I’ve got three tried and true methods to tip you on to.

If you’ve ever been to a website, watched a hilarious clip, and thought to yourself, “Wow, I wish I could keep that one forever. What if it gets deleted?”, you’re now looking at the correct article.

Downloading Flash Files Using Your Browser

Saikat wrote an awesome article nearly three years ago that still works like a charm. This method is still my favorite as it can be performed in every browser available. Although the method still works like a charm, exactly as it’s described in Saikat’s article, let’s go back over the process for Firefox.

Start by going to a page with a Flash video on it. YouTube is a good example. You can tell if a website is using Flash to power their video front-end by right clicking on the video itself and looking at the context menu. If Flash is mentioned, there you go.

After you’ve found your video, right click on the page (not the video) and select “View Page Info“.

Now, click the “Media” tab across the top. Scroll through the list until you find the content with the “Type” matching “Embed“. Click on it, and then “Save As…“. A download prompt will come up and you’ll be saving the SWF file right to your drive.

Using Offliberty

Offliberty is my best-kept secret when it comes to pulling video content off of the web. I’m not sure if it can get any more easier than this solution.

There are a lot of ad-filled websites that extract videos from YouTube for you. There’s also a lot of sticky, bad adware that you can download to get it done. With Offliberty, you just paste the URL and then wait for it to crunch some numbers, then download.

It’ll take a few seconds and then your results are in. You can actually rip the MP3 or the entire video from YouTube with this service, but for the sake of this article, let’s go with the video.

Offliberty supports a lot of the most popular video and music websites. Just plug a URL in and give it a shot, pretty good chance that it’ll be able to instantly convert and spit out what you’re looking for.

Just a little warning: Offliberty uses a script to randomize their page background. I refreshed anywhere between 10 and 15 times and one of the backgrounds was set to a very faint image of a male and a female, the female being topless. It was nothing explicit or hardcore and I’d classify it as “artsy,” but don’t use this at work. You shouldn’t be, anyway!

NetVideoHunter for Firefox

NetVideoHunter Video Downloader is one of my favorite Firefox add-ons. This page explains the usage of the add-on better than any, but let me give you a quick rundown.

Download and install the plugin. Restart Firefox. Go to any website that streams video. Start the video. Look at your Add-ons Bar for the NVH icon and click on it.

Here, you’ll see a list of every video that you’ve loaded this browser session. From this menu, you can watch the videos or download them. If using a site like YouTube where many formats are supported, every format should be available in the menu (as you can see it is in the screenshot). Can’t be much simpler than clicking “Download” and saving the video locally.

If these three are less than what you want, check out some of our other related posts:

• Capture Streaming Video From Any Website With These 5 Tools
• How To Download Videos From Hulu The Easy Way
• 4 Quick Ways To Download YouTube Videos Off The Net

What are your preferred ways of downloading videos off the web? Let us know in the comments below.

View full post on MakeUseOf

Ruby is an expressive, very high-level, scripting language. It is used on the Web mainly as part of the Ruby on Rails web development framework, but also standalone. If you’re curious about what Ruby (not Ruby on Rails) feels like, you don’t necessarily need to pick up a book or go watch a screencast (although those are good ways to learn, too).

Below are three fun, simple ways in which you can try Ruby in your browser, right now, for free, without installing a single file.

Rubymonk

Hailing all the way from India, Rubymonk offers a series of over 50 short, interactive Ruby exercises and it saves your progress. Above is what I saw when I went back to Rubymonk after leaving the website (I solved the first couple of exercises).

Let’s look at what a single exercise looks like:

The exercise starts with a simple explanation, followed by a snippet of code. If you hit the Run button, the code is immediately evaluated and you get to see its output. Next, you get a simple assignment. Write the code you think is the right answer, and hit Ctrl+Enter to run it (or click the Run button). The Rubymonk now spits out an answer:

Once you finish working through some of the exercises, you will be presented with a problem to solve on your own:

You get an explanation of what you need to solve, some template code to get you started, and you’re on your own. This is great, because it’s much closer to actually coding than filling in one-liners in response to narrow questions.  If you get stuck, you can always click “See the Solution” and the solution will instantly appear in the text box.

Once you’re done with the first problem, you are transported to the table of contents, where you can pick and choose what you want to learn (and whether you want a lesson or a problem). Lessons look like this:

And a problem looks like this:

The tags are lessons which you should work through, in order to acquire the skills you need to solve the problem. The whole thing is very polished, and just generally fun to work with. Highly recommended.

Ruby Koans

The Ruby Koans are hosted over at Heroku, and are even more steeped in mysticism that Rubymonk. Check it out:

Say what you will, but this is definitely not boring. Fill in what you think is the right answer (trivial, in this case), and hit Enter. The snippet will be evaluated, and colored accordingly:

The Ruby Koans are a lot of fun, and they seem much more advanced than Rubymonk. They start off with asserts and testing, rather than arrays or other basic concepts. One small niggle is that your progress is not saved between koans, so you’d better bookmark where you stopped for the day. It’s not as AJAXy as Rubymonk, but I think it’s still great, and it’s a project that inspired many imitations, such as the JavaScript Koans.

Try Ruby

Try Ruby was created as a tribute to why’s (poignant) guide to ruby (link to PDF), one of the craziest programming textbooks I have ever laid eyes on. It’s a great book for the Ruby language, and although the author no longer takes an active role in the Ruby community, I have a feeling he would have approved of the project. The website is built as a large ruby prompt, with instructions on the side:

The text is simple and playful (no mystical references here). You type real Ruby code in the prompt, and work through the simple exercises one by one. The whole thing doesn’t take very long.

Final Thoughts

Personally, I feel that learning by doing is one of the best ways to absorb new material. These may not make you into a code ninja, but they will definitely give you a feel for Ruby. If you’re curious about the language, pick the one you like best and take it for a spin! Let us know how it went in the comments.

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Creative jobseekers are always searching for new ways to distinguish themselves to potential employers. One of the quickest ways to do this is to make your résumé stand out from the crowd. Once you’ve got their attention, they’ll hopefully notice all those great skills you have. In the meantime, you’ve got to turn your résumé into something which looks really interesting. And who’s got the time for that?

Luckily, for those of us with our résumés in LinkedIn, there are services available to do all of the visually creative stuff for you. All you need to do is sync your LinkedIn account and your visual résumé is ready for use.

Here’s two of the best visual résumé creators you can try for free.

Update Your LinkedIn Profile First!

Firstly, since both of these great visual résumé services import your information from your LinkedIn profile, the best approach to creating a great résumé would be to update your details in LinkedIn before you start exploring these options. That, and your LinkedIn profile is more useful when updated regularly, too.

Visualize.me

Visualize.me is a one-click LinkedIn service, meaning you can jump straight into viewing your visual résumé and creating eye-catching content. The content is taken from LinkedIn, but it’s not a two-way sync so nothing will be saved back to LinkedIn after you’ve finished.

There are several great themes to choose from, plus a lot of control over which details are shown in the profile and exactly which colours to use for your style. The resulting infographics are rich and well-designed.

Recommendations from colleagues look especially good in the Visualize.me format, making a feature of your achievements as seen by the people you work with. Don’t forget that word-of-mouth recommendations are the most memorable! Make sure those kind words about you get noticed.

Re.vu

Re.vu gets you to create an account and choose your URL before linking to your LinkedIn account. Then it’s a simple authorisation process with LinkedIn to get your details imported. You can further tweak your details if you wish, or upload a photo and a résumé in document form if you like.

Once you’ve saved the basic information, you’ll be able to choose a theme for your profile and decide exactly how you’d like your information presented. Then, simply promote it as you wish and update the details whenever you need to.

The re.vu themes are eye-catching and stylish, plus they allow you to upload your own background if you want to personalise the page further. The visualisation of your work history is especially good if you’ve worked multiple jobs as it shows clearly how you’ve spent your work time.

Choices

Both of these services provide great profiles for jobseekers. If I were to make comparisons, I’d say Visualize.me had more bells and whistles, while Re.vu was easy enough for the average grandparent to understand. Both profiles looked fantastic and took very little time to create. I’d personally recommend using both – since you can’t have too many résumés out there working to get you a job.

More Reading For Jobseekers

These articles will probably also be of interest to you:

• 3 Ways To Meaningfully Visualize Your LinkedIn Network
• Try Signal & Learn How To REALLY Use LinkedIn
• BranchOut Business Networking Rivals LinkedIn [News]
• Top 3 Websites To Build A Free Resume Online

Has a visual résumé helped you to find work? Would you ever wear your résumé on a t-shirt?  What unique ways have you found work?

View full post on MakeUseOf

class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/iphone.png?323f2c" alt="mobile phone culture" />The title="3 Free iPhone Games That Are Too Good To Be Free" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-free-iphone-games-good-free/">mobile phone is amazing, and I can’t really bash it. How cool is it that we live in an age where almost everyone has a title="Check Out These 6 Sci-Fi Wikis To Kill Some Time On" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/check-6-scifi-wikis-kill-time/">Star Trek communicator in their hip pocket? (Now if only we could have phasers.)

However, sometimes even the coolest inventions in the world bring negative impacts, and although it doesn’t take away from how great these inventions are, it is our irresponsibility that puts a bad mark on them. So let’s take a look at how mobile phone culture has ruined the world.

We Have Gotten Lazy

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/foulbachelorfrog.png?323f2c" alt="mobile phone culture" width="580" height="577" />

It’s true, isn’t it? The mobile phone isn’t just a way to communicate to people. Oh no. It’s your go-to device for everything. You can shop online stores, map out trips, and read the news all from one device. Heck, with the right armchair that’s near an electrical outlet, you would never have to even leave your seat.

What I am getting at is that we tend to become very dependent on our phones. When’s the last time that you actually mapped out a trip? How often do you use your mobile phone as a title="A Variety Of Calculator Apps For Both Basic & Advanced Calculations [iPad]" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/variety-calculator-apps-basic-advanced-calculations-ipad/">calculator. Have you ever tried figuring out the time using only the sun? Don’t get too defensive, for it’s true that we should use technology to make our lives easier, and I recognize that. However, we mustn’t forget our roots in the event that technology ever fails us.

We Have Given Up Privacy

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

No longer can you have a moment to yourself in this day and age. If you ignore a phone call and post something on Facebook from your phone right after, the person who called is going to see it, and said person  could quite likely become offended (which is kind of silly when you think about it). I am curious as to when we decided it was okay to let everyone know exactly where we are. Technically, there’s nothing wrong with it, but I would consider it to be a faux pas in the category of societal evolution.

Using apps such as title="How To Check Into Events Using Foursquare" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/check-events-foursquare/">Foursquare, title="Facebook Integrates Deals Into Their Mobile Places Platform [News]" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/facebook-integrates-deals-mobile-places-platform-news/">Facebook, and title="Important Tips on How to Use Twitter Like a Pro" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/tips-how-to-twitter-like-a-pro/">Twitter, we have successfully made the world our mother, letting it know where we are going, who we are going with, and what exactly we are doing while we are there. I’ve been told by a reader that I have missed the point of social networking, but wouldn’t sharing valuable information such as worldwide, local, and even personal news be a more proper way to utilize social networking? By constantly sharing our location (keyword is “constantly”), we set ourselves up for an title="5 Things You Need To Stop Posting On Facebook" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-stop-posting-facebook/">invasion of privacy.

We Have Also Become Too Private

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/foreveralone.png?323f2c" alt="mobile culture" width="580" height="488" />

Ironically, in this supposedly open source world, it seems as though that as soon as we get away from the computer, we become a title="3 Ways You’ve Sold Your Soul To The Internet" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-ways-sold-soul-internet/">privacy-hungry individual. Granted, I do not have a solid foundation for this argument – it’s merely an opinion and currently based upon experience – but how often do you find yourself avoiding face-to-face interaction these days? Surely there will be one of you who comments on here, “Joshua, I don’t have a problem at all with talking to people face-to-face,” and to that, I say good for you.

However, there are people who do struggle with this due to mobile phone culture, and you must recognize that I do not believe all my points apply to everyone. I do ask this – how many people do you know that would rather send a text message than make a phone call? There is something troublesome about a human being more open to an electronic device than a fellow human being.

We Have Forgotten Social Skills

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/sociallyawkwardpenguin1.png?323f2c" alt="mobile phone culture" width="580" height="580" />

Moving on along with this privacy nonsense, I believe that we can assume that all the former rules of privacy have been turned around into something totally unrecognizable. We don’t mind title="4 Reasons I Don’t Like Twitter And Why I Joined Anyway [Opinion]" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/4-reasons-twitter-joined-opinion/">Tweeting that we’re about to use the toilet, but we refuse to say much more than “hello” to a friend on the street.

Furthermore, we tend to make the world our place for private conversations, venturing out into public and having loud discussions that would have made my grandmother blush – alas, the death of the phone booth. The street, dear people, is not a place to have conversations about your sexual frustrations, your diarrhea, or your most recent hit-and-run victim. Save that for at home. Or the car. Somewhere else. Anywhere, really.

Conclusion

It’s very easy to communicate using only text on a screen, and even though actual voice conversations are more closely related to face-to-face interaction, it’s just not the same as two people connecting with each other.

I don’t think we should stop using mobile phones, and with that being said, I don’t think we should stop using social networking or fancy apps that let us order a pizza online. We’re residing in the future, and we should live it up as much as possible! However, there’s something that we need to retain in this mobile phone culture – our humanity.

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/2011-11-28-15h14_15.jpg" alt="download videos from internet" />Streaming video websites are such a big part of our lives, it’s hard to remember a time when they didn’t exist. These websites revolutionized our computer video experience – no longer do we have to download every single video we want to watch – it’s all right there!

But the opposite is also true. Sometimes sending a link or embedding a video is not enough, and we need the actual file, or only its soundtrack. And when that happens, the default FLV file format rarely cuts it. Luckily, there are several downloaders-converters out there that make it easy as pie to download videos and convert them into almost every possible format.

Xenra

href="http://www.xenra.com">Xenra is an easy-to-use web app which both downloads and converts YouTube videos into multiple formats. You can use it to either download whole videos, or extract entire audio tracks from YouTube videos.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/2011-11-28-12h58_49.jpg" alt="download videos from internet" width="529" height="171" border="0" />

It’s very easy to use. Simply enter a valid YouTube link in the address bar and click the big red shiny “Download Now” button. You can then choose which format you want your video or audio file to be in, choose its quality and control several other aspects of the download.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/xenra-13.jpg" alt="download free videos" width="566" height="334" border="0" />

When you’re done, click “Start Conversion”. Xenra will start by downloading the video to its servers, and then convert it into the requested format. The process is rather swift, depending of course, on the video you chose and the quality you selected.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/xenra-2.jpg" alt="download free videos" width="572" height="383" border="0" />

When it’s done, you can download the file, share it, embed it, and generally have fun with it.

ClipConverter

href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/download-clip-convert-web-videos-clipconverter/">ClipConverter is another excellent web app which can be used with multiple streaming video websites, not just YouTube. It can even convert or extract audio from video files you already have on your computer.

To start, paste the video’s URL or upload the file you wish to convert.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/clipconverter-15.jpg" alt="download free videos" width="581" height="205" border="0" />

Now choose which format you want the downloaded file to be converted into. Here too you can download the entire video or extract only the audio. If you wish to download only part of the video, you can specify start and end times and get only that snippet of the video as the final product. When you’re done, click “Start!”.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/clipconverter-2.jpg" alt="download videos" width="580" height="350" border="0" />

ClipConverter downloads and converts your video – and does so extremely quickly – and presents a download link along with a QR code, for downloading directly to your phone.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/clipconveretr-3.jpg" alt="download videos" width="438" height="343" border="0" />

To speed things up even further, try ClipConverter’s href="http://www.clipconverter.cc/addon/">browser add-ons for Firefox, Chrome and Safari, or use the handy dandy href="http://www.clipconverter.cc/addon/">bookmarklet.

ConvertVideoToAudio

href="http://www.convertvideotoaudio.com/">ConvertVideoToAudio is not as slick as the former two web apps, and not nearly as fast. What it does have going for it, are some unique file formats most other such converters don’t offer.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/convert-video-to-audio.jpg" alt="download videos" width="418" height="429" border="0" />

The website itself is way too cluttered with ads, and there are no settings to choose from except format. Having said that, you may find it useful if you need to quickly download and covert an online video into one of these formats, and while you can’t control the quality, it ends up being surprisingly good.

KeepTube

href="http://keep-tube.com">KeepTube is another download and convert service which you can use in multiple ways, although only with YouTube videos. Similar to other web apps, KeepTube sports the copy & paste option, but another way is to add the word “keep” before the word “youtube” on any YouTube URL you’re currently watching.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/keeptube-2.jpg" alt="keeptube-2" width="440" height="371" border="0" />

Both the copy/paste method and the “keep” method will direct you to the KeepTube website, where you can choose your preferred quality. KeepTube can be used mainly for full video downloads (HD and HQ included), but you can also use it to convert videos into MP3s.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/keeptube-1.jpg" alt="keeptube-1" width="580" height="405" border="0" />

If this is not quick enough, you can download a href="http://keep-tube.com/greasemonkey-plugin.php">plugin for Firefox or Chrome, or use the href="http://keep-tube.com/download-youtube-videos.php">bookmarklet. Note that the web app will attempt to launch a Java applet. If this is not to your liking, you can use the non-Java version of the app.

Freemake [Windows]

If web apps are not your cup of tea, and you like the feel of a good desktop app under your feet, this is the option for you. href="http://www.freemake.com">Freemake is a fantastic video converter for Windows which we’ve href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/freemake-easy-video-converter-windows/">mentioned in the past, which now also offers Freemake’s href="http://www.freemake.com/free_video_downloader/">free video downloader.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/freemake-1.jpg" alt="freemake-1" width="577" height="198" border="0" />

This slick piece of software grabs your video links from the clipboard. Copy the video URL and simply click the “Paste URL” button. The software can be set up in advance with your favorite settings, and will start downloading and converting immediately. When it’s done, you can even play the new file directly from the app.

If you turn off the one-click download option, you can set up the quality, format and location for each file separately. The downloader can also be used to extract audio from videos.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/freemake-23.jpg" alt="download videos from internet" width="566" height="598" border="0" />

Note that the software requires an installation of the latest version of .NET. If you don’t have it yet, it might take a little while to download.

Conclusion

Last time I actually needed to download and convert a YouTube video from the Internet, it proved to be quite a difficult task. But downloading an converting online videos has been getting increasingly easier, and after only a year or two, the Web is teeming with quick and simple options. Now I can’t wait for it to becomes even easier.

Know of some more easy-to-use video downloaders that also convert? Know of an important option we missed? Share in the comments!

Image credit: href="http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/206200/206200,1239563704,10/stock-vector-two-arrow-refresh-symbol-28369810.jpg" rel="nofollow">Shutterstock

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/gplus2.png" alt="" />Well, I finally caved in and adopted Google Plus. It wasn’t willingly – with most new fads, I like to wait it out to see if, like 90 percent of most new and exciting online phenomena, it fades away into the ether of cyberspace. In the case of Google Plus, I was instantly reminded of so many other failed projects in the past – href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/4-great-gadgets-to-spice-up-your-google-wave-experience/">Google Wave, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/rise-fall-google-video-player-google-video/">Google Video Player, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/google-notebook/">Google Notebook….the list goes on and on.

So, when Google Plus came out, I had the same trepidation as always. But as time passed, that has certainly changed.

Integrating Google Plus Into Your Blog

Over the past few days I’ve decided to take a closer look at Google Plus, and discovered that it is quickly becoming far more integrated throughout the Internet than many people probably realize. For that reason – it’s probably high time to assimilate with the Borg. After all, resistance is futile, right?

Now, we’ve covered quite a bit of Google Plus here. Mark started us off with href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/started-google/">an overview, Bakari described how Google Plus is href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/google-profile-blogger-blogs-news/">integrated into Blogger, and Matt released the news in July about href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/google-launches-1-websites-news/">+1 for websites.

Just like we did with href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/7-tools-to-integrate-twitter-with-your-wordpress-blog/">Twitter and href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/add-facebook-widgets-buttons-website/">Facebook, it’s time to go over the tools that are available to integrate Google Plus with your blog. First, create a new G+ page for your site in your Google Plus account by clicking on “Create a Google+ Page” in the right navigation pane.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border-width: 1px; border-color: black; border-style: solid;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/googleplus1.png" alt="" width="571" height="509" />

Creating a Google+ page for your blog or website is a critical part of establishing it in the social networking sphere of influence.

By the way – make your tagline count. Focus on topics that your blog or website covers so that people will find you. Pick a good, branded photo for your site and you’re good to go. Once your new page is up, just like on Facebook you can share your stories, post comments and anything else that you can do to start a conversation with your readers.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border-width: 1px; border-color: black; border-style: solid;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/googleplus2.png" alt="" width="579" height="473" />

The About page is important. Make sure that the top ribbon has a cool selection of photos that reflect the sort of content people will find at your site. Offer a good, strong, well-written introduction, contact information (this makes you look more professional), and of course the website link.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border-width: 1px; border-color: black; border-style: solid;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/googleplus3.png" alt="" width="577" height="473" />

Now that you’ve linked from a related Google+ page to your website, it’s time to integrate the Google+ tools to link in the other direction.

Adding A Google Plus Badge To Your Blog

The first thing you want to do is create a badge that links from your website or blog directly to your new Google Plus page for the site. You do this from your Google Plus page that you’ve just created. Click on the “Get Started” link in the left navigation pane, scroll down to “Connect Your Website” and click “Get the Badge“.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border-width: 1px; border-color: black; border-style: solid;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/googleplus4.png" alt="" width="580" height="543" />

This is easy enough, thanks to a fast Wizard that Google provides to complete the process. Just complete the URL that links to your new page, and then scroll down to set up what your direct-link “badge” will look like. Right now your choices are fairly limited, but there is a large G+ image that works pretty well for sidebars. In my case I want to put a medium one at the top of the site.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border-width: 1px; border-color: black; border-style: solid;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/googleplus5.png" alt="" width="579" height="582" />

You can have it print the name of your site, or just leave it as a plain button. The next step is just to highlight the “head” code and paste it somewhere inside the <head> tags. In WordPress this will likely be in your header.php file.

Next, paste the href link section inside the body of your page where you want the badge to show up. In my case, I’ve pasted it inside the main template of my site so that it’ll show up above all content on every page, like shown below.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border-width: 1px; border-color: black; border-style: solid;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/googleplus6.png" alt="" width="525" height="366" />

Adding The +1 Button To Your Site

Next up is adding the +1 button to every article page so people can share your posts with the world. Go to the same “Get Started” page in Google Plus as before, and scroll down to the link to add the +1 button to your site.

You’ll see a blue button that says “Go to Google+” and under that a link that reads “Get the Code“. Click on that link.  That takes you to the easy Wizard for configuring your button without any hassle.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border-width: 1px; border-color: black; border-style: solid;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/googleplus8.png" alt="" width="539" height="548" />

Choose the size of the icon and the width of the text/icon snippet that you want, and you’ll see the code in the field at the bottom. Again, just like you did above, place the <script> section of code into your header, and place the “g:plusone” line of code into your page where you want the button to exist.

Now, voila – people can click on the link to +1 your page. If you’re doing this on WordPress, make sure to edit the single.php file, or whatever php page provides content for individual posts – you want your +1 button to apply to individual articles.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border-width: 1px; border-color: black; border-style: solid;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/googleplus9.png" alt="" width="480" height="421" />

So, there you have it. You’ve just bought into the next big thing. You’ve just assimilated into the Borg, and your site traffic is going to reward you for it.

I honestly thought it would be a lot longer before I would let myself say it, but I actually think Google Plus is here to stay. Not only that, but it may very well be the next big thing to actually have a chance to compete with the Facebook monster. We’ll have to wait and see.

Did you find it easy enough to integrate G+ into your blog? How do you like the Google Pages for websites? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below.

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/ChangeDefaultPassword01.png" alt="how to password protect computer" border="0" />Protecting your computer with a password should be common practice, especially if many people potentially have physical access to it. Windows provides several levels on which you can set passwords to lock your user account. This article will introduce you to all common options and hopefully one will work for you.

Before we even start with password protecting your computer, please make sure you understand how to create a strong password. Here are a few articles to help you out:

• title="5 Free Password Generators For Nearly Unhackable Passwords" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-websites-to-generate-a-safe-and-strong-password/">5 Free Password Generators For Nearly Unhackable Passwords
• title="How To Create A Good Password That You Will Not Forget" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/create-strong-password-forget/">How To Create A Good Password That You Will Not Forget
• title="How To Create Strong Passwords That You Can Remember Easily" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-create-strong-password-that-you-can-remember-easily/">How To Create Strong Passwords That You Can Remember Easily

If you believe you have a reasonably good password, you may want to title="Put Your Passwords Through The Crack Test With These Five Password Strength Tools" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/put-passwords-crack-test-password-strength-tools/">put it through the crack test.

Set Windows User Account / Logon Password

Now I admit setting a Windows password is not very creative, but this is a method worth mentioning nevertheless. Why? Not only will this password be required when the computer is booted, you can also protect an active session in many different ways.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/ChangeDefaultPassword02.png" alt="how to password protect computer" border="0" />

To set an account password in Windows 7, go to your User Accounts via the Control Panel and ‘change’ your password. Moreover, you should make sure a password is set to title="3 Default Passwords You Must Change & Why" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-default-passwords-change/">protect your Administrator account.

Note that a Windows logon password is a very weak defense since it is rather easy to crack, as outlined in these articles:

• title="3 Ways to Reset Forgotten Windows Administrator Password" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-ways-to-reset-the-forgotten-windows-administrator-password/">3 Ways to Reset Forgotten Windows Administrator Password
• title="5 Tips To Reset The Administrator Password in Windows XP" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-tips-to-help-you-reset-a-forgotten-windows-xp-password/">5 Tips To Reset The Administrator Password in Windows XP

Lock Active Session

Clicking the [Windows]+[L] keyboard shortcut will lock your active Windows session. To get back to your desktop requires the Windows password.

For a more ‘transparent’ desktop lock, check out title="ClearLock" href="http://www.swanrivercomputers.com/programs/clearlock">ClearLock, which was reviewed in title="ClearLock – A Cool Transparent Desktop Lock For Windows" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/clearlock-cool-transparent-desktop-lock-windows/">this article.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/02a-The-computer-is-locked.jpg" alt="how to password protect your computer" border="0" />

Enable Wakeup Password

Do you use Hibernate or Sleep? Enable a password on wakeup in your title="Windows 7 Power Options And Sleep Modes Explained" href="Windows 7 Power Options And Sleep Modes Explained">Power Plan’s advanced power settings.

Search and open > Power Plan from the Windows 7 start menu, then click > Change plan settings on your present Power Plan, click > Change advanced power settings in the bottom left. Expand the first item within the Power Options advanced settings and select > Yes. Click > OK and > Save changes.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/CreativePassword02.png" alt="how to password protect computer" border="0" />

Enable Screen Saver Password

To set a password when returning to the desktop from the screensaver, right-click your desktop and select > Personalize. Click on > Screen Saver in the bottom right. In the Screen Saver Settings check the box next to > On resume, display login screen. Click > Apply or > OK to save changes.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/CreativePassword03.png" alt="screen saver password" border="0" />

Password-Free Lock Options

If you’re not keen on using passwords, but do want to lock your computer, have a look at these alternative methods:

• title="Two Unique Ways To Log Into Your Windows Computer Without Typing A Password" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/unique-ways-log-windows-computer-typing-password/">Two Unique Ways To Log Into Your Windows Computer Without Typing A Password
• title="Lock Your Computer with Bluetooth Proximity Lock Utility" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/lock-windows-computer-bluetooth-proximity-lock-utility/">Lock Your Computer with Bluetooth Proximity Lock Utility
• title="3 Ways To Lock Your Keyboard & Mouse And Keep Your Computer Safe From Unwanted Guests [Windows]" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-ways-lock-keyboard-mouse-computer-safe-unwanted-guests-windows/">3 Ways To Lock Your Keyboard & Mouse And Keep Your Computer Safe From Unwanted Guests

Conclusion

There are many ways and places to set passwords. They will certainly keep the average user from accessing your computer and getting hold of your data. However, as mentioned above, it’s possible to hack, crack, or circumvent passwords and often this is an easy task for an experienced user. The following articles highlight this dilemma:

• title="Ophcrack – A Password Hack Tool to Crack Almost Any Windows Password" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/hack-windows-passwords-with-ophcrack/">Ophcrack – A Password Hack Tool to Crack Almost Any Windows Password
• title="How To View Passwords Hidden Behind Asterisk Characters" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-recover-passwords-from-asterisk-characters/">How To View Passwords Hidden Behind Asterisk Characters
• title="6 Free Password Recovery Tools for Windows" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-free-password-recovery-tools-for-windows/">6 Free Password Recovery Tools for Windows

Rather than depending on a single password, be sure to secure your data in many different ways and consider to title="TrueCrypt" href="http://www.truecrypt.org/">encrypt your confidential and sensitive data.

Do you even bother settings standard Windows passwords? Do you use any alternative or creative methods of securing your computer?

Image credits: title="Password Lock" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=44569345">myVector

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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/automated.png" alt="automate computer cleanup" />Computer maintenance isn’t exactly something that most people remember to do. For the general user that isn’t exactly tech savvy, when a computer doesn’t work, they either call for help or simply buy a new computer.

If you have family members or friends that are always calling you for help with a slow computer, I’m going to offer you a solution that you can use to stop those phone calls right now. This solution incorporates six tools into a Windows script. That script is going to perform all of the PC cleanup work that you would do if you were sitting right in front of the computer yourself.

What This Script Will Accomplish

This Windows script is going to run the required tools in command line mode. Many of these tools that you’ve been using for years, you may not have even realized that there is a command-line mode available.

Clean Up Registry & Temp Folders

The first step is probably the most important. We’re going to launch CCleaner in command line mode to clean up temp files and the registry.

One catch. In order to make this script work without constant notifications about the apps making computer changes, you’ll have to disable the User Account Control windows feature in Windows 7.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border-width: 1px; border-color: black; border-style: solid;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/autoclean1.png" alt="" width="571" height="406" />

Now you’re ready to roll. Create a file called CleanComputer.wsf and start it off with the following script.

<job> /> <script language="VBScript">

Option Explicit /> On Error Resume Next

Dim WshShell /> Dim retVal

set WshShell=CreateObject("WScript.Shell") /> WshShell.run "CCleaner.exe /AUTO"

Danny covered href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/optimize-system-run-ccleaner/">CCleaner recently, so you can see just what it is capable of and how much it can optimize your system. When you launch it in the script as shown above with the /AUTO flag, it’ll run invisible and it’ll use the settings you used when you last ran the application. You’ll see CCleaner.exe running in the Task Manager.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border-width: 1px; border-color: black; border-style: solid;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/autoclean2.png" alt="automate computer cleanup" width="520" height="417" />

If you configure CCleaner beforehand, in auto mode it’ll automatically clean up temporary files, log files and your registry as well.

Clean Up Spyware

Next up is to take care of any spyware that might be running on the PC. My favorite tool for that is Spybot, and luckily Spybot also offers a command line feature. The one problem here is that the path to Spybot is full of spaces, which is hard to handle in a Windows Script shell command.

So, create a .bat file with the following:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Spybot - Search & Destroy\SpybotSD.exe" /taskbarhide /autocheck /autofix /autoclose /> Exit

Save it as SpyBot.bat in the same directory as your Windows script. Then in the next line of your WSF file, add the following:

WshShell.run "spybot.bat"

Your Windows Script will launch your batch job that will launch Spybot in command-line mode. You will know it’s running when the Exe appears in the task manager.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border-width: 1px; border-color: black; border-style: solid;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/autoclean3.png" alt="script to clean temp files" width="549" height="410" />

Those four parameters after the spybotsd.exe file  will run Spybot in silent mode, automatically remove any spyware found, and then automatically close.

Remove Malicious Software

In addition to anything Spybot catches, I also like to run the Microsoft href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/890830">Malicious Software removal tool. Download the executable from the “Microsoft Download Center” section, save it in your script directory as “malremove.exe” and then add the following line to your growing Windows Script.

WshShell.run "malremove.exe /Q /F:Y"

The /Q command tells the malware removal tool to run in quiet mode (no interface) and /F:Y tells it to forcibly remove any malware that it finds without any intervention required. The first time you run it during your initial testing, you’ll have to select the option for no warning the next time it runs.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/autoclean4.png" alt="script to clean temp files" width="404" height="305" />

Here it is running in the background.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border-width: 1px; border-color: black; border-style: solid;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/autoclean31.png" alt="script to clean temp files" width="549" height="410" />

So, we’ve covered most of what you’d probably do if you were there in person – run CCleaner to get rid of temporary Internet files and other temp files, remove spyware and malware, so what’s left?

Automate Disk Cleanup

Another common tool that can help computer performance is the Windows Disk Cleanup tool.  First you have to set it up. Go to Start -> Run and type: “cleanmgr /sageset:1“. The following window will appear.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/autoclean6.png" alt="computer clean up script" width="385" height="472" />

Set up the items that you’d like your command line to automatically clean, and then click OK. This tells it that whenever you choose /sageset:1, to utilize the settings you’ve just created. Now, in your Windows Script, add the following line.

WshShell.run "Cleanmgr /sagerun:1"

This will run the Windows disk cleanup silently, using the settings you’ve just created. You can also install the latest Windows updates by first installing  href="http://www.wuinstall.com/">WuInstall.exe and adding this line.

WshShell.run "wuinstall.exe /install /reboot_if_needed"

And don’t forget to do a quick defrag of the hard drive by adding the following lines to the script.

WshShell.run “Defrag volume c:”

WshShell.run "Defrag volume d:"

Automate Virus Scan After Cleanup

Last, but definitely not least, you’ll also want to end your script by firing off a full virus scan. For example, I use Kaspersky, which offers its own href="http://support.kaspersky.com/kis2010/tech?qid=208280476">set of command line parameters.

In my case, I just add the following final line to my script.

WshShell.run "AVP.exe SCAN /ALL /i4"

And that kicks off the command window and runs through a full scan (which can take several hours).

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/antivirus51.png" alt="automate computer cleanup" width="580" height="293" />

Most other anti-virus providers out there offer similar command-line options.

So, once you’ve added all of these lines, close out your Windows Script.

WScript.Quit /> </script> /> </job>

Once you’ve finished the procedure above and saved your file on the PC, just schedule the job to run on a regular basis (/Accessories/System Tools/Task Scheduler). Give the procedure above a try and see how well it works for you.

Did it work well, and can you think of any other useful command line tasks that could also be added? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Image Credit: href="http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/704362/704362,1308593659,3/stock-photo-high-resolution-d-render-of-an-control-panel-in-colorful-lighting-control-panel-switches-80248693.jpg" rel="nofollow">Shutterstock

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/relationship.jpg" alt="ex revenge pics" />When it comes to revenge, they say that it’s a dish best served cold. Today, it seems that when it comes to ex-partners and ex-flames, its best served online. Revenge is as old as man and his ego. Heck, they even have bestsellers on the subject.

With the coming of age of the very public World Wide Web, pouring vitriol on your partner has taken on another dimension. It’s like being hauled up to the town square and given a very public tongue lashing. But don’t get me wrong here. I am not writing this post with a broken heart. I am writing it with an inquisitiveness that’s born out of watching such ‘breaking news’ given top billing by even major news channels.

So, let’s check out some myriad (and creative) ways to take revenge on your ex-partner after a relationship has gone south.

Use Social Media

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Social media like Facebook and Twitter has turned us into vampiric voyeurs. Just change your relationship status message and see the comments you collect. But scorned partners take it further…much further. Posting images of your ex is by far the most common but suspicious spouses also use the relative anonymity of social networks to href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1243354/My-cheating-husband-tried-seduce-sexy-blonde-Facebook--didnt-know-was-.html">pose as someone else and catch their ‘worse’ half’s in the act.

Did you know that href="http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/facebook-infidelity-cheating-spouses-online/story?id=12272421">Facebook Cheating has found a place in popular lingo today along with Facebook Divorce? Check out href="http://facebookcheating.com/">Facebookcheating.com for more relationship horror stories. So you really aren’t alone when it comes to venting it out on Facebook or any other social media. Remember Facebook has a ‘Friends of Friends’ sharing option!

Blast Away With a Blog

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In simple words – put it out on a blog. If you can start a blog about your cats and their favorite pet foods, why not stick it to your ex-flame with sulfurous words. From the free WordPress to Tumblr, you have options galore.

Auction off on eBay

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If you are looking for an instance, look no further than this woman who started a whole garage sale of her ex-husband’s belongings on eBay. The image if I remember went viral very fast, probably inspiring other entrepreneurial broken hearts in its wake.

Ex Revenge Pics Say A Thousand Words

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This is perhaps the most common ways of showcasing your anger. Ex revenge pics by jilted lovers are the stuff of online voyeurs…and all of us have seen a fair share of them. Photo upload and sharing sites like Flickr do their bit by giving you lots of descriptive tags (hate, venom, revenge, feelings, relationships etc.) to use with the photos. Put in a caption and you are set to use photo albums like real world graffiti walls. Oh yes, mark it public.

Go YouTube