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Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. All listed websites are FREE (or come with a decent free account option). No trials or buy-to-use craplets. For more cool websites and web app reviews subscribe to MakeUseOf Directory.

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Bounce – Website annotation is a great way of sharing websites when you want to say something about specific parts of a site. You can leave comments anywhere on a webpage through website annotation thereby fully expressing yourself. Bounce is one site that lets you easily perform this task. Read more: Bounce: Tool For Marking & Annotating Websites.

		FamilyShield – is a great free service that provides protection from phishing schemes. But that is only its secondary object; the primary objective is to block all types of adults websites and save your children from viewing them online. Read more: FamilyShield: Block Adults Websites & Other Malware.
		Anti-Theft For Mobile – There are a number of phone apps that provide great security for iPhones and Android based smartphones. There are 3 basic features these security apps offer: the ability to know where your phone is when lost, the ability to remotely lock your phone and the ability to remotely wipe all of your phone’s data. Read more: Anti Theft For Mobile: Recover Lost/Stolen Cellphone & Protect Your Data.
		Wordgames – If you love smart online games, then you should check out Wordgames. This website is a collection of fun word games and puzzles including popular ones such as Crossword, Sudoku, Hangman, and Typing. There are also more complicated word challenges that you can play here. Wordgames features a new game every week. Read more: Wordgames: Comprehensive Collection Of Fun Word Games online.
		MyJobChart – If you are a working parent then you’ll agree that managing daily household chores and getting kids to do simple tasks is not easy. Before you give up, you might want to try My Job Chart. It’s a nice online tool that introduces a reward-based chore tracking system for kids to get them involved in some daily household work. Read more: MyJobChart: Manage Daily Household Chores With Family.

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Not all webpages are made equal. There will be some webpages which will render you optically-challenged. But thanks to the Zoom feature in all browsers, webpages can be made clearer for readability. The zoom feature has some uses apart from just text enlarging functions.

Noting down the finer details of an image is one of them. Sometimes, thumbnails don’t link to their larger versions. A bit of zoom helps to get a hint of the picture. But the most useful use of zoom is reserved for the elderly. Zooming the webpage a few notches more than the default, makes everything stand out better for them.

There is nothing complicated about the zoom feature. If we talk about Firefox and its full page zoom, the browser provides the option of zooming the entire page or just the text. Firefox also calls up the zoom levels you used on a specific website on a previous visit. Mozilla Links has a nice post on what you can do with Firefox and its zoom.

But as we have seen many times, Firefox is a lot about add-ons. And there are quite a few add-ons available at the Firefox add-on gallery that add whizz to the zoom. Let’s check out six of the best Firefox zoom add-ons.

Zoom Page

Zoom Page is basically a simple add-on that brings the zoom controls from the menu to the status bar for quicker accessibility. You have two buttons (+ and -), and the zoom level. Clicking on either of the two buttons (or using the mouse wheel) increases or decreases the zoom level. A click on the zoom level percentage resets it to the default.

Setting ‘Full Page’ zoom or ‘Text Only’ zoom is just as easy with a right click on the zoom level indicator. From the add-on’s options, the zoom levels can be set to anything between 25% up to 400%.

MouseZoom

MouseZoom is a simple but useful add-on that lets you zoom a webpage using the right mouse button and scroll wheel combo. Another combo renders the browser window in fullscreen. Zoom levels are displayed right on the center of the webpage. You can also configure the zoom levels in the add-on’s options.

NoSquint

NoSquint brings more control to the zoom business by taking over the native zoom of Firefox. You can not only set the default zoom levels on a site by site basis or apply global settings; you can also change the text and background color to whatever suits you. Irritating backgrounds can also be disabled.

Sometimes, NoSquint treats sub-domains of a particular website as the same (For e.g. Gmail and Google Reader). Different zoom levels and colors can be customized for each by using the advanced exception handling features of this add-on.

Image Zoom

The author’s website gives a very good learn-by-trial intro of the add-on. As the name suggests, Image Zoom brings zoom control specifically for images using the mouse buttons and wheel. Right-clicking on any image on a webpage brings up the Image Zoom functions:

I don’t know how useful it is, but you can also rotate images from the context menu. You can also use the wheel and the mouse buttons to do things like zooming in and out, or fit the image to the screen.

PixelZoomer

PixelZoomer represents the web development uses of the zoom tool. Clicking on PixelZoomer’s icon in opens up a screenshot window where you can apply tools like a select tool to measure pixel distance, an eyedropper to pick up color values, and a zoom dropdown to go right down to the details. The maximum zoom level is 3200%. You can speed up your web work with the shortcut keys for all the functions of PixelZoomer.

Theme Font Size Changer

Theme Font Size Changer is a zoom tool with a difference. Instead of changing the size of text or images, it changes the font size in all windows, menus, toolbars, and other browser elements within Firefox. Font sizes can be set anywhere between 9 and 40 pixels to change the appearance of the browser for better accessibility.

As these zoom tools show, it is first about visual accessibility, but the zoom tool is also important for development tasks like picking up pixels and finely measuring pixel distances between two points. Do you use the zoom tool often or do you let your eyes do all the hard work? Let us know.

Image credits: yauhin1

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After monitoring digital trends in student technology and tools for some time, GradeGuru, a McGraw-Hill Education startup has worked out which tools are the most useful for students. They have also ascertained what types of online tools are most important to students and know exactly what needs to be covered in a definitive list of tools. So, with a bit of narrowing down, GradeGuru is happy to present to MakeUseOf readers a list of their top 10 student tools.

This is a fantastic list of online student technology and tools covering all aspects of study, including chat, note-taking, helping your brain do its job and moving your furniture around. Not matter what your field or level of study, you’re bound to find something useful in this extremely well-chosen list.

1. Skype

Skype is well known for being a great way to make voice calls. It’s free to call other Skype users (including conference calls), and the plans to enable calls to landlines are quite reasonable. Skype is also great for video calls – enabling people separated by distance to get a better sense of the people they’re talking to. Windows users can even beta test Skype’s group video chat with up to four users at a time. Now that’s got serious potential for group assignments!

2. Google Docs

Google Docs are a great way to collaborate on documents, keep backups online and generally to keep things organised.

I’d personally be recommending the whole Google Suite – don’t forget how many useful tools for students Google has: Google Books, Google Scholar, Gmail, Google Calendar, plus a number of other useful things. Last but not least, Google Search. Can you believe that you can now search for “Population of Japan” and Google will give you the latest figure at the top of the search results (along with the source)? Forget jetpacks – we already have a hive mind. The future is here.

3. Twitter

Twitter is great for bouncing ideas around with like-minded folks. It’s the ultimate crowd-sourcing tool and can also be used for basic surveys. On a more personal level, Twitter is a great way to keep in touch with fellow classmates and gradually get to know them a little, thus improving overall classroom cohesiveness. It can also be pretty distracting, so watch out!

New to Twitter? Download our Twitter PDF manual – The Complete Guide To Twitter

4. GradeGuru Citation Manager

GradeGuru Citation Manager is a free Firefox Add-on and Javascript bookmarklet which allows you to highlight text, click on the bookmarklet and automatically collect all of the citation data for your quote. Later you can easily paste it into your assignments using APA or MLA format. Handy!

5. Chegg

Chegg is an American textbook rental company. A quick look at their pricing shows that most books can be rented for approximately 1/3 of the cost price. They also care about the environment and will plant a tree on your behalf every time you rent books with them. Sounds like a great way to go green and save money at the same time!

6. Studyrails

Studyrails is primarily a student planner, offering very handy services for a small monthly fee. It allows students to plan their assignment scheduling in order to ensure all their assignments get done on time. Users can send text messages of assignments to Studyrails and Studyrails will help to plan the workload and schedule reminders. You tell Studyrails all of your assignemnts, due dates and expected time to complete.

Then you nominate which timeslots you have available to study and Studyrails re-works your schedule to ensure you’re working on the most important assignment. See the Studyrails demo. These reminders even go so far as to send a text message to you when it’s time to study. Studyrails even helps you avoid distractions by blocking access to certain websites when it’s time to study.

7. Study Tracker

Study Tracker is an iPad app designed by Grade Guru. It’s a brilliantly simple idea: Students enter their study time and their grades. This allows students to evaluate the time spent versus grade outcome and decide how their time is best allocated.

Editor’s note: At the time of writing, this app hasn’t been launched. As soon as its on the iTunes Store, we’ll link to it.

8. MindMeister

Mindmeister is a fantastic mind-mapping tool which allows you to work online, offline and in groups in real time. It’s even available as an iPhone app! The MindMeister interface is really easy to use and the end result looks great. So, it can be used by students both for the brainstorming and planning of projects or to present the final results.

9. Quizlet

Quizlet is a really easy-to-use online flashcard tool. There’s plenty of pre-prepared flashcards for you to learn from or you can easily upload your own. They don’t just plod you through your flashcards either – try playing Scatter or Space Race for something a little different. Absolutely the best way to test yourself!

10. DYD

Design Your Dorm is targetted at American students, making it very easy to set the room size according to American schools, shop for furniture from American stores, plan your room, collaborate with room-mates and even get those goods delivered directly to your school. But, even if you’re not in America, don’t let that stop you. This planning tool is very easy to use and the shop features things you might easily find locally. It’s a great way to design your room, both the layout and feel, and to keep it within your budget.

And a few more

I’d personally also add Netvibes and Delicious to this list, because my studies would have been far more difficult without them.

You might also be keen to check out other MakeUseOf Study Tools, including:

• MakeUseOf’s Smart Productivity Guide
• Top 10 Downloaded Student Tools
• 10 Online Learning Tools
• Three Online Study Tools to Get Better Grades
• Five Free Mac Apps for School
• Three Wikis for Online Studying
• Top 10 Web Tools to Save Your Butt

Thanks again to GradeGuru (in particular Angela Santiago) for giving us this list of tools to share with you today. We hope it helps you with your studies.

Feel free to share your thoughts on these great tools in the comments!

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When it comes to drawing applications, more fully-featured doesn’t always mean better. Some people prefer simplicity to create quick drawings over the steep learning curves of the giant drawing apps. One of the most popular simple-but-quick drawing applications is Microsoft Paint. This application might be the number one choice of such software under Windows for not so graphic literate people.

I used MS Paint a lot. Even though I’ve moved to more “capable” alternatives under Mac, I still miss the bare-bones simplicity of the good ol’ MS Paint every once in a while. That’s why I was excited to find out that there’s a similar drawing app for Mac called Paintbrush.

Quick Doodling

Paintbrush is a free open-source application which was built to fill the needs of a simple drawing app after Apple dropped its MacPaint. But don’t let the word “simple” fool you. Paintbrush is a very capable drawing app. To get a better picture (pun intended), let’s see the application in action.

After downloading and installing it, the first thing that Paintbrush will show you when you open it is the canvas size setting. You can choose one of the preset sizes from the drop down list, or you can set your own preferred size.

You might notice some familiarity in the number combinations of the presets because they are the common pixel settings of a computer monitor.

Continuing on to the drawing canvas, I personally think that the interface couldn’t be any simpler. There are only two things visible: the blank canvas and the tools floating pane.

To start drawing, just pick a tool and begin doodling. You can do free drawing by using a brush and spray, or you can pick a more precise tool like line, curve line, rectangular, ellipse, or rounded rectangular.

Choosing one of the shapes will give you more drawing options. You can choose among empty shapes and two kinds of color filled shape.

You can also adjust how bold the tip of the brush/spray is by moving the stroke slider, and change the line color by clicking at the color picker.

You can zoom in to get more precision in your drawing. Aside from the magnifying glass, you can also adjust the zoom using zoom level chooser at the lower left of the screen.

I tried to do a quick doodle using Paintbrush, and here’s the result.

Beyond Drawing

Besides drawing, the app is also able to do other basic image editing such as resizing, adding text, and also flipping.

To open an external image, use the “File – Open” menu and browse to the location of the file.

While resizing the image can be done using the “Image – Image Size” menu.

Add text to the image by clicking on the “Add Text” icon in the tools pane, write down the text on the text field and adjust the Font using the Font menu.

Paintbrush is indeed simple and might not be enough for those who are used to more heavy graphics applications. But for everyday Mac users who only want to doodle, this app is a solid alternative.

Have you tried Paintbrush? Do you know any other alternatives to light drawing apps for Mac like this one? If so, share your thoughts and opinions using the comments below.

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Often times when we shoot photos, we get so caught up in what we’re shooting (as we should be) that we often don’t think about how we’re composing the shots we take. Or sometimes when taking candid shots, there’s little time to think about composition because we’re trying to capture the moment.

But thanks to post-processing techniques, we can crop photos in ways that make our images more appealing to the eye.

One of the basic and first elements that most photographers learn about in composing a shot is using what is called the imaginary Rule Of Thirds, which consists three sections and four quartiles of which you place your subject. The definition by itself doesn’t makes much sense, so let’s look at illustration.

In this original photo of my son, I composed this shot with his head almost dead center in the frame. Believe me, it looks like he stood still to take the photo, but not hardly. As usual, I had a few seconds before he was off and running.

The composition is okay, but when I’m making use of the Rule Of Thirds, I can explore some other creative ways to crop (and thus re-compose the shot). Thanks to image editing programs like iPhoto, the cropping tool comes with a Rule of Thirds grid that can be used when cropping photos.

One of the basic rules for this technique is to place your subject’s eyes in one of the four quartiles of the grid.

The theory is that taking the subject out of the middle of the frame creates some tension. I like to think that in placing the subject off-center, it leads the viewer’s eyes into the image, instead of the subject of the image coming straight at them.

When you click on the cropping tool in iPhoto and start to move the handles, the grid appears so that you can use it to crop your shot. With my son’s eye placed in the top-right quartile (and the right-third of the grid), the photo seems more appealing, and it eases you into the image.

Some recent cameras also come with a Rule of Thirds grid that can be used while composing shots in-camera. But the idea is to keep the imaginary Rule of Thirds in your head as you shoot photos. While I typically zoom in and shoot close on my subjects, I try to also leave some space for creative cropping.

Another reason for cropping is simply to get rid of the dead or distracting space in an image.

Say I really liked this photo, but as a candid shot I had two distracting subjects in it. Well, I can use the cropping tool to try to get rid of the distractions as much as possible.

Again, the Rule of Thirds can be applied to help better compose the crop.

Cropping for Prints

When it comes to printing photos, many beginning photographers don’t realize that they should crop images to fit the size of prints they plan to make.

If you don’t make the crop, the printing process will do it for you, and it might crop off parts of the photo you didn’t want cropped. Again, in many image editing applications, the cropping tool comes with pre-defined scales to help you accurately crop your images.

So for instance, if I want to make a 4×6 print of this photo, I can constrain the crop to fit the dimensions I need. I do lose part of the photo, but if I didn’t crop ahead of time, the printer might crop off some part of his head.

Even when you’re using an online or in-store printing service, you can use the editing tools to crop your photo before you send them off for printing. Cropping yourself provides you more control over the process.

Note, however, in the online editor in screen shot above, I am not able to freely crop as much as I can as in iPhoto. Thus, in this 4×6 crop I would lose a part of my son’s head in the actual print. So using an off-line image editor is typically better and provides you more control.

Creative Cropping

The Straighten tool, found in all popular image editors, is another technique for cropping images. Though its purpose is to straighten crooked images, you can also have some fun with it and “un-straighten” a photo.

In this photo, I first used the Straighten tool to tilt (un-straighten) my son’s head.

And then I used the crop tool and the Rule of Thirds to further compose the shot.

Sure, I chopped off some of his head, but the crop gives a fun look to the subject of the photo.

Cropping photos in an image editor does take some time. There’s no real automation process that will fit all images. It requires you to make some artistic judgements.

Also, as with any rule, the Rule of Thirds is just a guide, and can be effectively broken. But I think for beginning photographers, it’s a technique that will guide you in composing shots during and after the photo taking process.

This is just a short introduction to photo composition and cropping. If you’re looking for a drop-dead easy way to crop, check out our MUO articles, EasyCropper: Upload and Crop Pictures Online and OnlinePhotoTool.  And for other post processing techniques, check out 10 Must-Know Introductory Photoshop Skills for Beginner Photographers.

Let us know about your strategies for dealing with this subject. If you have a link or two to an interesting crop, let us know about it.

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