Multibar – An Eyecatching & Multifunctional Application Dock [Windows]

Multibar – An Eyecatching & Multifunctional Application Dock [Windows]:

Multibar is a stylish and smart application dock for Windows. It is designed to help you get to your files, folders, and tools faster. For instant access, Multibar supports hotkeys and quick launch commands. As an added bonus, it also helps with un-cluttering your desktop.

When Multibar first launches after its installation, it will proceed to index your files and folders. This step is necessary if you want to use the instant search feature. Unfortunately, Multibar presently can only index your C drive.

Multibar opens at the touch of a button and that button is your [Windows] key. When you click this hotkey, your cursor will instantly jump to the instant search field (red arrow in screenshot below). In the window below you will see a selection of quick launch commands. Type in a program or folder you want to open or click your [Tab] key to move to the other items in the instant search window.

When you hover over an application icon in your Multibar, it will show the recently used files, provided you didn’t disable this Windows feature. Hovering over a folder will show its content.

You can manually open the Multibar with your mouse by clicking the little pull-down label on the side or top of your screen. It is also shown directly below.

When the dock is open, click the tools icon in the top left corner to access Multibar’s settings.

If you don’t like the fact that the Multibar opens when you hit the [Windows] key, you can disable this hotkey. Further hotkeys can be accessed and modified via the respective tab.

Through the settings you can customize the look and feel of your Multibar. Decide where on your screen it is located, how it behaves, change the size of the icons and the background, and set which icons are shown.

Presently, you have the choice between 11 different skins for your Multibar, which are available via the Themes tab.

Multibar comes with a small selection of added tools: games, a friend meter, and a weather forecast tool. More addons (some premium) can be found on the Ticno homepage. The smart folders feature advertised on the installation screen appears to be missing in the current build.

The only default addon worth mentioning here is the weather forecast tool. It determines your present location based on your IP address and will show a five day forecast when you hover over the icon in your Multibar. The games and friendmeter addons didn’t work for me and I recommend to disable them via the addons tab in the settings.

Taken together, Multibar is a very sleek, unobtrusive, and intuitive to use application dock for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

MakeUseOf has previously written about docks, please check out these articles:

• How To Create A Dock In Windows Vista
• Docks – The 6 Best Friends of your Windows Taskbar
• 4 Applications to Give Windows XP Mac Functionality

How do you organize and access your shortcuts to files, folders, and applications? Do you love your chaotic desktop or have you found other ways to handle them? Please share your strategy with us!

How To Block Unwanted Calls On Your Android Phone

How To Block Unwanted Calls On Your Android Phone:

With my ancient Nokia, when people were calling and bugging me, I couldn’t do much about it. The phone would ring, I would glance at the caller ID and silence it. If it was someone particularly insistent, I had to repeat the process several times, or just turn off the phone. With Android, I no longer have to do this.

I’m going to show you two different ways to block unwanted callers. The first is easy, free and built-in, while the second is more powerful and makes use of the amazing Tasker app.

The Simple, Free Way

Did you know Android already contains a built-in facility for filtering calls? Let’s say you’ve got an evil troll on your address book; someone whom you never want to speak to. To block all calls from this contact, fire up the Contacts app, go to the contact, and press Menu:

Now, tap Options:

And add a check next to “Incoming calls“. This way, all calls from this contact will be sent directly to voicemail.

This method has the advantages of being free, easy to use, and requiring no extra software. However, it also has some drawbacks. What if it’s someone you don’t want to always block, but only sometimes? And what if you’re trying to block all calls from unknown callers (i.e, “hidden numbers”)? These guys don’t have entries in your address book, so you can’t use this method at all. In that case, it’s time to kick things up a notch.

The Sophisticated, Tasker-Based Way

If you don’t know Tasker, you should read my introduction to Tasker, as well as Angela’s Tasker GPS tutorial. Both of these show some of the magical stuff that can be done with this app, which is, by the way, leaps and bounds beyond anything you can do with an iPhone, including iOS 5. iPhone bashing aside, we’re now going to look at how you can set up a Tasker profile for blocking unknown callers, and then set up a widget for toggling this profile on and off.

First, run Tasker and hit the + button for adding a new context:

Select Event > Phone > Phone Ringing:

Under “Caller”, put the number of the caller you’re trying to block. Since we’re trying to block all unidentified calls, we need to enter “0″ here. Now hit the OK button.

Next, it’s time to select a task that would be executed when this context becomes active. As in what is your phone going to do when you get a call from a hidden number? You can select from any existing task, but you’re probably going to have to press New Task:

Next, hit the + button on the bottom-left:

When an unknown caller calls, we just want the phone to send them to voicemail, i.e, hang up the call. So go to Phone > End Call:

Your finished profile should look like this:

Okay, that was part one. You now have a profile that blocks all incoming calls from hidden numbers. Now let’s create a widget for toggling this profile on and off. Begin by noting the name of your blocking profile (here, called “Block hidden numbers” – we’ll be using this name later), and then toggle it off. Just tap the check-mark on the right. Next, long-tap your home screen, and add a Tasker task widget:

Select New Task and give it a name. Next, configure the task to look like this:

And there’s also step 6, which didn’t fit on my screen for the screenshot:

I know this might look a bit complex, so let’s break it down a little bit. The first thing we do is add a variable called %TOGGLE, and assign it a value of 1 and a “Wrap Around” value of 2. This means that %TOGGLE “wraps around” to 0 as soon as it reaches 2. In simple terms, it starts at 0, increments to 1, then goes back to 0 again. It looks like this:

Next, we toggle the “Block hidden numbers” profile. This is step 2, and it looks like this:

In step 3, we set the widget icon to a green “picked up phone” icon (i.e, “not blocking”), if %TOGGLE equals 1. It looks like this:

Step 4 sets a different icon (a red “bounced call” icon) if %TOGGLE equals 0:

Steps 5 and 6 do exactly the same things as steps 3 and 4, but set the widget label rather than the icon. I’ll just show you step 5:

Obviously, make sure you pick the correct label to go with each icon: The red icon, shown when %BLOCKING = 0 gets “Blocking” while the green one, shown when %BLOCKING =1, gets “Available”.

If you’ve done everything correctly, you should end up with something like this:

Which after a single tap, would change to this:

You can then go into your Tasker task list and see that the blocking profile is indeed toggled on.

Caveats

The first caveat is that this isn’t the simplest Tasker setup ever. If it’s your first one, you may need to fiddle with it a little bit until you get it to work. If things don’t work, drop me a comment below and I’ll try to help.

The next thing you should know is that Tasker provides a lot of other ways to toggle a profile on and off. For example, you may decide you wish to toggle the “Block hidden calls” profile according to the time of day, or your location. If you do that, the widget you created can easily go out of sync with the actual state of the profile. That can still be fixed, but it would involve a more complex setup which goes beyond the scope of this post.

Final Thoughts

Tasker is awesome, and this is just one example of its sheer power. It’s true that there are dedicated call-blocking apps on the market, but they are often heavy and do a lot of other stuff, such as block numbers off a central cloud-based list of spam numbers (useful if you’re in the US, not so much if you’re not). Tasker lets you configure your own custom call blocker, to work just like you want it to.

Are there any other Tasker profiles you’d like to see featured here?

Get Multiple Translations Fast with QTranslate

Get Multiple Translations Fast with QTranslate:

With the advent of the Internet, it’s become common for people that speak different languages to converse on a regular basis, either for business or pleasure. Personally, I communicate with three different people that speak a language other than English on a regular basis. This means I am almost always on the lookout for better translation tools. QTranslate is a freeware program that let’s you search multiple different translation sites at one time, gather the results, and compare them to see which one is best.

Anyone who has used more than one site like BabelFish or Google Translate knows that for every site you submit a translation question to, you’ll get a different answer as to what the proper translation is or should be. For me, that means bouncing around from site to site for at least a few minutes before I have an idea and general consensus of the right translation, or even something close to it. With QTranslate, this becomes infinitely easier. You can translate anything from emails to webpages or text files of almost any file format.

Created by QuestSoft, the program offers two different versions to install. First, the ‘normal’ version, and also a ‘portable’ version. The difference is that the portable version will store all the relevant information for the program’s settings within the program folder itself, rather than in the usual /User/ folders. This is a nice nod from the developers to the laptop and netbook users of the program, and since those are possibly most likely to need a program like this, it makes sense.

Upon running the program, you’re offered a small window that features two main sections. The top section immediately shows some helpful hotkey information for the program and the bottom section is blank, awaiting input of the word or phrase you want to translate. Additionally, there are two drop down windows for auto-detecting or specifying what languages you want to translate to and from. For example, if you’re translating a phrase from English to Russian, you’d select English in the left box and Russian in the right box. The auto-detect feature is nice for when you have a copied block of text from a language that you don’t recognize or can’t positively identify. I found it to be fairly accurate most of the time.

In the bottom of the input section is a little button that looks like headphones and clicking on it will have the program read the text in the section aloud. This function requires that you have the proper TTS, or Text To Speech, package installed on Windows. Below that section is a listing of the different sites that QTranslate uses. You can either click the generic “translate” button in the middle of the window, which will translate the given text using the most recent site you’ve selected, or you can click one of the specific site buttons to switch to a different one. There’s even a virtual keyboard built in and it keeps a history of what you’ve recently translated, for handy repeat reference. It has a built in spell checker, an auto-complete feature that suggests finished words while you type, and a handy ‘help’ button that re-displays the hints in the top section any time you need them.

Now, all of that is the main window. The program is meant to be used with websites and any other program that allows text selection. The most handy function of the program is that once it is running, you can select any line or block of text, and press the hotkey combo of Ctrl+Q to instantly translate that text using the current settings of the main window. The program supports the following translation services and any of the languages those services can handle. That’s nearly everything out there from Albanian to Yiddish and all the stuff between.

• Google Translate (translate.Google.com);


• Microsoft Translator (Microsoft translator.com);


• Prompt Mobile (m.online-translator.com);


• SDL (www.freetranslation.com);


• Yahoo! Babel Fish (babelfish.yahoo.com)

This essentially turns your computer into the next best thing to a universal translation device. You’ll be able to translate almost any text in the blink of an eye, and you can now impress all kinds of people with your worldly skills in communication. A mobile app would be nice, but nothing has been announced in regards to developing one in the future as yet.

Until next time, my friends!

Compatibility: Windows 7/Vista/XP/2008 Server/2003 Server operating systems. Version 2.3.1 Tested on Windows 32-Bit Home Premium and Chrome (5.0+)

Available here (approx 331K).

Lord of Ultima Tutorial – Starter Gameplay Guide (Tips, Tricks, Strategy, Statistics)

This article is intended to teach you how best to start your game in Lord of Ultima-as with any game there are certain ideal ways to play for maximum efficiency. If you are able to outpace the players around you at the start of the game, you will have a huge advantage and can begin to take over the area.

Why should you listen to me?

Not only have I done (and continue to do) research, but I have a large alliance who shares their secrets and strategies with me. We often discuss specific game engine concepts to calculate the maximum efficient way to progress in the game. Basically, we do the work and you reap the benefits! Furthermore, myself and my alliance have past experience in a number of games, specifically browser based games like Tribal Wars (tribalwars.net), The West, Lunar Wars, and others. In Tribal Wars, which is very much like Lord of Ultima, I reached the #1 rank in kills for the World and was in the top 10 overall points rank. This is not to brag, just to share that I take these games seriously (perhaps too much so), so readers will believe that this is credible information.

If you find you have a question that is not covered in this article, here are two useful resources:

• Lord of Ultima Wiki
• Lord of Ultima Official Forums

Beginner Concepts

• Join a large alliance of active people near you geographically. Their support will be invaluable.
• You have a 7 day grace period where you cannot be attacked. Utilize this by focusing on resource-building early on.

Resources

Resources like the Woodcutter’s Hut receive increased production by being connected to any of 3 different things. Note that diagonal DOES count as being connected! A maximum of 8 squares can affect each square, but squares at the border walls of your won’t get the full number.

1. Resource fields – Forest, Stones, Iron Mines, Lakes, Farmland (empty grassland)
2. Manpower – Cottage
3. Processing – Sawmill, Stonemason, Foundry

Be sure to consider how best to use the bonuses provided by adjacent squares. For example, you should find a heavy collection of forests or stones in at least a couple places. There should be 1 or 2 squares which are touching 5-6 of the resource, be sure to build the correct production building at those squares.

Note that you CAN destroy resource fields, but you should almost never do this at the beginning of a game. When your city is nearly fully upgraded and your are completely out of room you may consider it then.

Step By Step Walkthrough Guide:

Day 1:

• Build your maximum amount of lvl 1 production facilities of woodcutter’s huts and quarries. Wood and stone are your primary resources needed for building up your buildings. Be sure to maximize placement next to resource fields like stones and forests for huge bonuses.
• Upgrade your town Hall a few levels (aim for lvl 4 or so) to increase your maximum building cap.
• At squares connected to 3, 4, 5, or 6 resource fields, begin upgrading the woodcutter’s huts and quarries to level 2, 3, and possibly 4.
• Depending on how often you will log in, build up to 2 warehouses (upgrade a little if necessary) so your resource capacity will not be reached before the next time you log in. Note that upgrading your Town Hall also increases your resource capacity considerably.
• Be sure to visit the “Quests” tab, there are some quests that will be easily completed that give you extra bonuses.
• Build 1-2 Iron mines at the best locations, no more.

Day 2:

• Upgrade your Town Hall 1 or 2 levels with the resources you have saved up
• Build a single farm, barracks, training ground. Start recruiting up to about 100 berserkers if you plan to play fairly often (multiple times a day). You can get a nice resource bonus by raiding dungeons with them. If you only plan to play once every 1-2 days, do not bother with army units yet.
• Be sure to keep building resource buildings. Again focus only on stone and wood at this point. You should always be at your maximum building cap; lvl 1 buildings are cheap and fast to build.
• Upgrade most, if not all, of your lvl 1 Woodcutter’s Huts and Quarries to lvl 2, and the best situated to lvl 3.
• If you have any super-great spots, with 4-6 forests/stones touching them, upgrade those further to level 4.
• By the end of day 2 your Town Hall should be about level 6. If you plan to raid, your barracks should be level 4-5 and you should have about 50 – 75 berserkers. You should have a ton of lvl 2 quarries and lvl 2 woodcutter’s huts, and a few at level 3, maybe 4. Your income should be around 2000 wood/h and 1500 stone/h
• Raiding: send 10-20 berserkers (more gives diminishing returns) to nearby dungeons to gather extra resources. Do this whenever you can, a raid should take any where from 1 to 3 hours round trip. Unless you upgrade, you’ll only be able to send out 5 waves at a time, which is okay for now.

Day 3:

• Upgrade all of your lvl 2 resources to lvl 3 immediately, if they aren’t there already.
• Keep enough resources to then upgrade your Town Hall to lvl 7 (requires 15,000 wood and 10,000 stone). This will take about 5 hours.
• Build more lvl 3 production (wood and stone) everywhere possible, up to your maximum building count.
• Start building cottages in ideal locations (4+), upgrade them to level 4-5 max, otherwise it is too expensive for now.
• Start placing Sawmills or Stonemasons  when you are able to build these (requires Town Hall 7 – o r 8?). Place them so they touch the corresponding resource production places. For now you’ll want about 2 of each, but a few more later.
• Before you stop playing for the day, upgrade your Town Hall to level 7 or 8.

Day 4:

• You should have the maximum buildings built always. You get 10 for every level of Town Hall. At this point, most should be woodcutter’s huts or quarries (roughly 4 WC to 3 quarry ratio). All of your WC and quarries should be at least lvl 3, many level 4, and ideal location ones at level 5.
• Continue to send out raids to close dungeons if you have time. 5 waves of 20 berserkers should be fine for lvl 1 dungeons.
• Start utilizing cottages to increase your construction speed, aim for at least 200-300% construction speed around this time.
• You should be hitting 4500+/hr wood and 3500+/hr stone at this point.
• Don’t bother building other buildings right now. No Trinsic Temple, Castle, Marketplace, Towers, Moonglow Tower, etc. They won’t be of use until after your 7 day grace period is up.
• Upgrade to Town Hall lvl 9 overnight. This should take around 10 hours with the cottage bonus.

Day 5:

• Build up to your maximum limit of buildings again. Look around you on the region map to see if there are any lvl 3 dungeons within 2-4 hours travel time. If so, you will probably want to recruit more berserkers — 200+ total. This will require upgrading the barracks or building another barracks. Keep sending berserkers out to these lvl 3 dungeons, the rewards begin to be worth it at this point.
• Again have all your resource buildings at lvl 3 at least, and start upgrading to lvl 4.
• Start utilizing cottages more to increase construction time (now that almost everything will take 2+ hours otherwise). Upgrade a bunch of cottages to about lvl 6 or 7 for now for a good bonus without spending too much time or resources. Note that a cottage built anywhere gives a construction speed bonus for everything, not just the surrounding squares. However, cottages act like forests to boost resource production, so place them so woodcutter’s huts and quarries will benefit. You can see your overall construction speed bonus in your building queue. Aim for at least 400% or so for now, maybe more.
• You should aim to have lvl 4 resource buildings by the end of the day
• Start upgrading a Moonglow tower, go for lvl 5 or so today
• Upgrade Town Hall to lvl 10 at the end of the day if possible, otherwise on the next day.

Day 6:

• By now you’ll want to be looking at having well over 500% construction speed (ideally 600-700%, possibly more). Be sure to place the cottages so they border and boost resource production. Try to find a sweet spot where you are able to build fast enough to constantly spend your resources.
• Begin to build some iron mines (you should have only needed 1 until now). Iron is needed to build up your armies.
• Start building and upgrading barracks.
• Continue upgrading your Moonglow tower (requires lvl 10 to get a baron).
• Be sure to upgrade to Town Hall lvl 10 today.
• Continue raiding whenever possible. Again, depending on how often you play, close dungeons can be ideal.

Day 7:

• Your last day of protection. Use today to build up defenses so you don’t become an easy target.
• Important defenses: Towers and Traps (can easily and cheaply cut invading army strength in half and boost the defense of your own troops).
• Defense Troops – city guards are cheap and recruit very quickly, but are fairly weak. You will want defense of all kinds: infantry, cavalry, magic, artillery. The tooltips of units in the recruit tab will tell you the defense power of each unit to each type. Generally, you will want a lot of infantry and cavalry defense and a much lesser amount of magic and artillery defense.
• Wall upgrades – fairly cheap way to raise defense % of your entire army.
• Continue upgrading your moonglow tower, aim to be able to make a baron in 2-3 days to start a new city.
• Here is where you will really want to start building a ton of cottages and maxing them out. When you have a high construction speed (1000%+) you can even start destroying resources to create an ideal resource layout. See below for cottage layout.
• The ideal building layout for resources: in the center section of your town create vertical lines. On the left, start with a vertical line of woodcutter’s huts. Next make a vertical line of cottages, then repeat this pattern all the way across your center section. Then go back to your first line of cottages on the left and create a sawmill at the top and the bottom of the vertical line. Then go to your next vertical line of cottages and create a sawmill directly to the left of your Town Hall. You’ll note this connects almost all of your woodcutter’s huts to a sawmill. Repeat this pattern again for the right half of the inner city section. You can swap the 6-square sections around a sawmill with the correct buildings for stone or iron, etc. This appears to be close to the best, if not the best layout for maximum income.
• See the below picture for an example, for your first town I would suggest only using the center section for resources then the spare building placements for troops/barracks stuff.
• Offense: Crossbowmen and Paladins are fast and carry a lot of loot so are ideal for plundering if you will be playing often. Berserkers are cheap and fast to make and will likely be the backbone of your army. Be sure to scout before attacking, use “plunder” unless you actually want to take over a town, and be careful not to piss off any big alliances!

Ideal building placement for resources

More to come! Lord of Ultima is currently in an open beta mode and is free to play. As a comparison, it is similar in a way to the Civilization game series, but is less intensive and can be played for only minutes a day from any internet browser. Sign up to play at lordofultima.com

If you have any tips or comments you’d like to share, please do so in the comments section below!