Ah, the Internet. Over the years, the Internet and technology has brought many great benefits into our lives. Today, we no longer need to step out of our houses every morning to fetch the daily paper. We no longer need to visit the bank to find out how much money we have. We don’t even need to remember trivial information like phone numbers or how to spell properly. Technology does it all for us.
Here’s a list of 15 things and practises that no longer exist, or could be on the brink of extinction, thanks to the glory of the Internet.
What would you add to this list?

1. Public phones

Image credit: AcidFlask/flickr

2. CDs and cassettes

Image credit: Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos/flickr

3. The Rolodex

Image credit: TOKY Branding and Design/flickr

4. Encyclopedias

Image credit: jev55/flickr

5. Classified ads in newspapers

Image credit: engineroomblog/flickr

6. Disposable cameras

Image credit: Kai Schreiber/flickr

7. Yard sales

Image credit: Bradley Stemke/flickr

8. Lining up to pay bills

Image credit: Tamal Das/flickr

9. Planning road trips on paper maps

Image credit: Rui Pereira/flickr

10. Physical copies of the Yellow Pages

Image credit: Francis Mariani/flickr

11. Answering machines

Image credit: Scott Diedrick/flickr

12. Faxes

Image credit: Nathan Rein/flickr

13. Teletext

Image credit: Clive Darra/flickr

14. Buying or reading newspapers

Image credit: Jon S/flickr

15. PDAs

Image credit: Andy Melton/flickr

So you have plans for a creative project and you aren’t sure where to begin? Why not start off on the Web? The Internet has a low barrier of entry yet grants you access to the largest audience known to man — the worldwide audience. There has never been a better time to jumpstart a creative project on the web than now and you won’t even need to spend much money to do so.
Unfortunately, though the Internet has increased the viability of creative projects, the creative process remains as difficult as ever. You’ll face a lot of challenges and setbacks along the way and it’s important to know how you can maximize your chances for success. It’s okay to think big and grand, but you’ll need to take baby steps before you get there. Here are some tips to keep in mind along the way to help stave off failure.

1. Plan and Prepare

As with most projects, creative or otherwise, the most important step is to plan ahead. I’ve personally started and failed many hobby projects (with some successes!) and the common factor between all of those failures was inadequate planning. Something that you couldn’t have foreseen blindsides you, leaving you unsure how to continue.
Planning helps to prevent the unexpected. Of course, it’s not entirely possible to know every contingency ahead of time, but it doesn’t hurt to explore every realistic facet. Once you think of everything that could go wrong, you can consider how you’ll overcome those obstacles before they manifest as real threats, which will better prepare you in case those problems do occur.

2. Set Proper Goals

Once you have an idea of where you want to take your project and how you think you can achieve it, you’ll want to set proper goals. “A proper goal,” you ask? Indeed. A proper goal will enhance your productivity, make your timeline clearer, and ease a lot of stress off of your back. Bad goals, on the other hand, will be vague, hard to follow, and offer no motivational value.
For more information, read our article on critical mistakes to avoid when setting goals.
Organization is an important aspect of managing a project. Keeping all of your ideas, plans, and goals in order will help ensure that your project flows along smoothly. Organization can come as easily as using the world’s simplest to-do system or through any other tools designed to keep you ordered and organized.

3. Establish A Web Presence

Lately, it seems like any project that doesn’t have a sizeable presence on the Web is doomed to fail. Web presence is important for building a userbase and maintaining a fanbase. It’s the fastest and easiest way for others to connect with your project and there’s no good reason not to have one.
How do you go about establishing a web presence? There’s always social media, but the best way is to use a self-hosted WordPress site. WordPress has proven itself to be more than just a blogging engine — it can be used to power entire websites. (Hint: MakeUseOf runs on WordPress!) It’s easy to set up, easy to use, and extensible through plugins.
New to WordPress? No problem. We have a full guide to setting up a WordPress site. On top of that, we have a Best WordPress Plugins page and a great article detailing 10 essential elements of a great WordPress site.
Not a fan of WordPress? There are alternative web systems out there that will power your website. These systems are called CMSs, or content management systems, and they vary in usability, power, and features. However, if you’re interested, check out our list of the 10 most popular content management systems.
Lastly, you may not even need a website if you can establish a strong presence through YouTube. Of course, this requires that your project be conducive to videos (e.g., if you plan on being a painter, timelapse videos could be a great way to get your name out there). Building a YouTube presence is all about making videos that people will want to share and maximizing video views.

4. Crowdfund

If you need funding for your project, whether it’s to purchase supplies or buy web hosting or hire outside help, it has never been easier than it is today thanks to the advent of services like Kickstarter and IndieGogo. You don’t need to be a big name creator to be successful on these crowdfunding sites; in fact, Kickstarter has a page dedicated to small projects (those raising under $1,000).

5. Find Help

A lot of creative projects start off as one person’s baby and if you’re a creator, you might have a strong attachment to your ideas because they’re your ideas. However, there’s a good chance that you aren’t an expert at everything, which means you’ll probably need outside help to make your ideas a reality. Whenever you have the choice between doing everything yourself at a mediocre level or finding/hiring expert helpers, you’re better off with the latter.
For example, when creating a game, you might be able to create an above-average product on your own, but specialized AI programmers, sprite artists, network administrators, and others can probably do their work better and faster than you. Similar, if you’re self-publishing fiction, you could self-edit and make your own semi-decent covers, or hire an editor and artist for top-notch quality.
Collaboration is also a great way to keep your project going strong due to the accountability and shared motivation. There are free services out there for collaborative web conferencing, collaborative document editing, and other collaborative activities.

6. Persevere and Stay Motivated

If planning is the most important element of starting a creative project, then perseverance is the most important element of finishing one. Logic states that if you don’t follow through then the project will never be done, so you need to actively seek ways to keep your motivation up, especially if the project takes you months or years from start to end.
Fortunately, we have a few resources that could help you out. If you tend to derive a lot of your hype and positivity from motivational videos, we have a roundup of inspirational videos for instant motivation. If you prefer drawing your motivation from websites, articles, and anecdotes, why not check out these inspirational websites for every day?

Conclusion

If you take the above advice to heart, you’ll be better prepared than most to create a project that ends up successful. There’s never a guarantee for success, of course, but with enough effort you have the power to tip the scales in your favor. Good luck!
Do you know of any other tips that could be beneficial for creative projects? Have any stories of past failures or past successes? Share your thoughts and experiences with us in the comments!

Windows Explorer — known as File Explorer on Windows 8 — is an application that you probably spend a good amount of time in. Even Windows geeks that avoid using any other Microsoft program tend to use Windows Explorer instead of a third-party file manager. But, while we spend time customizing our browser with extensions, we often don’t think about hacking our file manager. There are a lot of ways you can customize Windows Explorer to make your file management experience faster and more efficient.
We won’t dwell on Windows Explorer’s built-in options here — just the most interesting ways you can go off the beaten track and do things that aren’t obvious.

Add Copy to Folder and Move to Folder

With a quick registry hack, you can add “Copy to Folder” and “Move to Folder” entries to your Windows Explorer context menu. You’ll be able to right-click on files or folders and select the Copy To Folder or Move To Folder options. Selecting either option will open a window where you can choose your preferred destination folder, simplifying the file copying and moving process.
To do this, simply download the .reg file for your preferred option from the Seven Forums website — either Add_Copy_To_Folder.reg or Add_Move_To_Folder.reg — and double-click it. Windows will add the information to your registry and display the options in your context menu.

Edit Your Send To Menu

The Send To menu allows you to right-click files or folders and easily perform an operation on them. By default, you can send a document to your desktop, compress it, email it to someone, and more. But you aren’t just limited to the options hat appear here by default. Your Send To menu is actually just a folder, and you can open it to easily add your own custom shortcuts and delete the shortcuts that already exist there.
To open the Send To folder on Windows 7 or 8, press Windows Key + R to open the Run dialog, type shell:sendto, and press Enter. After you’ve opened the folder, copy shortcuts you want to use to the folder. If you want to remove shortcuts from the Send To menu, just delete them from the folder.

Customize Your Context Menu

Windows Explorer’s context menu, or right-click menu, becomes cluttered over time as you install more and more software. You can normally uninstall the associated programs to get rid of their right-click menu entries, but what if you’d prefer to leave them installed? You can use a tool like CCleaner to remove options you don’t use from your right-click menu, making it more minimal and less cluttered.
CCleaner doesn’t list all context menu entries — check out our list of ways to remove context menu entries for more information.

If you’d rather add custom shortcuts to your context menu, you can do that by using a program like FileMenu Tools, which we’ve previously covered.

Change Your Default Folder

On Windows 7, Windows Explorer opens to your Libraries folder whenever you open it. But maybe you don’t use libraries, or perhaps you just use a different folder more often instead.
Microsoft doesn’t make this option obvious, but you can easily change the default Windows Explorer folder to your preferred folder by editing your taskbar’s Windows Explorer shortcut. Whenever you launch Windows Explorer, you’ll see the folder you chose. We like making the Downloads folder the default folder, giving you easy access to your recently downloaded files, but you should choose whatever folder you use most.
To do this, right-click the Windows Explorer (or File Explorer) shortcut on your taskbar, right-click Windows Explorer in the jump list that appears, and select Properties. Add the path of your preferred folder to the end of the Shortcut box.

Add Tabs

Apple’s Finder is getting tabs in OS X Mavericks, and Linux file managers have had tabs for a long time. But Windows Explorer is still without tabs, even on Windows 8. Internet Explorer was the last big browser to get tabs, and it seems that Windows Explorer will be the last big file manager to get tabs — if it ever does.
While you can replace Windows Explorer with tabbed file managers, you don’t have to switch to a new file manager just for this small feature. Third-party tools like QTTabBar can add tabs to Windows Explorer, giving you the ability to have several folders open in the
same file browsing window.

Improve File Copying

The file-copy dialog on Windows 7 and previous versions of Windows isn’t very good. It’s slow, has trouble dealing with file conflicts, and doesn’t allow you to pause file operations. If there’s a file conflict or another problem, the file-copy dialog will stop in its tracks and wait for your input rather than continuing and dealing with conflicts later. Windows 8 improved on this, but you don’t have to upgrade to Windows 8 just to get a better file-copying experience.
To get an improved file-copy dialog, just install TeraCopy and enable its Explorer integration options. Whenever you copy or move files in Windows Explorer — either with drag and drop or copy and paste — TeraCopy will leap into action and perform the file-copying instead. This effectively rips out Windows’ poor file-copy dialog and gives you a much better one. You can disable the integration in the future if you’d like to use the standard file-copy dialog.
TeraCopy also adds itself to your context menu as an option, so you can launch it only when you want it and use the standard file-copy dialog most of the time, if you prefer.

Do you have any other useful tips for hacking away at Windows Explorer? Leave a comment and share them!

Guns don’t share illegal files. People share illegal files. Or, wait, how does it go again? What I mean to say is, BitTorrent has a bad reputation for its piracy potential, but it shouldn’t. BitTorrent is a tool that allows people to share and receive files with other people and there are legal uses for BitTorrent unrelated to downloading illegal files.
Torrenting is so popular that there are dozens of great clients out there, but many of them are packed with bloat and extra features that the average user will never use. What if you want a clean, simple, and easy client instead?
Sometimes you want to pop open your torrenting client and download a range of items as soon as possible. Maybe you want to do this on an old computer that rattles and whines with every spin of the hard drive. Maybe you just don’t care for all the bells and whistles. A lightweight BitTorrent client is exactly what you’re looking for, and thankfully there are several good ones from which you can choose. Here are the ones I’d recommend.
Note: If you’re a complete newbie to the concept of torrenting, fear not. We have a fantastic beginner’s guide to BitTorrent written by our very own Saikat and it’ll get you started off on the right foot.

Tixati [Windows, Linux]

As of right now, Tixati is my BitTorrent client of choice. I’ll admit that it’s not the most beautiful client around – frankly speaking, it’s actually quite ugly – but it certainly gets the job done without hogging too many resources. Just look at the screenshot above and you’ll get a sense of what Tixati is all about: sharing files! You’ll find no built-in media managers, social networking, or web browsing here.
With regard to performance, I’m impressed. I don’t know if it’s all in my head or what, but my own experience is that Tixati’s speeds are faster than other competitive torrenting clients. When prioritizing files, they do indeed download much faster than files with low priority. Perhaps it has something to do with Tixati’s special algorithms for efficient peer selection. And best of all? No spyware, no malware, and built-in encryption for improved security.

Hadouken [Windows]

Hadouken is one of the more recent creations in the realm of BitTorrent clients. The thing that separates Hadouken from pretty much every other client is that it runs as a headless Windows service, meaning that it doesn’t have an actual program interface that shows up in the taskbar or the system tray. In fact, the only way to use Hadouken is to install it, then interact using its Web-based interface.
The cool thing is that the Web-based interface is actually based on uTorrent’s Web UI, which means Hadouken’s interface will be familiar to a lot of you. On top of that, Hadouken has a powerful plugin system that can be used to implement a whole slew of features – sending emails, unpacking files, mounting images, etc. – at your whim.
Once Hadouken is installed, you need to go to your browser and type in the following to access the Web-based interface:

URL: http://localhost:8080
Username: hdkn
Password: hdkn

MiniGet [Windows]

At first glance, MiniGet doesn’t look like anything spectacular. There’s no real eye candy and it looks about as barebones as it gets when it comes to torrenting clients. Well, that’s what we’re looking for, right? Like its name implies, MiniGet is all about being as small as possible while still providing power and efficiency in file sharing, and it accomplishes this by throwing out ALL features that aren’t absolutely essential.
MiniGet can handle the HTTP, FTP, and BitTorrent protocols. It can handle Magnet links, DHT, web seeds, as well as NAT traversals (also known as NAT punchthrough). And, of course, it can pause and resume downloads. Those are the core features deemed necessary by MiniGet. You won’t find much more, but at least it results in a tiny CPU and RAM footprint.

qBittorrent [Windows, Mac, Linux]

Ever since µTorrent sold out and went down the drain, qBittorrent was considered to be its replacement. There are a lot of similarities between the two, namely that they’re both simple, straightforward, and lightweight (this is before  µTorrent began to bloat up). This is no surprise since the creator of qBittorrent originally intended qBittorrent to be the µTorrent for Linux as there were no good alternatives at the time.
qBittorrent handles all of the core features you’d expect in a torrenting client – encryption, priorities, IPv6, etc. – as well as some neat advanced options, such as sequential downloading and remote control of the client through a Web-based interface. All this comes wrapped up in a package that’s lightweight and easy on the resources, which is why qBittorrent remains as one of the best torrenting clients ever.

Conclusion

Sometimes you need a big all-in-one torrenting solution, and there are plenty of options out there if that’s the case, but when you need little more than the core functionality of a client, the ones listed here will serve you well if you ask me. And if none of these fulfill your torrenting needs, you could always check out these lesser-known but still effective BitTorrent clients.
Which BitTorrent clients do you use when you want something lightweight and easy on the resources? Are there any that I missed? Please share them with us in the comments!
Image Credits: Feather Via Flickr

Apple has taken the wraps off its new iPhone 5C, but it turns out that the “C” doesn’t stand for cheap. The phone still sells for at least $99 on-contract (for a 16GB version) and off-contract versions are at least $549. Such pricing is far from unheard of in the mobile phone world, of course, but some were hoping (perhaps foolishly) for a new, free on-contract model.
The iPhone 4S has picked up that torch instead. Though ageing, the 4S offers many recent features that have become selling points, including 3D maps, Siri and a great camera. Buyers who want Apple’s quality without the “Apple tax” may find it appealing; but they should also be aware of its disadvantages.

Smaller Screen

The iPhone 4S has a 640×960 “Retina” display, but it’s also the last of the breed to use a 3.5″ 1.5:1 display aspect ratio. Long touted as preferable, Apple finally relented with the larger 4″ widescreen found on the iPhone 5, and the new models have an identically sized screen.
While perhaps a tad more pocketable, the smaller display on the iPhone 4S is not the best for watching video. Most content is formatted for a 16:9 display, so 4S users will see a lot of black bars. Those same bars may also appear in some apps, as most developers will now be targeting the larger screens on the iPhone 5, 5S and 5C.

No Lightning Connector

One of the more controversial changes introduced by the iPhone 5 was the Lightning adapter, a replacement for the older 30-pin Apple Dock connector used on all previous iPhones and iPads, including the iPhone 4S. Anyone who buys the 4S today will be buying a product with an outdated connector, and while there are still plenty of older docks available, new ones are unlikely to come to market.
The new Lightning connection is also simply better. It’s smaller, easier to connect and detach, and can deliver more power (which, in turn, results in a quicker battery recharge). The Lightning port wasn’t game-changing, but the iPhone 4S’ reliance on the older 30-pin connection is another knock against it.

Less Durable Design

The iPhone 4S, as well as the iPhone 4, used a glass-back design unlike anything else available at the time. Apple also touted the glass as highly scratch resistant, a claim that the iPhone 5’s less scratch-resistant back seems to prove.
Unfortunately, whatever protection the 4S gained from scratches may have been paid for by a tendency to shatter when dropped. Many users reported seeing cracks or spiderweb shatters after seemingly minor falls, and while a case will greatly reduce the risk, it adds bulk to the phone’s slim frame. Why buy a small, inexpensive phone if it must be protected by a thick, expensive case?

Slower Processor

Apple’s shiny new iPhone 5S runs an A7 processor which is also the first 64-bit mobile processor in the world. The iPhone 4S on the other hand runs the A5, a chip that’s now outdated by two generations. Though it’d perhaps be harsh to call the A5 “slow,” the 1 GHz dual-core chip is certainly not the quickest kid on the block, and both the iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S provide dramatically better performance.
The real trouble with the iPhone 4S is not what we know, but what we don’t know. We don’t know how the transition to 64-bit will impact app availability and performance on the 4S. We don’t know if the 4S will be able to play the latest-and-greatest mobile games.
That’s a lot of unknowns. Owners of iPhones several generations out of date have experienced reduced performance when running a new version of iOS in the past. Will that happen again?

No 4G LTE

Another performance issue facing the iPhone 4S is its lack of support for 4G LTE. Though rare when the 4S was announced, LTE support has expanded rapidly across North America, Europe and Asia, bringing Internet speeds on par with broadband to smartphones in most large cities and their surrounding suburbs.
Since the 4S lacks 4G, it can only connect via older 3G technologies. These can be very quick under the right conditions, but most cities will see 4G speeds that are at least several times quicker than 3G, and in some cases the gap can expand substantially. Web pages, podcasts, videos and files will download slowly compared to any post iPhone 5 model.

The iPhone 5C Might Be Better Value

Some pundits have, for whatever reason, decided that the iPhone 5C’s off-contract price of $549 is “ridiculous” or “absurd.” These pundits apparently could not be bothered to actually check the pricing of current smartphones. With the exception of the Nexus 4, which sells for $300 direct from Google, current mid-tier smartphones generally sell for $500 to $600, and top tier phones go for $600 or more.
The iPhone 4S is only $100 less than the iPhone 5C both on and off-contract. And the price is actually worse than it looks, because the 4S comes with just 8GB of storage, while the 5C comes with 16GB. Most people will find the extra capacity  a worthwhile investment.
So, for just $100 more, the 5C offers: more storage, bigger display, better performance, improved durability, quicker Internet connectivity and more future iOS updates. The 5C is also thinner, more attractive and newer; which, let’s face it, is more exciting.

Conclusion

Does this mean it’s a bit daft to buy the iPhone 4S instead? I’ll leave that up to you (but the correct answer is “yes!”). Leave us a comment and let us know what iPhone model you plan to buy.
Image Credit: Hans Kaniz/Flickr, Martin Hajek/Flickr, Brett Johnson/Wikipedia

1: Treat Your Laptop With Care

3: Keep The Operating System Snappy

4: Run Regular Software & Operating System Updates

5: Upgrade Your Laptop Hardware

Making Your Laptop Last Is Common Sense