Players can navigate along the roads in the Street View to see more details about the location and can zoom in or out in an attempt to find clues about the location of the image. Once players have a guess about the location, they can zoom in on the map on the right side of the screen to place the marker in the appropriate location. The marker can then be moved around until the player clicks the “Make Guess” button making the guess final. Points are earned for distance from the actual location in the Street View. Once a game is completed, players have the option to share their final score via social media, including Pinterest, Twitter, Google+, Facebook and other social networks, or to challenge friends to try playing the game with the same locations that the player just got. In challenges, the final screen displays not only the player’s score but also how it compares to the challenger’s score, which adds a nice competitive element to the game. The game is simple to learn, particularly given the clear, overlaid instructions that are displayed the first time players play the game, and it is very addictive. Well worth a try if you are looking for your next casual online game!

When you sign up for the service, you will be prompted to share your own images as well. Uploaded images can be JPG, PNG, or SVG files of up to 12 MB. They must have a minimum width of 1920 pixels and their width can be up to twice their height. The fairly detailed guidelines are intended to improve the quality of the items shared on the site and based on the images I found on Pixabay, they seem to be working. Users can earn an ad-free experience by uploading ten of their own images to the service, but even if you choose to never upload a single image, you have full access to all of the public domain images that Pixabay has collected. If you’re a photographer, you may also want to check out the photo contest that Pixabay is running between now and June 1st for a chance to win money for your photographs.

For those who are simply looking for images that they can use, Pixabay is a great option. I conducted a number of searches on Pixabay using different terms and found numerous relevant and aesthetically pleasing images for each search term. Results included a mix of pictures and graphics in most cases, which makes it a good tool regardless of the type of image you would like. Search results include pictures from Shutterstock that are not free, but they are clearly marked and each of the searches I tried also came up with public domain images, so I found this to be a minor complaint. Results can be sorted by image orientation, image type (photo, clipart, or vector), popularity or by most recent additions. You can also identify the most popular images (by number of downloads) or photographers on the leaderboard or find the editor’s picks on a separate page. One interesting feature that the service also offers is the ability to sort images by the type of camera used to take the pictures. This is a nice option both for serious photographers and for those who are simply interested in seeing some examples to help them choose a camera. This service is well worth a try by both photographers and those who need images for use in their own projects.

Users can browse through presentations that have already been shared on the site, which are divided up by topic. Speaker Deck also highlights certain slide decks in their Featured Presentations section, which can bring additional attention to these slides. Uploading new presentations is quick and easy. While you do have to have your presentations in PDF format, Speaker Deck provides information about how to export from PowerPoint or Keynote to PDF. Each file can be up to 50 megabytes and the FAQ also includes information on compressing larger files. Perhaps best of all from a user’s perspective, when presentations are embedded via Speaker Deck, they automatically resize to fit the available space without any need to modify the code. Overall, Speaker Deck is a great alternative for posting and sharing slides, especially if you will be embedding the slides on a website.

Interested in finding more tools for creating or sharing presentations? Take a look at my guide to presentation tools.

Taking the same form as the RubyMonk tutorials, these lessons are designed for those with no programming experience and start with the very basics. They walk users through the learning process with a combination of text, examples of code and exercises for users to complete themselves. The exercises advance slowly enough to give students a chance to really learn the concepts without being so slow that they lose interest. For those who get stuck on any given exercise, there is the option to get a hint for most exercises or, if truly confused, to see the answer in its entirety. The pacing and content are good for those who are hoping to learn the basics of Python relatively quickly.

In addition to these lessons and exercises, PythonMonk also offers problems so that users can apply what they are learning. In a nice touch, the elements of the problems are listed on the image for each problem and turn from red to green once the lessons for that problem have been completed and a note at the top of the problem indicates the lessons related to the problem have not yet been completed. While users can attempt any problem they would like, it is nice to have a visual cue to indicate whether they have learned the concepts necessary for the problem.

Overall, PythonMonk is a nice collection of exercises for those hoping to teach themselves Python. Right now there are only a few lessons and problems available, but as the list develops over time it will become an even more useful tool.

Just a few of the available templates on Phoster.

With over 200 templates to choose from in portrait, square and landscape dimensions, one of the best features of this app is the fact that is gives you a stylish starting place for all sorts of different posters. Elements of the template can also be recolored and edited to personalize the look and feel of the poster to fit your needs. There is also a blank template available if you prefer to completely customize your project. Even better, if you find yourself using the same templates over and over, you can favorite them so that you can find them more quickly. Once you have selected a template, all text is editable and you can also add images to your poster from your iPad’s library with just a couple of clicks. Images can be moved around on your poster and enlarged or shrunk by pinching them on your screen. Once you have finalized the basic content on the poster, the next step is selecting from the 20 different filters that Phoster includes to add additional visual interest to your final product. After this final step, all that is left is exporting your poster. You can opt to save it to your Gallery within the app or share it by printing it, emailing it, or sharing it on Instagram, Flickr, Facebook or Twitter. The app also includes a feature to directly share your final poster with other image editing apps on your iPad. If you frequently create posters for events, activities or groups, this app is well worth its $1.99 price tag.

Writing on the page is very comfortable, though with the free version of the app, you are somewhat limited in the ways that you can write since you only have access to a black pen. You can, however, still achieve some nice effects, such as bold or stretched text, by manipulating your writing with the zooming feature. This feature is actually one of the more impressive aspects of Inkflow since it lets you select a specific portion of the page and then zoom in on it or move it around on the page. You can also add typed text or images to a page using the select functionality. Each book in the free version of the app can be up to 20 pages long and you can create an unlimited number of books. The app offers blank pages by default but also includes several types of stationery, including grid lines, ruled paper and musical staffs (in the paid version of the app, you can also create customized stationery). You can also change the type of stationery on a page retroactively. Pages or books of pages can be exported as PDFs or JPEGs, emailed, tweeted as an image, saved as a snapshot or locked to prevent future edits.

If you opt to upgrade to the paid version of the app for $7.99, will also have access to a pencil and paint brush in addition to the basic pen and each will be available in a full palette of colors. The paid version of the app also offers access to more than 50 fonts (as compared to only 4 in the free version) for any text you want to add to your books and the ability to cut, paste and rotate any section of your page. With the paid app, your books also won’t have a page limit any more. For those who have been looking for a way to replicate the paper and pen sensation on their iPad, Inkflow is well worth a try.

An example of a script in Hopscotch.

The app includes the option to save projects for later use or share projects with friends, which makes it good for repeat use or use with a group of people. It also has a help feature that is really more of a glossary for all of the types of blocks that the app offers, which is helpful for those who are just getting started. Hopscotch is a nice alternative to Scratch for those who want to be able to write scripts on the go or for schools where students have iPads. The company is particularly interested in working with educators who want to use the app and there is a form on their website for educators who want to connect with them for additional support in using the app.

I really enjoyed using ici. I found that some of the 26 locations included in my list were somewhat far away from my location, but I definitely learned about my surroundings from it and I think it will encourage users to add images to Wikipedia, which is a great benefit. The code to ici is available on GitHub and is in the public domain, so anyone is welcome to use it as the basis of their own application. I would definitely recommend checking out ici, particularly if you have a trip coming up. It is a lot of fun.

At the end of the day, this isn’t a practical solution for an RSS reader since it is limited to a single RSS feed and only shows a limited number of entries from that feed before coming to an end. But, it is a very entertaining application, particularly for Star Wars fans. You can check it out with any RSS feed or you can see it in action with posts from my blog. If you want to check out the code used to create it, it is also available on GitHub.

This is what my blog looks like on StarRSS

To use OneTab all you need to do is download the application from the Chrome Store. Conveniently, it is not an application that requires that you restart your browser when you download it, so you can even download it once you already have dozens of open tabs. Once OneTab is installed, an icon will appear in your Chrome window next to your URL. Clicking this button will consolidate all currently open tabs onto a single page. This page offers links that allow you to delete all of the tabs, restore them to their own separate tabs, or bring additional tabs onto the page. And, there is even share the entire list of URLs as a webpage that includes a QR code to facilitate transferring the URLs to a mobile device. Since you don’t have to register to use OneTab, your tabs are kept private unless you opt to share them as a webpage. According to the developers, using OneTab can speed up your browser, save memory and lower the load on your CPU, and while I haven’t done extensive testing to check the numbers they provide, I did find that it sped up my browser. I think this is a tool that I will end up using a lot and I highly recommend it for anyone who tends to have a lot of tabs open simultaneously.