My Science School

Social media and online games are often the things that come to people's mind when someone mentions the Web. But there is more to it than just networking with people or passing time. You can use the Web to express yourself creatively, while also keeping in touch with your friends and fulfilling your academic responsibilities.

1. Make personalised greetings

COVID-19 might have forced you to stay indoors, but that doesn't have to stop you from celebrating your loved ones birthdays. There are several downloadable software such as Adobe Photoshop and GIMP, as well as online websites such as Canva and Adobe Spark, which let you personalise and design birthday cards. You can create your card, mail it to your loved ones and wish them virtually if you can't meet them in person. It will be sure to touch their hearts.

Meanwhile, you can also use these software and websites to explore your creativity when it comes to art and graphic design.

2. Host games and meetings

Are you the person who loves organising get-togethers and hosting events? Then, why not do it virtually? There are dozens of group video calling software available online for free. Most of these let you host a meet-up with at least 50 people. So, like you would do for a physical get-together, design an invite with all the details and mail it to your friends/family members. You can come up with your own games that can be played virtually, or you can take the help of online websites that let you play multiplayer games such as Tambola or Mystery Rooms. Don't let the pandemic stop you from catching up with your friends and putting on a show.

3. For the author in you

Have you ever been inspired to write novels after reading some of those chilling mystery books? Or perhaps you like flash fiction, where you can narrate a story in just a few sentences? Fiction or non-fiction, the Web is an amazing platform to explore your writing skills before you take the plunge and publish a book of your own. There are several blogging sites that let you publish content for free. You can start your own blog and share your stories in it. You can also share the blog with your friends and family and invite them to give you feedback that will help you improve as you progress.

4. Ready, set, action

If expressing yourself in front of the camera or from behind the camera is more your thing, get up, take that smartphone and explore your neighbourhood. Thousands of people from all over the world share their experiences through the camera lens every day. With sites and apps like YouTube, Vimeo and Instagram giving you the freedom to share your content, make the best use of your creativity and shoot and edit videos. You can put up any kind of content from singing, dancing, DIY crafts, or even presentations on topics that interest you.

5. Lend your voice

If you love voicing out characters or narrating stories, the Web can fulfil that wish too. There are several websites online that let you host your own podcast and share it with people. If you are more of a storyteller who loves narrating stories, you could also lend your voice to free audiobooks online. Some sites, such as Librivox, encourage you to narrate popular books so that people online can consume them.

This is a great way to learn more about voice modulation and expression, and will also be a great platform for you if you wish to be a voiceover artist or radio jockey in the future.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Project Gutenberg

The first name that pops up in the minds of people looking for free e-books to read is Project Gutenberg. Offering books in formats such as PDF, ePub and Simple text, Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitise and archive books. It is one of the oldest and largest libraries in the web with a collection of over 50.000 books. It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart.

ManyBooks

As the name suggests, this site has many books for you to read. With over 50,000 books across genres on offer, you can register with ManyBooks and download the e-books of your choice or read online. The site also has the latest bestsellers apart from the classics. The books on the site are compatible with Kindle, iPad and most e-book readers.

Wikibooks

If you are looking for textbooks and reference books, this is the site to visit. Hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, from Science to Languages, Wikibooks has a wide range of free books. All are catalogued and the text can be edited, similar to the content on Wikipedia. The site also has a Featured Books section that suggests books worth reading.

Librivox

Librivox is not an e-book site, but a site for people who find it more fascinating to listen to a story than read one. Librivox offers free audiobooks for people to listen to. The content on the site is available through a volunteer effort where people who consume the books can also lend their voice to record audiobooks. All you need to do is register, and get set to be mesmerised.

Open Library

Open Library has more than a million free e-books available for consumption. It is an open online project of the Internet Archive, which is a non-profit digital library. Apart from consuming books, users can contribute books that others can read.

Free eBooks

This website has a large repository of e-books. One just needs to register on the site to access digital books on a wide range of genres. Once you register, you can access the books in HTML format. However, if you wish to read them in PDF or TXT format, only five books are available for you to download each month.

International Digital Children's Library

To take a break from all the heavy reading, you can visit this website to find a range of children's books in different genres and languages. The site has award winning books of different lengths and reading levels to suit all age groups. You can register on the site and start your journey into the world of children's books.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Chrome comes with a built-in tool to check for enhanced protection. Head over to Chrome Settings, and click on the Safety Check button on the left sidebar. Alternatively, you can go to chrome://settings/safetyCheck to access the safety check page directly. The Safety Check tool will then verify that Chrome is up-to-date, cross-check whether all your stored passwords are complex and not leaked in any data breaches, and confirm that Safe Browsing is set up properly. It will even check if you are protected from any potentially malicious extensions. Run it once in a while.

With this check Chrome will check all your stored passwords are complex and not leaked in the previous data breaches. In order to do this check, you have to login with your Google account. It helps Google to send the passwords in encrypted manner and check the database to match if the password is in the previous data breaches.

The result of the safe browsing section depends on the level of protection you have enabled on your browser. By default, Chrome will use the standard protection and hence you will see a message like “Standard protection is on. For even more security, use enhanced protection.”

 

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Deepfake generally refers to images on videos in which the face and/or voice of a person, usually a public figure has been manipulated using artificial intelligence software to generate visual and audio content with a high potential to deceive. Deepfakes are a source of concern because they are created to be intentionally misleading, such as by making it look like a politician said something they didn't, or making it appear like a celebrity was in a video they weren't in.

Everyone from academic and industrial researchers to amateur enthusiasts, visual effects studios and porn producers. Governments might be dabbling in the technology, too, as part of their online strategies to discredit and disrupt extremist groups, or make contact with targeted individuals, for example.

It is hard to make a good deepfake on a standard computer. Most are created on high-end desktops with powerful graphics cards or better still with computing power in the cloud. This reduces the processing time from days and weeks to hours. But it takes expertise, too, not least to touch up completed videos to reduce flicker and other visual defects. That said, plenty of tools are now available to help people make deepfakes. Several companies will make them for you and do all the processing in the cloud. There’s even a mobile phone app, Zao, that lets users add their faces to a list of TV and movie characters on which the system has trained.

 

Picture Credit : Google