When you look at the guides over MakeUseOf you will notice that they are all straight and up to the point. Available right now are more than 50 guides about general and specialized tech related topics. Guides that sparked my interest include the Microsoft Office 2010 Ultimate Guide, the Windows on Speed guide and the Facebook marketing guide. I have put other tech guides on my to-read list, including the guide to PC Security, How to create professional reports and docs on word or the ultimate guide to Gmail.

You find a listing of all guides on the official download page. All guides are displayed on the page with their title, book cover and the download count.

Here is a list of all guides currently available for free download:

50 Cool Uses for Live CDs
An Android Guide : These Are The Droids You’re Looking For
An Easy Guide to Build Your Own WordPress Site
An Idiot’s Guide To Photoshop
Bam! Your Guide To Cool Online Comic Books
Best of the Web, Delivered: The Reddit Manual
Computer In Your Computer: How To Use VirtualBox
Go Google: Free Email and More On Your Domain
HackerProof: Your Guide To PC Security
Hard Drive Of The Future: 101 Guide To Solid State Drives
How The Internet Works
How To Build a Gaming PC
How To Build A Great Media Center PC
How To Create Professional Reports & Docs on Word
Learn to Speak “Internet”: Your Guide To xHTML
Lockdown: Secure Your Files with TrueCrypt
MakeUseOf’s Smart Productivity Guide
Microsoft Office 2010: Ultimate Tips & Tricks
New Life: Bring Old PC To Life With Ubuntu [PDF]
Newbie’s Getting Started Guide to Linux
Open Book: Managing Your eBooks With Calibre
Operation Cleanup: Complete Malware Removal Guide
Picture Perfect: Set Up Your Own Photoblog
Set Up Your Blog With WordPress: The Ultimate Guide
Step-By-Step Guide To Using GarageBand
Stuff Happens: The Backup & Restore Guide
The (Very) Unofficial Facebook Privacy Guide
The Awesome Automation Guide for Mac Users
The BIG Book Of iTunes for FREE
The Complete Beginners Guide To Joomla
The Complete Guide To Twitter
The Easy Guide To Computer Networks
The Essential Guide To Digital Photography
The First Unofficial Guide To Dropbox
The Five-Star Guide For Your iPad
The FREE A-Z Torrent Guide
The FREE Mac Manual
The Idiot’s Ultimate Guide to Build Your Own PC
The Internet Guide to the Movie Addict
The Internet Music Guide For The Audiophile
The Laptop Buying Guide 2011
The MakeUseOf Guide to File Sharing Networks
The MakeUseOf Guide To Internet Searching
The MakeUseOf Online Shopping Guide
The MakeUseOf Windows Mobile Guide
The Office Worker’s 101 Guide to a USB Thumb Drive
The Ubuntu Karmic Koala Bible
The Ultimate Guide To Gmail
The Ultimate Windows 7 Guide
The Underground Guide To The iPhone
Virtual Currency: The MakeUseOf BitCoin Manual
Watch The Web: AWESOME Media Center Guide 2011
Windows on Speed: Ultimate PC Acceleration Manual
You Like This: The Facebook Marketing Guide
Your PC, Inside and Out [Part 1]
Your PC, Inside And Out [Part 2]

A click on the Download Now button opens a page with a short description, links to similar ebooks and a download now button that is protected by a password. Normally you would have to subscribe to the MakeUseOf newsletter to get the password or you would need to share the link on a social networking site.

The guys over at MakeUseOf where nice enough to hand out a password for all guide downloads on their site. Just enter makeuseof (who would have thought that) into the password form to enable the download right away.

Each guide comes with bookmarks and a menu to quickly load a specific chapter. The overall design is well done and includes screenshots, headings and links.

The guides are packed with information and contain no advertisement whatsoever (apart from linking to the Makeuseof website that is).

Have you had the chance to read one of the guides yet? If so, which one did you read and what’s your overall opinion?

You may read Make Use Of, if you don’t then it’s one of the larger tech blogs dedicated to webware and software reviews and has over 25, 000 daily subscribers.

You hear about hacking stories and security alerts all the time around the internet but you never really expect it to happen to you, however Make Use Of certainly wasn’t taking any risk, I’ll give you the summary of what this hacker did:

A certain Al Ferank of Dubai hacked Aibek, MakeUseOf’s owner and editor’s Gmail account, it’s worth noting that Aibek was using a secure scrambled password of 15 characters, if it’s that easy to gain access to Gmail perhaps their security needs to be looked at.

Within the account he than set up an email filter to forward GoDaddy communications to another email account, using these details he called up GoDaddy directly and identified himself as Aibek, he simply stated the username and password of the account and requested the domain be transferred, this was carried out within the hour.

Viewers of MakeUseOf where suddenly greeted by a static page filled with nothing by paid links and advertisements, editor Mark O’Neil found out via Twitter shortly afterwards and contacted Aibek.

As they where trying to figure out what happened they received a charming email from the man himself:

I said it very simply and very easily !

2 K !

Deal or not ?!

You own the domain I get the money…

Regards

Make Use Of was hacked and the domain stolen within an hour, the process of getting it back took significantly longer:

Aibek contacted NameCheap – the hosting company the domain had been transferred too and they agreed to lock the domain down while they and GoDaddy investigated the situation, although they warned it might take between 20 hours and 3 days. In the end after much back and forthing between Aibek, GoDaddy legal and their PR department the whole process of getting the domain back took about 15 hours, getting MakeUseOf online again took another day or so.

I can actually think of no way this could have been avoided on MakeUseOf’s part, however I definitely think Gmail needs to look at their security measures, obviously a ‘strong’ password isn’t strong enough.