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?

The guide explains the following security concepts on Facebook:

• Protect your Facebook account
• Avoid the scammers
• Use advanced security settings
• Recover a hacked Facebook account
• Stop imposters

Protect your Facebook account

This short guide offers two tips. First it recommends to use a good password. The interesting part here is that Facebook recommends to use the password manager KeePass Password Safe to users who have troubles remembering their Facebook login details.

The second tip is to always log out properly after a Facebook session.

Avoid the scammers

This part begins with a definition of scammers, and what they do on Facebook. It is very basic but a good read for users who are not familiar with the concept.

The “Scammers who target Facebook” part on the next page is more helpful. It displays two examples of how scams look like on Facebook and ends with tips on how to avoid clickjacking, malicious script scams and Facebook account thieves (due to phishing).

Using advanced security settings

Several security concepts and information are provided in this chapter. This includes information about secure browsing and how to enable a secure connection on Facebook, the use of one-time passwords with the help of a smartphone or mobile phone and monitoring account activity.

Recovering a hacked Facebook account

Facebook has guidelines on hacked accounts. The firs thing that users need to do is to go to http://www.facebook.com/hacked/ to secure their account. The account will be temporarily locked and the user who initiated the lockdown will have to provide account-specific information to regain control.

The top tips for staying secure on Facebook offer additional tips to stay secure, for instance to use add-ons like Web of Trust or NoScript (!) in Firefox to protect the account.

I’m a bit surprised to see the guide mention both my password manager KeePass and my favorite Firefox security add-on NoScript. That alone makes the guide stick out from the usual “security guides” on network sites that you find on the Internet. So, great read for users who want to understand some of the security concepts on Facebook.

I recommend you check it out, or send the link to the document to friends, family or colleagues who need to freshen up in this regard. [link, via]

The guide is written for the inexperienced user mainly and consists of several parts. The first, called”The Basics: Spotting and Eliminating Threats” suggests to install a firewall, anti-virus software, anti-spyware software and other software like software that detects rootkits. They always recommend some programs that can be downloaded by following the links.

Now that they have covered the basics they tell you to update your operating system and software that is installed on your system. They suggest to use either Opera or Firefox instead of the Internet Explorer, want you to disable file sharing and be cautious when downloading.

As I said all those tips are good for beginners but geeks like we are should have implemented most of their suggestions already.

Next comes safe emailing with suggestions on good e-mail clients, again don’t use Outlook but tools like Thunderbird or Gmail instead. They also tell you to be wary of extensions and be cautious when clicking on links in emails to avoid malicious websites. (phishing). Last but not least you should setup email filters.

The next part deals with protecting your passwords which can be summed up by choosing different passwords that can’t be found using dictionary attacks. They also suggest to password protect the computer which I think is completely useless.

After that they make two suggestions to protect the wireless network which are really basic suggestions, they also suggest not to use the wireless connection of your neighbours because it could be setup for this case. (scanning the data like passwords that are send over the connection)

The last part deals with physical protection: Disguise your laptop and use anti-theft solutions should not bother most users but could be useful for business clients.

As you can see those are basic advices that could help inexperienced users. They miss to cover some topics that could really increase security but require knowledge of the subject. They fail to address the possibility to create a user account in Windows and use this one instead of the admin account. They also miss to mention that not needed services should be turned off, which user needs telnet or remote access anyways ?

I’m also not very fond of software firewalls and would suggest to use a hardware firewall instead. Software firewalls give a false sense of security especially if you are inexperienced.