Archive for the 'Tips' Category

Picnik - Now With Crop, Resize & Scale At The Same Time

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at March 31, 2008 in Tips, Web, Software and Web 2.0. 1 Comment

Back in the day I wrote a review of online photo editors, and my biggest concern with all of them was the lack of some web-oriented options, most notably Photoshop’s brilliant ability to have an image resized and scaled to a certain (exact) size while cropping. It’s an extremely valuable option if you’re working for the web, where you usually need a photo in a certain size (on this site, I usually want photos that are 490 pixel wide).

A friend just told me that one of the best photo editors out there, Picnik, has added a lot of new features. I went to take a look, and lo and behold, Picnik now has the aforementioned option! Now, it definitely gets my recommendation as an online photo editor; if you haven’t, try it out.

5 Things Every Geek Must Do Before Going to a Vacation

Published by

Stan Schroeder

at August 13, 2007 in Tips and Features. 6 Comments

It’s the same every time: you think that you’ve got everything you need on your laptop and that you can do everything online, but once you get separated from your trusty desktop (presumably with an annoyingly slow wireless connection), you realize that you’ve forgotten to prepare some essentials that you can’t really work without.

Being on vacation right now, I’ve had plenty of time to reminisce about things I should have done and haven’t; the least I can do is share them with you. For the purposes of this article I’ve presumed that you usually work on a desktop, like me, and you’ve taken your laptop (with some sort of internet connectivity) with you on a trip somewhere.

1. Forward all your email accounts to a new Gmail account

If you’re anything like me, you have several email accounts - couple of Gmail ones, corporate ones, and some old ones which don’t even have (decent) web access. The best thing you can do is create a new Gmail account and forward all your other e-mail accounts to it. In fact, this is a good backup option even if you aren’t planning a vacation.

2. Load all essential apps to a USB flash drive

You’re used to fast Internet, and then you get stuck somewhere with GPRS-type speeds (10 K/s if you’re lucky), and suddenly downloading Winamp is a tedious task. Besides, all these “small” apps you’re using on everyday basis have gotten really fat since the last time you’ve cared about file size. It’s best to always have a USB stick with some essential applications ready.

3. Write *all* the passwords you need into one file and take it with you

You think you know all your passwords by heart? You don’t. You think you can access them all online? You can’t. Usually, at least 20% of the passwords you use are default passwords you’ve been given and you’ve never bothered to change them. Trust me, there’s only one way to be sure you’ll be able to access your stuff - write down all your essential passwords into one file and take it with you.

4. Transfer all your current bookmarks to your laptop

If you’re anything like me, chances are your bookmark count increases by the dozen every day, or at least every week. And, if - like me - you were lazy to install some sort of bookmark synchronization plugin, like the great Foxmarks, make sure you transfer your bookmarks to your laptop, or otherwise you’ll be banging your head against the wall trying to remember various web addresses all vacation.

5. For God’s sake, triple-check you’ve taken all the necessary chargers

Yeah, I know these are the basics. Somehow I always manage to screw up on this one, though.

Post to Pownce, Twitter, Jaiku and Tumblr at The Same Time

Published by

Stan Schroeder

at July 16, 2007 in Tips, Web, Web 2.0 and Features. 70 Comments

Time has come to consolidate all my miniblogging/webIM services. There’s no sense in updating them all separately, especially if there’s a way to update only one and have them all display these updates. Here’s how I did it.

I’m going to actively post to Pownce. It’s a matter of personal preference, although have in mind that you’re going to have a hard time doing it the other way round since Pownce doesn’t support RSS feed import. To find your Pownce RSS feed go to the following URL:

http://www.pownce.com/feeds/public/username/

In my case it’s:

http://www.pownce.com/feeds/public/frantic/

Now, register with Twitterfeed. If you don’t have an OpenID you can get one over at MyOpenID - you’re going to need it sooner or later anyway. Create a new feed in Twitterfeed and add the Pownce feed to it; make sure to uncheck the “Include description” checkbox, and set the update interval to 30 minutes (you can set it to be longer, but we want our updates to be up-to-date, right?).

TwitterFeed

However, Pownce and Twitter aren’t enough for me; I want to add Tumblr and Jaiku into the mix. The problem with Tumblr is that it won’t recognize the Pownce feed. No worries, though, go to the Twitter feed you’ve forwarded your Pownce feed to, click the RSS icon and add that feed to Tumblr (as text).

Tumblr

Finally, open up your Jaiku profile, click on Feeds (Edit) and add an RSS feed. You can use the Pownce feed or the Twitter feed - they both work pretty much the same.

Jaiku

That’s it - by posting on Pownce you now automatically update all four services at the same time. Now, if only someone would create a Miranda Pownce plugin…

Btw, my Pownce/Twitter/Jaiku/Tumblr stream is a lightweight combination of some posts from FranticIndustries and some of my personal thoughts. If you’d like to follow any of them, here are the links: Pownce, Twitter, Jaiku and Tumblr.

Howto: Automatically Expand Digg Comments

Published by

Stan Schroeder

at June 21, 2007 in Tips, Web, Web 2.0 and News. 0 Comments

The new Digg comment system we wrote a couple of days ago is finally live. Out of two possibilities, both of which were at some point working at the site, Digg chose the less popular one: all replies to comments are hidden by default. What’s worse, opening them seems to be quite a slow affair.

Well, many Digg users already find a simple cure for this (look at this thread) - simply add “/all” to the end of any Digg story address and all the comments will be expanded.

Example: instead of “http://digg.com/tech_news/New_Digg_Comments_System_Live” try “http://digg.com/tech_news/New_Digg_Comments_System_Live/all”

It’s simple to write a Greasemonkey script to do this automatically, and, of course, someone already did it. So, if you have Greasemonkey, head on over to Userscripts.org and install this nifty script. Voila: all the comment threads are now automatically expanded.

How to build a web startup for $12.000

Published by

Stan Schroeder

at June 4, 2007 in Tips, Web, Web 2.0 and News. 3 Comments

Guy Kawasaki has a very detailed post on his blog, in which he give a by-the-numbers account of his experience with launching Truemors. You may remember that we wrote about Truemors twice: first to give our initial (quite lukewarm) impressions, and second to defend the project from unjust and overly harsh criticism.

Regardless of what you think about Truemors, Guy’s latest post is a great read for anyone considering starting a similar project. Guy has been in the IT business for a long time, and a look at his priorities is very interesting. Personally, I had no idea that almost 5000 dollars had to be spent on legal fees on a site like Truemors. On the other hand, he spent $4500 on development of the actual service, which sounds relatively cheap.

Another revealing fact is Guy’s business model: create a (cheap) service, see if people like it, and put some ads. I like it much better than: create a service, get VC funding, hire 10 people you don’t need, rent expensive office space you don’t need, buy expensive equipment you don’t need, swarm your service with ads when you realize that you’re gonna start losing money soon, and then desperately try to sell it when you realize that ads don’t cover half of your expenses.

How to: submit to all social sites at once

Published by

Stan Schroeder

at June 4, 2007 in Tips, Web, Web 2.0 and News. 8 Comments

Social poster

We’ve just been tipped about a service called Social Poster (Thanks for keeping the “e” in, the English language sends its regards and promises to buy beer) that lets you submit links to all the social networking/bookmarking/content sites you like.

When we say “all the social sites” we mean 34 of them, including Digg, Reddit, Technorati, Stumbleupon, del.icio.us and 29 others.

Social Poster is also available as a code snippet which you can include on your web page, or in the form of a Wordpress plugin which then works similar to Sociable or Gregarious.

Use Google Maps Street View from outside the US

Published by

Stan Schroeder

at May 29, 2007 in Tips, Web, Web 2.0 and News. 3 Comments

One of the neatest new features of Google Maps is called Street View; it enables users to see certain streets as if they were there, from the ground persepctive. It looks quite spectacular, but, unfortunately, it works only for users in the USA.

Well, someone figured out a way to avoid Google’s IP filter: simply add this string of characters, “&gl=us”, to the end of the URL. Example here.

Of course, chances that this will work after it spreads all over the net are slim to none, but if you’re fast, you still might be able to catch it in action. Screenshot below (have in mind that I’m not living in the US, therefore in normal circumstances I should not be able to use the service)

Google Maps Street View

[via]

Quick tip: open Reddit comments from Netvibes

Published by

Stan Schroeder

at May 29, 2007 in Tips, Web, Web 2.0 and News. 4 Comments

Recently I’ve written about a minor Reddit-Netvibes annoyance: the Reddit RSS feed in a Netvibes box doesn’t let you open the story on Reddit; instead, it skips directly to the source. Because of this, Reddit probably loses quite a lot of pageviews; furthermore, some users, like me, like to read Reddit comments before looking at the source article.

The poll results (the poll is mysteriously gone at the moment, courtesy of PollDaddy) I’ve set up in my article on this subject show that the majority of users prefer Reddit RSS links as they are; but quite a number of you would like to see this changed.

Well, thanks to our reader Aaron Bassett, who is quite a JavaScript wiz, now you can have it both ways. Aaron has created a Firefox bookmarklet for this purpose. Drag it to your toolbar, and click it while on your Netvibes page (with the Reddit RSS feed in it), and all the Reddit links will now lead to the Reddit comments instead of the source article. Thanks, Aaron.

The Amazon monster RSS feed

Published by

Stan Schroeder

at May 8, 2007 in Tips, Web, Web 2.0 and News. 0 Comments

Amazon has announced advanced RSS support which enables you to create custom RSS feeds, which in turn can be used to monitor certain items in the Amazon store.

Using a simple URL-building syntax, you can have RSS feeds that let you search for new, recent or popular items. For example, this feed:

www.amazon.com/rss/tag/PS3/popular

will give you all the popular items tagged PS3. Simple, eh? There are several advanced options, which aren’t all that exciting, and you can see the full scoop here.

However, here at FranticIndustries we want to help you. We really do. That’s why I’ve created the Amazon monster RSS feed. It is actually a Yahoo! Pipe with user input, which makes it dead simple to create a combined feed with up to 5 Amazon tags. Simply enter the tags/item names into the “Enter item” boxes, and type (this is obligatory) either “new”, “recent” or “popular” into the box that says (doh) “New, recent or popular?”

Now, simply click subscribe and subscribe to the RSS in your favorite RSS reader, and voila; you’ve got yourself fresh info on up to 5 items on Amazon. Enjoy.

Btw, if you want to see the other cool Yahoo! Pipes we’ve made, check out this post.

How to: access Pandora from outside the US

Published by

Stan Schroeder

at May 3, 2007 in Tips and News. 202 Comments

I’m not an avid Pandora user. Personally, I like Last.FM better. But it angers me when I see that such a great service will now be unavailable for users outside of the US. TechCrunch has the details, as well as a facsimile of the letter sent to Pandora’s international users.

Of course, I don’t blame Pandora for this: they’re just complying with the US (and international) laws and regulations.

I blame the laws and regulations.

In any case, this is the Internet, and it’s easy to be a hacker nowadays, so here’s a couple of services you can use to access Pandora from wherever you are (btw, Pandora still works for me although I’m from Croatia; I guess they haven’t covered all the IP ranges just yet):

1. Firefox + anonymous proxy - in Firefox, open Tools - Options - Advanced - Network - Settings. There you have the proxy options. Go to one of these sites:
http://tools.rosinstrument.com/proxy/
http://www.publicproxyservers.com/
http://www.proxz.com/
http://www.stayinvisible.com/

Find some proxies there, enter their details into the proxy options in Firefox. Don’t worry if the first couple of proxies don’t work; it’s a trial and error process.

2. Public CGI Proxies - the easiest method. Randomly chooses a public proxy server; all you have to do is enter the Pandora.com address and enjoy the melodies.

3. Tor and Privoxy - these two are frequently used together to surf anonymously. Might be a bit complicated for beginners.

4. Metropipe - a set of commercial and free tools for anonymous surfing, including a free Firefox toolbar. Starts at $8.33.

5. Proxify - just enter Pandora.com, uncheck remove all scripts, and you’re good to go. Well, in theory; it didn’t work for me; might be just a temporary glitch.

6. The Cloak - same as Proxify, enter the address and surf anonymously right away. And, just like Proxify, it doesn’t work. Again, maybe it starts working somewhere in the future; you never know with services like this.

7. Cotse - another commercial service, starts at $5.95. Covers much more than just anonymous surfing, though.

8. Anonymizer - another commercial anonymizing package, a bit more expensive.

This should be enough for most users. Enjoy Pandora, wherever you are (;.

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Tip: never, ever ask for a reading confirmation

Published by

Stan Schroeder

at April 19, 2007 in Tips and Web. 6 Comments

It surprises me that in this day and age some people still send e-mails which require reading confirmation, forcing me to do an additional click, which is not only annoying, but utterly pointless, as I will never OK it.

The thing is, e-mail reading confirmation is an option that doesn’t work. In a perfect world, in which I wouldn’t receive hundreds of e-mails per day, it might make sense for something that’s really urgent. But in the real world, it’s annoying, and in many cases a great way to permanently end up in my junk folder.

I’ll repeat it once more: never, ever, send an e-mail that asks for a reading confirmation.

Find MP3s with Google - does this make Google liable to a lawsuit, too?

Published by

Stan Schroeder

at March 15, 2007 in Tips, Web and News. 6 Comments

One of the currently popular items on Digg is showing how to find MP3 files through Google. This is not a new concept, it has been around for quite a while, and it was pointed in the comments of the Digg story that several idiot-proof tools for searching MP3 files through Google already exist, making it even easier. One of them is Cr3ation B3ta, another one is G2P, and there are probably more. Since Google search allows for quite a powerful syntax, interesting queries can be made which come up with very specific results. Someone once figured how to see what surveillance cameras see through a simple Google search, and now people are doing the same thing to get free MP3s.

However, two aspects of this story strike me as very interesting. First one stems from the short description of the G2P tool. The quote goes:

Why would we want to use Google to find MP3s instead of using P2P apps?
-P2P/BT is being monitored — Using Google we can download a lot more safely

And it’s true. With the RIAA throwing their John Doe lawsuits everywhere they can, people are looking for different ways to share music. Some of them would even go legal - if there weren’t for DRM. So, they pursue other alternatives.

The other interesting aspect of this story is apparent in the light of Viacom’s recent lawsuit against YouTube, and thus, effectively Google. Viacom’s lawyers claim that YouTube has the capability to remove and/or filter copyrighted materials uploaded by users to YouTube. Fine. Maybe it’s true (it still doesn’t mean that Viacom is right, but let’s leave it be for the sake of argument).

But, does Google also have the capability to filter and remove every MP3 file from their indexes? Should they also be sued for allowing their search function to be used as a tool to share/download MP3 files (most of which are illegal from RIAA’s standpoint)? If you think that Viacom is rightfully suing YouTube, why shouldn’t they (or the RIAA) sue Google for each and every audio or video file available through Google search?

I’m sure that Google has the capability to filter these items. They have a lot of money - they can probably hire millions of students to count the sand in the Sahara desert, too. Just because something can - in theory - be done, it doesn’t matter that it’s practical, or that it’s fair to make someone do it. Google, YouTube, and the old Napster - all those were just tools. Since the music and the movie industry can’t go after all the users individually, they’ll keep on suing the people who provide the tools to share music and videos. But the original, the biggest, and the ultimate tool is the Internet. Sue it, if you can.