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Why Should a DBA Learn Hadoop? 1 May 2013 5:58 AM (12 years ago)

If you are in the IT world, chances are everywhere you turn you are inundated by the word ‘Big Data’. For the longest time I was put off by the words thinking that this is just a fad that will go away.

But this excellent article by Gwen Shapira – Hadoop FAQ – But What About the DBAs, changed my whole perspective and really piqued my interest.

hadoop

Gwn lists a couple of advantages of why DBAs could make great Hadoop administrators

After reading this, I went on to installing a 4-node Hadoop cluster and getting my feet wet in the Big Data world. If you have been asking yourself this question, I highly recommend reading Gwen’s article and may be it will change your perspective too.

It sure did change mine.

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Simple Task Management with Todoist 18 Nov 2012 12:01 AM (12 years ago)

We are faced with mounds of tasks everyday. We get through them and attack them and get them out of our way in different ways. And we forget some of them resulting in stress not just to us but even to people around us.

Task Management tools aim at aiding this aspect of your life. I have discussed a few other task management apps tagged ’GTD’ after the popular book by David Allen, Getting Things Done. I have read pieces of this concept here and there and tried it but I am picking this book up for a complete read this weekend from our local library.

Regular ShanKri-la readers might know that I use Remember the Milk (RTM) for my personal task management and d-cubed for work related (project oriented) tasks. However, after reading Getting Things Done I want to implement this into RTM and I’ll document here in the coming weeks. Check back here or subscribe to the ShanKri-la feed to keep track of the happenings at ShanKri-la.

For someone looking for a very simple, web 2.0ish web-based task management application, this might be what you are looking for. (but it is not Beta and does not have a fancy logo)

Todoist – Useful, fast and easy to use

If you like ajaxy interfaces and simple to-do lists, Todoist is going to fit the bill. It’s interface is simple, intuitive and quick. Better yet, it’s free. If you are an average user and if your needs for task management aren’t as complicated as Google’s Todoist page rank algorithm, then I have a feeling you’ll like Todoist.

Some quick facts about this quick web app:

Why do we need one more GTD tool? Every application isn;t built equal. What works for one person is not guaranteed to work for another. And I am always in the lookout for better applications and I like to see what’s out there every now and then. I gave Todoist a whirl when I read about it and I am sticking with Remember the Milk as it is the best fit for my needs right now.

There are several other players in this arena. Most of the web apps make it easy to sign for a free account and it will only take a few minutes to check out a new player.

As much as finding these tools and tweaking them to your needs are fun, don’t get side tracked by all these in your goal of getting things done. A good GTD tool should let you spend the least time configuring and tweaking it and rather let you concentrate at the task at hand. I think Todoist does that well as well.

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Machinarium’s Experience With Non-DRM/Piracy, Offers Amnesty 18 Nov 2012 12:01 AM (12 years ago)

DRM advocates tend to argue that they add anti-piracy protection to keep users honest with paying for the software or product.

Machinarium is an amazing point and click adventure game playable on Windows, Mac or Linux.

In an effort to prove a point, Machinarium developers – Amanita Design from Czech released the game without any DRM restrictions. You can install the game without any serial numbers or online authentication.

image

This makes the game so easy to copy and be pirated.

Sadly, the game developer is saying that Machinarium has only 5-15% of players who actually paid for the game.

Amanita Design in an attempt to give a second chance for those 85-95% of players who haven’t paid for the game has announced a ‘Pirate Amnesty’ sale.

Machinarium and its soundtrack is available for a mere $5 with 75% off from its original price of $20 until August 12. They are hoping the game pirates will make amends buy purchasing it at this low price.

However, this amnesty sale doesn’t apply to just who already have a copy but also to anyone interested in this game.

I played the online free demo and was totally amazed by the creativity behind this point and click adventure game. $5 for such an amazing experience is nothing, IMHO.

Try Machinarium

{ via Ars Technica }

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Firefox Extensions: Picks of the Week 09-03-24 18 Nov 2012 12:01 AM (12 years ago)

We looked at the new Firefox 3.1 beta 3 features last week. Did you know Firefox 3.1 is being renamed to Firefox 3.5?

While we wait for that to come out of beta, let’s look at a few cool Firefox extensions, shall we?

Firefox Extensions of the Week

As I usually advice, make sure you remove extensions you don’t use anymore to keep your Firefox install humming along swiftly. And if you are looking for more, my list of Top Firefox Extensions could have a few surprises in store for you.

Greasemonkey Script of the Week

This is a new section I started doing this month to highlight a cool Greasemonkey script!

Gmail 3.0 (Productivity Package): You will love this script if you live in Gmail all day like I do. It pushes Gmail and makes its cloud services like Google Docs, Zoho services etc right in your Gmail. For instance, your New Mail button is replaced with a cool menu where you can choose to create a mail or any other Google service documents.

Firefox Theme of the Week

CamiFox takes the cake for the Firefox Theme of the week. It has a very clean, crisp and sophisticated design that’s very pleasing to the eye. I have been using PitchDark featured last week for a while but I might keep CamiFox for a bit as its such a pleasant change.

Camifox Firefox Theme

You can see the Tab Sidebar add-on in action in teh screenshot as well. How do you like it?

Do you have an extension, Google greasemonkey script or theme recommendation? Leave a comment here or contact me and I’ll try to showcase it in my next review.

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Typealyzer – What Type is Your Blog? 18 Nov 2012 12:01 AM (12 years ago)

I came across an interesting site this morning.

Typealyzer.com sets out to analyze a blog based on the content and determines the personality type of the blog.

Typealyzer Logo

Typealyzer Logo

Typealyzer analyzes writing style in the blog based on text patterns, etc and determines the type of blog. Of course, naturally I put ShanKri-la to the test and we came out as

ISTJ – The Duty Fulfillers

The responsible and hardworking type. They are especially attuned to
the details of life and are careful about getting the facts right.
Conservative by nature they are often reluctant to take any risks
whatsoever.

The Duty Fulfillers are happy to be let alone and to be able to
work in their own pace. They know what they have to do and how to do
it.

I am not sure if that is flattering or demeaning but I tend to take things positively. Even though the title seems a little discouraging, the details are more friendly and some of it even true.

typealyzer result

I do like to work in my own pace – I feel no urge or desire to post for the sake of posting everyday or to some schedule. Of course, you know that as a regular reader.

One little secret I’d let you in is that actually I like reading others work more than I do writing. This results in me devouring a lot of stuff from the web but only writing about a select few that I really feel excited about here. I hope this shows in my writing than just being ‘dutiful fulfiller’.

Behind Typealyzer.com

There isn’t a lot of information about the site (no About page for starters) in the home page. But, the site does have an active Google Group for Typealyzer.

Reading through a few posts reveal that Typealyzer only analyzes the text directly on the url provided. So, I could have been really dynamic this whole year but Typealyzer determines the blog type by just the 10 posts in my home page.

So, try putting different pages of your site url to see what you get. For eg, search results page or archives page, etc.

Alternately, my wife’s Indian recipes blog SpicyTasty.com came out as ESFP – The Performers – the entertaining and friendly blog.

Our iPhone blog TopiPhoneResource.com came out as ESTP – The Doers – the active and play-ful type.

Let us know in the comments what type of blog is yours.

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New Flock Social Browser Based on Chromium 18 Nov 2012 12:01 AM (12 years ago)

Just when we were thinking the good old social browser Flock is dying a slow death, they have come back renewed!

Flock has just released a new version of their social browser this time based on Chromium. Chromium is the open source browser project Google made Open Source when they released the Google Chrome browser.

Flock has ditched Mozilla’s Firefox and has moved over to Google Chrome as its base and totally re-engineered their social browser.

For those new to Flock, it is a social web browser where they let you add all your social networking accounts and provide easy access to them as well as nice integration so you can seamless share content with your friends as you browse.

image

Here is what I found on the Flock blog

These are exciting times around the Flock offices and in our wider community. As many of you know, we recently launched the New Flock Social Browser and the response from our users and people new to the Flock experience has been phenomenal. A core focus of the new Flock is to help users better manage the large volume of information and relationships they interact with online each day and we’ve been blown away to see that our first 20,000 new Flock beta users have viewed, managed and interacted with over 100,000,000 "activities" in the Flock sidebar in the first 3 weeks of using product! ("activities" include tweets, DMs, status updates, comments, feeds, requests, invites, photo upload notifications, etc, etc.)

Right now, the new Flock browser (beta) seems to support only Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. But, the integration is similar to the one before. You could see the Twitter, Facebook updates in the sidebar. Also, you could see them as a unified view if you use multiple accounts and just want to check them together.

You could also add your favorite RSS feeds in the mix.

Earlier, I believe they had integrated Delicious, StumbleUpon, Gmail, etc but the new motto ‘Built for Twitter and Facebook’ probably makes it clear on their intentions to keep things focused on these 2 powerhouses.

I have been using Google Chrome more and more lately for casual surfing and Firefox for Web development. I am giving Flock a try to see if it really aids my social networking seamlessly while working just like Google Chrome. if it does, we will have a winner here with most Google Chrome fans.

The new Flock beta is now only available on Windows and you can enter your email address to get notified for a Mac version.

Download New Flock browser

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How to Overcome RSS Feed Overload? 18 Nov 2012 12:01 AM (12 years ago)

Have you collected a lot of RSS feeds over time that you neatly categorized in folders? If you are like me, you hardly have time to visit some of these folders because to actually go through them all, you are going to need a few hours a day. And who are we kidding?

RSS is the best thing since sliced bread to me and many of you who follow our feed. But, it offers little flexibility in choosing what you want to read in a particular feed. Often you end up receiving any updates made in a blog/site and then manually discarding (marking Read) that item in your feed reader. Some blogs offer your category feeds, so you can choose the category you’d like to follow. But, often times it is not that clear cut.

For instance, what if you don’t want to receive any post of mine that talks about ‘Remember the Milk’ or if you wanted to only receive posts that are about ‘Firefox’? How would you like to fine tune a feed to match your interests and filter out other stuff that are probably interesting to others reaching your feed reader?

FeedRinseWith FeedRinse, you can do just that. And more.. Let’s take a look at it’s features and I’ll show you how it can help you overcome your RSS Overload.


FeedRinse Quick Facts

I have previously discussed, as a blogger how you can use Google Alerts to stay on top of your niche. FeedRinse can help you in a similar manner where you can create customized channel feeds.

Here are a few ways you can use FeedRinse:

As you can see, the way you can use FeedRinse is limited only by your
imagination. Sure, you might miss out on a few interesting posts when
you are filtering but isn’t it much better than just letting it
accumulate and marking them all as read in frustration?

I have heard of FeedRinse before but haven’t had the need to try it so far. I set out to do something about my Google Reader feeds. I simply wasn’t able to read all my feeds everyday.

I had subscribed to a lot of feeds and some of the feeds were getting updated with tons of posts. For instance Mashable has anywhere between 30-50 posts a day and it was increasingly getting hard to read all the posts. I could have deleted their feed but some of their posts were of great interest to me. That’s where FeedRinse helped me out.

After setting this up this week, today was the first time I was able to actually really read and mark my feeds as ‘Read’. It did take me a week to achieve this and I will be fine tuning this by adding and deleting feeds to FeedRinse as I go.

This is my workflow to rinse my feeds

So, give your feed reader a fall cleaning and read your feeds with your own spam filter for the feeds. Are you ready to overcome your RSS Fed overload?

Geeks are Sexy $1300 Contest

Geeks are Sexy s having an awesome contest where they are giving away prizes worth $1300 celebrating their 2 year anniversary. And this is my entry for this contest and there is only a few more days left until the contest ends. So, write your how to article to enter the ccntest!

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Mister Wong Comes to USA 18 Nov 2012 12:01 AM (12 years ago)

I like competition because we, as consumers benefit directly from it. I especially like the new competition to del.icio.us, the popular social online bookmarking service.

Mister-Wong.de has been hugely popular in Europe and I have been in their closed-beta for over a month. I was really excited because I have been looking for a better interface than del.icio.us and Mister Wong came very close to it.

On August 2, Mister-Wong.com was officially launched and opened the doors for everyone to join.

You can read how I used this trick to make del.icio.us actually taste good here.

If you use del.icio.us or myYahoo, some of the features mentioned below might not be new to you. But, I am listing here for the benefit of anyone wanting to try an online social bookmarking service.

Quick Facts

Video

Here is a video by 2 geeks and a hot girl of Mister-Wong to take a look at some of the above-mentioned features.

[youtube hKqPp94rzLg]

Links

Mister Wong

Firefox Toolbar, WordPress Plugin, Wong Widgets, etc.

Do you use a social bookmarking tool? If you use del.icio.us are you happy with it? Would you give Mister-Wong a shot?

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Broadcast your skills with Sclipo 18 Nov 2012 12:01 AM (12 years ago)

I turn to the internet to for learning a lot of things I am new to. Some times I look up tips or try to find a better way to do the things I do.

You can read manuals after manuals and still may not get the hang of it, but if you watched someone do it, you pick it up instantly. If you are this kind of person, which I am, you are going to love this site. It is a site full of how-to and instructional videos.

Sclipo – broadcast your skills

It is striving to be the YouTube of instructional videos and it already has a lot of videos. Here is a run Sclipo down of some quick facts about the site:

I am having fun with this site and the Masters section is a good starter page to get a hang of the videos that are already considered popular so you can gauge the quality of the site for yourself.

If you like Sclipo, there are couple of similar places you could turn to for instructional video: SuTree and ViewDo.

I would really like to upload an instructional video to Sclipo. Instead of pulling a how-to out of thin air, I would like to ask my readers for suggestions. Is there something you would like me to do an instructional video on?

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Would VaultPress Become the Best Paid WordPress Backup Solution? 18 Nov 2012 12:01 AM (12 years ago)

WordPress.com blog users (free and hosted version) have enjoyed Automattic’s backups and not worry about their content getting lost. But, the self-hosted WordPress blog users have been left to using some custom solution via Plugins like WP DB Backup or custom backup scripts until now.

Automattic has announced a WordPress.com branded solution called VaultPress for private beta. Matt Mullenweg from Automattic says

The vision of VaultPress is to ensure that blogs and sites under its care are always completely secure, regardless of what happens. Today, this means every bit of content will be safe, from plugins and themes to the smallest comment or post revision, with WordPress-aware, real-time, multi-cloud backups. This is some of the most advanced technology I’ve seen interact with WordPress.

In the future, if your site is tampered with in any way, we’ll know within minutes and can take appropriate steps. The VaultPress core engine will be able to protect you against zero-day security vulnerabilities by updating your blog with hot-fixes, even while you sleep.

image

VaultPress is a premium solution with a price tag of $15-20 a month but promises to be different than the current WordPress solutions in the following ways

With more and more self-hosted WordPress powering entire websites (my wife’s service plug 🙂 ) and not just blogs, it is about time we had a reliable backup solution and I am glad Automattic is offering this.

If your business website is powered by self-hosted WordPress, would you mind paying for such a comfort?

Would VaultPress become the best paid WordPress backup solution?

[via VaultPress blog]

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Chinese Concept Train That Never Stops 18 Nov 2012 12:01 AM (12 years ago)

I came across this video on Twitter last week and had bookmarked it.

This Chinese concept bullet train never stops anywhere. That’s right! It never stops. Anywhere.

The way they figure it is there is a compartment at the station where the passengers are loaded before the train arrives. And as the train passes the station it picks up the compartment at the top as it enters and drops off a compartment as it leaves. The passengers who needed to alight are already in the top compartment that was dropped off.

Zero time wasted in loading and unloading passengers.

I can’t think of any practical hurdles that could ruin this project. For eg. It could be pretty cumbersome for everyone to get into that one compartment if this was a really long train but will work for short commuter-type bullet trains.

Anyhow, this is a really novel yet simple concept that I felt worth sharing.

Have a great weekend!

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Call of Duty: Blacks Ops Makes $1 Billion in 6 Weeks 18 Nov 2012 12:01 AM (12 years ago)

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare may be the title everyone talked about last time around.

Now, Activision’s latest title Call of Duty: Black Ops has made $1 Billion in sales in just 6 weeks since launch.

This is an amazing feat only achieved by movie Avatar.

Call of Duty: Black Ops is available on all 3 major gaming platforms – Sony Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii.

image

Here is the complete press release:

Call of Duty®: Black Ops™ Surpasses $1 Billion in Sales Worldwide

Over 600 Million Hours Logged Playing Call of Duty: Black Ops Game Continues to Set Entertainment Records

SANTA MONICA, Calif., Dec. 21, 2010 /PRNewswire/ – Activision Publishing, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI) announced today that Call of Duty: Black Ops continues to set sell-through records crossing the $1 billion mark in sales worldwide since its launch in November, according to internal Activision estimates.

In its first five days alone, the game sold more than $650 million worldwide, outpacing theatrical box office, book and video game sales records for five-day worldwide sell through in dollars, according to internal Activision estimates and boxofficemojo.com.  The game exceeded Activision’s previous five-day worldwide record of $550 million set by last year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare® 2.

To date, more than 600 million hours have been logged playing Call of Duty: Black Ops since the game launched on November 9, 2010.  According to Microsoft, the average player logs on more than once a day and plays for more than one hour each time.  Over half of that time is spent playing online with and against friends, illustrating the unique social characteristics of the game.

“In all of entertainment, only Call of Duty and “Avatar” have ever achieved the billion dollar revenue milestone this quickly,” said Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard.  ”This is a tribute to the global appeal of the Call of Duty franchise, the exceptional talent at Treyarch and the hundreds of extraordinary people across our many Call of Duty studios including Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer that work tirelessly on the franchise.  Our ability to provide the most compelling, immersive  entertainment experience, and enhance it with regular, recurring content that delivers hundreds of hours of audience value, has allowed Call of Duty to continue to set sales and usage records.”

Kotick continued, “This extraordinary milestone was achieved  because of  the tens of millions of passionate Call of Duty players around the world.  Global audiences have logged billions of hours online with Call of Duty games on Xbox LIVE, the PlayStation Network and on personal computers.  This unique level of community engagement has enabled Call of Duty to become one of the world’s most engaged online communities.

“Call of Duty continues to rewrite not just the record books, but also the rules of interactive entertainment,” says Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing. “Even more remarkable than the number of units sold is the number of hours people are playing the game together online which are unprecedented. Call of Duty is more than a game, it’s a true community.

Call of Duty: Black Ops is rated “M” (Mature) by the ESRB for Blood and Gore, Intense Violence and Language.  For additional information about the game, visit www.callofduty.com/blackops.

Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, Activision Publishing, Inc. is a leading worldwide developer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment and leisure products.

Activision maintains operations in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Australia, South Korea, China and the region of Taiwan. More information about Activision and its products can be found on the company’s website, www.activision.com.

*All references cited are sourced according to www.boxofficemojo.com or www.guinnessworldrecords.com

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How to Backup and Save Your Delicious Bookmarks? 18 Nov 2012 12:01 AM (12 years ago)

One of my favorite bookmarking service, Delicous, is shutting down thanks to Yahoo neglecting it and finally ditching it.

We had a bit of a good news with Xmarks staying alive but Delicious is going away. I have a ton of bookmarks saved for a few years in delicious and started looking around for ways to save them.

2010-12-17_111258

Here are a few ways to backup and also a few alternatives.

How to backup Delicious bookmarks?

  1. Login to your delicious account
  2. Go to Settings –> Bookmarks –> Export/Backup Bookmarks
  3. Check ‘include my tags’ and ‘include my notes’ and click ‘Export’.

Save your delicious bookmarks as a HTM file. You can rename the extension to .HTML so it is compatible for import into browsers.

Export Delicious to your browser

You can export the Delicious bookmarks to your browser but unfortunately they arrive without tags. This could be a deal breaker as that is one of my key ways of organizing bookmarks in delicious.

In Firefox, you can just go to

Bookmarks –> Organize bookmarks –> Import and Backup –> Import HTML

If you have Xmarks or Firefox Sync, you can use one of those sync services to keep your bookmarks synced across your browsers.

In Google Chrome, go to

Bookmark manager –> Organize –> Import bookmarks

You can choose in Chrome settings to sync your bookmarks to Google.

Both these solutions aren’t pretty if you have thousands of bookmarks like me tagged nicely in delicious. So, I am in search of other alternatives to Delicious but haven’t decided on one. I will share them here to get some ideas from you as well.

Delicious Alternatives

Diigo – This is a service that offers bookmarks as one of its features in addition to note taking, web reasearch, etc. Plus, Diigo is not free. You can see the comparison here. How-to guide.

Evernote – The popular note taking web app can import your delicious bookmarks but with no love for tags.

Spabba.com – A quick service put together by Blippy co-founder. Quick as in built-in 30 minutes However, the service is supposed to work only with old-ish accounts that were created before yahoo merged. Also, they seem to be hitting an API limit with a ‘fail fish’ error. Might have to try again later.

Pinboard.in – A paid barebones bookmarking service whose price goes up as more members join. Here is a list of features roadmap for this budding service.

Mister Wong – I have reviewed this service a long time back. Maybe it’s time to take another look.

Historio.us – A simple service like Pinboard but it also lets you search for any word on the pages you have bookmarked!

Faviki – Another cool bookmarking service that applies the concepts of Wikipedia to tags.

Also, here is an interesting read – Delicious’s Data Policy is Like Setting a Museum on Fire.

It is pretty sad to see one of the first services that got ‘web 2.0’ is going away. But, I see this as a wonderful opportunities for other startups to fill in this void. Who knows, we might end up getting something way better than Delicious.

What do you think?

{credit to some sources here – TNW }

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3 Super Fast Dictonaries in the Internet 18 Nov 2012 12:01 AM (12 years ago)

I have stopped looking up words in my Webster’s College Dictionary a while back. I used their online version for the longest time before I started using other super fast means of finding meaning for words in the internet. I have listed them in the order I have found and used them, Google being the first. Here they are:

Google’s Define Query

The simplest and fastest way is to use Google’s search interface. Just type ‘define: voracious’ (without the quotes) in the Google search box to get the meaning of the word ‘voracious’.  It’s simple, fast and you can use the same familiar interface you use to search for other things.

Google Dictionary Search

Ninjawords

As geeky as the name sounds, this dictionary is fast like a ninja! Just try it to find out just how fast. Ever since I’ve found Ninjawords, that’s where I go first to get meanings for the words I am looking up.

NinjaWords

Definr

Definr is my latest find and I just love it. It is fast plus it is such a life saver if you are not sure about the spelling. It lists words and its variations as you start typing so you can just click on the one you want to look up. Plus, if you are a Firefox user, Definr lets you look up words super fast by these easy ways:

Definr

OneLook (Thanks Jeanne!)

OneLook has a quick dictionary feature just like the others for quick lookup. But, it is more like a search engine for words and phrases. It has more than 5 million words from over 900 dictionaries indexed! As Jeanne explains in the comments, it is a great resource for anyone trying to build their vocabulary or just plain looking up word’s meaning or origin, etc.

OneLook Dictionary

If you are a person who loves to learn new words, the Reverse dictionary feature can be fun to play with! I once had a Reader’s Digest Reverse Dictionary and had so much fun learning new words.

What do you use for your dictionary needs? Do you find one of these useful enough to bookmark and use later?

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Remember the Milk For Gmail Google Chrome Extension 18 Nov 2012 12:01 AM (12 years ago)

Remember the Milk is my favorite online to-do manager and even has a great RTM iPhone app too.

I use Gmail and Remember the Milk extensively everyday. So, naturally Remember the Milk for Gmail Firefox extension has been such a wonderful tool for me.

I can access RTM from within Gmail. This is pretty huge as I live in Gmail and it makes it so easy to add and manage my tasks.

Google Chrome has slowly been gaining my trust because it is so fast to load. Plus, each tab runs as a separate process so even if a web app crashes it doesn’t close the whole browser.

Remember the Milk has come out with an add-on for Google Chrome.

With the Google Chrome RTM for Gmail add-on, you can manage your tasks from within Gmail. You can complete, postpone and edit tasks. You can add tasks and connect them with your emails, contacts and even Google Calendar events.

rtm-chrome-gmail

This is huge as I use both RTM and Google Calendar. You can automatically add tasks for starred messages or specific labels in Gmail!

All you need is a free Remember the Milk account and make sure your Gmail language is set to US English.

Download RTM for Gmail Google Chrome Add-on

Google Chrome supports extensions only in their recent beta version. Just follow the notice you will get when you try to install the RTM add-on if you are using an older Google Chrome.

[via RTM blog]

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BuddyPress Get WordPress Single Install Friendly 18 Nov 2012 12:01 AM (12 years ago)

BuddyPress is another awesome open source forum project that works great with WordPress MU.

BuddyPress reached version 1.0 last year but it was friendly only with the multi-use version of WordPress – WordPress MU. Those with single installations of WordPress, like myself, were unable to use BuddyPress with the same ease as WPMU users.

With the release of BuddyPress 1.2, single installations of WordPress can also use BuddyPress now for their forum needs.

We can install BuddyPress as just a plugin from within the WordPress installation. BuddyPress makes it very easy to integrate a forum in an existing WordPress blog.

image

And you can share your existing WordPress blog user base across your forum too, just like that. If you had tried to integrate user login with forum software like PHPbb or the like you might already know how painful that is.

BuddyPress makes that a breeze. But, there was one catch. BuddyPress comes with it’s own default theme and most WordPress single installation blogs already have their own themes.

The good news is that, Andy Peatling, founder and lead developer of BuddyPress has created a WordPress plugin – BuddyPress Template Pack.

The Template Pack walks you through the theme additions step by step that adds the necessary configuration to your existing WordPress theme in a non-destructive way so you can back out if you don’t like it.

I can’t wait to try out BuddyPress integration shortly in some of our sites. How about you?

Try BuddyPress

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Start your browsing with HomepageStartup 18 Nov 2012 12:01 AM (12 years ago)

Going to bookmarks to start browsing is so old. If you are a little savvy with your browser, you might have set up multiple pages to open as your home pages. (if not ask me how in the comments)

If you use Opera for your browser, you will be all too familiar with the Speed Dial feature. It is a feature where you can set a bunch of websites as thumbnails in your home page. Talk about power browsing with all your most used websites available in a single click as soon as you fire up your browser.

If you use Firefox, there is a Speed Dial extension that lets you do exactly the same. This is all fine and dandy as long as you are on your computer. What if you are on the road using someone else’s computer and you can’t remember the darn website address?

HomepageStartup – Fill your Home Page needs

HomepageStartup is here to fill that niche. You can create a free account and set up all your HomepageStartup favorite sites in there. You can customize the startup page to have upto 5 columns & 10 rows (50 thumbnails). Anything over 10-15 might beat the whole purpose of easy access, IMHO.

In addition to quick visual access via website thumbnails, it features custom tabs. So you can group your sites by categories such as Home, Work, Bills, Blogs, etc. Tabs is something that is missing in the Speed Dial Firefox extension and I have started using this just for that.

Quick Facts:

HomepageStartup

I have a liking for web services that fills a special need. This one fills such a need and does it very well. Plus, this site is ad free and the author says in his blog that he intends to keep it that way.

You don’t need an account to play with it.. so go ahead and try it and this might be the best thing since sliced bread! (I like this look better)

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Which DNS Service Should You Use? 18 Nov 2012 12:01 AM (12 years ago)

Google recently introduced Google Public DNS service. Last week, I wrote about what Google Public DNS actually means to you. If you are not aware of what it is I recommend reading that post before reading this further.

With a couple of different options with DNS Servers now between your ISP’s default DNS server, the time tested OpenDNS project and the new Google Public DNS server, you might be wondering which one of these should you be using.

Namebench is a free tool that’s here to answer just that question for you.

namebench

It runs a bunch of tests and finds the fastest DNS server available for you. It runs a pretty exhaustive bechmarking by using your web browser history, tcpdump output or even standardized datasets to give a personalized recommendation.

Namebench is a free download and works on Windows, Linux or Mac OS X. It sports both a GUI (graphical user interface) and a command line interface.

It does not install anything in your computer but just runs standalone. Here is a sample Namebench result after a run.

namebench-results

You can choose to use this DNS settings and you may be able to realize faster browsing speed.

Download Namebench

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TweetDeck Goes Supersonic With a New Update 18 Nov 2012 12:01 AM (12 years ago)

Ok that might be a little bit of exaggeration but the new version of TweetDeck really has gotten an awesome speed boost.

Twitter introduced User Streams API earlier that allowed for instant delivery of tweets. The older API allowed for the clients tto check for new tweets every few minutes.

TweetDeck launched a new version with the User Streams API but I found it a bit buggy to use. Today, in a new version update, TweetDeck has brought the User Streams API into the main version.

Once you install the new version v0.36, you will have the new stream feature enabled. The tweets you see are in real time and are updated as they happen instead of the old way where TweetDeck would poll every few minutes for new updates.

This can be really useful and kind of give the same functionality of TwitterFall.com inside TweetDeck.

However, if you follow a large number of people on Twitter, this could get overwhelming. You can easily turn this off and go back to the old method by going to

Settings –> Twitter –> Enable realtime Twitter streaming

and disabling it.

image

TweetDeck has a few tips on using the new feature

You can’t just expect to jump into your F-14 and start buzzing the tower without a few pointers. So here are a few key articles from our support site that should help you understand some of the finer points of streaming updates in TweetDeck.

Other than that, just strap yourself in and enjoy Twitter the way it was meant to be – in TweetDeck and in true real-time!

If you are thinking you may not use this feature and don’t need to upgrade your TweetDeck, think again. Twitter seems to have made another major architectural change behind the scenes.

Twitter is switching to a new way of assigning unique identifiers to each tweet in it’s database. This new method, dubbed "Snowflake", has forced us to make some fundamental changes behind the scenes in TweetDeck. 

The result of all this techno-jiggery-pokery is that you *must* update to at least v0.36 urgently. If you have not upgraded before 24th November then your TweetDeck will start going very wrong.

So, make sure you update your TweetDeck before Nov 24.

{ via TweetDeck }

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Free Online Screen Recorder – ScreenToaster 18 Nov 2012 12:01 AM (12 years ago)

Sharing screencasts are the in-thing now. Screencats make sharing information visually that much more powerful. It can come in handy for many situations.And this is especially true for bloggers doing short video or tutorial.

ScreenToaster is an online screen recording tool that doesn’t need anything installed in your computer. Yes, that’s the beauty of it. It just works in your browser.

ScreenToaster Features

You just need to register for a free account with ScreenToaster and you are good to go. It is in private beta at the moment and you need an invite code to sign up.

Here’s a short video sample recorded with ScreenToaster but I don’t attest to the claim in the video to make your computer faster. 😉

Screencasts and videos online

What’s to come

ScreenToaster will fit only very basic screencasting needs and it doesn’t compare with the full-featured screencasting software like Camtasia, etc.

ScreenToatser is missing audio recording so you can’t narrate as you record a screenshot. You could do a voice ver after you record the video but that’d need some practice. Also, the videos are now only hosted in ScreenToatsre and no download options are available. But, the developers say they are working on those missing features for future release.

ScreenToaster is a no-frills zero-download screen recording tool that works everytime. If you are on the road and need to record something without your favorite tools, ScreenToaster could come to your rescue.

It worked great in Windows but had some issues running in Linux and warns about those if you have graphic effects turned on.

There are plenty of other options out there. Which is your favorite?

Update: 01/17/09

ScreenToaster just opened for public and gets the much needed recording audio option. Check it out.

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