Figure 1 The Problem Steps Recorder dramatically speeds up troubleshooting. (Click the image for a larger view)

The Credential Manager provides a handy, secure place to store passwords.

Windows 7 adds a great deal of virtualization support, including the ability to create and attach virtual hard drives from the GUI.

Don’t forget to enter the Antispyware Give-away for December 2009!
Two lucky winners have won a free professional license of Superantispyware!

—–Ammendment—

I found a complete list of shortcuts for Win7 – 99 Windows 7 Shortcuts

this list was mined from http://www.7tutorials.com/biggest-library-windows-7-shortcuts  they seem to have several great no non-sense tutorials regarding windows 7

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Resize An Existing .vdi Virtualbox Image – EASILY!

Start off by creating a fresh new drive of the size you’re after using the VirtualBox user interface. Then, locate both the your old, smaller HD and the new, larger one and run the following command:

VBoxManage clonehd --existing oldhd.vdi newhd.vdi

After some progress indicators ahve come and gone your HD should have been cloned to the larger one. You now need to use some software to expand your drive partition into the new space. Vista and W7 have this feature built in to Disk Management, or you could use something like GParted. I have never had luck with the integrated windows disk management tools, so I opted to use a free product called EASEUS PARTITION MASTER – home edition:

This tool was easy to install directly into the new vdi image.  Walked through the wizard after clicking on “Resize” – it rebooted itself and resized the partition without a fuss.

The command line entries for running the VirtualBox commands:

gmilby@gmilby-ubuntu64:~/.VirtualBox/HardDisks$ ls
XP_10GIG.vdi  xp.vdi
gmilby@gmilby-ubuntu64:~/.VirtualBox/HardDisks$ ls -l
total 6042484
-rw——- 1 gmilby gmilby      61952 2009-11-20 08:15 XP_10GIG.vdi
-rw——- 1 gmilby gmilby 6181380608 2009-11-20 07:56 xp.vdi
gmilby@gmilby-ubuntu64:~/.VirtualBox/HardDisks$ VBoxManage clonehd –existing xp.vdi XP_10GIG.vdi
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 3.0.12
(C) 2005-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
All rights reserved.

0%…10%…20%…30%…40%…50%…60%…70%…80%…90%…100%
Clone hard disk created in format ‘VDI’. UUID: 1366bb7f-e827-41de-90ce-763e82309f26
gmilby@gmilby-ubuntu64:~/.VirtualBox/HardDisks$

Resized .vdi image:

Don’t forget to enter the Antispyware Give-away for December 2009!
Two lucky winners have won a free professional license of Superantispyware!

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Congratulations to Octobers Winner:
Lewis Meyers
SuperAntiSpyware.com will be contacting you to award your prize.

Click to Enter November’s Spyware Giveaway!

Enter to win a free professional license

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Anyone who knows me, knows that I do not endorse many things, and the things I endorse are usually freeware or opensource. Despite my warnings, my wife and all of our friends & family use windows as their primary operating system. Yours truly is the designated help desk for any and all emergencies.
During the past 4 years (that’s about 20+ virus & trojan emergencies [per year]), I stumbled across a product that actually works as described. It’s rare to find something that completely works, but I’ve yet to find anything malware, spyware, trojan issue that this software cannot handle – COMPLETELY HANDLE and REMOVE.

During some conversations with the Marketing Director (Mike Duncan), we decided to share the experience by offering a free PROFESSIONAL license for the product – which carries a life time subscription (hence, no surprises later).   We will be awarding one license per month for the next three months.   You need to enter each month in order to be eligible. If you would like to register for a chance to win one of the free lifetime license keys – click on the following link:

Enter The SUPERANTISPYWARE Give-Away

The best part is that you can try this software for free, “NOW” and they even offer a free version. The free version offers some limited features & does not offer the proactive features, but it still will removes ALL of the malware, spyware, and trojans. It just will not self-update, run 24/7/365 and do scheduled scans/remove all the bad things automatically like the professional version does.
If you decide to try the freeware version, there is no nagware – no aggrivating things asking for your information/etc. Either way you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the experience, and more importantly you’ll be shocked at what it finds & removes from your system.

Follow Me On Twitter!

====Ammendment====
Congrat’s to Jonathan Pereira our final SuperAntiSpyware Pro License winner for December 2009!
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If you are looking for a POWERFUL database tool – this may be the way to go. Installing in windows is a click and drool endeavour, but installing in ‘buntu’ (Ubuntu or Kubuntu) is another story.

These no non-sense instructions will get you going quickly:

Linux/Ubuntu/Kubuntu requires that the Sun Java 6 JDK be installed on your system. Install it by typing: sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk

To download the installable package, navigate to Oracle’s SQL Developer download page at:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/sql/index.html

You can only download after you agree to the OTN License Agreement for SQL Developer at the top of the page (look for radio buttons). Choose the Accept License Agreement radio button.

Scroll down and select the package entitled ‘Oracle SQL Developer RPM for Linux’ to download the package. Don’t worry – we’ll deal with the RPM shortly.

If you’re in a hurry, and want to skip the compile process, then download the .DEB form here Syrbot SQLDeveloepr.deb Download

Compiling:
Next we need to convert the .rpm to a .deb to install it in Ubuntu. We’ll do this by using an application called ‘alien’. Install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install alien

Next, in a terminal session, browse to where you saved the SQL Developer .rpm package and type:
sudo alien -k –scripts sqldeveloper*(insert the version number)*.rpm

This will create a .deb package ready to be installed into our system. We do so by typing:
sudo dpkg -i sqldeveloper*.deb

Oracle SQL Developer is now installed, but you will need to create the profile directory in order to run it (the hidden folder in your home directory e.g. .sqldeveloper

Below, each directory had to be created individually, chowned to me (since mkdir is a sudo operation), then chmod to 777 to allow the system user to write in the files to the directory.
the folder labeled system1.5.5.59.69 will change as version numbers change – so pay attention.

Looking at the message we can see that it’s trying to obtain the JDK path by reading a file called ‘jdk’ in a directory called ‘~/.sqldeveloper’. Let’s resolve this dependency.

First we’ll create the missing directory by typing:
mkdir -p ~/.sqldeveloper

Next we’ll create an empty jdk file by typing:
touch ~/.sqldeveloper/jdk

Edit this file and input the path to the JDK by typing:
gedit ~/.sqldeveloper/jdk
and pasting into it:
/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun

gmilby@gmilby-ubuntu64:~$ ~/.sqldeveloper/system1.5.5.59.69/o.ide/diagnostics$

gmilby@gmilby-ubuntu64:~$ sudo chmod 777 -Rf .sqldeveloper

Once the profile path is created you should be able to launch SQLDeveloper via the menu (Applications/Programming), or by terminal window, typing, “sqldeveloper“.

Follow Me On Twitter!

Good Luck with this and post your comments below – we’re always open to improvements in the process.

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Here’s a list of all the “video-type” sites i could find from a few sources. It’s worth bookmarking just for the sake of finding shows/vlogs that are sometimes hard to find.  Some offer full episodes or webcast of events.

Broadcast Networks

• ABC
• CBS
• NBC
• Fox
• The CW
• CBS Sports

Cable networks with full episodes and / or live streams

• Food TV
• Monsters HD
• MTV Music
• MTV Shows
• TNT
• Nickelodeon
• TBS
• CNN
• CNN Live
• Lifetime
• CNBC
• USA
• SciFi
• VH1
• Cartoon Network
• Adult Swim
• TruTV
• FX
• ABC Family
• History Channel
• BET
• A&E
• Disney Channel
• TLC / Discovery / Animal Planet
• HGTV
• CSPAN
• Current
• Comedy Central
• Showtime
• ABC News
• TVLand

Show specific full episodes

• The Daily Show
• The Colbert Report
• South Park Studios

Independent Internet-only networks

• Reuters
• MicroGuide
• ManiaTV
• CNET TV
• Revision3
• NextNewNetworks
• College Humor
• Funny or Die
• Gametrailers
• Gamevideos
• Super Deluxe
• Onion News Network
• Crackle
• Twit
• VBS
• FearNet
• blinkbox

Aggregation sites

• Veoh
• In2TV
• TV.com
• Fancast
• Hulu
• Joost
• iTunes
• YouTube
• Vimeo
• Blip.TV
• Rewer
• OVGuide
• First on Mars

Pay Per View

• Blockbuster
• Jaman
• CinemaNow
• StarzPlay
• MovieFlix
• VOD
• Play4film
• Bigstar
• TotalVid
• etvnet
• Netflix
• Amazon

Sports

• SI Vault
• HockeyStreams
• ESPN Video
• ESPN Motion
• CBS Sports
• MLS
• PBA
• SPORTSKOOL
• MLB
• Fox sports video
• WWE
• The Tennis Channel
• NFL
• NHL
• NBA
• PGA
• Tennis
• Open sports video site
• Sky sports video

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Creating a functional navigation for your website is key – especially if you want to add any style that retains cross-browser functionality.   I’ve gone through hundreds of sites and have found the top 3 primo CSS menu generators that will give you the most options to get that stylish nav menu you’re looking for.

13 Styles offers cross browser/lightweight menu’s that offer a variety of styles ranging from simple to elegant to fun.  Most of the menu’s are generic, and can be easily implemented into an exisiting design.  The most you would need to do is to adjust some of the colors in the CSS.  The stylesheets are using standard property componenets (CSS1/2), and appear to work in backward versions of browsers also.  Which is good considering the bulk of corporate America is using ie6 still.  If you’re interested, these menu’s offer the PSD’s to totally customize the menu (for a price) if the free version doesn’t work for you.

CSS Menumaker offers more menu’s that are utilizing a more graphic flair, and most seem that they make work well with more conservative color palets (considering the vibrance of the menu’s).   These CSS menu’s offer solutions for creating dropdown menus (unique – most CSS sites do not even approach this topic).  This generator  has a pretty extensive customization feature – allowing you to build more than just the look on the webpage – this generator actually builds the menu items.   If you’re creating the menu’s dynamically, then this feature will not matter a whole lot.

CSS Play is the perverbial “Mother-Load” of every configuration imaginable… literally.  I was able to look through about half this site, and it’s literally overwhelming as to how many resources are actually offered.  The multi-level dropdown menus are new, and the menu’s appear to be consistent.  Sometimes CSS/js menu’s will have gaps depending upon the layout or browser used.  All of the menu’s appear to “look correct” regardless of how they’re used, and how they’re viewed.   If you are concerned about page size, they have some pure text CSS menu’s that are actually appealing.

enjoy.

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Frameworks are best known for giving a developer an abreviated environment, where they can create basic pages with minimal effort.  How these frameworks are laid out greatly differ, but the logic is usually the similar by replacing content variables/markers in the inner array and using the framework to provide the infrastructure information like the header/footer/sidebar.

TemplateBlocks & LIME:VC appear to be the two latest entries on the block.  TemplateBlocks uses a segmented design that holds the “pieces” of each design template in a set/template so that a collection of objects are the template (e.g. CSS, JS, HTML bits and pieces).  It greatly speeds things up by allowing the user to merely naming a page, adding some content, then selecting which template to use (template being used in the appearance realm).  The only difficulty that I’ve noticed is implementing customized script, but the basic items are included and it works fine as long as you are familiar with .htaccess or not maintaining many virtual instances on your apache install.

The TemplateBlocks Admin Panel is probably the strongest element to the application.  It is well organized and very simple to use.  The only criticism I have is that the template sets are all displayed together – if you have a set named “Default” – when you go to the blocks page, ALL of the objects from every template set are thrown in the mix.  It would be helpful if the assigned attributes were marked or sorted by which template they’re associated with.

I’ve emailed with Makis (the developer of TemplateBlocks) on several occasions, he is always willing to listen and assist – which is a great asset to the application.

LIME:VC is a very new development that works along the same lines, but the goal was to provide an extremely light-weight framework that would help the back-end developer create front-end content quickly.  It’s not CMS-oriented like TemplateBlocks, it’s slightly more manual, but it’s equally as easy to setup and use.

Louis Stowasser (developer) is the primary on the project, and has been working to implement plug-ins – a CMS plug-in exists at the moment.   By developing the add-on components as plug-ins, it frees up the developer to “customize” an install instance so that each instance isn’t dragging around dead weight or utilizing/committing server-resources that are not needed to make the application run. It’s programming  follows the Model-View-Controller design pattern to ensure clean code & reduce redundancy.

Keep an eye on LIME:VC in the future, it appears to be an upcoming trend as far as how applications may be made in the future using 3.0 technology (instance/object-based functionality that encompasses only the required applications to build out an instance of the LIME).

Products like Wordpress, Joomla, etc… have been used for years as a make-shift framework to help expedite website production, but along with all the dead weight/luggage, comes an entire array of site variables.  Variables as which plugins are compatible with which version of the product (as it upgrades frequently), and how will upgrades effect customizations of the current instance.

If you can, download and try both TemplateBlocks & LIME:VC, and install them.  You’ll be pleasantly surprised how easy they both are to work with.   Using a framework will free up time to focus on the code more than the orchestration of building the actual pages.  More importantly, a framework will only effect the items that are implemented – separating the business layer logic – and not jeopardizing functionality during an upgrade/update.

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You know what a lightbox is – even if you don’t think you do. They’ve penetrated our daily internet lives as a way to dramatically display some content by popping up the content while graying out the background.

There have been some lists created with names of list boxes, but no one has sorted them out into designer-friendly categories. Especially sorted by value-type perspective. Though there are a variety of javascript classes/methodologies used to reproduce the lightbox effect. This post will review the high function lightbox scripts regardless of the class variety used to produce the product.

I’ll rehash the lists, and add some of my findings too – My opinions will be poised from the ease of use, how fast they load and complexity (is it more of a pain in the butt to implement it than it’s worth).

Here are the lightbox clones that seem to stand out, but as I soon learned, standing out means it’s bulky… the prettier it is, the more baggage it is (Kind of like a rich lady traveling?).

Greybox (& Greybox redeux) may be one of the most amazing ones out there, er – I mean pop up lightbox clone scripts. It handles iframes with ease (including a web page inside the pop up) – all of the close buttons are appealing and it’s smooth as butta. Just make room for the 50 suitcases though.

Leightbox (Yes, it’s spelled correctly). I may be in love with script… it’s light – insanely fast, and a painless install. It’s not the flashiest script out there, but when you need something rock solid and fast – it’s Leightbox to the rescue.

Lightbox2 is like it’s namesake – it performs as the original, but it does take things a step (or 2) further – it can handle image sets, so you’ll have the forward/reverse arrows are visible on the popup image – which saves the viewer a little trouble while browsing images. It’s package load is reasonably light, but the ‘Close button’ for lightbox 2 is easy to spot for the user. Lightbox2 seems to have taken the user into account while developing this script.

Lightwindow is a newer one on the scene, but it is a good contender. Easy setup, VERY clean design make it a good choice to integrate into 2.0/3.0 sites. Only a designer could appreciate the rounded corners feature, and the fast image preloading.

Weebox is small, fast and flexible. It’s self-explainatary name says it all. It’s actually one of my final picks along with Leightbox. There is a reported problem with safari web browser, so keep that in mind for the mac audience.

Thickbox is like “old faithful” JQuery-based – always there/always works, but the only complaint is that the stock close button is hard to find for new & inexperienced web users. A big hold back when designing anything that is retail oriented.

Slimbox is another top choice – it’s fast, easy to use and even looks good. One of it’s most useful features is that it does a lot of the ‘little stuff’ that saves some time – auto centers images into the lightbox pop up, scrolls through images in list – even does horizontal scrolling without missing a beat.

Shadowbox the project goals for Shadowbox are rare – their project goals were to develop an unobtrusive piece of code that performed the same way every time. This script even will refuse to scroll – big pitfall of most of these iframe based lightbox clones. If an image is too big – it only shows the area that is within the spec’s of the window – keep the user experience clean and neat.

Smoothbox is another extremely light-weight lightbox script. The setup is quick/easy – it’s not bulky or clunky, and only requires 2 files to operate (css & js, and images of course).

Modalbox is the balance of all of the goals. It’s big enough to look “AMAZING” & light weight enough to move around & setup easily. If you’re developing an online application and want to add the “WOW” factor without a headache – here ya go. You MUST click on the examples and ’see it in action’ buttons on this page. The confirmation box along with the ability to enable/disable client side features is a great idea.

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Headspace2
HeadSpace is a powerful all-in-one plugin to manage meta-data and handle a wide range of SEO tasks. With it you can tag your posts, create custom titles and descriptions that improve your page ranking, change the theme or run disabled plugins on specific pages, and a whole lot more.

Google Sitemap Generator
This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search. If you have any intention of using the webmaster tools – you should get this plugin so you can keep your sitemaps current & prevent any hold ups from your site not being current with current tags/etc…

Digg-Digg
This is another program that gives your blog visitor’s the opportunity to make it accessible to share a post in a network that can potentially drive more traffic to your site. The integrate “Digg Button” , “Reddit Me Button” , “Dzone Button” and “Yahoo Buzz Button” Into Wordpress Content. Setup screen provided to let user choose where user want to display Digg , Reddit , Dzone and Yahoo Buzz buttons.

Awesomepixgallery
Let’s face it… there isn’t a perfect gallery out there. If it looks good, it’s slow – if it’s ugly is fast and no one wants it anyway. APG is a good compromise between all the features out there. APG does have a superior intergration interface (after you upload pics you have quite a bit of control immediately to place/shape the image).

Email-Users
A plugin for wordpress which allows you to send an email to the registered blog users. Users can send personal emails to each other. Power users can email groups of users and even notify group of users of posts. The best part about this plugin is that you can specify mailing by group, so you only hit the publishers, subscribers/etc…

All in One SEO Pack

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

http://semperfiwebdesign.com/ I keep going back between this and the headspace2 plugin, both have their advantages. Even though I’m currently on headspace, this is still worth checking out.

Simpler-Contact-Page
Are you tired of all the “bells and whistles” of most WordPress contact forms? Are you exhausted from modifying CSS for hours just to get a contact plugin to display with your theme?
WP-Cache

WP-Cache is an extremely efficient WordPress page caching system to make your site much faster and responsive. It works by caching Worpress pages and storing them in a static file for serving future requests directly from the file rather than loading and compiling the whole PHP code and then building the page from the database. WP-Cache allows to serve hundred of times more pages per second, and to reduce the response time from several tenths of seconds to, supposedly, less than a millisecond.
Google Analytic Plugin

• Google Analyticator supports the following features:
• Standard Google Analytics tracking support
• Provides a widget that can be used to display visitor stat information on the front-end
• External link tracking of all links on the page, including links not managed by WordPress
• Download link tracking
• Support for hiding Administrator visits without effecting Google Analytics’ site overlay feature
• Support for any advanced tracking code Google provides
• Easily installable only requiring the user knows their UID
• Allows code to be placed in the footer to ensure faster load times
• Complete control over options; disable any feature if needed

Socialble Bookmarking Plugin
Social bookmarking sites allow your blog visitors to save, catalog, and share interesting pages they find on your website. The Sociable plugin appends links for your readers to use those sites to the end of each of your blog’s posts – making each post as accessible as possible. I’m currently using Digg Digg, but it doesn’t hurt to stay familiar with updates to the social networking sites. Sometimes what one plugin misses – the other will catch.

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