Make Tech Easier

How to Create a Virtual Machine of Your Existing Windows Operating System

Soumen Halder — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:35:57 +0000

A virtual machine is a software, that lets you create and run a separate operating system in your existing computer system. You can boot the virtual machine from the parent operating system and run just like another software application.

For example: If you are using Windows xp, you can install popular virtualization software like Windows virtual PC, Vmware workstation to create a virtual machine within your current operating system. Now in that virtual machine, you can install any operating system e.g Windows xp, vista. You can run these operating systems in a new explorer window within Windows xp.

The problem with virtual machines is that you have to install an operating system from scratch. This includes loading the operating system from cd or dvd, installing all the drivers and system software etc. This can be very time consuming and is not a quick job.

How to Convert your Existing Operating System into a Virtual Machine

Microsoft has a free application named Disk2vhd, which can create a virtual machine of your existing operating system. The utility is a portable application and does not require any installation. You can run the virtual machine on any computer you want.

Following are the steps involved to create the virtual machine of your existing Windows operating system:

1. Download the Zip file (751 Kb) and extract it. After that, just run the Disktovhd. exe.

2. The application will show you the available drives in your computer.

3. Select the drive which you want to migrate as a virtual machine. In this case, i would want to create a virtual machine for my Vista installation, hence i have selected the D drive.

4. Specify the path where you want to save the virtual hard drive (vhd) file. The file would be of large size and almost equal to the size of the operating system drive.

5. Hit the Create button. It would take some time to create the vhd file (mine took 25 minutes).

The software will clone a virtual hard disk of the drive selected and save it in specified location. After the vhd file has been created, you can use any virtualization software to mount the virtual hard disk and run the operating system as a virtual machine.

For example: I mounted the virtual hard disk on Microsoft Virtual PC and ran Windows Vista as a virtual machine under Windows xp. The software can convert the chosen hard drive into a vhd file, even if it is under use.

How can the Virtual machine be useful

Using a virtual machine has many advantages, especially when you are tech savy. Consider you are working in Windows xp and need to test a small Windows application compatible with Windows vista only. In that case you have to boot your system and start Windows vista again. A virtual hard disk of vista will come in handy here as you can start testing the vista compatible application by starting a virtual machine in xp.

Another situation where virtual machine can be a real time saver is when you are using multiple computers. Suppose you want to work in your friends computer with all your installed software and applications. In that case, just create a virtual hard drive of your operating system and carry the vhd file in a usb stick. When you are using the friend’s computer, just mount the virtual hard disk and use all your installed software.

Disktovhd can be used to create virtual hard drives of Windows xp, Windows vista, Windows server 2003. If you are using Ubuntu, check out how to create an Ubuntu virtual machine.

How to Create a Virtual Machine of Your Existing Windows Operating System originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Become A Technical Guru With Problem Steps Recorder

Damien — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:19:42 +0000

How many times have you tried to teach your mum or old granny a simple task on the PC, but you never seem to be able to get the message across?

Firefox? What is that? Browser? Browse what? …

In MakeTechEasier, we understand how you feel, because we have been teaching people to do simple stuffs on their computers day in and out and we know how frustrating it can be. Apparently, what appears simple to us is actually an arduous task for many.

In Windows 7, there is this small and simple application that could make your life much easier. Problem Steps Recorder is an useful tool that allows you to record down your steps to troubleshoot the issue. It is almost like a screencast application, except that it saves in the MHTML format.

Using Problem Steps Recorder

In your Windows 7, click on the Windows Orb (also known as the Start menu) and type in psr in the search field.

Select and run the psr.exe application.

Click on the Start Record button

Do the required action.

At any point of time, you can Add Comment button to add comments to your recording.

Once you are done, click Stop Record. You can also click Pause Record to stop recording temporary.

PSR will then prompt you to save the recording. The saved file is in zip format. When you unzip it, you will get a MHTML file where you can double click to open it in browser.

Viewing the recording

In the file, you will see the actual steps (with screenshot) recorded by the psr. For example, I recorded the way to uninstall an application in Windows 7. The following screenshots are the result generated from PSR.

1st step: Click on the Start button.

2nd step: Click on the Control Panel

3rd step: Click uninstall program

5th step: Uninstall the application

As can be seen, every single step that I did was recorded.

Uses of PSR

Here are some ways that you can make use of the Problem Steps Recorder:

be a technical guru and provide visual technical support, especially for your old granny.
If you are facing a problem in Windows and are seeking support, you can use PSR to record down the problem and email to the support officer. It enables them to has a better understanding of what went wrong.
Documentation: You may have discovered a hack to solve something and you want to record it down and store it somewhere so that you can refer to it in the future.

Have you tried PSR? What do you mainly use it for?

Note: Problem Steps Recorder is only available in Windows 7.

Become A Technical Guru With Problem Steps Recorder originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How to Install and Test Wordpress on Your Mac

Sharninder — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:18:58 +0000

Wordpress is without a doubt the most popular blogging platform around. Not only is it a good piece of software but what makes it the best tool for the job is the awesome community that is associated with development of not only the Wordpress core software, but also the various themes and plugins.

For all it’s simplicity, a lot of people still shy away from using Wordpress because installing and maintaining it requires a certain level of technical knowhow. Specifically, the knowledge of installing and managing a PHP/MySQL stack and dealing with all the problems that can happen with a botched Wordpress installation.

So, without further ado, we’ve written this post that’ll not only teach you how to install a complete PHP/MySQL stack on your Mac but also teach you to install and configure a fully functional Wordpress install, all without leaving the comforts of your own computer.

MAMP, which stands for Mac-Apache-MySQL-PHP and is an all-in-one solution for people who do not want the hasle of installing and configuring the individual components on their system.

Follow the download link on the MAMP site to get hold of the latest DMG image and double click the image to mount it in the Finder. The download is a bit heavy at about 170 MB but it will be totally worth it … trust me.

One of the best things about OS X is the ease with which software can be installed. To install MAMP in your system just drag the MAMP icon to the Applications folder.

Double click the MAMP icon to launch control panel.

MAMP will automatically start the Apache web server and the MySQL database server and also launch an instance of your default browser to tell you that everything is working fine.

Keep this window open – We’ll need it in a while.

MAMP also bundles a version of phpMyAdmin along with the complete PHP/MySQL stack.

phpMyAdmin is a web based software to manage MySQL databases and we’ll use that to create a database for our Wordpress install.

Click on the phpMyAdmin link in the browser, and when it loads up in your browser, give a name for the new database and press the Create button.

That was probably the easiest MySQL install I’ve ever done.

Now that we have all the infrastructure in place for Wordpress, head over to the Wordpress website and download the latest version of the software.

Unzip the file that you just downloaded into the htdocs folder inside the MAMP folder – /Applications/MAMP/htdocs.

You should now see a wordpress folder inside htdocs. Browse to this folder and open the file named wp-config-sample.php using a text editor.

In this file, find the lines which say:

‘DB_NAME’ – replace ‘putyourdbnamehere’ with ‘the name of the database that you created’
‘DB_USER’ – replace ‘usernamehere’ with ‘root’
‘DB_PASSWORD’ – replace ‘yourpasswordhere’ with ‘root’

Save the file and rename it to ‘wp-config.php’ from ‘wp-config-sample.php’.

Now, open this address in your browser – http://localhost:8888/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php.

Follow the wizard and at the end of it, use the temporary password that the wizard created for you to login to your shiny new Wordpress Install. That’s it ! You now have a fully functional Wordpress install on your computer to play with all the themes and plugins that you want.

How to Install and Test Wordpress on Your Mac originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Using Kate As a Web Editor

Tavis J. Hampton — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:03:59 +0000

There are many applications out there that provide project-based web development tools and very feature-rich interfaces, but sometimes all you really need is a good text editor. For those times, there are few editors that can stand up to the KDE powerhouse called Kate.

Kate is a multi-document interface (MDI) text editor, available for both KDE 3 and 4. It runs on multiple Linux and Unix-like platforms, Mac OS X, and Windows. It also includes a component called KatePart, which runs inside numerous other KDE applications, including Quanta+ (on KDE 3 only), KWrite, Konqueror, and Kdevelop. Kate provides syntax highlighting for over 120 text formats, making it perfect for whatever programming language you choose.

HTML Editing

Kate will highlight HTML markup and underline errors, particularly when you forget to close a tag. It will also group text within tags, so that you can see what content is where. It will display folding markers, small arrows on the side, that you can use to collapse or expand a tag and its contents. To toggle folding markers, press F9. For that reason, if you are coding in XHTML, make sure to use the XML highlighting rather than HTML. It will then appropriately mark single tags that are not closed with arrows.

To enable XML highlighting:

1. Click Tools in the main menu
2. Navigate to “Highlighting”, “Markup”, and finally to “XML”.

You can also do the same for PHP and other web scripting languages. Kate will generally highlight all of these, so you can usually leave the settings at the default.

Kate includes a dynamic word wrap feature, useful for documents with large amounts of text. Toggle it on or off with F10. Press F11 to toggle line numbers, and you will notice that a wrapped line has symbols indicating that it is still part of the previous line.

Multiple Documents

With Kate, you can edit multiple documents at once. The left-hand column will display the list of currently opened files, and you can move through them by clicking on the file you want to edit, by clicking the forward or back buttons, or by holding the Alt key and pressing the left or right arrow. Control+S will save your current document, and Control+L will save all open documents.

Sessions

Kate has a handy feature called “Sessions” that allows you to pick up work right where you left off the last time you were editing. For example, you might have eight documents for a particular project. Rather than having to open each document one at a time every time you want to work on them, you can save a Kate session that will automatically open those documents when activated. To save a session:

1. Click Sessions
2. Click Save As…
3. Give your session a name.

The next time you want to return to that project, just open the session you saved.

Remote Editing

There are times when you need to edit a document quickly right on the server. While you could SSH into the server and use whatever text editor is available from the command line, you will miss some of the many benefits of Kate. Furthermore, if you have a shared hosting account, you might not even have access to SSH. With Kate, you can open a document live on the server via FTP, SFTP, and any other protocol supported by KDE. To accomplish this, do the following:

1. Login to your web server using the normal method. You can use Dolphin or Konqueror.
2. Navigate to the folder containing the file you want to edit.
3. Right click on the file and open it with Kate.
4. Repeat those steps for multiple files if necessary.

Find

Kate’s find feature is very useful with long documents. To activate it, press Control-F. It will open a dialog at the bottom of the window. You can find each instance individually and scroll through the results with the “Next” and “Previous” buttons, or click “Options” and “Highlight all” to see all results highlighted at once.

Click the arrow on the far right to expand the find dialog further, and it will add a “replace” feature. With it you can find a tag or piece of content and replace every instance of it with something else or nothing at all. Kate will also remember your searches so that you can perform them again by pressing the down arrow on the right side of the search box.

I have only touched the surface of the many features available in Kate. The best way to find out exactly what Kate can offer you is to try it out for yourself. I highly recommend it, not only for KDE users, but for anyone. Kate is available through any Linux distribution that offers KDE.

Using Kate As a Web Editor originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How to Manage Multiple Google Analytics Accounts from Desktop

Soumen Halder — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:12:06 +0000

If you are a blogger or a webmaster, you must be using Google analytics to get detailed data about your blog. Undisputedly, It’s the best free web analytics software out there and provides you with valuable information about how your site is performing in search engines and which sites are sending you traffic etc.

If you want to check your Google analytics data from desktop, then here is a very good Adobe Air app called Trakkboard. It let’s you check Google analytics data of different website accounts from your desktop. You do not have to keep your browser open all the time and be logged in at Google Analytics anymore.

How to Download Trakkboard

In order to download the Adobe Air application, you have to first register with the site. Just head over to this page and submit your email address to request a key.

Hit the “request Key” button and you will receive an email containing the verification link to verify your email address. Click the verification link and you are done with verifying your email address.

Once you click the link, you will be redirected to a page containing your Trakkboard license key. After that click the “install now” button and the application will start to install Trakkboard in your computer.

Immediately after the installation you will receive another email containing your Trakkboard license key. Do not lose this License key as you will need it to start the desktop application.

That concludes the installation part. Now let’s see what Trakkboard has to offer.

How to use Trakkboard to View Google Analytics reports from Desktop

After the installation is complete start the application and put the Trakkboard license key and hit next.

The next step involves choosing a password for Trakkboard. This password is not your Google analytics account password. Instead, this password is used to protect your Trakkboard data in case anyone else wants to sneak peak into it.

After choosing your password, you have to enter your Google analytics account details. This will be used to Login to your Google analytics account and let you see the website data from desktop. If you have multiple Analytics account, don’t worry as you can always add another account later on.

That’s it. Hit the Finish registration button to complete the installation. Now you are ready to use this amazing software.

Using Trakkboard – Features , Widgets and Interface

The entire Trakkboard interface works in widgets. You have to select a website profile from the upper bar and select the corresponding widgets to display them into the application.

Just select a time span and the widget type. After that click save and your widget is placed in the application panel. Here is how the Trakkboard panel looks with all the custom widgets set up.

You can drag and drop widgets to your preferred locations. If you feel the application is getting cluttered with too many widgets, you can always open a new tab and organize your data.

Available Widgets in Trakkboard

There are quite a number of widgets to choose from. And they are :

Total visits over a definite time span.
Total number of page views
Traffic sources
Medium
Top Keywords
Bounce rate
Time on site

I guess all these features are more than sufficient for you to analyze the data. However the benchmarking feature hasn’t been implemented yet.

Adding a New Google Analytics account

If you have multiple Google analytics accounts, then you can add them up from the control center.

Well that’s about it. Have you tried out the new desktop client for Google Analytics ? tell us what you think about it.

How to Manage Multiple Google Analytics Accounts from Desktop originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

The Safe Way to Change your WordPress Database Table Prefix

Damien — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:00:08 +0000

Unless you have make an attempt to change the table prefix before installing your WordPress blog, chances are that your WP database is still using the default ‘wp_’ as the table prefix. With this default prefix, hackers can easily perform a SQL injection attacks on your database and wreak havoc to your site. The best way to prevent this from happening is to change the table prefix to another term that is difficult for hackers to guess.

If you are new to blogging and are looking to install your first WordPress blog, then it is easy. Simply change the $table_prefix entry in wp-config.php file, upload the file to the server, then proceed on with the famous 5-mins installation.

For those who have already been blogging for sometime, follow the method below to change your table prefix.

Preparation

Download the following two plugins, install and activate them in your WordPress blog.

WP-DBManager (plugin download page)

Wordpress Table Rename (modified version, original download page)

Note: I have make a slight modification to the WordPress Table Rename plugin to include changes in the later version of WordPress, but credit must be given to SEO Egghead for creating such an useful plugin.

Get started

Before you do anything to your database, first perform a db backup.

On the left pane, go to Database –> Backup DB. Do a backup of your database.

Next, go to Settings –> Table Rename

Enter a new term for the table prefix.

Click the Create New Tables button to generate new tables with the new prefix. If you have a big database, this process will take a long time.

When it is done, you will see the success message.

If you have a big database, the page might issue a timeout and show a blank page.

Verify your new database tables

Now go to Database->database. You should see the new tables in place.

Migrating your blog

While the plugin provides a way to change the table_prefix value in wp-config.php file, it won’t work in most cases unless you have set the wp-config.php file readable/writable (which I strongly advised against). The best way is to change the value manually.

With your favorite FTP program, download your wp-config.php from the root server.

Open it up with any text editor and scroll down to the section where you see

$table_prefix = 'wp_'

Change it to

$table_prefix = 'YourNewPrefix_'

Save it and re-upload this file back to the server.

Almost there

You have just completed the migration from the old table prefix to new table prefix, there are still several things that you need to do

1. Browse through your site and make sure all the pages, images and content are loading correctly. If you see errors, or that the site is not loading, change the $table_prefix back to ‘wp_‘ and re-upload back to the server.

2. Browse through the settings for each individual plugin and make sure that all the configurations are intact. Some of the plugins use the table prefix for their storage and these values were not changed by the plugin. For such plugins, you will see the settings fall back to their default values. What you have to do is to reconfigure it and re-save it. It will now store in the database with the new table prefix.

3. (Optional) Go to the Database –> Empty/Drop Tables, check the Drop button for all the table with the old prefix. Click the Empty/Drop button to remove them from your database.

Important: Do this only if you are sure that the new tables (with the new prefix) are working correctly.

Note that this is purely optional. Leaving your old table in the database will not hurt your blog and it can serve as a backup and allow you to switch back to them quickly in the event your blog got hacked into. However, if you have a big database, the extra tables could add plenty of overhead to your server. So, make your own judgement.

Last part

Once you are happy with everything, backup the new database. If you have previously schedule a daily backup, you have to reschedule it again to include the new tables.

You can also deactivate and uninstall the WordPress Table Rename plugin. There is no use for it now.

That’s it. You have successfully changed your WordPress database table prefix.

Image credit: naokomc

The Safe Way to Change your WordPress Database Table Prefix originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Amaya: A Simple, Yet Useful Alternative to Dreamweaver

Shevonne — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:00:10 +0000

While on a project, where money was scarce, we were scrambling around looking for a free or open source HTML editor that can provide us the same functionality as Adobe Dreamweaver. During my analysis of the different HTML editor out there, I came across Amaya. What intrigued me about it was that it was created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). As someone who loves Dreamweaver, I thought that I would never find something comparable to it that was free (open source), but I was wrong.

Amaya is an open-source HTML editor created by the W3C. If you don’t already know, W3C is an international community that develops Web standards. It was founded by Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited as inventing the World Wide Web. In 1998, Amaya was invented. Since then, there have been various releases that have given more functionality to Amaya.

Amaya is the most user-friendly HTML editor that I have come across. One of its features that is very similar to Dreamweaver is that you are able to split the screen to view the visual editor and the HTML code. In this way, you are able to code while seeing the changes, or you can do the other way around. It’s a great way to learn HTML, if you don’t know already. On the sidebar, you are able to easily modify the HTML, like in Adobe Dreamweaver. Different profiles can change the way they see the sidebar displayed.

Another great feature is the CSS functionality. With the press of a button, you are able to create a CSS stylesheet. You do not have to know CSS in order to create one, which is great for people trying to learn CSS and/or if you are trying to design a stylesheet quickly. This is a great way to have your site’s formatting and style be in a different file than the HTML code. It provides a way to add flexibilty to your web site/blog. It also has a debugger to check your code for errors.

One good thing about Amaya is that it allows five different user editing profiles, so if someone wants to change the behavior of the Amaya tool, he/she can have his/her own profile that is different from someone else. In addition, Amaya runs on Linux, Mac, and/or PC, so regardless which OS you are using, you will be able to use Amaya for your coding project.

What’s can be improved on?

Amaya is a quick and neat HTMl editor. I couldn’t find any issues, except that it needs to keep up with the new technologies. For instance, it isn’t made to build smartphones apps, which I saw in other free HTML editors. It also doesn’t support Ajax, which is being used more and more.

When it comes to features, Amaya is definitely not on par with Dreamweaver, but if you are looking for a free, simple, and useful HTML editor, then Amaya is a good candidate.

Have you use Amaya before? Tell us what you like/dislike about it.

Amaya: A Simple, Yet Useful Alternative to Dreamweaver originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Afloat 2.2 Adds Support For Snow Leopard and New Features

Damien — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:32:00 +0000

When Snow Leopard was launched, many applications broke because of compatibility issue. Afloat was one of them (mainly due to the plugsuit issue). The good news is, Afloat 2.2 was launched to patch up the issue. Now you can get Afloat running smoothly in Snow Leopard.

For those who have not heard of Afloat, it is an useful software that you can use to keep an application window “always on top” of all other windows. One thing for sure, Afloat 2.2 brings some new features that are not available in previous version.

Make windows appear in all spaces

If you are a great fan of Spaces in Mac, then you are going to love this feature. If you are working on a project and have several application opened in different spaces, instead of traversing between spaces to access your data, you can make the application window follow you around, without you having to do the manual work.

Resize windows easily

The usual way of resizing an application window in Mac is to move your mouse to the right bottom corner of the window and drag to resize. With Afloat 2.2, you can now press Ctrl + Command + right mouse click to resize the window from anywhere inside the window region.

Move window around without dragging the title bar

By pressing Ctrl + Command + left mouse click, you can move the window around easily and quickly (similar to the Alt + left mouse click feature in Linux Compiz).

Pin to the desktop

You can also pin a window to the desktop and make it persistent. With this feature turn on, even the “Show Desktop” command will not hide the window.

Existing functionality

For those who are new to Afloat, here are some of the functionality that existed since version 1

Afloat: keep the window “always on top”. Accessible via the shortcut key Ctrl + Command + A or via the Window menu. (Note: the shortcut key don’t work in Preview)

Add transparency to windows: Press Ctrl + Command + mouse wheel scroll to change the transparency of the window. This is useful if you just want to take a quick peek at the windows beneath.

Make window an overlay: This turns a window into an overlay. When this mode is on, it will not respond to any mouse click or keyboard entry.

One thing to note: Afloat does not work with all applications. It only works for Cocoa based applications, such as Safari, Preview, iChat etc. Carbon based applications like iTunes and Finder do not get the love.

Afloat 2.2 Adds Support For Snow Leopard and New Features originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

10 Useful GMail Search Tips

Joshua Price — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:07:18 +0000

Like many of you, I’ve been happily using GMail for years. While there are many things I like about it, one in particular has always impressed me: email search. It’s no surprise that Google would add powerful search features to their email system, but there are many great features that go laregely unnoticed by many GMail users. Today we’ll go over some of GMail’s best search tricks and how to get the most out of this powerful feature.

1. Removing keywords

A common websearch function applied to email. You can filter out items containing certain words. For example, if I want to get a list of all my MakeTechEasier messages, but not those relating to pingbacks, I can remove items containing that word from my results with the minus sign.

2. To: and From:

Probably the simplest and most often used search function is the ability to specify sender or recipient. By specifying a name or email address you can narrow results to items written by (or to) a name or email address. In this example, I’m trying to get all the emails I’ve written about MakeTechEasier to Damien.

3. CC:

Much like To: and From:, you can filter to show messages with a certain person in the cc or bcc fields. Here I am searching for all party-related messages that involve my good friend The Dude.

4. has:attachment

This one’s pretty self-explanatory – you can get only the results that have a file attached. In this example Im looking for all emails from my sister that may have pictures of her kids.

5. filename:

Similar to #4 above, but this time you can specify an exact filename, or even just part of a filename in an attachment. I can improve upon my previous search by specifying that I want only results with pictures attached.

6. OR

No search system is complete without at least a few boolean operators, and GMail is no exception. While AND is implied in most searches, sometimes you need OR to get the results you want. In this example, I’m trying to get messages about Christmas plans from both sisters.

OR, by the way, does have to be in caps.

7. is:

Another very handy one, is: lets you see only messages in a certain state, like read, unread, or starred. Here, I’m trying to get any emails from Damien which I had previously marked as important (starred).

8. label:

Labels are already a very useful GMail feature, and the search function only makes it better. You can tell the search to return only messages with a particular label attached. If I have a Work label for all my work-related emails and I want to find a message relating to last year’s company picnic, I can use label: to avoid getting messages relating to my countless other picnics of 2008.

9. (Parentheses)

I just recently learned about this, and I’m very glad I did. Using parentheses you can group items for use with things like OR. Parentheses can shorten what might otherwise be a long search string. Let’s say I’m searching for the XBox Live names of my friends Adam, Galt and Joe. I could write out three separate from: statements much like #6, or I could use parentheses to group items together.

10. Combinations

A few of these examples have combined the search options into single queries. GMail gives nearly unlimited flexibility when combining complex search options. You can get extremely detailed results by combining the options to return exactly what you want. The following is an attempt to bring up all messages from both of my sisters about all our prior Christmas plans, that also have pictures attached, but not including our trip to Kentucky.

10 Useful GMail Search Tips originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

VistaUACMaker Makes Your XP Apps Compatible With Windows Vista & 7

Soumen Halder — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:20:17 +0000

Windows Vista and 7 come with User Account Control (UAC) that controls the permissions the users have for running each application. Due to this restriction, many program in Win XP that require administrators privilege will not be able to run smoothly in Vista or Win 7. In such cases, you can use the VistaUACMaker to change the permission in the application and make it compatible with Vista and Windows 7.

To achieve the goal that we have in mind, we need to alter the Manifest File of the app which contains the useful information that provides the privileges needed by the app concerned & its UI Interaction of the app.

Those are the three types of privileges that can be stored in the Manifest File.

requireAdministrator – Run the app as administrator.
asInvoker – Run with same privilege as that of the parent process.
highestAvailable – Run with highest possible privilege available to user.

Ok that is enough with the geeky talk, let us proceed to the HOW TO section which tells us how to perform the task.

1. Download Vista UAC Maker.

2. Run the Utility. Now using the Select… button browse & locate the app or program executable file.

3. Add some words in the Project Description field for future reference.

4. In the Required Privilege Level drop-down list select the privilege. The default is [requireAdministrator], but you can change it to whichever is suitable for the application.

5. In the last step where you are asked “Does your application interacts with high privilege windows on desktop?”, check the Yes box only if your app interacts with high privilege apps on UI level in Vista else leave it as No.

That’s it.

Now the configured app is compatible with Windows Vista as well as Windows 7 too. This works great in cases where you need to use a particular app meant for XP to be sound & working in Vista & Windows 7. Hope that helps. Share your experiences by putting in your valuable comments.

VistaUACMaker Makes Your XP Apps Compatible With Windows Vista & 7 originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

25 Time Saving Bookmarklets You Will Want to Have in Your Browser

Trevor Dobrygoski — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:14:26 +0000

I noticed recently that many sites, applications and services are offering bookmarklets. I know I have about 40 of them, of which I use 10 very regularly.

For those of you who don’t use bookmarklets or arent quite sure what they are, here is a brief description.

What are Bookmarklets?

Bookkmarklets are a tiny java script application designed to add one click functionality to your web browser. There are hundreds of different uses, many of which save the need to run a desktop program.

A few programs with bookmarklets that have been mentioned on Make Tech Easier before are:

Webnotes
Hootsuite
Zementa
Evom
Posterous

Why Use a Bookmarklet?

The main reason to use them is to save time. As an example:

To email a copy of the Webnotes post to someone, use the “Gmail This!” bookmarklet. A window will pop up just like when the compose button in Gmail is clicked. The link and email subject are automatically added. If you want to add more to the body of the email you can explain what the link is before you email it.

Other reasons to use bookmarklets are:

Sharing things quickly on a social media site
Spell check
SEO
URL shortening
Adding the site to a social bookmarking site (ie Delicious, Digg, Reddit)
Subscribing to a RSS reader
Eliminating the ads and bloat for printing

20 other useful bookmarklets

1. Share on Facebook

Share sites on your Facebook wall or send as a message

2. Share on Friendfeed

Share links on both Friendfeed and Twitter with this one bookmarklet

3. Gmail This!

If you are going to pick one from this list to try, pick this one. It will save immense amounts of time and keep distractions at a minimum.

4. Evernote

Great for the avid Evernote user. send a link with tags, web clip, and notes to the notebook of your choice. This is a very quick way to add things without keeping the page or desktop app open all the time.

5. Serendipity (Reddit)

Randomly displays a site. A lot like Stumbleupon

6. Add to RTM

Quickly add a reminder or to-do

7. Vox This!

Add content to your Vox Blog

8. Readability

If you do a lot of reading on the web, this customizable bookmarklet will rock your world. It removes the bloat and formats the text in a way that is easier for YOU to read.

9. Spell Check

Checks spelling of any page, even published pages. Any word spelled wrong or not in Firefox’s dictionary will be highlighted.

10. Subscribe in Google Reader

Fast way to add a RSS feed to your Google Reader

11. Xray

Great for web designers. Click the bookmarklet then on any item on a page. Information like dimensions, position and border is displayed.

12. Share on Tumblr

Easily share a link on Tumblr

13. BugMeNot

Use BugMeNot database of usernames and passwords to sign in to “registered users only” websites, like news sites.

14. Boxqueue

Add videos to your Boxee Queue for viewing later. You need both a Google account and Boxee account to make this bookmarklet work.

15. DiggThis!

Quickly add sites to Digg.

16. Password Generator

If you have trouble coming up with secure passwords all the time, save some time and energy by installing this bookmarklet.

17. Google Translate

Super handy for those times when you end up on a site written in a language other than your native tongue.

18. TweetBurner

You know there had to be at least one Twitter something or other in the list.

19. Pagezipper

Features like continuous scrolling and auto resizing of images for your browser window make viewing sites less work.

20. Printliminator

Eliminate items on the page you DO NOT want to print. Great for pages or blogs without a printer friendly version of the page or post.

Including the one we have previously mentioned at MakeTechEasier, here are 25 of the useful bookmarklets that you can place in your browser. These are only a small portion of what is available. All of them are made to save time or make your browsing experience more personalized or enjoyable.

What bookmarklets do you use?

Image credit suchitra prints

25 Time Saving Bookmarklets You Will Want to Have in Your Browser originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

TonidoPlug: Your Personal Cloud Server in a Plug

Damien — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:47:39 +0000

Putting all your stuffs and confidential data on the cloud may seems like a good idea as it allows you to access to them anytime, anywhere. However, it can become a totally bad decision when the security of the cloud server is compromised or the third party providers wind up their services and all your data gone down with them. When such things happen, you might wonder why you have not heard of Tonido earlier.

Tonido is a free software that turns your desktop into a personal server and allows you to access and share your files, media, calendar and apps from everywhere. Be it Windows, Mac or Linux, you simply install the software and have your own personal cloud server up and running in no time. Forget all the complicated stuffs you have heard about creating your own server. There are no technical skills required to set up and run Tonido. The best thing is – all the data resides in your own computer and there is no need to worry about security or even data loss (unless your own computer crashes).

Introducing TonidoPlug

On the other hand, if all your important data resides on your external backup drive and you wish to have your own cloud server running at all times without having to turn on your computer everytime, then TonidoPlug is the one for you.

TonidoPlug is the hardware version of Tonido. It is a tiny, low power, low cost home server and NAS device powered by Tonido software. It comes with its own RAM and CPU (and preinstalled with Ubuntu). All you need to do is to plug it into the power socket and there you are, a server ready at your beckoning. It integrates nicely with all the features found in the Tonido software and allows you to access your files, music, pictures from anywhere.

Setting up TonidoPlug

Once you have connected up the respective cables (there are only 3 cables that you need to connect: the power cable, LAN cable and the USB cable), power it up. On any computer that are linked to the home network, go to the URL: http://tonidoplug.com/ip. This will detect your Tonido Plug. In some cases where it doesn’t detect, you can enter the MAC address (at the back of the plug) to get it identified by the network.

Once the plug is detected, you will have to create a new profile for the Tonido. Those who already have an existing profile can use this method to import them into the Plug.

In the dashboard, you will find the exact same interface as the Tonido. The software available in TonidoPlug is as follow:

Many of these apps should be familiar to already Tonido users, (Jukebox, Photos, Search, Thots, Workspace). The newer apps are WebsharePro, Torrent, Explorer and Plug Admin.

Here’s a quick summary of these applications.

WebsharePro: All the power of Tonido Webshare, plus the ability to upload, setting upload quotas for users, zip downloads, viewing currently downloading lists, change thumbnail and photo slide show image size
Torrent: Download Torrent files to your plug and control torrents via your web browser from anywhere
Explorer: Web based File manager and browser that allows common file operations like rename, delete, copy files and folders and even uploads
Plug Admin: Manage your TonidoPlug hardware, recover Tonido Profile passwords, Manage attached USB drives, Share USB drives over the network for access, Monitor CPU loads etc

If you are not in your own home networks, you can also connect to your TonidoPlug via the public URL: http://yourprofilename.tonido.com:10001.

In addition, TonidoPlug is also a DLNA device, which means you are able to connect to your PS3, Xbox, or even XBMC software and stream music over the cloud.

The Tonido software is free to download and use, but the TonidoPlug comes at a price of $99.

Considering that most Web servers with the same hardware spec as the TonidoPlug can easily cost you up to $40-50 per month, at a mere price of $99, TonidoPlug is really a great bargain; not to mention the unlimited amount of storage device you can attach to it and the security issue that you never have to worry about. This is really a no-brainer deal.

Note 1: Thanks to Venkat for sending in a test unit for review and providing a prompt support for all my doubts.
Note 2: MakeTechEasier is not affiliated in any way to CodeLathe, the company behind TonidoPlug, nor do we benefit from any sale of TonidoPlug generated from this article.

TonidoPlug: Your Personal Cloud Server in a Plug originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

5 System Administration Tools for KDE

Tavis J. Hampton — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:54:12 +0000

Keeping any computer system running can be some work. It would be nice if we never had to do any type of maintenance or troubleshooting, but no operating system has reached that point. Many desktop Linux users have server administration experience and are quite comfortable dropping to the command line and tinkering with their system. Not only do they know how to do this, it is the method that makes them comfortable.

For those users who use a desktop operating system and expect a graphical experience, opening a terminal window is not a normal thing to do. That does not mean they are incapable of learning it. They are just more comfortable with a visual interface.

There are many control panel tools and settings dialogs in KDE that make it easier for graphical-minded users to get things done. Here are five stand-alone applications that will help you stay informed about your computer’s status and health.

1. KInfoCenter

It is just what it says. It provides users with information about their systems. There are categories for graphics cards, PCI devices, memory, CPU, and many others. If you are ever unsure about what devices you have or what system settings you currently have, KInfoCenter is a good place to start.

2. KDiskFree

This is a very useful tool for those of us who manage to fill up our hard drives rather quickly. You can monitor disk usage on both fixed drives and currently connected removable ones.

3. KDE Partition Manager

Need to format a drive, resize a partition, or create a swap partition? KDE Partition Manager can do it all. It depends on the trusted disk “Parted” libraries, so users can know they are getting reliable results

4. KSystemLog

Linux documents every major occurrence on your system. You just have to know where to look for that documentation. For convenience, KSystemLog will collect that information for you and display it in a window, all with the click of a button. KSystemLog monitors your log files, updating them periodically. It currently supports system log, kernel log, authentication log, daemons’ logs, CUPS (printer) log, X.org log, and others.

5. Ksysguard

KDE 4 includes a handy little task manager that you can access by pressing Control+Escape or by clicking the button on Krunner. For those of us who used KDE 3, however, we need something a little more robust. Ksysguard monitors processes, provides stats, and includes graphs, updated in real time. Processes and programs can be monitored, filtered, and killed, when necessary. As with previous versions, users can add new tabs, placing customized sensors on each tab. Sensors include CPU cores, uptime, partition usage, log files, memory, and much more.

There are many others tools that can make your Linux experience easier. If you have a favorite, feel free to post it in the comments. For me, after having worked as a Linux system admin for many years, I still occasionally love to open up Konsole and hack away the command line.

5 System Administration Tools for KDE originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Unlock Hidden Mac OS X Settings With Secrets

Sharninder — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:00:41 +0000

Mac OS X is a wonderful operating system with one of the best and easiest to use graphical interface among mainstream operating systems. It is amazing to see how much thought the designers of the OS have put into each element of the interface striving all the while to make it easier for the user to use the computer without bringing in any complexity, and retaining the ability to configure the computer as the user wishes.

But, there is still so much more that OS X is capable of and it is not always possible to harness all that power from the Graphical interface, and that is where our application of the day, Secrets, comes in handy.

Secrets installs in the System Preferences Pane and provides you access to hundreds of hidden OS X settings. Almost all of these settings can be accessed from the command line also and if you’re a regular follower of the Mac OS tips website, Mac OSX Hints, you might have come across some of them earlier. But, with the hundreds of hidden settings that Secrets unlocks, you’re bound to find some that you’ve never come across and will find useful.

To install Secrets, just download the zip file, extract it and double click the Secrets.prefPane file that is a part of the zip archive.

Now, you can just click on the icon in System Preferences and OS X will launch Secrets.

Secrets divides all the settings into various categories that are displayed in a vertical sidebar on the left side of the window. This classification makes it easy to find what you’re looking for. For example, if you want to change the dock style from the default 3D type to the older 2D style dock, just click on Dock in the left sidebar and select the 2D style from the drop down menu under Dock Appearance.

If you follow the popular OS X blogs, you’d recall that this particular setting was widely published for users who wanted to go back to the older Dock style when Apple decided to change the default Dock appearance to the 3D style in OS X 10.5. I, on the other hand, actually like the 3D look more so that’s what I keep.

How about something more useful?

One of the features of OS X that I use most often is Quick Look. This feature lets you quickly preview a document right from the Finder without even opening the document. The feature works even if you don’t have the required application installed, and Apple has been nice enough to bundle plugins for the most common type of documents along with OS X.

I use Quick Look all the time to read Word and Power point documents even though I don’t even have Microsoft Office installed on my system.

By default, if I use Quick Look on a folder all it tells me is the size of the folder and the number of files in it.

The two Finder settings that I like to enable using Secrets is to let Finder display hidden files and enable the Quick Look X-ray folders which enables Quick Look to display thumbnails of all the items inside the folder.

Changing the above settings require you to restart Finder. You can do so by clicking the Quit This button at the bottom of the window.

Now, whenever you use Quick Look to view a folder, you’ll see thumbnail images of all the documents inside the folder. Isn’t that cool ?

Go ahead and use Secrets to customize OS X as you see fit. Let us know which are your favorite Secrets.

Unlock Hidden Mac OS X Settings With Secrets originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How to Create a Video Channel From Different Video Sharing Sites

Soumen Halder — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:04:15 +0000

Sometimes you may wish to create a video channel of your favorite movie star but can’t find enough videos in a particular video sharing site. One of the sites may contain a set of videos while the other may contain a different set of videos. You want to create a single channel containing all those videos but you are stuck because the videos are distributed over different sites.

One option may be to download all the videos in your computer from different video sharing sites and then uploading them back in your preferred video sharing site so that you can get all the videos and create your customized channel. But this process would take hours of work and you can’t get it working in a day or two at least.

Yubby: Create Your Own Video channel from 30 Video Sharing Sites

If you are looking to create a Video channel comprising of videos from different video sharing sites (Youtube, Google video, Metacafe etc) then look no further than Yubby. Using Yubby you can search for videos in more than 30 video sharing sites at once. After you have searched for the videos, the service lets you create a video channel containing all of your chosen videos. The videos can be categorized into channels and you can also embed the video channel in your blog. (See example)

Search for videos

Go to the homepage of Yubby and search for your desired videos. Based upon your keyword, the site will search the top 30 video sharing sites and list the videos one after another. After that you can just drag and drop the videos and start organizing your custom video channel. The interface is very simple and there aren’t any bells and whistles.

You can even restrict your search to specific video sharing sites, if you want. Just click the search options and you are presented with a board containing the names and logos of all the video sharing sites that Yubby supports. Select the sites you want and then you can filter your results.

The search results can be sorted by relevance, newest and view count. You can also search videos by tags and owner name.

Previewing your Video Channel

Once you are finished adding videos and creating the video channel, you can preview it by clicking the “Play Channel” button.

To know more about your video channel just hit the “Video Overview” button. It will show you the following :

How many videos are added in your channel.
The tags assigned to your videos.
The rating of the videos in the respective video sites.
How many people have viewed the video today.

What makes Yubby impressive is that you can even search for a particular video in your video channel. So if you have added a large number of videos to your channel you need not worry at all. Just go to the video overview tab and you can search for a particular video.

Sharing and Embedding your Video Channel

Sharing and embedding videos is also dead easy. Go to the “Embed” tab and you are given the code of your video channel. You can further customize your video playlist widget to match with your style and feel.

Copy the Html code and you can put the video channel in your blog or Myspace profile. Here is a sample video channel created using Yubby

Registering an Account with Yubby

You do not need to sign up and register for an account to use Yubby. However with a Yubby account you can manage your video channels at a later date. After some weeks, if you wish to add another video to your video channel you can do that from your Yubby dashboard. Other features include : Uploading photos to your Yubby account and having a free blog with Yubby.

To wrap it up, Yubby is a useful web service where you can create specialized video channels and publish these channels in your blog or social media profiles. It also supports Wordpress integration so novice bloggers can get started in minutes.

How to Create a Video Channel From Different Video Sharing Sites originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Manage your clipboard items in Mac with Shadow

Jeffry Thurana — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:00:33 +0000

I use Cut, Copy and Paste commands a lot, and computer’s basic clipboard ability to hold only one item at a time really annoys me. That’s why one of my must have applications is clipboard manager. It allows me to copy as many items to my heart content without having to worry about losing any entry.

There are several choices of clipboard managers for Mac users. We’ve discussed clipboard managers for Mac before. Jumpcut was my long favorite manager and it’s a pretty amazing one if I may add. It’s small, fast, and it does the job well. True that Jumpcut can only handle text, but my needs are simple.

So it’s a bit hard for me to switch to other application. But Shadow changes everything. It can do everything every other clipboard managers can do, and more.

Let’s peek at what lurks behind the shadow.

First step into the shadow

Just like most of other clipboard managers, Shadow will reside in the menubar. It can be summoned using configurable shortcut key.

To set the key combination, open Shadow preferences menu by clicking the menubar icon and choose “Preferences”.

Go to the “General” tab, click inside the HotKey field and hold down your chosen key combination.

And while you’re at it, why don’t you choose the Advanced tab and click on the “Start on login” button to make sure that your clipboard is available all the time. Here you can also decide how many items that Shadow should hold inside the clipboard.

Please note that even though you can set as many clipboard items as you want, the bigger the number, the bigger space you need to hold the items. So, those with limited hard drive space please beware.

Walk in the shadow

Using Shadow is as simple as letting it running in the background and quietly collecting clipboard items. You could do the usual Cut-Copy-Paste routine: cut or copy an item and directly paste it. But you can also use past cut or copy items to be pasted.

To do this, you have to bring Shadow window upfront (either by clicking its item in the menubar or by using the hotkey),

Choose one of the past items using the up and down arrow, and use Shift + Enter to paste it.

By default, there’s one clipboard that comes with Shadow called “System Clipboard”. You can’t modify nor delete it but you can choose to share it with others by clicking Edit (pencil icon).

However, the Shadow’s true power lies in it’s ability to create multiple clipboards and share them to other computer within the networks. To add more clipboards, open Shadow window and click on the plus (+) button below the window.

A new clipboard options window will appear. Fill in the clipboard name and choose whether you want to share the clipboard to others by ticking the checkbox. There’s also an option to password protect the connection should you need the extra security. The password allows you to choose which clipboard to share to which person.

The ability to store as many items as you want in the clipboard and to add as many clipboards as you want bring about new problem: information overload. When Shadow has stored too many items, using the clipboard will become difficult and impractical.

Luckily Shadow comes with search ability. All you have to do is put the search string, hit Enter, and all the clipboard items that match your query will appear. Choose the one that you need and press Shift + Enter.

Have you tried Shadow? Do you know other free alternatives to clipboard manager for Mac? Share using the comment below.

Manage your clipboard items in Mac with Shadow originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How to Share Files Securely with OneSwarm

Joshua Price — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:04:47 +0000

There have been a few attempts over the years at making a safe and secure way to swap files or interact online. Projects like Tor and Freenet have give us some of what we’re looking for, but often have drawbacks such as low speed or complex installation. OneSwarm takes a different approach. Essentially, it’s a multiplatform Bittorrent client with support for the OneSwarm network. With it, you can securely swap files over insecure networks, search for friends and content, and even play media like videos and music from within your browser.

What does it do?

There are two aspects to OneSwarm – the private, secure, friend-based OneSwarm network, and the standard P2P. The developers took an existing Bittorrent client (Azureus) and heavily modified it to include support for their private network. They added a web client (you can control your file transfers through a web browser, even remotely) and included software for finding and inviting friends into your swarm.

Even if you have no interest in the secure swarm aspect, OneSwarm makes a great torrent client. It’s built on the Azureus classic UI which is a high quality mature torrent client. All the P2P benefits of Azureus matched with the extra functionality of the web client gives OneSwarm a very powerful feature base.

How does it work?

There are two methods of using OneSwarm, a web client and a desktop client. Both are usable immediately after installation, but the developers seem to encourage use of the web client. That’s where I’ve found most of OneSwarm’s unique features. The desktop client is more or less a standard Bittorrent client. So far, I’ve found the web client to be the way to go when working with OneSwarm friend-based transfers, but the classic desktop client gives more options for standard torrent downloads.

Windows users who’d like to use the desktop client instead of web can do so by right-clicking the OneSwarm icon in their system tray and choosing Show Classic UI. Linux users – access to the desktop client could vary widely based on your choice of desktop environment. Because of this, and to highlight the unique features of OneSwarm, this article will focus on the web client.

Getting Started

If your system didn’t take you to the web client automatically, you should be able to access it by opening your browser of choice to http://127.0.0.1:29615/. There you’ll find the opening screen for the OneSwarm web client.

For those who aren’t networking geeks – 127.0.0.1 is the address a computer uses to identify itself. By putting that into your browser you’re telling it “open the web page running on this computer”. The OneSwarm web client runs a small webserver on your machine so you can access the web client.

Finding Friends

The main concept behind OneSwarm is Friend-To-Friend transfers. When you first connect to OneSwarm, you’ll be asked to add friends. The first, and easiest way to do that is to choose “Use Default Settings”. This will connect you to the OneSwarm community server. Within a minute or two, you’ll see names pop into your Friends list. Users of the community server can all see each other, but cannot, by default, see each other’s files. Everyone on the community server is a “limited” friend by default and cannot trade files.

There are multiple other ways to add friends, all of which can be found by using the Add friends button below your contacts list on the left. For me, the GMail/Google Talk option would normally be a great way to add my friends, but as of the time of this writing, that feature does not appear to be working correctly. I have settled for using email invites through the Redeem/Create/View Invitations option.

When my friends get the invitation in their email, they can install OneSwarm and click the link included in the invite to become a OneSwarm friend. For example, I sent an invite to Tara, who has named her computer “Hank”. She downloaded the OneSwarm client, clicked the link in the invite, and now OneSwarm sees us as friends. She shows up on my Friends list as well as the community server with which she’s registered.

Friend Access

As noted earlier, friends by default are set to “limited” status. They cannot see each other’s files or initiate any transfers. Fortunately, removing that limitation is quick and painless. You simply choose Friends from the navigation panel on the left, and you will have the full list of friends. Click the one you want to share with, and remove the check for “Limited”.

From now on, Tara can browse through all the files that I have shared and choose whatever she’d like to download. Speaking of sharing…

Sharing Files

At the heart of any P2P app is the sharing of files. There’s not much point otherwise. To allow certain files to be shared over OneSwarm, you just add those files or directories to your Shared list. On any section of the OneSwarm web client you’ll find the Share button near the top of the screen. This will let you choose what to share. Here, for example, is one user’s files that they’ve chosen to open to the OneSwarm network.

I can download whichever of these files I like and choose where to save them. In addition, OneSwarm appears to have read the ID3 tag information for the music files, and added the album art to the thumbnail view. A nice touch.

I’ve found OneSwarm to be a very elegant, well-designed system. I’ve often looked for (and written about) ways to securely transfer files over the Internet. Some of them are simpler than OneSwarm, but not nearly as friendly and versatile. I’ll be sticking with OneSwarm for a while.

What about you?

How to Share Files Securely with OneSwarm originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Get Your Homepage Organized With 43marks

Trevor Dobrygoski — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:58:36 +0000

A few weeks ago I was re-listening to an audiobook by Seth Godin called “Purple Cow”. One part talked a little bit about a person who randomly sent the people at Google an email if the word count got too high on the main search page. These emails help them keep the search page exactly what it is designed to do. Compare the main search pages of Yahoo.com and Google.com; which one are you more likely to get distracted on?

My main personal homepage has been iGoogle for a long time. I use the tabs to keep things sorted. In those tabs are a some RSS feeds, a couple gadgets, webmaster tools and some mindless time wasters. I have to admit, I really don’t use the different things on the homepage much; they are what I am used to.

When I am sitting at my desk and trying to focus on work, it is all too easy to lend my attention to something much more interesting than what I should be doing. Going to a search site or looking at the auto suggestions when typing in a bookmark tag can easily steal your attention.

I have recently been trying out a different homepage at work. 43marks isn’t as flashy as some of the homepages out there, but flashy is usually distracting. How 43marks differs from other homepages, is how much it offers in such a simple layout. 43marks combines two things people use on a daily basis: bookmarks and search engines.

Having four options to search at your fingertips without all of the typical distractions and random links associated with some sites is a breath of fresh air. Google, Yahoo, Bing and Wikipedia are probably the most commonly used search engines. All of them aggregate the “top sites” in a different way. Type in a search term and get the results from Google; to see what Yahoo,Bing or Wikipedia simply click that tab and the results shift to the other search engine’s results.

To personalize your 43marks homepage, follow these steps:

1. Click on the the “customize yours” tab in the top right corner of the main page.

2. Enter in a user name, email address and a password twice.

3. Once you are all set up, you will have a default list of bookmarks and RSS feeds.

4. To change the bookmarks and RSS feeds, click [Manage]

5. Three options are presented to you: Manage Bookmarks, Manage RSS Feeds and User Settings.

If you want to wipe the slate clean, 43marks does give an option to delete all bookmarks.

6. In the RSS Manage RSS Feeds tab, the same option to start from scratch is available.

* A pretty easy way to add a feed is to click on the RSS icon most sites have. This will pull up a page with the feed address listed. The feed URL should look something like this – http://feeds.feedburner.com/MakeTechEasier

The RSS part works well, but if you want to change a feed from ESPN to Make Tech Easier, you need to delete the old one and add in the new name and address.

7. In the User Settings, you are presented a four options:

Choose whether you want your page to be private or public so anyone can see your list of bookmarks and RSS feeds. If you choose public, just give our the URL to your page. Mine is 43marks.com/trevor_dobrygoski

How you would like the RSS feeds displayed – Expanded or collapsed
The maximum number of books marks to display in each category column
How you want the bookmark or RSS link to open when clicked

With all of the distractions present to anyone who works online, 43marks is a great solution to wrangle the information you NEED to look at and none that you don’t.

What tools do you use to cut down on distractions when you work online?

Get Your Homepage Organized With 43marks originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Tabbloid: Convert Rss Feeds into PDF Newsletters and get them as Email

Soumen Halder — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:56:43 +0000

We all consume content using Rss feeds but some of you may still prefer email newsletters. The boring thing about email newsletters is that you cannot really save a particular article in your hard disk for future reference. You have to open a word document, copy all the text, download the images and then place them again in a word document. This process can be really tiring and if you want a much simpler option, Tabbloid can be useful.

Tabbloid let’s you create a pdf newsletter from a group of Rss feeds of your choice. It’s way simple and you don’t have to be a geek to get started. You choose one or more feeds, give them your email address, set the time you want to receive the newsletter and forget the issue. Tabbloid will pick the latest articles from the feeds and will merge them into a singe pdf document. You will receive the document in your email inbox at your preferred time.

How to set up your own Tabbloid

1. To get started with creating your own Tabbloid, you do not need to register or set up an account. Just open the Tabbloid Homepage and click to get started.

2. In the next page, choose the Rss feed url and enter it. Here we are using the Maketecheasier Feed as an example.

They also provide you with some sample subscriptions like technology,business,politics etc which you can subscribe to but i would prefer subscribing to MakeTechEasier to get an idea how things work inside Tabbloid when you subscribe to an individual site or a group of sites.

3. As soon as you paste the feed url the site will present a confirmatory message asking you whether you really want to subscribe or not. Just hit the big Yes button to subscribe to the feed and add your preferred feed in Tabbloid list.

4. In the right hand pane you can see the list of feeds you have subscribed to. You can remove a feed from the pane and add another one at any time.

5. Now you need to set up the email details and delivery options.

As you can see, it’s pretty simple and straightforward. Enter your email address where you would like to get your Tabbloid, set the day and time save the delivery options. You can set a daily or a weekly delivery of your pdf newsletter.As i am a web addict and check my email daily so i would love to get the newsletter daily.

As soon as you save the options a confirmatory email would be sent at your given email address.

Now that you have confirmed your email address, it’s time to actually preview the pdf newsletter by clicking the “Generate Sample issue now” button. A Tabbloid of the rss feed will open as pdf inside your browser.

Here is how the Maketecheasier Tabbloid looks

You can view the complete Tabbloid sample here

The daily email you receive as part of the newsletter will contain all the contents of the recently published articles in the feeds you have subscribed. Along with the email, you will have an attachment which will contain the pdf.

You can subscribe to multiple feeds and get a compact newsletter if you want. All in all, it’s a very handy way to get all the blog updates as pdf documents delivered straight in your inbox, daily.

Tabbloid: Convert Rss Feeds into PDF Newsletters and get them as Email originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

The Top Three RSS Readers for PC Users

Shevonne — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:42:23 +0000

In previous weeks, we have discussed the best RSS Readers for the Web and the Mac. This time we will be talking about the desktop-based RSS Readers for the PC.

1. FeedDemon

FeedDemon is an application, made for the PC, created by the people behind NewsGator. It has numerous functionalities that will help enhance your RSS feed management. It has the basic layout: All Subscriptions, Unread Items, Starred Items, Shared Items, and tags.

During the installation, users are able to sync the FeedDemon with their Google Reader, if they choose to.

They are also able to decide if they want to allow FeedDemon to add default feeds, which is useful if you do not have any subscriptions. Another useful option is the ability to import subscriptions from Bloglines, OPML file, RSS Bandit, or a Windows Common Feed List.

There is also a featured called “Watch,” where you are able to add keywords. Whenever one of your feeds has one of those keywords, the folder is smart enough that it contains it. If you want to remove posts, you are able to do so using the Cleanup Wizard. It allows you to remove them by date, number of items, and folder.

Other useful features are desktop alerts that are customizable by time and feed; ability to share with other people specific items; and the fluidity with Internet Explorer. If you want to choose another browser, you can always open links outside of FeedDemon.

It’s definitely a great RSS Reader with tons of functionality, which is especially useful if you have tons of RSS feeds, like I do.

2. Feedreader

Feedreader is a simple RSS Reader that does not have the number of features that FeedDemon, but it does what it sets out to do. The layout is very similar to FeedDemon, which has your subscriptions, unread items, and starred items.

If you want to import your Google Reader (or from another service) items, you can do it by uploading the OPML file and picking the feeds to import in. Feedreader allows you to add default feeds to get you started.

There is this useful feature call “Rating” that you can turn it on. When it is on, Feedreader will monitor your behavior and suggest items that you might find interesting. If you do not want a keyword to be used to make these suggestions, you are able to blacklist it, so that the application doesn’t take it into account.

It also has desktop alerts that summarizes the unread items for each feed.

This is definitely an useful RSS Reader if you are just looking for simplicity.

3. Snarfer

Snarfer is a robust RSS Reader that really uses Google apps. the layout is just like the other two RSS Readers.

It is very similar to the other two that it allows Snarfer to import default RSS feeds to start off users that need the assistance. After you select the feeds you want, you are able to place them in preexisting folders or folders you have already created (or imported).

If you don’t want to put your feed into one of the folders listed, the application should give you the option to create a folder. Users are able to add two plugins: Google Reader Synchronization plugin and Google Reader plugin. These allows you to import and sync your feeds you are maintaining in Google Reader, and the ability to share interesting items with others. Snarfer even has a Google translate function, so you are able to translate feeds from one language to the next.

Snarfer also allows you to do three types of searches: ebay, keyword, or web. If you want to monitor items that you bid on Ebay, you are able to do this using Snarfer.

Like FeedDemon, you are able to watch certain keywords, and whenever it comes in, Snarfer automatically adds them to a “Watch” folder. You are also able to search by web sites. It really takes searching to another level. Snarfer is the most visually-pleasing RSS Reader of the bunch. Additionally, it has great plugins that enhance the reader even more. However, needing to add plugin, whereas with others, it is already built-in the app, is an extra step that isn’t needed. It also doesn’t have desktop alerts, which can be useful. Overall, it’s a nice RSS Reader application.

Which RSS reader do you use on your PC?

Image credit: dwingdwang01

The Top Three RSS Readers for PC Users originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)