Let’s say you have 5 windows showing up in your taskbar and the second one is currently active, place your mouse pointer anywhere on the taskbar and scroll up and down to switch to next (third) and previous (first) windows respectively while this script is running. While scrolling down as you reach the last window, the very first window in the taskbar comes to front as expected. Similarly when the first window is activated while scrolling up, you jump to very last window when you continue.

The following screencast (800×600, 15 sec, 600 KB) demonstrates this (opens in a new tab/window):

Download AHK file (need to have AutoHotKey installed) or the zipped exe version

You might realize that using Alt-Tab is easier to switch to windows that are not adjacent to each other, but for switching between two windows next to each other, this is pretty useful.

Credits: Lacrossa and lanux128

Find And Run Robot (FARR) is a program and command launcher that uses an adaptive "live search" function to rapidly find programs and documents on your computer as you type. It is a fantastic piece of freeware that you can not afford to miss.

FARR also lets you quickly run web searches, send email, manipulate files, control on-screen windows, and much more. Build and share custom commands or install plugins to add tons of new features, like live search features for your clipboard history and your internet bookmarks; a popup a calculator with history tape and persistant variables; and many more..

You can bring up FARR text input window via a hot key like Alt+Space and as you start typing, it lists the installed programs that match the string. To launch the desired program, simply navigate to it using your arrow keys and hit enter or double click on it or type the number infront of it.

Below are 10 practical uses of FARR that will increase your productivity:

1. Launch any shortcut on the desktop or installed application simply by typing out its name. FARR shows and filters results as you type. So for launching Firefox, you may need to type only ‘f i’. When you see it in the list, hit the corresponding number. Note that FARR doesn’t by default launch via the number. You have to press Alt+number. You can however change the setting so pressing the number launches the desired item. FARR scores over Launchy in this aspect since it doesn’t need 10 minutes or so to index a newly installed application.

   

2. Search internet faster.

   The power of FARR comes in the form of user definable aliases.

   • Set up an alias so you can bring up FARR, type g keyword, press return and you’ll be taken to Google Search results page for your keyword in your default browser.

     

   • Go to the first result (I am feeling lucky) of Google search results fast. Type ! keyword and hit enter.

     

   • Set up an alias for Google Image search. gi keyword

     

   • Set up an alias for Google Suggest. gs keyword

     

   • Set up an alias for YouTube video search. yt keyword

     

   • Search in Wikipedia by typing wp keyword.

     

   • Search for meanings of words from an array of several dictionary and thesaurus sites by define keyword.

     

3. Go to any URL fast. Bring up FARR irrespective of whether your browser is open/active application or not, type in the site name like neowin.net and hit return to go there. No need to even append ‘www.’

   





4. You must be familiar w/ keywords in Firefox. You can set similar abbreviations in FARR. Ex.: Type gn, press the space bar and hit enter to go to Google Notebook.

   

5. Paste date and time fast in any (active) text taking program. Type dt (don’t put a space after) or paste in FARR and hit enter. Sample output: 05/12/2008, 4:39:38 PM

   

6. Set timers quickly. To set up an alarm that alerts you after 5 min, type tm in 5 0 "this is the text I want to be reminded about". After 5 min, an alert pop-up comes up plus optionally, the text will be read out aloud by your chosen male/female voice. Want to be reminded on 13th of May 2008 at 4.30 PM? Just type tm on 13/5/2008 4 30 "Blog about FARR". Want to be reminded today at 6PM for supper? Type tm at 6pm supper.

   

7. Shutdown, LogOff, Standby and more by typing cmd and pressing a number.

   

8. Set an alias to show your latest del.icio.us posts. Simply type dp followed by a space. Then you can go to any post from the results list.

   

9. Search your browser (IE, Firefox, Opera) bookmarks by typing ff keyword (since Firefox is my primary browser, I’ve set ‘ff’ as the trigger text. It can be set to any other like ‘bb’, standing for browser bookmarks)

   

10. Get the value of numerical expressions as you type by fc expression.

    

To set all the above:

1. If you have not already, download and install FARR by going here.
2. Download and extract the content of this zip file to C:\Program Files\FindAndRunRobot\Plugins\. Alternately, you can download only those plugins that you want by visiting this page.
3. Bring up FARR, click the Options icon, go to Aliases tab, select myaliases.alias from the dropdown, right click in the empty space, create a new entry and select ‘Import: Paste Preformatted Alias Groups..’

   
   and paste the following:

   1000>>>Google Notebook>->Google Notebook | http://www.google.com/notebook/>+>^gn(.+)$
   1000>>>Paste Date and Time>->paste date and time | paste %date%, %time% /ICON=icons\farr\core-misc_paste.ico>+>^dt(.*)$
   1000>>>Goes to any web site w/o appending www>->Surf to $$1 | http://$$1 /ICON=icons\farr\core-internet_www.ico>+>^(\S*\.(net|com|org|info|co.in))$
   1000>>>Google Search>->Google - $$1 | http://www.google.com/search?q=$$1 /ICON=icons\google.ico>+>^g\s(.+)$
   1000>>>Feeling Lucky>->Google - $$1 | http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=$$1&btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky /ICON=icons\google.ico>+>^!(.*)
   1000>>>Google Image Search>->Google - $$1 | http://images.google.com/images?q=$$1 /ICON=icons\google.ico>+>^gi\s(.+)$
   1000>>>YouTube Search>->YouTube Search - $$1 | http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=search_videos&search_sort=relevance&search_query=$$1&search=Search /ICON=icons\youtube.ico>+>^yt (.*)
   1000>>>Wikipedia Search>->Wikipedia search $$1 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=$$1 /ICON=icons\wikipedia.ico>+>^wp (.*)
   

4. Press OK, close the window and restart FARR.

So there you go. This is just scratching the surface of what can be done with FARR. If you know Regex, there’s lot more you can achieve with this powerful tool. Give it a try. I am sure you will find it indispensable for your day to day computing/surfing tasks. Our previous coverage of FARR is here.

• z - Go Back
• x - Go Forward
• a - Go to previous tab
• s - Go to next tab
• c - Close tab

Below is a step-by-step tutorial on how we can set the above quickkeys in Firefox:

1. Install KeyConfig Firefox add-on from here. At this time, it is in experimental section. So you will need to create a free account at Firefox add-ons site to download.
2. Install functions for keyconfig from here
3. Restart Firefox. Note that there are no options for this add-on
4. Go to Tools -> Keyconfig (or press Ctrl+Shift+F12)
5. Click on ‘Add a new key’

   

6. Type in ‘Go Back’ for the name and BrowserBack(); in the text field. Press OK.

   

7. Now select the new entry you just created, click inside the text box below, type in your hotkey, ‘z’ in this case and hit Apply.

   
   So you should have the entry like so:

   

8. Clicking on any other pre-existing entry in the list will show up ‘Add a new key’ button. Now create other keyboard shortcuts similarly. Below are the codes you need:

   
   
   

   Go Forward (X):	BrowserForward();
   Previous Tab (A):	f4kc_PrevTab();
   Next Tab (S):	f4kc_NextTab();
   Close Tab (C):	BrowserCloseTabOrWindow()

9. Once you are done setting up the above keys, click Close button and press OK for the alert window that says that changes take place only after a browser restart.
10. Restart Firefox and test the keys.

Note: When you visit a web page where the focus goes to a input field by default like in Google homepage, click anywhere in the empty space on the page or else your key input will be entered in the field. None of the above keys work in Gmail webpage when you have keyboard shortcuts enabled in Gmail’s settings.

While this might not have the bells and whistles of a full-fledged Gallery script like Menalto’s Gallery, it’s quite useful for the intended purpose of managing photos for display in your web site.

Features:

• Automatic generation of thumbnails and resized
• Commenting of pictures with antispam security code
• IPTC Support, import of keywords and picture description, showing other IPTC-tags
• E-Card - you can now send e-cards to your friends and family
• Screenshots for files to be downloaded, movie, audio, exe or whatever
• Password protection for your private galleries
• Admin section for creating new directories, uploading photos (works even with PHP safe_mode=on),Uploading ZIP Files preserving directory structure
• Short and long description of galleries/directories and photos
• Highly customizable layout, separated layout (HTML) from functional code, this allows easy creation of new themes
• Caching of all generated thumbnails and resized photos
• Transparent logo and icon processing with any background color, including IE6
• Access logging, with exclude strings

Homepage | Official Demo

Current Latest Version: 0.4.1.14.fix03

Below are the step-by-step instructions to install, configure and administer phpAlbum on a typical shared hosting webspace:

1. Download the latest version of phpAlbum from http://www.phpalbum.net/files/phpAlbum_v0.4.1.14.fix03.zip.
2. Extract the zip file on your local computer.
3. Rename config_change_it.php to config.php. Edit this file and set the value of $data_dir to something like data_P6IbpVyv where P6IbpVyv is some random hard-to-guess string.
4. Connect via FTP client to your web space and upload all the content of the script to where you want to install phpAlbum.
5. Create these directories: cache_P6IbpVyv, data_P6IbpVyv and photos_P6IbpVyv. Note that you have to change the random string ‘P6IbpVyv’ to something else for security reason.
6. CHMOD cache_P6IbpVyv and data_P6IbpVyv directories to 777.
7. Visit the URL of your installation. You should see this text in the middle of the page: "You are not allowed view this page or download this image!". Click on Login at the top right. The default Name and Password are admin and admin. Now click on Setup.
8. Enter a new password, your E-Mail address, Homepage and click the Save configuration button.
9. Click on Main setup. Replace photos/ in ‘Album Directory’ field to photos_P6IbpVyv/. Similarly replace cache/ to cache_P6IbpVyv/. You may want to change the Site name, Return Home URL (ensure that this doesn’t contain http://).
10. If you want to be able to upload media via the admin backend, provide your FTP Server and FTP Photo Directory (this is NOT relative to your installation, but should be w.r.t your web server. Typically you can just navigate to this directory and copy the path you see in the FTP client and paste here) values. You may enter Google Analytics code for tracking your visitors in the last text area and finally hit Save configuration.
11. Go to Upload manager section and Login with your FTP username and password. You will now be able to upload a single file or a zipped file containing the media you want to show in your phpAlbum.
12. Once you have uploaded media via the web interface or via FTP, visit Pictures section to setup the descriptions or parameters of photos. The photos will appear when you click ‘Scan directories now!’
13. Rest of the admin options like Galleries, Users, Groups are intuitive and easy to figure out. Clicking on ‘System check’ does nothing for us; just shows a blank page.

That’s it. If you have questions or suggestions, head over to http://www.phpalbum.net/forum. You may want to go through some useful installation notes written by one Mr. Plowman here.

These are some of the alternate PHP photo album scripts in case phpAlbum doesn’t make the cut for you: http://gallery.menalto.com/ (The Grand Daddy of them all), http://www.4homepages.de/, http://www.phpalbum.net/, http://coppermine-gallery.net/, http://www.sgal.org/.

What is new in v2.3.3? Well, only 5 files. These are:

There’s no change in the database (tables) structure. Hence there’s no need to do the full upgrade the usual way (as mentioned in the WordPress documentation).

To upgrade your WordPress blog from 2.3.2 to 2.3.3, follow these steps:

1. Download the .zip file containing the changed files from here.
2. Extract the archive and upload the files to your web space using a FTP client overwriting the existing ones.

That’s it.

I’ve recorded the desktop screen activity while I upgraded this blog to 2.3.3. It’s a 2 minute video at 800×600 resolution. Click on the image below to watch the WordPress upgrade video:

Thanks to the village idiot.

Below is a video tutorial on how I went about installing WordPress at www.sridhareena.com. This screencast is aimed at those who are new to DreamHost and WordPress.

Video info:

• Dimensions: 800×600
• Duration: 4.52
• Audio: Yes
• File Size: 2.92 MB

Click on the image below to start the WordPress installation video:

Click here to access the how-to on integrating Job-A-Matic in WordPress.

You can see a live demo of the job board on his blog here.

When you add a web site at emptyspaceads, you need to decide the percentage of time the Network and Personal ads are shown. A good value is 50%-50%.

Two types of ads can be placed:

1. Network Ads: Presently the only participating network in their system is Shopping Ads. You will have to sign up at Shopping Ads (formerly known as AuctionAds), if you don’t have an account there already. Then paste the code into emptyspaceads.
2. Personal (In-Site) Ads: Text and Image ads can be placed. These can link to any URL of your choice. When creating a personal ad, you have the option of letting emptyspaceads determine the empty space on your site (where the ads will be displayed) or you can specify the ad region (ads will be displayed only when the visitor’s mouse is in the region). This ad region is specified by adding a CSS class to the HTML element.

The Overview tab gives a summary of the number of impressions, ad displays, mouse overs, clicks, and CTR.

You might be wondering what’s in it for emptyspaceads in all this. They get a pie (50% to be exact) of the Network ads that are displayed on your site.

Finally inorder for the emptyspaceads to appear on every page of your site, you need to place the generated code just before the closing body tag in your site’s footer.

Conclusion: emptyspaceads is a new type of player in the online advertising field and since it isn’t over-used (yet), it holds a tremendous potential especially for site owners who run a products/reviews related sites/blogs. It could be improved by adding Personal ads in the form of widgets (HTML and RSS, for example). One usage, then, could be for a blog owner to specify the simplepied RSS feed (just the title linked to the post generated via SimplePie) of his blog in a Personal ad widget showing all the items when a visitor mouses over the empty space. Thus it becomes a fast and unobtrusive way of navigating the blog.

Kenny Carlile has put together code that will add the Digg Submission button to your WordPress blog posts. Stories already submitted will show how many times they have been dugg and stories not yet submitted will post to the submit story page with information pre-populated (first 350 characters from the post will be pre-populated for first-time submission).

Here is how we have used this code to place the ‘Digg It’ button to the left of posts in single view with the content wrapping around the button:

1. Create a file called diggthis.php in your theme’s directory having this code.





2. Edit your theme’s style.css and add the following to it:

.diggLink {
   float: left;
   margin-bottom: 4px;
   margin-right: 10px;
   width: 52px;
}

3. Edit your theme’s single.php and include diggthis.php just above the the_content function like so:

<?php include('diggthis.php'); ?>
		<?php the_content('&raquo; Read the rest of the entry.. ') ?>

Done.

You can also accomplish this using a plugin called DiggBadger and placing the following above the the_content function, and then styling it to align left:

<?php getDiggBadger(); ?>

Credit: http://www.kennycarlile.net/2007/08/25/add-a-digg-badge-to-wordpress-postspages/

Update: According to Jonathan of plagiarismtoday.com, there is no need to follow these 4 steps. Check out his comment.

1. Visit the offending blog and flag it as objectionable.

   

2. Visit Blogger’s Report a Terms of Service Violation page. Select the second radio button ‘Someone is stealing my content’ and press Continue.

   





3. Press the CONTINUE button on the next page.

   

4. Fill the form and request in the message that Google either delete the offending blog or remove the posts. Submit the form.

   

You’ll then get an automated email from Blogger which details the steps you need to take to expedite Google’s processing your request. In short, it involves writing in detail about what material has been copied, the list of source URLs and lastly, faxing or mailing (regular mail) the document.