Steve Betts: Computers

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 21:05:29 GMT

Improve Your Blog's Reach With These 20 Essential Web Utilities.

Youâ€™ve spent hours setting up your blog on your favorite blog platform just right. Good for you! So how do you maintain your blog so that it remains at the top of its game?

It turns out, there are a large number of free web utilities useful for improving your blogâ€™s effectiveness outside of your blog engine.

Everytime I come across one of these useful utilities, I bookmark it to my Blog Utilities folder. This folder is my blogger utility belt, full of tools to meet every need when composing blog posts or optimizing my site for bandwidth and speed.

Iâ€™ve chosen to focus on web utilities as they are quick and easy to use â€” no installation required. This is not a comprehensive list by far, as I am sure there are many others out there. Let me know what I missed in the comments.

Optimization

The first three tools in this category are all website speed testers, but each offers something different, so Iâ€™ve listed them all.

Web Page Analyzer - This tool is fairly comprehensive and may be the only one you really need for website speed analysis. Includes stats on every file and object downloaded and provides approximate download times for different connection rates.
OctaGate Site Timer - I didnâ€™t find this one to be as accurate as the first one because it attempted to download images referenced in my CSS files that were commented out. However, it provides a nicer graphical output that marks when the request was started, when it connected, and the time when the first and last bytes were received. It also highlights 404 errors in red, which is handy for finding missing files or bad URLs.
HttpZip Compression Checker - Use this to check whether files from your website are being served with HTTP Compression on or off. Thanks to Jeff Atwood for pointing me to this one (among others).
Dynamic Drive Online Image Optimizer - if youâ€™re hardcore about your image compression, you should check out Ken Silvermanâ€™s Utility Page. But if youâ€™re like me and just want a quick and easy web based utility for compressing images, this is your site. It can convert gif, jpg, and png files up to 300kb. It will also do conversions to other image types and display multiple results at various color levels and compression rates so you can pick the best one for your needs.
Javascript Minimizer - This is an extremely simple tool. Paste in your javascript and click the button and reduce the size of your javascripts.
CSS Minimizer - Just like the Javascript minimizer, but for Cascading Style Sheets.

Statistics and Search Engine Optimization

Get a handle on your web traffic with these sites.

Website Grader - Gives your website a score in an attempt measure its effectiveness. Shows your PageRank, meta info, domain info, technoratic stats, etc... It generates a really neat report card for your blog.
Google Webmaster Central - An absolute essential tool for those who care about users finding their site via Google. Especially pay attention to the Webmaster tools which include Sitemap support.
Google Analytics - A free and full featured analytics package for your blog or website. Add some javascript to your page template and youâ€™re in information overload land, but done up with nice charts and graphs.
103bees Search traffic analysis - Unlike other stats packages, this one is focused purely on natural search engine traffic analytics. What are users searching for when they land on your site? This is a nice complement to Google Analytics. And itâ€™s free! One caveat is that the script can be slow sometimes, which can play havoc with CSS based designs.
Technorati - Itâ€™s so obvious, I almost forgot to list it. Register, claim your blog, and find out who is linking to you. You can add a little script to your blog that displays how many other posts link to yours.
Alexa.com - The beauty of this site is that you can easily compare your websiteâ€™s reach with several other websites on a single graph, thus starting a huge pissing contest.

Spicing Up Your Posts With Images

Wikipedia Public Domain Image Resources - Images can bring a blog post to life. But rather than worrying about receiving a cease and desist letter for misusing copyrighted material, why not use images that are part of the Public Domain? This page is chock full of links to resources for free images.
PicFindr - Despite itâ€™s â€œOh so Web 2.0â€� name (must everything end in a consonant plus â€œrâ€� these days? At least it doesnâ€™t have BETA anywhere), this tool is really great. It will search a set of free photo sites such as Stock.xchng, for free photographs.
Flickr Creative Commons - Still havenâ€™t found that picture that just hits the point youâ€™re trying to make? Try the Flickr Creative Commons search engine. Remember, these photos are not public domain. You do need to abide by the license. But for the most part, the licenses are pretty lenient for you to reuse the photos in your own blog.
Open Clip Art Library - Maybe you want your image to be iconic rather than photographic. Check out this free Public Domain clip art library to find an icon for every occasion.
WP Clipart - Another Public Domain clip art library, though the quality tends to be less than the Open Clip Art Library.

Create and Improve Your Content

Cliche Finder - Try to avoid using too many tired old cliches by running your post through this web based utility.
HallwayTesting.com - This is a fantastic site for basic hallway usability testing. Just submit your URL and real people will post comments with criticisms and praise for your site. The more specific you are about what you want testers to focus on, the better quality the feedback. Try it out.

Syndication

FeedBurner - This one gets special mention because it fits in so many categories. Itâ€™ll help optimize your bandwidth by serving your RSS feeds for you. Also, it includes a basic free stats package as well as a premium stats package that can replace Google Analytics. FeedBurner can also provide features your blogging platform might not, such as subscribing to RSS Feeds via email.

Special Mention

As I mentioned before, this post is focusing on web utilities. However, these two utilities are so essential, I just had to break my own rule and list them.

Firebug Firefox Add-on - Ok, this breaks my rule as it isnâ€™t technically a website, but it is a FireFox browser plugin so it might as well be a website, right? Well in any case, this tool is too important not to mention. It has it all. It can be used to time your websites download speeds, view the underlying HTTP information, measure the size of each file. Add to that a great Javascript debugger and CSS and DOM explorer. This is a must have tool.
Windows Live Writer - I broke my rule again. This tool wonâ€™t help you write better content, but itâ€™ll help you have fun doing it. Also, all the plugins available make it easy to add a little extra oomph to your blog posts by including Flickr images, formatted code, etc...

Again, Iâ€™m sure I missed someoneâ€™s favorite tool hear, so please let me know what I missed in the comments. And if you do, let me know which tool youâ€™d remove from this list in order to add yours. Iâ€™ll try following up at a later time with an improved list.

[you've been HAACKED]

Awesome tools to test various browsers and OSes for web development

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 03:18:17 GMT

Browser Compatibility Testing: BrowserCam Gets Better - Video Review.

Browser compatibility testing is a web development practice that allows a web site owner to verify how her web site or blog, appears on computers utilizing browsers, operating systems and screen resolutions that are different from the one used in originally designing / developing a web site.

These visual differences is a critical element to consider when wanting to increase traffic, provide greater accessibility and allowing commercial publishers to extract the best from their online communication efforts.

BrowserCam puts a full range of browsers and operating systems at your disposal

With Linux, Mac OSX and Windows machines all accessing your website through a range of operating system versions, and even more web browsers, how are you going to know that your web site is going to look the same across all these other computer setups?

There are now a vast range of browsers on the market, from Internet Explorer and Firefox to Camino and Opera, to touch on just a few. If you then take into account the fact that more and more people are switching from Windows computers and over to Mac OSX and Linux operating systems, things become even more complicated.

But how can you hope to know what your website looks like on a Mac running an older version of the Mac OSX while using Opera?

Sure you could call your friend up and ask them to take a look, but there are only going to be so many friends with so many different machines, operating systems and browsers at their disposal.

One common way that web development agencies around the world have adopted is the one of having a range of machines all running different operating systems and browsers, and making use of them every time you need to check your website. This is far from being easy, inexpensive and speedy, and when you bring into the calculation the several versions available of all major operating system, the various versions of the major web browsers, and the infinite number of combinations that these two variables can generate when coupled with the myriad monitor sizes and screen resolutions that your readers may have, you soon realize that this amounts to a big headache that is not going to be that easy to solve.

So, while most (webmasters) simply resort to check IE and FF at their default resolution, on their standard operating system, this is a far cry from being able to serve a truly accessible web site that looks and acts the same no matter what computer, browser or monitor size your readers happens to use.

I don't need to add that given the increasing good interface design and usability of many commercial sites, if you have any stake in being commercially successful online, this is something to which you must give very serious attention.

Luckily, there are several services and tools out there, which can ease your pain within a few clicks.

Among them, we have chosen to go back to the one that did impress me the most when it was the first and only solution against this web riddle.

First reviewed in 2004, Browsercam, is a web-based solution exclusively devoted to provide webmasters with an semi-automated system to check your web site appearance across all the operating systems, browser and screen resolutions available out there.

Now, Browsercam has added some new and truly powerful features to its already jam-packed line-up.

In this video review I guide you through the ins and outs of this must-have cross-browser compatibility testing:

Video review

The video, which has five separate parts, covers the following aspects of the BrowserCam experience:

Selecting your capture parameters - A guide to the full range of compatibility settings available, and how easy it is to select from among them

Checking out the results - The great variety of ways in which you can filter and sequence the resulting screen captures, and the process of selecting and downloading your images

The addition of the DeviceCam tool - This new feature allows you to see how your website will look to those using PDAs

Remote compatibility testing - This feature of the service allows you to make use of a range of computers, operating systems and browsers via a remote connection

The addition of the new BC Virtual tool - This new addition to BrowserCam allows you to create a range of virtual machines configured to run the operating systems of your choice

BrowserCam's vast set of testing parameters

BrowserCam effectively puts a huge range of browser and operating system versions at your disposal, and gives you the opportunity to select from a vast range of parameters. Once you have decided which of these parameters you are interested in, it then systematically goes about taking screen-shots of your website.

With the ability to choose from Linux, Windows and Mac operating systems, and different versions of the various browsers available it then provides clear screen grabs of exactly how your website is going to look under the parameters you have set.

Furthermore, you can decide if you want to see the site with the popular (but not entirely ubiquitous) Flash plug-in activated or deactivated, and can select from a range of screen resolution sizes to get an idea of how your website pans out on different sized screens and settings. This truly comprehensive range can either be dipped into, to produce a limited number of images, or else used to test every single permutation available to you.

What's great is that once you've made your selection, and taken your captures you can filter and sort the resulting images that the service has created in a number of useful ways.

Checking your results

Once your screen-shots have been captured it is very easy to browse through them, even if you have taken a huge amount of images to truly cover yourself in terms of browser compatibility.

BrowserCam's interface makes it very easy to sort images by operating system, browser and a range of other parameters that make it quick and easy to locate the exact images that you're looking for at a given point in time. Any of the thumbnails provided can be clicked to give you an instantaneous full-sized version of the screen-grab.

Then, it is simply a matter of ticking the appropriate check boxes for those images that you would like to make a copy of, and clicking on download. Straight away you are given a zipped folder full of the images, to download directly to your desktop. Obviously, this then allows you to email them directly across to the people you are working with, if you haven't granted them access to your BrowserCam account.

DeviceCam and the handheld market

One nice new addition to the service is the ability to perform a browser compatibility check not only for home computer based systems, but also for the increasingly popular Windows Mobile and Blackberry PDA devices.

As an increasing amount of people are using these hand-held devices to access the web, it's a good idea to see how you are faring when your site is squashed onto a 320x240 or smaller screen. While obviously this great new feature to the BrowserCam service will be of most interest to those developing websites specifically for these devices, it is nevertheless a useful addition to your compatibility toolkit.

Remote testing functionality

Screen-shots are a great way of checking out how your website is going to look on other operating systems and browsers, but unfortunately they cannot tell you how it is going to perform.

With BrowserCam, this doesn't pose a problem, however.

In addition to being able to take accurate screen grabs, the service allows you to remotely access a range of computers, running a range of operating systems via VNC. In short, this means that you can take control of the exact computer that you need to test your website on, and use it from your own location.

This is a great way to test a particular system in hands on way, and it is possible to capture and save the results as you do so. Using this approach is a great compliment to the screen captures you can take with BrowserCam, and while the process is time consuming, it does allow you to look into the kind of issues a screen grab just won't show you.

If, for instance, you need to check for JavaScript browser compatibility, or want to work out the specifics of a Flash or Ajax interface, the best way to be sure that all is well is to get stuck in and have a quick play with your site.

BrowserCam makes this incredibly easy, and gives you the option of either using your own VNC client to access their remote computers, or else using their own bundled Java VNC client, which will allow you to get stuck in straight from your browser window.

BC-Virtual - virtual machines at your disposal

As if all of that wasn't enough the BrowserCam people have just added yet another supercool feature called BC-Virtual, which is currently in beta testing.

Put simply, BC-Virtual allows you to make use of dedicated server space to run private virtual machines, to which you are granted full administrator access. This effectively means that you can have at your disposal the ability to create machines with the OS, browsers and resolution of your choice, and tweak all of the finer points you don't have access to as a guest user of the previously mentioned remote machines.

This adds a whole new level of control, and the ability to truly customize a machine to your exact specifications. As it is stored within your allotted server space, you can obviously do as much compatibility testing as you need to, without having to worry about losing your configurations and data.

Every time that it seems that BrowserCam have reached a plateau, they pull something like this out of a hat and push the envelope a little further. With the addition of this new feature, there are now a number of options available for those looking to extensively test browser compatibility.

Pricing and plans

I am genuinely impressed by the flexibility of the pricing infrastructure of BrowserCam's service, which seems to have an option to suit every level of user. The range goes from casual users that might want to make use of the service on a once-only basis, right up to unrestricted, annual premium access.

The price range goes from a measly $19.95, which will buy you 24-hours of unlimited access to the service, right up to $999.95 for unlimited, annual, premium access. Between these prices there is truly flexible range that allows for different access plans and pricing structures that can be mixed and matched to suit your needs.

A list of the available plans is available on the BrowserCam website, and involves varying degrees of remote access, and additional features at the premium end of the scale.

Conclusions

Having extensively tested BrowserCam for this review, I can say with positive confidence that BrowserCam will make the task of testing your website on multiple operating systems and browsers a truly effective one.

While most blogging platforms have pre-designed templates already designed to work across the vast range of browsers and operating systems out there, anyone who has any kind of customized design or web site template needs to make very sure how her site is going to be seen on the browsers, monitor sizes and screen resolutions she can't see directly on her development machines.

Browsercam ensures your easy access to Mac, Linux and Windows previews, no matter whether you want to see these through the eyes of Opera, Firefox, Internet Explorer or several other browsers and versions of the same.

Webmasters and website designers that do not make use of such a straightforward, easy to use shortcut to checking a website's compatibility could end up spending a lot more time (and money) finding alternative approaches to the problem. Nonetheless the apparent significant cost for buying yourself a yearly subscription (about $1000/year for the top level service) I can state with confidence that not only this is money well spent, but that if you take the time to evaluate how much time and effort it would have cost you or your webmaster to find out what BrowserCam does in a click of your mouse, you would rapidly realize that this is a tool that saves you a great deal of money and time too.

The BrowserCam service is also available on a monthly basis, and at different pricing levels, including a full one-day free try-out option.

Additional resources

If you are interested in learning more about BrowserCam, the following links might be useful:

BrowserCam's homepage has a lot more information about the service

A full list of browsers and remote access machines available via the service

BrowserCam's comprehensive forums

Video demos of the service in action

[Robin Good's Latest News]

Feed readers, if someone asks.

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 16:53:06 GMT

RSS Tools and Services - The Best Picks From Sharewood.

RSS tools and services play an increasingly important role in the effort to effectively aggregate, syndicate, market and distribute online content.

Photo credit: Eric Ejk

Thanks to RSS feeds, many of your readers need not go and check your home page on the internet every single day to find out what are your latest news. With any web-based RSS reader like Bloglines,Google Reader, Microsoft Live or Kinja anyone can keep himself updated to the many web sites that interest him by simply copying and pasting the URL laying behind those ubiquitous orange tags into their RSS reader / aggregator.

But RSS tools and services also include instruments that allow online publishers and power users to move beyond the standard base by:

Scraping and Creating custom RSS feeds from sites that do not have any

Generating your own RSS feeds even if you don't have a web site

Mixing multiple RSS feeds into so-called newsradars or master feeds

Receiving your RSS feed subscribed content within your preferred instant messaging tool

Converting RSS feeds in a variety of other formats

Tracking and monitoring web pages changes via RSS

Filtering RSS feeds from unwanted content

Publishing an easy to access page that simplifies RSS readers subscriptions

Generating serialized, cycling RSS feeds

Future-publishing and scheduling RSS post for delayed delivery

Tracking and monitoring the status of your RSS feeds and the content you read through them

Here is a selection of some of the most interesting and useful RSS tools I have showcased on this site in the last 12 months. The list doesn't pretend to be exhaustive or comprehensive of all the RSS tools and services out there providing such features. You are very wlecome to contribute additional tools and services in the Comments section at the bottom of this article.

Scraping and Creating custom RSS feeds from sites that do not have any

RSS feeds generator enables you to create feeds from any web page in few clicks: Ponyfish

Ponyfish is a web-based tool that allows you to create your own RSS feeds from any web page. All you have to do is simply point Ponyfish to the web page you want to create a feed from, then follow a few steps to setup which types of links you want to include in the feed. The basic service is free. There is also a premium plan that allows you to put advertising and use Ponyfish on a commercial site.
http://www.ponyfish.com/

Web service that generates RSS feeds for websites who don't have any: Feeds2Be

Feeds2Be is a web service that generates RSS feeds for websites who don't have any. To use the service, all you have to do is search for a website in the feeds page, by using its name or address. Then, select the feed you want from the list and copy the link to your aggregator. If the website was not found, simply click the â€œAdd it!â€� link and we will create a feed for it. This service is free to use.
http://feeds2.be/

RSS feeds generator enables you to add RSS feeds to any web page : RSSpect

RSSpect is a service that lets you add RSS feeds to any web page. RSSpect offers three kinds of feeds, so you can add an RSS feed to literally anything you find online: â€œAnySite feedsâ€� allow you to create update feeds from any website or any document online, even those that you don't control; â€œMySite feedsâ€� allow you to generate advanced RSS feeds from your own website content, automatically. â€œPodcast feedsâ€� are specially-designed RSS feeds to be used with iTunes. Free to use.
http://www.rsspect.com/

Advanced RSS generator creates feeds from static web pages : Feed43

Feed43 is a web-based service which allows you to create a custom RSS feed for any site (which doesn't have one). This process is generally called HTML scraping. Yes, you are reading it right: Feed43 converts free-form HTML or XHTML documents to valid RSS feeds by extracting specific recurring snippets of text/HTML, or by utilizing custom search patterns. This service is definitely for "geeks" or for those who some good technical comptence. To give you an idea of its technical complexity here is the procedure of setting up a feed :
- Find a web page with the content that interests you.
- Create a new feed on Feed43, which points to that web page.
- In feed parameters, define search patterns and output templates for this feed.
- Get the link to your feed.
- Subscribe to this feed using your favorite feed reader (aggregator).
- Optionally, protect your feed with password so no one could alter it.
Feed43 is currently in private beta stage of development. To use this service you must get an invitation code. To get one, say that you have read Robin Good' Sharewood Picnic and apply for it here. Free.
http://www.feed43.com/

Simple, non-geek RSS generator to scrape static web pages with no feeds: Feedtier

FeedTier is an automatic RSS feed generator for non-geeks that has already been featured as a Microsoft Windows Live.com gadget. FeedTier simplifies the process of scraping RSS from any web page by offering a user-friendly and simplified approach. FeedTier performs content analysis, picks-up the most prominent cluster of hyperlinks and automatically generates RSS web feeds from HTML-based web pages that do not have already an RSS feed. The beta version is free for personal use though I would recommend if you find this tool useful to please consider donating any small money amount to Ashutosh Nilkanth, FeedTier generous developer.
http://feedtier.somee.com/

Generating your own RSS feeds even if you don't have a web site

Create an RSS feed even if you don't have a web site: FeedXS

FeedXS is a service that allows you to create as many RSS feeds as you need. Once you have created your feed on FeedXS, people will need a feed reader to be able to read your feed. FeedXS lets you create a feed even if you don't have a web site. FeedXS requires registration. Free to use.
http://feedxs.com/

Generate, store and syndicate your own custom RSS feeds from anywhere: LinkRSS

LinkRSS is a web service that lets you generate, store and syndicate your own custom RSS feeds from anywhere. The editing interface is very simple to use and enables you to produce your feed in a matter of seconds. Nothing to install, nothing to download. LinkRSS is currently in beta and is completely free to use.
http://www.linkrss.com/

Mixing multiple RSS feeds into so-called newsradars or master feeds

Create a new RSS feed from several existing feeds: Feed Mix

Feed Mix is an RSS editor, which lets you create, edit and publish an unlimited number of RSS feeds. Feed Mix is also able to create a new RSS feed from several existing feeds. Feed Mix gives several useful tools, including a WYSIWYG feed editor, a built-in RSS reader, a blog client, an HTML editor, an image editor, an XML editor and an FTP upload facility. Feed Mix costs $25.95 for a single computer license. Free trial.
http://www.extralabs.net/feed-mix.htm

RSS filter and aggregator lets you manage your subscriptions and receive information via RSS or IM: Blastfeed

Blastfeed is a service that allows users to filter the RSS feeds they subscribe to in order to get only the pieces of information they are interested in. Blastfeed pushes information in real time on any media channel, such as email, RSS or IM. Blastfeed can handle any RSS formats available. Free to use.
http://www.blastfeed.com/

Receiving your RSS feed subscribed content within your preferred instant messaging tool

Receive any RSS feed via all major instant messengers: InstantFeed

InstantFeed is a service that allows you to receive any web feed (RSS or Atom) via all major IM carriers including MSN Messenger, Jabber, AIM and ICQ. You can add the InstantFeed Button to your bookmark toolbar and let InstantFeed auto-discover feeds on any page or login and add the feeds you want to monitor manually. Free to use.
http://instantfeed.biggu.com/

Service that sends RSS newsfeeds to your AOL Instant Messenger account: Feed Crier

Feed Crier is a service that sends RSS newsfeeds to your AOL Instant Messenger account. You can subscribe to any RSS feed using your AOL Instant Messenger, get job listings from Craigslist, Simply Hired and others, receive breaking news from thousands of sources and know right away when your favorite blogs are updated. Publishers can give readers an easy way to subscribe to IM alerts from their site. Feed Crier is free up to three feeds. To subscribe to more feeds you need the pro service, which costs $4 per month.
http://feedcrier.com/

RSS feeds alerts service sends real-time news updates to your Skype: Anothr

Anothr is a tool which provides real-time alerts for your favorite RSS feeds directly on Skype. You simply need to add â€œanothr.comâ€� to your personal Skype buddy list. After doing that, you have to subscribe to your favorite feeds to let Anothr know which kind of news you are interested in. Anothr will verify them and send you instant messages everytime there are fresh news. Free to use.
http://www.luobotou.com/

Converting RSS feeds in a variety of other formats

Set of tools to create, combine and convert RSS feeds: xFruits

xFruits is a service that provides a set of tools to create, combine and convert RSS feeds and also allows you to view the feeds that others have created. xFruits offers a set of four RSS tools to take advantage of:
- Aggregator RSS: aggregates your favorite feeds into a single feed.
- RSS to Web: allows you to change a feed from within a webpage.
- RSS to Mobile: automatically converts your RSS feed to a mobile version.
- Post to RSS: allows you to get an RSS feed of all emails sent to an xFruits mailbox.
Currently, there are four more RSS sydincation tools in the works: RSS to PDF, RSS to Mail, File to RSS and Composer. Free to use.
http://www.xfruits.com/

Publish, convert and display custom news feeds on your web site: Feedo Style

Feedo Style allows you to add fresh themed content to your website from any sources with a simple copy and paste. With Feedo Style you can easily convert any valid RSS, RDF or ATOM feed into stylish looking news tickers and boxes that update automatically according to your settings. If your website spans different topics, you can consider creating different Feedo Styles for each type of content. You can use Feedo Style in your online desktop or personalized homepage, like Google's Personalized Homepage, Microsoft's Live.com or Pageflakes, as a replacement for the standard feed boxes. No XML or programming experience is necessary. Feedo Style is free to use.
http://www.feedostyle.com

Tracking and monitoring web pages changes via RSS

Automatic generator of RSS feeds sends email alerts for any web page on the internet: Feedwhip

Feedwhip is a service that detects changes to web pages. Feedwhip sends notifications to your email account whenever the change matches criteria you specify. If you are a webmaster, Feedwhip will keep track of changes to your website, and then send emails to your subscribers. You only need to put a Feedwhip button on your web page. Feedwhip works with just about every web page on the internet, whether or not it provides a RSS feed. Free to use.
http://www.feedwhip.com/

Filtering RSS feeds from unwanted content

Spam filter for RSS allows cleansing RSS feeds from unwanted content: Feed Rinse

Feed Rinse is an easy to use tool that lets you automatically filter out syndicated content that you aren't interested in. It's like a spam filter for your RSS subscriptions. Simply enter the url for your feeds; You can enter subscription URL' s manually or export an OPML file from your favorite RSS reader (Feed Demon, NetNewsWire, MyYahoo!, Rojo, etc.). In order to set up your filters you can rinse your feeds by keyword, author, tag, etc, or filter profanity and more. Once you have done this operation, your RSS reader of choice simply retrieves your clean feeds. Feed Rinse is currently free to use and provides the mentioned function for up to 5 feeds; Premium packages with addictional features are soon to be developed.
http://www.feedrinse.com

Publishing an easy to access page that simplifies RSS readers subscriptions

Create an easy to access page for your readers that facilitates RSS readers subscriptions: FeedPass

FeedPass is a tool that enables you to make RSS easy for any blog or website. You just have to enter your feed URL and FeedPass will generate one information rich page along with subscription buttons and mini-tutorials on RSS that you can easily republish on your site to guide your users through the RSS subscription process. FeedPass also gives you a way to earn money from your FeedPass pages, both for your own content or for links to other feeds. You can create a FeedPass link to any blog or feed and earn money via Google AdSense when people view it. Free to use.
http://www.feedpass.com

Generating serialized, cycling RSS feeds

RSS feeds creator lets you set up, publish and manage serialized web feeds: FeedCycle

FeedCycle is a service that enables you to create, publish and manage cyclic, or serialized, web feeds using the RSS feed format. A serialized RSS web feed is that one which enables a subscriber to receive sequential episodes from within a series of episodes. The subscriber always starts at the beginning regardless when they start their subscription. For example if you have previously published a 10 episode podcast, you can create a cyclic web feed and ensure that your subscribers always start from the beginning. Free to use.
http://www.feedcycle.com/

Future-publishing and scheduling RSS post for delayed delivery

Future publish and schedule RSS feed content publication: FutureRSS

FutureRSS is a PHP script that converts an RSS feed into HTML and displays only the current RSS feed's items. The FutureRSS script allows webmasters to pre-plan an RSS feed's content items and to publish them all at predetermined dates and times. FutureRSS allows web publishers to prepublish RSS content weeks or even month's in advance. FutureRSS has been developed by the same creators of FeedForAll and if you are a registered user of FeedForAll, the new FutureRSS script is available to you free of charge. Fees for FeedForAll start from $39.95.
http://www.feedforall.com/future-rss.htm

Tracking and monitoring the status of your RSS feeds and the content you read through them

Feed status tracker keeps you updated across multiple computers: Feedlinx

Feedlinx is an online feed reader that tracks the status of your feed items on all of your machines and across all of your feed readers and tells you whether you have already viewed a post before. You just need to add or import your feeds into Feedlinx then you can subscribe to the new addresses that are generated. You can subscribe to the Feedlinx addresses at home, work, or anywhere you want to keep track of your posts. You can even have Feedlinx email your posts to your inbox. The service has been tested with many popular feed readers and supports both RSS and ATOM feeds. The online interface of Feedlinx supports all major browsers. Sign up now, it's free to use.
http://www.feedlinx.com

[Robin Good's Latest News]

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 23:49:55 GMT

HTTP Debugging Using Reverse Proxies And Port Forwarders.

Iâ€™m currently working on an interestingÂ project to develop a series of HTTP services used by games running on the RIM Blackberry. These services will enable players to compete against one another (though not in real time) in various games and see high scores, challenge friends, etc.... It brings a social aspect to gaming on your blackberry device.

The games are written in Java and Iâ€™m using a Blackberry emulator for testing the interaction between the game and the services. Iâ€™m running the service at localhost on my local machine to allow me to step through the debugger when necessary.

With all these web requests and response shuttling back and forth between the game and the service, itâ€™d be nice to be able to debug that HTTP traffic using a network analyzer likeÂ Fiddler.

What Is Fiddler?

If youâ€™re not familiar with Fiddler, it acts as a localÂ HTTP ProxyÂ on port 8888Â allowing you to inspect HTTP traffic between yourÂ an applicationÂ and a web application (even one running at localhost). WinINET-based applications (such as Internet Explorer) automatically use Fiddler when its running. For other applications, you need to configure the application to use Fiddler as a proxy.

Itâ€™s immensely useful when debugging web services and weird problems with web applications.

It Wasnâ€™t Working For Me

Unfortunately, I ran into an annoying problem. The emulator is not a WinINET-based application nor does it allow configuring a proxy, thus Fiddler was not reporting any traffic.

Configuring Fiddler as a Reverse Proxy

Fortunately, I found instructions on the Fiddler site that shows you how to configure Fiddler as a Reverse Proxy.

A reverse proxy sits in front of your webserver and forwards requests on to your webserver. Thus the application doesnâ€™t need to be configured to use it. All I had to do was ask the developers to change the application to make requests for port 8888 (Iâ€™ll explain later why I couldnâ€™t just set up a HOSTS file entry).

I then added a rule to forward requests forÂ localhost port 8888Â to localhost port 80 like so:

if (oSession.host.toLowerCase() == "localhost:8888")
Â Â Â oSession.host = "localhost:80";

Unfortunately, this didnâ€™t work, creating some weird infinite loop when I would make a request to localhost:8888. To rectify this, I added an entry to the HOSTS file to map the hostname MOBILE to the ip address 127.0.0.1. Fiddler apparently doesnâ€™t work as a simple port forwarder (Iâ€™ve got a solution for that, keep reading).

I then updated the custom rule in Fiddler to route requests for mobile:8888 to port 80 of the localhost and again asked the developers to change the url encoded in the app (I donâ€™t have the source for the client app).

if (oSession.host.toLowerCase() == "mobile:8888")
Â Â Â oSession.host = "localhost:80";

Now I can monitor requests from the emulator to localhost using Fiddler. One benefit of using Fiddler is that I can replay requests tweaking form values and such.

Dealing With Hard-Coded URLs

In the most recent build of the game, the game developersÂ accidentally changed theÂ hard-coded URL to point back to theÂ QA environment. For the sake of this example, suppose it is http://mobile.example.com/.

Rather than asking them once again to change it, I decided to try and work around this. I added theÂ QA server hostname to the HOSTS file just like I did with MOBILE before, pointing it to localhost. I then had toÂ change IIS on my machine to run on a different port, since I planned to configure TcpTrace to listen in on port 80. I chose the perennial favorite alternate port for IIS, port 8080. andÂ used TcpTraceÂ to listen on port 80 and forward requests to port 8080.

This allowed me to view the HTTP traffic back and forth between the emulator and the web service again using TcpTrace. Unfortunately, I could not get FiddlerÂ to work in this setup, so I lost some of the ability to tweak and replay requests. This ended up being fine since the latest build is meant for final testing.

The following are some useful resources for HTTP debugging.

Technorati tags: Mobile, ASP.NET, Fiddler, HTTP, Debugging, Blackberry

[you've been HAACKED]

From Rogin Good, the best personal productivity tools

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 13:24:20 GMT

Personal Productivity: The Best Tools And Services From Sharewood.

Personal productity tools and online services are increasingly taken over physical consumer electronic tools and downloadable utilities. Nonetheless there will always be space for the latter two, it is indeed an outstanding fact that with the advent of what is being labelled Web 2.0, the number and variety of these tools has grown exponentially.

Photo credit: James Thew

Here is my selection of some of my preferred personal productivity tools from the over 560 mini-reviews Master New Media has brought to you in this past year through our weekly Sharewood Picnics feature.

Enjoy:

Personal Productivity Tools

Online file converter allows you to upload and convert all the most popular files without any software: Zamzar
Zamzar is a service that allows conversion between a wide variety of different file formats. When converting more than one file, Zamzar gives you the option to download all your files in a compressed zipped format. Once downloaded you can unpack your compressed zip file that contains all your converted files. Generally this file is 25% smaller than downloading all your individual files. Zamzar currently stores converted files for a 24 hour period. Check out conversion types (http://www.zamzar.com/conversionTypes.php). Free to use. http://www.zamzar.com/

Reading software improves your capability to read on the computer screen: ReadPal

ReadPal is a software that facilitates reading on the computer screen. ReadPal extracts the text from any document and displays it to you in a format that is both easier and faster to read. ReadPal automatically displays the text in the format that you have chosen. Downloading ReadPal costs â‚¬31.62 but the software is available for free trial on the website.
http://www.readpal.com/

Web-based spell-checking application that lets you spell correct from any operative system: Orangoo

Orangoo is a web-based application that lets you spell correct from any system or computer that has Internet access. Orangoo provides spell check in 27 languages and it partially uses the Google spell checker and Aspell. The source code is free, so users can place it in their own Web applications. Free to use.
http://orangoo.com/spell

Clearinghouse for best freeware, shareware and open-source software: Freeware Home

Freeware Home is an online indexed collection of all freeware, open-source and shareware tools available out there. All of the software is categorized by subjects (business, education, graphics, internet, etc). In each category you can find:
- a brief description of the tool
- the author
- system requirements for downloading
- file size
- a reader-based rating
A full search facility is available and anyone can submit directly new software for inclusion. Windows and UNIX/Linux programs only. Free to use.
http://www.freewarehome.com/

Best open-source and free software apps for Windows PCs and Macs: OpenSourceWindows and OpenSourceMac

Open Source Windows and Open Source Mac are two simple lists cataloguing some of the best free and open source software for Windows and for the Mac. These lists do not try to be a comprehensive listing of every open-source application available out there, but rather attempt at showcasing the best, most important, and easiest to use tools among the hundreds available. This human edited catalog is intended as a handy reference for getting more people to start using free and open-source software.
http://www.opensourcewindows.org/
http://www.opensourcemac.org/

Online community identifies and reports computer programs that enable you to carry around your applications on any portable device: Portable Apps

PortableApps is a community site devoted to the reporting and promotion of portable applications. A portable app is a computer program that you can carry around with you on a portable device like an USB flash drive or an iPod and use on any Windows computer. When your portable device is plugged in, you have access to your software and personal data just as you would on your own PC. Applications on PortableApps can be downloaded for free.
http://portableapps.com

Zero footprint projectable portable keyboard: Laser Projection Keyboard CL800BT

By means of a laser, the Laserkey CL800BT projects a full-scale keyboard (layout measuring approx. 241 x 106 mm) equipped with a mouse feature onto any opaque, flat surface. Keystrokes are recognized and then relayed via an invisible infrared layer combined with an optical sensor. This keyboard is the perfect solution for PDAs, cell phones, smart phones, web-pads and tablet PC'.This keyboard is Wireless (Bluetooth Interface), small and easy to carry around. It is compatible with Palm OS, Windows Mobile 2003/SE and Windows 2000/XP. Price: $199,99
http://www.projection-keyboard.com/store/...

Telephone interfaceable automatic recording devices: DynaMetric

DynaMetric Inc. is a leader in telephone accessories and telephone interfacing technology. Among its products there are two in particular: the first is Call Saver Pro, which allows users record their calls on their PC or any network drive, automatically or on demand; the second one is DynaMetric's NEW Digital Audio Recording Kit, a tool that features up to 48 hours of recording time and up to 512MB of file storage. Call Saver Pro price ranges from $144.95 to $185.95 (depending on the adapter) and it is designed to run on Windows 98/ME/2000/XP; DynaMetric's new Digital Audio Recording Kit comes with 128MB data storage (256MB & 512MB also available) and supports both PCs and Macs.
http://www.dynametric.com

Generator of identification numbers for all things digital to protect your copyrights: Numly

Numly assigns electronic serial numbers for all things digital. These unique identifiers provide digital rights management capabilities as well as third-party measures for proof of copyright via real-time verifications. Numly Numbers are simple and quick to generate and they act as an electronic timestamp for copyright purposes. They can also be used to digitally certify email. Numly numbers also allow you to track content viewership, monitor ratings, and can be used as permalinks. Numly Numbers costs are currently free.
http://numly.com

Talking translator enables you to translate any text sentence into a spoken phrase in another language of choice: Polly Glotto

Polly Glotto is a website that provides a text-to-speech translator. Polly Glotto reads and translates text to into 11 different languages (English, Dutch, Chinese, Catalan, Italian, Greek, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Swedish): you only need to select a language among the provided ones and type in the text you want to be translated. The service is completely free to use.
http://www.pollyglotto.com/

Set up simple web-based to-do lists to organize your tasks within your team: iPrioritize

iPrioritize is a web-based service that lets you set up simple to-do lists to organize your tasks. You can drag tasks up and down as your priorities change, mark items complete when you finish. You can access your lists anytime and anywhere, because you simply need an internet connection. iPrioritize allows you to print, email, subscribe via RSS, and view lists on your mobile phone. iPrioritize offers a free account and a business account coming at $10/month or $100/year (check out the features of both accounts). Free to use.
http://www.iprioritize.com/

Text-to-mp3 conversion tool: MT1

MT1 is a text-to-voice tool that translates textual files (email, MS Word documents) into audio files that can be listened to on a PDA, iPod or other portable audio device. Produced by Irish company MagneticTime, MT1 replays your documents to you in "natural sounding voices" such as the soothing sampled female voice that greets visitors to the MT1 website. Text files submitted to MT1 are exported as standard .mp3 files. However, it is not a one-product-fits-all program, meaning that different versions exist to support iPods, PDAs or cell phones. Currently supporting only English language documents on Windows PCs, MT1 is available for about â‚¬34 ($40 USD) or for a free, limited-time trial

http://www.magnetictime.com/

Create your own online desktop and access it from any computer: CosmoPOD

CosmoPOD allows you to create your own online desktop and access it from any computer. Once you have signed up for an account, you download a small application that provides you with the means to connect your online desktop. Once you've logged into your desktop, you'll see a list of applications, among which there is an office suite that allows you to work with Word and Excel documents seamlessly. The free ad-supported version of CosmoPOD gives you a free email, 1GB online storage, a full office suite, an instant messenger and much more. CosmoPOD requires registration and download. CosmoPOD client is available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Solaris, PlayStation 2 and iPAQ. Free to use.
http://www.cosmopod.com/

Download massive amounts of images, videos, audio, executables or documents from any website: WebRipper

WebRipper is a free downloadable software tool that allows you to automatically download large amounts of images, videos, audio, executables or documents from any website unattended. You donâ€™t need to waste your time clicking the links and saving every file manually. WebRipper is compatible with Windows. Free download.
http://webripper.dnsalias.com/index.php

Web-based word processor that can read and write Microsoft Word and other standard document formats: ajaxWrite

ajaxWrite is a web-based word processor that can read and write Microsoft Word and other standard document formats. ajaxWrite also handles all the popular document formats so it's easy to share your files and collaborate with your co-workers and friends. Once finished with your document, you can easily save your work right to your hard drive. ajaxWrite works from a Firefox

http://www.ajaxlaunch.com/ajaxwrite/

Web-based application that helps you build online forms: Wufoo

Wufoo is an Internet application that helps you build online forms. You can create a mailing list, a contact form, a marketing survey or even a complete customer management system. When you design a form with Wufoo, it automatically builds the database, backend and scripts needed to make collecting and understanding your data easily. Forms are hosted by Wufoo, therefore all you need is a browser and an Internet connection. Free to use.
http://wufoo.com/

Create almost any kind of web forms, including multi-page forms and forms with conditional questions: The Form Assembly

The Form Assembly is a service that allows you to create almost any kind of forms, including multi-page forms and forms with conditional questions. The Form Assembly can host the form for you and give you a personal web address. This form processing service is not designed to safely process credit card information. The Form Assembly is free. If you want to also process submitted responses, the site provides both free and paid plans. See our plan comparison page for more information.
http://formassembly.com/

Manage your Google Calendar offline directly from your desktop: Calgoo

Calgoo is a software that allows you to manage your Google Calendar offline. Your calendars and schedules are brought to the desktop where you can easily search, filter and organize them. Calgoo synchronizes your Google Calendar information with your desktop for easy offline access and will be soon available for mobile devices. Calgoo improves calendar sharing and makes it easier for you to collaborate with your friends, colleagues, family and social groups. Free download.
http://www.calgoo.com

Web-based tool that allows you to manage projects, track time and monitor your activities: MyTicklerFile

MyTicklerFile is a web-based tool that allows you to manage projects, track time and monitor your activities. You can create and receive reminders on your mobile phone via text message and sync projects and time tracking with iCal. Export project data to csv file. Take a look at the subscription plans available. MyTicklerFile officially supports IE 6 or later on the PC, as well as Firefox and Safari on a Mac. Free to use.
http://myticklerfile.com/

Online desktop that looks like a local computer lets you access all your personal data within any browsers: Desktoptwo

Desktoptwo is a free web-based desktop that imitates the look, feel and functionality of a local computer, all contained within one browser window and fully accessible from any Internet-connected device. Desktoptwo can contain all of your personal information, programs and applications in one location. Desktoptwo offers you 1GB storage, an mp3 player, an RSS

http://desktoptwo.com/

Web-based tool that converts PDF files in text files: PDF Text Online

PDF Text Online is a service that converts PDF files in text files. PDF Text Online handles all fonts and languages (including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and more) and you donâ€™t need to download or install anything on your computer, as it is completely web-based. PDF Text Online is still in beta, and uses Ajax technology. The EULA for PDF Text Online gives this service the right to turn your text over to third parties. Also, by downloading anything (including, presumably, your own text) you certify that it is non-proprietary. Free to use.
http://www.pdftextonline.com/

Web-based application for streaming mp3 audio files to any web browser on any computer: Portable Playlist

With Portable Playlist you can view or listen to your portable playlist from any computer, anywhere. Portable Playlist is a free web-based application for streaming mp3 audio files, that can be accessed through any web browser on any computer with internet access. The website interface incorporates a selection of tools that help you to manage files found in various locations across the web. You can store URLs to offsite mp3 files, subscribe to podcasts, create and edit playlists or find media files using the built-in Blogdigger search. No audio files are hosted at the website, so you need to have them stored somewhere else in the Web. Portable Playlist is a free service.
http://www.portableplaylist.com

online backup service for your iTunes music libraryincluding playlists: MP3tunes Locker

The MP3tunes Locker gives you unlimited online storage to back-up your entire personal music collection, including your playlists. You can play your music collection and playlists in iTunes and anywhere you have an Internet connection. The Basic MP3tunes Locker is free to use and includes webloading, sideloading, MP3tunes Oboe Software Suite, and streaming inside iTunes on the Internet at a medium quality bit-rate (56k). The Premium MP3tunes Locker is $39.95 per year and includes back-up with unlimited storage, syncing, webloading, sideloading, the MP3tunes Oboe Software Suite, and streaming iTunes at a high quality bit-rate (192k).
http://mp3tunes.com

Put a sticky note on any web page to keep track of the web sites you are interested in: MyStickies

MyStickies is a web-based service which gives you the ability to put a sticky note on any web page your browser can visit. When you come back to the page, your sticky note is still there, where you left it. This enables you to remember what was important about the page you are on. Along with the ability to put sticky notes on web pages, MyStickies offers a powerful interface to browse, search, sort and edit your sticky notes from any computer that has internet access. MyStickies is only compatible with Mozilla Firefox. Free to use.
http://www.mystickies.com/

Save text notes on the Web, classify them according to tags and share them with others: iKnolio

iKnolio is a service that helps you save text notes on the Web. You can classify your notes according to tags, make them public or private, search them and add filters. You may publish/make your notes for other users and also you can read all the information written for others by your friends.Everything is stored in the same place where you have the access from all over the world via Internet. Free to use.
http://iknolio.com

PayPal worldwide money transfer service alternative: iKobo

iKobo is a PayPal alternative. iKobo is a money transfer service that allows you to "make purchases, withdraw cash, or receive money from anyone, anywhere in the world." With just a few steps, registered users can receive payments or transfers directly to their "iKard". The iKard is nothing else but a physical reloadable Visa debit card that is usable anywhere Visa is accepted. iKobo charges a small fee for every transfer made as well as for drawing cash out of automated teller machines. Free to sign-up.
https://www.ikobo.com/?scr=signup

Mobile-based electronic payment system: Text Pay Me

If you live in the US you no longer need to be in front of your PC to send an electronic payment. By using your own credit card you can pre-load your TextPayMe account and start paying services and people by sending them money directly from your mobile phone. To make a payment: take out your mobile phone, send a text message, and answer a phone call. That's it. TextPayMe mobile payment solution works with any phone that can send SMS text messages. There are no additional applications to install. Works only in the US across all major carriers. Free to sign-up and free to beta users. Later TextPayMe will charge $0.15 + 1.35 % for each deposit and auto-debit operation performed as well as $ 0.50 for each withdrawal from TextPayMe to your bank account.
https://www.textpayme.com/

Rip DVDs onto your hard drive (tutorial): How to rip a DVD

Elliot Back has put together this tutorial that gives step-by-step instructions on how to copy (rip) a DVD onto your computer. With easily-understood instructions and screenshots, this page is a quick and effective way to learn how to turn your DVDs into video files you can watch on your computer without the original DVD.
http://elliottback.com/wp/archives/2005/12/26/how-to-rip-a-dvd-a-tutorial

Utility for Windows that enables you to remove the Microsoft "Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications" tool: RemoveWGA

RemoveWGA is a utility for Windows that enables you to remove the Microsoft "Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications" tool, which connects to Microsoft servers every time you boot. Basically, Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications sends information to Microsoft to make sure that you have a legit copy of Windows. Nonetheless, connecting to Microsoft brings security issues for corporate networks, and privacy issues for everyone. It is also unclear which information are transmitted, despite Microsoft's official clarifications. Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications is different from Windows Genuine Advantage Validation: RemoveWGA only removes the notification part and does not touch the Validation part. RemoveWGA is compatible with Windows XP. Free download.
http://www.firewallleaktester.com/removewga.htm

[Robin Good's Latest News]

These are really good flash animations.

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 13:31:55 GMT

Simply amazing. Watch for yourself.

I am an XML Bozo. Are You?

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 17:22:51 GMT

Are You an XML Bozo?.

Here's a helpful article that documents some common pitfalls to avoid when composing XML documents. Nobody wants to be called an XML Bozo by Tim Bray, the co-editor of the XML specification, right?

There seem to be developers who think that well-formedness is awfully hard—if not impossible—to get right when producing XML programmatically and developers who can get it right and wonder why the others are so incompetent. I assume no one wants to appear incompetent or to be called names. Therefore, I hope the following list of dos and don’ts helps developers to move from the first group to the latter.

Don’t think of XML as a text format
Don’t use text-based templates
Don’t print
Use an isolated serializer
Use a tree or a stack (or an XML parser)
Don’t try to manage namespace declarations manually
Use unescaped Unicode strings in memory
Use UTF-8 (or UTF-16) for output
Use NFC
Don’t expect software to look inside comments
Don’t rely on external entities on the Web
Don’t bother with CDATA sections
Don’t bother with escaping non-ASCII
Avoid adding pretty-printing white space in character data
Don’t use text/xml
Use XML 1.0
Test with astral characters
Test with forbidden control characters
Test with broken UTF-*

I'm a little ambivalent about XML, largely due to what John Lam calls "The Angle Bracket Tax". I think XSLT is utterly insane for anything except the most trivial of tasks, but I do like XPath-- it's sort of like SQL with automatic, joinless parent-child relationships.

But XML is generally the least of all available evils, and if you're going to use it, you might as well follow the rules.

[Coding Horror]

Woohoo! Digital camera for No $$

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 13:35:15 GMT

CVS camera software unlock.

The meddlers over at the camera hacking forum have been abusing our favorite CVS product once again. You can now unlock your single use digital camera without any hardware modes. Last week [Sailpix] discovered that Pure Digital had left their FTP server wide open. He found an interesting app on it and discovered the way the challenge/response keys were generated. It was only a matter of time before other hackers like [BillW] were able to use a little brute force and create a software app to generate the correct response keys. You can download the app here. BillW wrote it based entirely on Sailpix’s description of the algo, not the original code. App works for the type-04 camcorder as well.

[thanks enigma- and Duggasco]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
© 2006 Weblogs, Inc.

Ads by Google

[hack a day]

Get these tools

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 13:26:28 GMT

Boost Your Internet Speed - Free!.

You can probably do two things, right now, to boost your Internet speed. They’re simple, they’re trusted, and they’re palpable changes:

Open yourself to OpenDNS. They have configuration pages for your OS or hardware router. Both Scott Beale (LaughingSquid) and I have seen dramatic differences in speed since going through their DNS servers. Matt’s happy about it, too. My speed difference was probably even more dramatic, considering I’ve already implemented my second recommendation…
If you’re on Windows, install FastCache: “Every time you go to a new website, or a website you haven’t been to in a day or so, your computer needs to locate the server again using DNS. Each DNS request can take anywhere from 50 milliseconds, to even a second or more, but most are in the 100 to 200 millisecond range. Want to save a couple hundred milliseconds? Probably not, but what about a couple million or more? That’s what AnalogX FastCache is all about.” I’ve been running FastCache since Mark released it on the first Helpathon. My stats are somewhat stunted, but I’ve saved 6d 18h 27m 53s worth of time (in 118w). It really adds up.

If you use a news aggregator, either one (or both) of these solutions is mandatory. Do not pass Go - do not spend $200. It’s all free for the taking.

analogx, boost, dns, dns request, dns servers, hardware router, internet speed, milliseconds, scott beale, speed difference analogx, boost, dns, dns request, dns servers, hardware router, internet speed, milliseconds, scott beale, speed difference

[Chris Pirillo]

Cool! Clip Art Library

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 18:25:20 GMT

Open Clip Art Library. Open Clip Art Library

"This project aims to create an archive of user contributed clip art that can be freely used.

All graphics submitted to the project should be placed into the Public Domain according to the statement by the Creative Commons. ..."

There are a couple pretty cool things about this collection...

It’s all public domain
They are using SVG as the standard format (i.e. kiss resizing issues goodbye)
The collection is available as a complete download package.
The current package, 0.18, is 131MB (zipped, 286MB unziped) and contains both the original svg file, png previews and text file metadata (for a total of 23,698 files).
There’s currently over 6,900 pieces of clip art

Ton-o-Clip Art indeed...

(via Larkware News - The Daily Grind 926)

Technorati Tags: Clipart, Clip art, Openclipart.org

By noemail@noemail.org (Greg). [Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day]

Cut the phone umbilical! Use VOIP for all your home lines.

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 12:56:14 GMT

How-To: Wiring VoIP to your phone jacks.

Filed under: Features, Household

Dear Ma Bell,

We've been together for a long time, but we think it's time for us to take a break up. It's just... we met someone else; someone who will hook us up with free long distance. But don't worry, we'll give you a call sometime next year when we're looking for faster internet.

In today's How-To, we're taking the diagonal cutters to the Ma Bell umbilical cord and hooking up our voice over IP adapter so we can use our old phone jacks. No soldering irons or caustic acid required. This time.

For today's How-To, you'll probably need:

Screwdriver, pliers, wire cutters
Extra phone wires
Splice connectors (optional)
VoIP Adapter

The idea for this one is pretty easy. We'll visit the ugly box that Ma Bell graciously left on the side of every single building, ever. Inside it, we'll cut the leash and take control. Back inside, we'll hook up our handy VoIP adapter so we can use the existing phone jacks that run all over the house.

Most phones get power from the phone line, so there is a limit to the number of phones you can connect to a VoIP adapter. Your mileage will vary, but you'll probably be able to use three phones with the average adapter. If you've got lots of voltage sucking phones, then you might want to pick up a ring booster.

We'll be semi-violating this warning label. If you connected it to the wall now, the voltage from the phone line would probably do something bad to it. Before hooking anything up a trip to the telephone companies box is in order.

Our typical access box. There's usually some sort of customer access area. In this case, we have to loosen a screw and the cover pops open.

Proper application of a screwdriver (or a dime) gains access to this rat's nest.

The module pops open to reveal some color coded screws. Since our VoIP line will be the primary phone, we're disconnecting the red and green leads. Since some lazy tech didn't connect everything, we had to splice together the two sets of red and green wires. Normal phone wiring has two pairs. If you're keeping your regular line, or have DSL on it, the yellow and black wires are the pair to use for a secondary line throughout the house.

The rebel inside is gonna enjoy this part. Sure we could have unscrewed the terminals, but snipping those cables was more fun. If you leave any wire attached, make sure they aren't shorted. Most phone companies leave out of service phone lines powered.

Inside the box, two of the wires were terminated at the screw terminals. To complete the internal network, they need to be spliced together. We used standard weatherproof splice connectors available from any hardware store. To attach them, just insert the unstripped wires and squeeze down the circle with a pair of pliers.

The wiring is completed. The first line is disconnected, and the remaining leads are now spliced together. Now, the center pair of wires of all the phone jacks are connected to create in internal phone network.

Our packet8 adapter just has three ports on the back. The Ethernet goes to our router, and now it's safe to connect the phone jack to a wall outlet inside the house. Now our VoIP adapter can live happily on our server rack, where it gets a UPS, and delivers phone service to the rest of our house through a pre-existing phone jack.

Bye, Ma. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

[Engadget]

Home music Software

Thu, 08 Jun 2006 13:48:13 GMT

This sounds promising. M-Audio's Session: Garageband For The PC.

Garageband for Apple is both easy to use and powerful—we've been known to whip out some ricked riffs on our bass and punch together a slammin' ballad—but the same functionality is hard to find on the PC. Until now, that is. M-Audio's new Session software is the Windows equivalent of GB, allowing you to make semi-professional to professional sounding music with little training. It even works together with select M-Audio gear for a more hands-on approach.

Making loop based music is simple with their 2 GB library of loops, and hooking up a MIDI keyboard to play a wide variety of instruments and effects makes you a true one-man band.

Comes free when you buy a Fast Trak USB for $100. – Jason Chen

Product Page [M-Audio]

Comment on this post
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[Gizmodo]

Using your own identity?

Thu, 18 May 2006 19:37:20 GMT

how to get through having your identity stolen. Gonna need to save this information, because it's not IF it happens, it's WHEN.

smart windows tools.

Wed, 17 May 2006 14:10:22 GMT

I need better control of my desktop! Let's pick these.

My Freeware Picks to Improve Windows Usability. Software can improve your life - so long as you know where to find it! The Internet is a treasure trove, filled with millions of tiny applications that'll help you through just about any quirk your OS delivers. Windows is replete with shortcomings, largely in its Explorer (otherwise known as the Shell). These utilities may seem frivolous to you, but they're quite helpful to me - and I bet you'll start using at least one of them on a regular basis:

Windowpaper XP - With this, you can change the background of any folder on your system. Make it a solid color or set your favorite photo as the background. It's a snap to use, and helps making navigation easier (when you set certain folders to certain colors).
TaskSwitchXP - A colossally improved task switcher, tweakable to your satisfaction. It takes virtually no resources when it's not being used - and seamlessly becomes your alternative Alt+Tab utility when you need it. Displays screen shots, extended process information, navigatable by mouse, etc.
miniMIZE - When you normally minimize a window, it shows up in the Taskbar and is relatively information-neutral (other than the program's title and/or icon). miniMIZE maximizes your minimizes by shrinking the minimized program to a tiny screen shot on your desktop. Compelling, clever.
Hawkeye ShellInit - I run at 1600x1200 on my primary monitor, but that doesn't mean I'm not worried about screen real estate! With this scriptable app, I can set up margins which open applications aren't allowed to touch - letting me have certain edges always exposed for me to see or use.
iColorFolder - Are you a visual learner, too? Here's an open source utility that'll enable you to easily change the icon of any folder. Again, this makes it easier to see where you're going inside of the Explorer. "I remember the icon is blue," is easier than trying to flip through folder names. This shell extension was partially inspired by the use of labels on the Mac.
Folder2MyPC - The root of "My Computer" displays hardware and a few select folders. Now, you can actually select the folders that show up here. Consider this method an easier way of getting to your favorite or most frequently accessed folders.
UberIcon - Visually speaking, Windows is bland - not even vanilla flavored. There's no feedback one receives after double-clicking on an icon. This tool turns on either visual "zoom out" or "bounce" feedback when you act upon an icon (file, folder, etc.).
Visual Tooltip - Can't wait until 2009 when Windows Vista ships, but you want the enhanced Taskbar tooltip functionality today? Don't pirate a buggy copy of Vista - just use Visual Tooltip. Hovering over a program in your Taskbar will now produce a live / interactive window for you to see and use.
Unlocker - What do you mean I can't delete the file or folder because it's being used? No, it's not - and I can prove it. Windows won't listen to you, so when some random process has locked a file, you can smack it around with Unlocker. No need to reboot in most cases!
ClearTweak - While sub-pixel font rendering (ClearType) is an amazing experience to be cherished, No LCD screen is created equal. Even if you have the feature enabled for your monitor, it may not be optimized for the way your hardware was built. Tweak it clear - your eyes will thank you.

And I certainly thank you for paying attention to this point. I'm sure I missed thousands of freeware apps, so recommendations are appreciated and encouraged. Windows should work better for you now. And if it still sucks for you, there's always OS X. [Chris Pirillo]

Bruce Schneier hits just the right note with question

Thu, 04 May 2006 13:13:32 GMT

Who Owns Your Computer?.

When technology serves its owners, it is liberating. When it is designed to serve others, over the owner's objection, it is oppressive. There's a battle raging on your computer right now -- one that pits you against worms and viruses, Trojans, spyware, automatic update features and digital rights management technologies. It's the battle to determine who owns your computer.

You own your computer, of course. You bought it. You paid for it. But how much control do you really have over what happens on your machine? Technically you might have bought the hardware and software, but you have less control over what it's doing behind the scenes.

Using the hacker sense of the term, your computer is "owned" by other people.

It used to be that only malicious hackers were trying to own your computers. Whether through worms, viruses, Trojans or other means, they would try to install some kind of remote-control program onto your system. Then they'd use your computers to sniff passwords, make fraudulent bank transactions, send spam, initiate phishing attacks and so on. Estimates are that somewhere between hundreds of thousands and millions of computers are members of remotely controlled "bot" networks. Owned.

Now, things are not so simple. There are all sorts of interests vying for control of your computer. There are media companies that want to control what you can do with the music and videos they sell you. There are companies that use software as a conduit to collect marketing information, deliver advertising or do whatever it is their real owners require. And there are software companies that are trying to make money by pleasing not only their customers, but other companies they ally themselves with. All these companies want to own your computer.

Some examples:

Entertainment software: In October 2005, it emerged that Sony had distributed a rootkit with several music CDs -- the same kind of software that crackers use to own people's computers. This rootkit secretly installed itself when the music CD was played on a computer. Its purpose was to prevent people from doing things with the music that Sony didn't approve of: It was a DRM system. If the exact same piece of software had been installed secretly by a hacker, this would have been an illegal act. But Sony believed that it had legitimate reasons for wanting to own its customers' machines.
Antivirus: You might have expected your antivirus software to detect Sony's rootkit. After all, that's why you bought it. But initially, the security programs sold by Symantec and others did not detect it, because Sony had asked them not to. You might have thought that the software you bought was working for you, but you would have been wrong.
Internet services: Hotmail allows you to blacklist certain e-mail addresses, so that mail from them automatically goes into your spam trap. Have you ever tried blocking all that incessant marketing e-mail from Microsoft? You can't.
Application software: Internet Explorer users might have expected the program to incorporate easy-to-use cookie handling and pop-up blockers. After all, other browsers do, and users have found them useful in defending against Internet annoyances. But Microsoft isn't just selling software to you; it sells Internet advertising as well. It isn't in the company's best interest to offer users features that would adversely affect its business partners.
Spyware: Spyware is nothing but someone else trying to own your computer. These programs eavesdrop on your behavior and report back to their real owners -- sometimes without your knowledge or consent -- about your behavior.
Internet security: It recently came out that the firewall in Microsoft Vista will ship with half its protections turned off. Microsoft claims that large enterprise users demanded this default configuration, but that makes no sense. It's far more likely that Microsoft just doesn't want adware -- and DRM spyware -- blocked by default.
Update: Automatic update features are another way software companies try to own your computer. While they can be useful for improving security, they also require you to trust your software vendor not to disable your computer for nonpayment, breach of contract or other presumed infractions.

Adware, software-as-a-service and Google Desktop search are all examples of some other company trying to own your computer. And Trusted Computing will only make the problem worse.

There is an inherent insecurity to technologies that try to own people's computers: They allow individuals other than the computers' legitimate owners to enforce policy on those machines. These systems invite attackers to assume the role of the third party and turn a user's device against him.

Remember the Sony story: The most insecure feature in that DRM system was a cloaking mechanism that gave the rootkit control over whether you could see it executing or spot its files on your hard disk. By taking ownership away from you, it reduced your security.

If left to grow, these external control systems will fundamentally change your relationship with your computer. They will make your computer much less useful by letting corporations limit what you can do with it. They will make your computer much less reliable because you will no longer have control of what is running on your machine, what it does, and how the various software components interact. At the extreme, they will transform your computer into a glorified boob tube.

You can fight back against this trend by only using software that respects your boundaries. Boycott companies that don't honestly serve their customers, that don't disclose their alliances, that treat users like marketing assets. Use open-source software -- software created and owned by users, with no hidden agendas, no secret alliances and no back-room marketing deals.

Just because computers were a liberating force in the past doesn't mean they will be in the future. There is enormous political and economic power behind the idea that you shouldn't truly own your computer or your software, despite having paid for it.

This essay originally appeared on Wired.com.

[Schneier on Security]

I havea dream.

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 16:35:31 GMT

No wait, Robert Scoble has a dream. This is the best response to blogging I have read.

Now a PBX!

Tue, 18 Apr 2006 18:44:06 GMT

The gods are telling me I need to work at home.

"Building an Asterisk@Home Test Lab". O’Reilly Linux DevCenter Blog - Building an Asterisk@Home Test Lab

"Learn how to build an Asterisk@Home test lab.This series is also a good howto for setting up a small production Asterisk iPBX on the cheap. This three-part series is aimed at both telephony and Linux noobs. If you understand computer networking basics, this is just the Asterisk howto you need to get up and running. Not only for a test lab, but also a small production system. The series covers installation, what hardware to use, how to set up local extensions and automatic call routing, how to connect to the outside world, and how to replace the Asterisk@Home logo with your own custom logo.

VoIPowering your Office with Asterisk - Building a Test Lab, Part 1
VoIPowering your Office with Asterisk-Building a Test Lab, Part 2
VoIPowering your Office with Asterisk-Building a Test Lab, Part 3 "
(Leached in full, but with Part 1 & 3 links fixed)

I so want a home PBX. We have a new multi-handset 5.8ghz phone system with digital answering machine which is pretty cool (as a call comes in it does text-to-speech on the incoming caller IDâ€™ed phone number... so we donâ€™t even have to screen the call to know we donâ€™t want to pick it up... ;)

But still, itâ€™s just not a cool as a home PBX could be.

The problem is that the SAF (Spouse Acceptance Factor) is pretty low in relation to a home PBX though... sigh...

Related Past Post XRef:
"Running Asterisk@Home Under Windows"
Build Your Own PBX with Asterisk@Home. Also Asterisk@Home 2.1 Has Been Released...
Free eBook "Asterisk: The Future of Telephony"

By noemail@noemail.org (Greg). [Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day]

Too much noise in a room? Fix it!

Wed, 05 Apr 2006 18:21:08 GMT

I certainly need to keep my late night gaming sessions quiet. Maybe this will help.

How-To: Theater or studio acoustic treatments.

Filed under: Features, Home Entertainment

Have you been yelled at for watching your latest Superbit DVD "too loud" by your mom / dad / child / spouse / neighbor? Tired of having the Tiki-bar TV guys next door in the background of your podcast recording session? In today's how-to we cover tricks to improve your room acoustics for better listening or recording pleasure. Yeah, we know it may seem a little esoteric -- and our own Engadget Podcast could probably take a hint here -- but you'd be surprised at how nice some peace n' quiet actually is.

Treating a room to improve its acoustic properties is a combination of art and science, especially for the home acoustic engineer on a budget. With an unlimited budget, a room can be double walled and covered in commercial acoustic paneling. When trying to improve the acoustics of an existing room, whether for listening pleasure or anger prevention, a smaller budget is more of a challenge.

Every room has different challenges, but if you're building your podcasting studio or improving your home theater the same problems need to be solved. Sound transmission into and from the room needs to be reduced and the room's acoustics are probably less than ideal.

'Acoustic isolation' is trying to reduce sound transmission out of the room. Improving internal acoustics is a matter of reducing sound reverberation. Completely eliminating reverb is not always desired. Even with today's sound processing technology, concert halls are still designed to use natural reverberation to improve sound for live performances.

For today's how-to we're making treatments for an unfinished basement. Finishing out the basement isn't an option at this house, so everything we do needs to be removable when we move out. Our home theater area has a concrete floor, two concrete walls, and two 'walls' that are open. Every surface needs some sort of acoustic treatment.

Often the simplest solution is one of the best. To keep excessive sound from going upstairs, we hung acoustic ceiling tile on the floor studs. Ceiling tile is easy to get and has acoustic ratings. Basic ceiling tile is pretty inexpensive. For about $60 in ceiling tile, we covered the entire ceiling of our home theater area. Rather than hang the tile with a drop frame, we screwed it directly to the floor joists. When we move out, a quick session with the cordless drill will take these down. The tile is pretty fragile, so using washers on the screw heads is advised. For the floor, a thick wool rug makes a great sound damper.

There are plenty of commercial products for sound treatment. Our temporary install is on a budget, so we built some simple portable acoustic panels to help reduce sound transmission and reverb.

To make your own, you'll need the following:

3-1/2 inch thick 15 inch wide rolled fiberglass insulation
Polyester batting
Lightweight fabric
1-inch by 3-inch pine boards
4-foot by 8-foot 3/16-inch lauan or plywood board
Liquid nails adhesive
Tools: saw, hammer, sharp scissors, staple gun.

Dow Corning R-13 insulation runs about $10 a roll. It's made to go between wall studs, so it's 15 inches wide. One roll should be enough to make eight to ten panels.

To make five panels, we need ten 48-inch 1x3s, and ten 15-inch 1x3 pieces for a total of seven 8-foot 1x3-inch boards. It's important to get boards that aren't warped. These boards are pretty thin, so it will be fairly annoying but worth the effort. Look down each board from the end to see how warped the board is.

To keep it light and inexpensive, we used lauan plywood made for floor backing. These panels have a smooth finish and are cheap. A four foot by eight foot panel runs about $10.

Just about every hardware store that sells lumber has a panel saw. Save yourself some pain and have them slice the four by eight lauan into 48 inch by 16.5-inch pieces. Most stores don't guarantee their measurements, so keep an eye on them to make sure they get them close enough. Luckily, the cuts don't have to be perfect.

We picked up this not so stylish green fabric off the wally world clearance shelf for $1 a yard.

We cut our 1x3s down using our handy miter saw. Ten 15 inch cuts for then ends and ten 48 inch cuts for the sides.

Nailing the frames together goes quickly. Start with one side, then locate the other side using the 15-inch end pieces to get the spacing correct. Then add the ends last. Finally a couple nails at each corner help connect it all. Wood glue is optional.

Lay the fiberglass out over the frame and cut it to fit. We tried a utility knife first, but scissors worked best. A bit of liquid nails adhesive under each end will keep the fiberglass in position.

We laid out polyester batting over the frame, and cut it with excess to cover the edges of the panels.

We wrapped the whole thing in fabric and stapled the edges. A quick trim and the panel is completed.

To hang our panels, we used some cheap brass hooks at the topmost corners of the panel. These won't take much abuse, but they'll do the job.

Our row of sound panels hung up in the basement. We're still playing around with the spacing, but they definitely improved the acoustics in the room. If you're not into hanging them, add some hinges and you can make a nifty sound barrier disguised as a changing screen.

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[Engadget]

Can't hibernate with 2G of ram

Mon, 03 Apr 2006 13:07:09 GMT

The 2GB Windows XP Hibernation Problem.

If you ..

use Windows XP SP2 of any flavor
have 2 gigabytes or more of system memory
use hibernate functionality

.. you may have experienced this error at some point when attempting to hibernate:

I know I have. It drives me nuts, because my system fails to hibernate after I've already initiated the hibernation process and walked away from it. This is on my desktop*. You can imagine how catastrophic this could be on a laptop; you'd be putting a laptop in your bag that was still fully on!

To avoid the error, install this Microsoft hotfix, which is graciously hosted by Owen Cutajar. It's from Microsoft KB909095, which also explains the problem in a bit more detail:

To prepare the computer to hibernate, the Windows kernel power manager requires a block of contiguous memory. The size of this contiguous memory is proportional to the number of physical memory regions that the computer is using. A computer that uses lots of RAM is likely to use more physical memory regions when the computer prepares to hibernate. Therefore, a larger amount of contiguous memory is required to prepare the computer to hibernate.
Additionally, the number of physical memory regions varies according to the programs, services, and device drivers that the computer uses. Therefore, the hibernate feature occasionally fails.
When the Windows kernel power manager detects that the hibernate feature has failed, the hibernate feature remains disabled until you restart the computer.

I originally researched this back in December, but the problem wasn't happening with enough frequency to make me call Microsoft support and dig up a hotfix. Now it is. And people have mirrored the patch so we don't have to go through the busywork exercise of calling Microsoft support to obtain a necessary hotfix. What a ridiculous policy.

* I would use sleep, but the motherboard I use isn't smart enough to restore the correct overclocked CPU speed. I get bumped down to stock CPU speeds every time I resume from a sleep state.

[Coding Horror]

The biggest virtual display yet?

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 14:37:18 GMT

I need me about 3 of these.

Virginia Tech's 24 display workstation.

Filed under: Displays

Leading the life of an Engadget editor, you don't ever think you could come upon a rig or setup with too much screen real estate. Sure, you can overcompensate in any number of ways -- like, say, too much drive space (what, you really need 8TB?) -- but pixel acreage never struck us as one of them. Until now. Say hello to Virginia Tech's 31 million pixel-pusher friends, their 24 display array "workstation" runs at 10240 x 3072. Apparently it takes 12 Linux servers running distributed computing software to operate, and can play Quake III at 15-30FPS. Well done, sirs, well done. We take it back, it's not too much. It's never too much.

[via Joystiq]

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[Engadget]

More things I didn't know I could do in a browser.

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 15:15:43 GMT

Standard Browser Keyboard Shortcuts.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer Blog recently posted a great list of keyboard shortcuts for the upcoming IE7. What makes it even greater, however, is that almost all of the shortcuts work identically in Firefox. In the interest of brevity, I tested every shortcut and pared down the list to only the keyboard shortcuts that work the same in both browsers:

Standard toolbar buttons

Alt + , or Shift + Mousewheel up
Back

Alt + , or Shift + Mousewheel down
Forward

F5
Reload

Ctrl + F5
Force Reload (no cache)

Esc
Stop

Alt + Home
Homepage

Address Bar

Alt + D
Set focus to Address Bar

Ctrl + Enter
Add "www." and ".com" prefix to Address Bar

Alt + Enter
Open Address Bar location in a new tab

Tabs

Ctrl + 1
Switch to n-th tab (1..9)

Ctrl + Tab
Switch to next tab

Ctrl + Shift + Tab
Switch to previous tab

Ctrl + W, or Middle Click tab
Close current tab

Ctrl + T, or double-click empty tab area
Open new tab in the foreground

Ctrl + Left Click, or Middle Click
Open clicked link in a new background tab

Ctrl + Shift + Left Click
Open clicked link in a new tab, and set focus to it

Reading

Ctrl + +, or Ctrl + Mousewheel down
Make font size larger (or Zoom in IE7)

Ctrl + -, or Ctrl + Mousewheel up
Make font size smaller (or Zoom in IE7)

Ctrl + 0
Set to default font size / zoom

Space
Scroll down

Shift + Space
Scroll up

Favorites

Ctrl + D
Add current site to Favorites

Ctrl + I
Open Favorites pane

Ctrl + H
Open History pane

Search

Ctrl + E
Set focus to search box

Alt + Enter
Perform search in new tab

Ctrl +
Change search box provider

There are only a handful of truly unique IE7 keyboard shortcuts. It's good to see the IE7 team adopting the keyboard shortcuts already in Firefox rather than making up their own.

[Coding Horror]

Writing Poetry at Work

Thu, 09 Feb 2006 16:29:41 GMT

This is a flattering comparison between the art of writing and the art of writing code.

Comparing writing specifications to writing code.

My colleague who manages to pack his entire office into a single box recently made the switch from program management to programming. I teased him, "So what's it like using an editor without a 'boldface' button?" His response was actually rather insightful.

"Writing specifications is like writing a novel. Writing code is like writing poetry."

When you're writing a specification, you need to start by setting the scene so people understand the problem you're trying to solve. You then explore the world you've created, elaborating on the details necessary to convey your intent, considering all the possibilities and addressing each one.

When you're writing code, you are focused on conciseness. Like a poet, you are thrilled when you find a single expression that covers all the nuances you're trying to convey. You are intent on writing only what is necessary, no more. Beauty is in the small.

I guess this explains why I was never good at long-form writing.

[The Old New Thing]

Offsite item registry

Thu, 29 Dec 2005 16:44:36 GMT

This is just one of the smartest ideas I've heard in a long time. Take a picture of your device with it's serial number and upload it for long term storage.

Petzold explains why windows paints funny

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 16:39:59 GMT

Ever wonder why Windows doesn't use the actualy pixel size when you tell it to?

The 96 DPI Solution.

In the never-ending quest to achieve device-independent programming under Windows, the Windows Presentation Foundation developers have devised a system in which all coordinates and sizes are in units of 96 dots per inch, called "device-independent units" or sometimes (rather oxymoronically) "device-independent pixels." I will avoid the latter term and sometime abbreviate the former as DIU.

The choice of 96 DPI (rather than, say, 72 DPI or 100 DPI) might seem arbitrary and even perverse only to people who aren't aware that Windows by default assumes a video display resolution of 96 DPI. (Of course, the user can change this assumed display resolution through the Control Panel Display applet, Settings tab, Advanced button, General tab. One common alternative — particularly popular among users born after the Moon landing — is 120 DPI, which generally increases fonts and other user interface elements by 125%. I believe that 96 DPI was chosen as the default Windows resolution rather than a rounder figure of 100 DPI because 96 DPI is 4/3rds of the one-pixel-per-point resolution of 72 DPI.)

In WPF, you always draw in units of 96 DPI. For example, if you want to create a one-inch square Rectangle object, you make it 96 units wide and 96 units high. If the program runs on a video display set at 96 DPI, the object will be drawn 96 pixels square. In the most common case device-independent units map directly to pixels. If the program runs on a video display set at 120 DPI, the object will be drawn as 120 pixels square. That's a fairly clean 3 units-to-4 pixels mapping.

These device-independent units aren't restricted to graphics programming. They pervade the entire WPF. You use device-independent units to specify sizes of controls, for example. You get mouse coordinates in terms of device-independent units. Device-independent units even show up in system parameters. The beauty of the system is that everything is consistent. It's not like a mapping mode where you have to convert between mouse coordinates in pixels and whatever graphics units you happen to have set. It's an entire consistent world out of which you really can't escape.

The pervasiveness of this coordinate system takes some getting used to. Here, for example, are the values of three static properties of the SystemParameters class obtained under four different Windows sessions with the display resolution set as shown in the column headings:

Property	72 DPI	96 DPI	120 DPI	144 DPI
SystemParameters.PrimaryScreenWidth/Height	1866-2/3 x 1400	1400 x 1050	1120 x 840	933-1/3 x 700
SystemParameters.IconWidth/Height	42-2/3	32	25.6	21-1/3
SystemParameters.CaptionWidth/Height	25-1/3	25	24.8	25-1/3

The video display on which I ran the little program that interrogated these properties is actually 1400 by 1050 pixels. When the Windows display resolution is set to 96 DPI, that's exactly what's reported. That pixel size and resolution implies a metrical size of about 14.6 inches by 10.9 inches. The dimensions of the video display in device-independent units is reported as something different when other display resolutions are set, but the metrical size remains the same.

Icons displayed on the desktop are 32 pixels square regardless of the display resolution. If you have Windows set for 96 DPI, the icon size is reported as 32 device-independent units. As the assumed display resolution goes up, the size of the icons in device-independent units goes down proportionally.

Windows uses a different pixel size of buttons displayed on the caption bar depending on the display resolution. The idea is that the buttons should always have about the same relationship to the default font. In device-independent units, therefore the button size is roughly the same regardless of display resolution, and is always approximately 1/4 inch. It's not exactly the same across display resolutions because these buttons always have an integral pixel size. For example, at a display resolution of 144 DPI, the pixel size is 38, which (multiplied by 2/3) is a DIU size of 25-1/3. For 120 DPI, the pixel size is 31, which (when multiplied by 0.8) is the DIU size of 24.8. For 72 DPI, the pixel size is 19. Multiply by 4/3 for the DIU size of 25-1/3.

I was recently working on a little calculator program where I made square buttons by simply giving them a dimension of 32 by 32 device-independent units. That's 1/3 inch regardless of display resolution, and a comfortable size to accomodate text in the default font.

Where I haven't quite grown accustomed to device-independent units is in specifying font sizes. Font sizes are specified in units of 96 DPI as well, so if you want a 24-point font, you need to increase the point size by 1/3 and specify a FontSize property of 32. Every time I do that, I think that WPF should have used a device-independent coordinate system based on 72 DPI rather than 96 DPI. Of course, a 72 DPI coordinate system has been done before in other graphical environments, but there's no shame in that.

It's not quite clear how this will work with printing. In the November CTP of WPF that we're all running, the entire System.Printing namespace hasn't even a tiny morsel of documentation.

By Charles Petzold. [Charles Petzold]

Business Plan? What's a Business Plan?

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 13:19:29 GMT

How to write a business plan, in easy to understand language.