End of an Era – RIP Geocities October 26, 2009
Posted by CLibra in Clippings, Internet, Websites.add a comment
As of today, Yahoo! are pulling the plug on Geocities; it’s kind of sad to see these websites disappear into nothing, as some were – albeit corny – quite interesting to visit. Of course, Archive.org will always exist with backups of your favourite Geocities, and for ones that are still up, you can copy them to your hard drive with tools like HTTrack.
This marks the end of the 1990s internet – scrolling text, flashing banners, webrings, counters and guestbooks. Geocities used to be divided categorically into ‘neighbourhoods’, but a majority of what it hosted was always tacky personal pages, which will be missed by all.
Nocs: a Notepad replacement with a twist October 4, 2009
Posted by CLibra in Clippings, Google, Notes, Software, Sync.add a comment
In my never-ending quest to find the perfect note-taking application, I stumbled across nocs, a lightweight application very similar to Windows Notepad that can be used for taking text notes on the fly; the catch is that your notes are saved into Google Docs, with the option of encrypting them to. After testing, I found that nocs was very fast and easy to use, it took up very little system resources, and it was good that my notes were saved online because if my hard drive broke, I’d lose them, and it means I can sync my notes between PCs.
However, nocs does lack a little in a few places; the notes are saved in an obscure spreadsheet format in Google Docs, making them unreadable through a browser, and as of yet there’s no Mac client. Notes can’t be read offline, and at the moment it’s only focusing on plain text notes, but in the future we might see nocs develop further.
All in all, I’d recommend nocs for a quick replacement to Notepad, but it’s still in its early days yet.
Scan Gmail’s spam for false positives September 23, 2009
Posted by CLibra in Clippings, Email, Gmail, Google.add a comment
Gmail’s spam folder works excellently for me, but it was only since I read this article that I realised that there were legitimate emails slipping into the spam folder.
Labnol writer Amit points out that with an easy to construct filter, you can scan Gmail’s spam folder for messages specifically addressed to your name, so you can pull out messages that look like they should have been delivered to you. Admittedly, some spam can be returned to the inbox using this method, but if you have too much spam in your junk folder to personally look through, have a go at this filter as it may be able to take the hard work of checking Gmail spam for you.
[http://www.labnol.org/internet/scan-gmail-junk-folder/9904/]
Vacuum the Firefox database for a speed boost August 25, 2009
Posted by CLibra in Clippings, Firefox.add a comment
Over time, as history & bookmarks are added and removed from Firefox, the browser can become sluggish; this is because this information is stored in a SQLite database, and items removed from it are just marked as ‘empty space’ instead of being properly cleared out.
Fortunately, it’s very simple to trim the empty space so that the database isn’t larger than it needs to be, and therefore it can be accessed faster. Mozillalinks posted an article on the ‘VACUUM’ command and how to use it within your Firefox database – a simple matter of copying & pasting a line of code. I noticed an immediate improvement in performance, particularly in start-up time, awesomebar delay, and generally add-ons that dealt with bookmarks and history. It’s recommended that if you Firefox regularly, you should give your database a defrag often, and there’s even an extension that can schedule it in the background so it’s always taken care of.
Perhaps in the future Mozilla will integrate vacuuming into Firefox, as it really seems like something an average user shouldn’t have to do, but at the moment it’s a very easy step to give Firefox an instant speed bost.
[http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2009/08/vacuum-firefox-databases-for-better-performance-now-with-no-restart/]
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13878]
Toad’s Scandal July 12, 2009
Posted by CLibra in Clippings, Games, Geeky.add a comment
“The princess is in another castle” is something Mario players hear all too often, but did you know that Toad’s actually a viscous little guy? Take a look at this.
Turns out he’s had the last laugh all these years. I thought better of you, Toad.
[http://www.sodahead.com/blog/100601/toad-has-been-giving-us-the-finger-since-1985/]
Twitter Proxies? May 11, 2009
Posted by CLibra in Clippings, Internet, Twitter, Websites.add a comment
Many people may find that Twitter is blocked by their corporate network, as I did today, and it got me thinking; most proxy sites are already blocked by my network, and I don’t have the privileges to install software (such as Tor) or change proxy settings in the browser, so how can I tweet?
And then it dawned on me – there are numerous websites which use the Twitter API to send messages, so why not harness one of them?
Twuffer, which is used to send delayed tweets, is a good one, as you can tell it to send the message now, but you can’t read tweets, only send them. I also had a look at TwitterGadget, which can be integrated into any gadget site that isn’t blocked (GMail, iGoogle, NetVibes etc.) so you can tweet from a website you know, and read your own tweets, too.
Has anybody else found good Twitter proxies? Does there need to be one developed just for Twitter?
Windows Live Call on the New menu? April 20, 2009
Posted by CLibra in Clippings, MSN, Microsoft, Windows.1 comment so far
I just found a bit of an oddity within Windows concerning the Windows Live Call feature of Windows Live Messenger (that’s an awful lot of Windows) and wonder if anyone can shed some light on it.
Basically, Windows Live Call seems to have embedded itself within the ‘New’ menu in the OS for no apparent reason – screenshot below.
Why would someone need to create a call in a folder? Even weirder, when clicked, I get a message box telling me that “Some features may not be available in this conversation”, regardless of whether I’m running messenger or not.
Now, I don’t use Windows Live Call – Skype is far superior – but I’m baffled by the failed attempt at tighter Windows integration. C’mon Microsoft, get with it.
Webapps Extending Uses March 8, 2009
Posted by CLibra in Articles, Clippings, Internet, Software.add a comment
DesignM.ag has posted an article on unorthodox uses of WordPress – that is, not using it as a blog. For example, WordPress can be turned into visual bookmarking database, an email newsletter hub, a contact manager and even a wiki; Design.mag links to all of the tutorials and plugins so it’s easy to adapt your WordPress installation, and if you don’t already have hosting for WordPress, hop on over to DreamHostApps for no-strings-attached webapp hosting.
This article got me thinking; what other applications do we use that could work for us in different ways? I’ve tried to think of some myself.
- It’s not a secret that Google Calendar can be used to book resources and equipment but I don’t see it being implemented as often as it could be.
- A CMS like drupal could be turned into a portfolio or note-taking application.
- GMail has been transformed into a ‘Personal Nerve Center‘ which is used to store information, bookmarks, to-dos, news updates and blogs.
- I’ve used GMail + Thunderbird as a cross platform, offline sync’d note-taking system.
- Twitter can be used to run a link blog (article to follow)
It’s harder than it looks to think of uses for online software. Perhaps in the future, we’ll see more plugins and tutorials on adapting well-known internet applications for other uses.
[http://designm.ag/design/11-non-traditional-uses-of-wordpress/]
Bebo turns FriendFeed December 10, 2008
Posted by CLibra in Clippings, Network, News, Social, Websites.1 comment so far
My favourite social network, Bebo, has introduced a new feature.
I think it’s aiming to become more like FriendFeed, because you can now hook up email (from AOL, Yahoo! and GMail), Twitter feeds, Flickr photos, and soon, AIM, del.icio.us, and YouTube. However, still no RSS feed for your bebo stream, but maybe that will change soon.
Check out the official announcement below.
Foldershare out, Windows Live Sync in November 21, 2008
Posted by CLibra in Clippings, Internet, Microsoft, Software, Sync, Tools.1 comment so far
My favourite cross-platform syncing tool, Foldershare, is doomed to die soon.
In its place will spring Windows Live Sync, a tool promising the same great features, and then some.
Click the link below to read the full letter from Microsoft, as it also explains how to prepare for the upgrade, because your libraries will be lost by Windows Live Sync.
Let’s hope this new version’s really something, hey?
