miniajax.com - Downloadable Ajax Goodness.

miniajax.com hosts some magnificient DHTML/Ajax re-usable code library. Believe me, your site is not cool enuf without miniajax.

A Keyboard Shortcut A Day...Keeps RSI Away !

Stephen Mack is director of TiVoCast operations for, you guessed it TiVo. He's also a keyboard shortcut guru. As he points out, the less often you have to reach for the mouse, the less strain you put on the wrist, and the quicker you can get your work done at your computer.
After getting a few requests for keyboard shortcut tips from his coworkers, Mack went and set up a new blog. Sure, there are plenty of places on the web where you can find lists of keyboard shortcuts. But it's nice to just find one new shortcut a day to focus on. It's sort of like flipping through a word a day calendar. You don't become a wizard overnight, but by the end of the year, you've expanded your vocabulary.

Use Windows Uxtheme Patcher to add more themes to Windows XP

uxthemer.png If you feel the urge to spruce up your Windows XP look or maybe you want your Windows machine to look like a Mac. STUDIO7DESIGNS Uxtheme Patcher and Windows Themes explains how to do it with the supplied Uxtheme Patcher and links to some great looking themes to try out. Of course, once the Uxtheme patch is installed, there are thousands of other WIndows XP themes on the web to try out as well.

Complete Guide to Optimixing Windows XP

The Complete Guide To Optimising Windows XP - for those of us who didn't make the jump to Vista, it's never too late to whip our old WinXP into shape! Optimising Windows XP is a pretty comprehensive guide on how to do that, featuring tweaks from basic to advanced.

Firefox's Memory Leak Bug or a Feature ?

Back when Firefox was a 1.0 "baby" application, many tech. enthusiasts started adopting it and proclaimed it as the future of web browsing. However, ever since it reached a certain version (namely, version 1.5) there has been a continuous rumor of it having memory leak problems.

Thousands of users and bloggers reported that after a certain amount of time Firefox starts to consume too much memory, therefore paving the way for the rumor-mill. Even I have caught Firefox consuming an amount of memory close to the 100 megabytes, however I never considered it a problem because think that I instinctively assumed that it had something to do with the browser's cache, and that's exactly what the "problem" is.

An unknown blogger from the element14 wordpress blog explains:

This ‘feature’ is how the pages are cached in a tabbed environment. To improve performance when navigating (studies show that 39% of all page navigations are renavigations to pages visited less than 10 pages ago, usually using the back button), Firefox 1.5 implements a Back-Forward cache that retains the rendered document for the last five session history entries for each tab. This is a lot of data. If you have a lot of tabs, Firefox’s memory usage can climb dramatically. It’s a trade-off. What you get out of it is faster performance as you navigate the web.

Ok. So now that we know that it's a feature, how can we change Firefox's settings so it won't eat up so much memory? Easy:

1. type “about:config” (no quotes) in the browser.
2. Find browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewer
2. set it’s value to “0″

There's also a little hack you can do so that Firefox only consumes 10mb of memory when it's minimized [discussed earlier by us somewhere]:

1. Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter.
2. Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.
3. In the box that pops up enter config.trim_on_minimize. Press Enter.
4. Now select True and then press Enter.
5. Restart Firefox.

So there you have it, the Myth Busters *cough* I mean, element14 helps to debunk this myth about the alleged Firefox Memory Bug. And there's also another tweak there to help you increase Firefox's speed in loading pages (although, it isn't very noticeable with DSL connections).

I am sure most Firefox power-users have seen the optimized builds for the various operating systems. It is also possible to make changes that will increase performance yourself using the about:config panel.

Basically just run Firefox, type about:config in the address bar and use this page as a guide for what you can change for your specific situation (fast computer/slow connection, slow computer/fast connection, etc.).

For an additional reference, check out the Firefox Tweak Guide

Democracy - the missing silver Bullet ?

Democracy Video Player is finally here and its incredible. First, The software is absolutely free and available for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. Since it uses the popular VLC Media Player, it can play virtually all video formats from MOV to Windows Media to iPod MP4...and wait, there's more...use Democracy to search or download videos from YouTube, Google Video, Blip.tv, Revver and many other video sharing websites...Yipee ! Are you ready to replace your WinAmp, Media Player, iTunes ? Democracy is here folks.

Shift+Delete mistyped autocomplete auto-suggestions in FireFox.

You accidentally typed gekeopadie.com into Firefox's address bar, and now it suggests that whenever you enter "ge." Remove mistyped URLs from the fox's suggestions by selecting the entry in the list and hitting Shift-Delete.  This trick works for bad suggestions for username textfields also. Just start to type in into the form field until the grey dropdown appears, then use the cursor keys to move to the entry to be deleted and press the SHIFT key and the delete key. Voila!

52 ways to reduce stress

Are you a little stressed? The Counseling Center at Texas Woman's University came up with fifty two different ways to reduce stress, simply and practically.

Amazing Wallpapers

We love Smashing Magazine, don't we ? Again, they have posted a list of creative, inspiring, gorgeous and hilarious wallpapers.

Desktop it.
Wallpapers in sizes up to 1600 x 1200
Screenshot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Desktop Wallpapers.co.uk
Nature, 3d, scenery & landscape wallpaper images and galleries - in sizes up to 1280 x 960Screenshot

Annoying Hard Drive Cleaner.

Hard drive clearing manager CleanUp! frees up space on your disk by deleting temporary files and other unnecessary space hogs. I found it to be good cleaner but it spits too many messages.

10 GMail Tips and Tricks.

 

Download Squad lists some great tips for enhancing your GMail experience.

Greasemonkey repository at Google Code by Mihai Parparita. Also The Gmail Power Users Google Group attracts many users just like us, looking for ways to extend and bend Gmail to their will.  Love these tricks. Take a look.

The Story of Sergey Brin

If you are into Google and Entrepreneur life, you might be interested in spending a few minutes reading through Mark Malseed's report on the life of Sergey Brin. An interesting read.

SysInternal Suite

The Sysinternals Suite contains a large collection of individually executable PC troubleshooting utilities by Mark Russinovich from Sysinternals (which was recently grabbed by Microsoft). Mark Russinovich the guy who revealed to the world that Sony CDs had that nasty rootkit installed has made available a single suite of tools for download. These tools are a must have for every single windows developer.
The Sysinternals Troubleshooting Utilities have been rolled up into a single Suite of tools.  Download it here.

Attract more traffic to your blog.

ProBlogger shows 11 EXCELLENT Ways to Find New RSS Subscribers for Your Blog

reduce computer induced eye-strain

The Lighting Blog posts 22 tips for reducing headaches, neck aches, or other symptoms of eyestrain at the computer. We already talked about a fabulous RSI prevention software WORKRAVE earlier, this post also shows some more ways to reduce RSI and eye strain for the geeks.

More Amazing Fonts.


Some more amazing free fonts with 49% more ajax cleaning power !


Better Fonts - Over 10000 fonts for free [via Geek Podcast]

valentine's gift from google - Gmail for all !

Nearly three years after its debut, Gmail has finally shed its invitation-only status. In the U.S., Canada, Mexico and other countries, anyone can sign up for an account. Google plans to sell additional storage space for users who want it, though pricing has not yet been decided. For the time being, Gmail will retain its beta status.

GMail fetcher is here...again...duh ?

The long awaited Mail Fetcher utility of Gmail has finally appeared in the settings of Gmail inbox.  This feature allows you to fetch mail from your other, non-Gmail accounts. You'll be able to read email from up to 5 additional accounts, all in one place.

Google Help Center details the setup and the feature.

smashing Wordpress themes

Smashing Magazine brings a list of superb wordpress themes. Lifehacker also listed some cool themes. Take a look.

Health Roundup

 

Lifehacker posts these very useful health tips for geeks

super free fonts - again !

fonts.png

If you're looking for a few new fonts to spice up your presentation or document, head over to UrbanFonts, a site with pay-for and freebie fonts.

Underground Software

 

All your friends use Skype, but you've found an application much better than Skype. You ask you coworkers why they still use Windows Explorer to go to a specific folder. Nobody wants to listen when you say that the Start Menu is useless or that you spend most of your time using the command-line.
If you use a software with little or no awareness and you're proud of that, tell the world about it. Don't forget to mention why you think it's special. It doesn't have to be a Windows software, but it would be nice if it were free.
Some of my underground software:
FreeRAM XP Pro - optimize your RAM
Super - convert multimedia files
Total Commander - Windows Explorer is nothing

Put Internet Explorer 7's file menu back where it belongs

 

IE7hack.png

Software developer Chris Hanscom and Lifehacker shows you how to tweak Internet Explorer 7's file-menu toolbar so it sits at the top, just like in IE6.

By default, IE7 doesn't even show the traditional File/Edit/View/etc. menu. You can restore it by clicking Tools > Menu Bar, but it appears below the navigation bar. That's just wrong. Hanscom's simple hack moves it back up top where it belongs. Just copy his code into a text file, save with a .reg extension and then run it. He also makes the file available for download if you want an even easier path.

How to Backup a Blogger Blog

 

If you have a blog hosted on Blog*Spot and you've upgraded to the new version, there's an easy way to backup your blog.
This page lists the latest N posts from the blog:
http://blogname.blogspot.com/search?max-results=N
Instead of N, type the number of posts. If your blog has less than 1000 posts, you can save this page:
http://blogname.blogspot.com/search?max-results=1000
To download all the photos uploaded to your blog, DownThemAll comes to the rescue. The Firefox extension lets you download all the files with a certain extension from the current page, so it's a good way to download all the images from the previous listing.

There's also a way to get all the posts in an XML feed. This is a better format if you intend to import it in a database.
http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?max-results=1000
The number of posts can be easily obtained from the dashboard.

You can also backup the comments:
http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?max-results=1000

Get the best super secret recipes from the best restaurants

Wanna know the super secret receipes from the best restaurants around ? You can find these recipes and hundreds more at Top Secret Recipes.

The site organizes the recipes by brands and lots of other criteria. Thanks Lifehacker

Make the most of your mornings.

Yes, I have been talking a lot about my new-found productivity idea...getting up early. Last week has been a pain in the head...herpes zoster and wat not. It gave me much needed time to sit down and re-organize my routine. Found this excellent article. Lifehacker's Gina points out this wonderful article. Writer Jim Citrin interviewed 20 CEO's and found one thing most of them have in common: they wake up early and make strategic use of those first, calm hours of the day.

Coupons ?

For my forthcoming US travel, I was planning my wishlist and wanted some super discounts coupons. Google failed me several times by suggesting trash sites. A little more greed and research lead me to CouponChief.
Coupons are nicely sorted into categories from clothing to travel; you can also search by store (Best Buy, Amazon, Gap, etc.) and find the best deal.

Want to do more ? start early.

Blogger Bert Webb has written up a simple yet powerful article on how to get more out of your day. The cure for this is simple. Stop working late and put that sense of urgency back to the early hours of the day where it belongs. Read the original article here.