Archive for the ‘Tricks & Tips’ Category
Darko on May 3rd, 2008
This is a follow-up to the previous article regarding the generation of thumbnail previews for FLV and 3GP files.
One of the problems that graphic designer working with Photoshop face, is Windows XP inability to create thumbnail previews for PSD files. To fix this problem follow these steps:
Download the following dll file: psicon.dll. Place the file in the following directory:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Shell\
If the Shell folder does not exist you can create it. If you understand the registry file that i’m about to give you, then you can edit the path of the file and place it anywhere you want.
Copy paste the following registry code to your favorite notepad application and name the file “psd.reg” without the quotations
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SharedDLLs]
“C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Adobe\\Shell\\psicon.dll”=dword:00000001
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.psd\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@=”{0B6DC6EE-C4FD-11d1-819A-00C04FB69B4D}”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0B6DC6EE-C4FD-11d1-819A-00C04FB69B4D}]
@=”Photoshop Icon Handler”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0B6DC6EE-C4FD-11d1-819A-00C04FB69B4D}\InProcServer32]
@=”C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Adobe\\Shell\\psicon.dll”
“ThreadingModel”=”Apartment”
Run the file you just saved and you’ll be notified that you’re adding information to the registry, click yes.
That’s it, now head to any folder containing psd files, select a Thumbnails view and Windows explorer will be able to create Thumbnail previews to all PSDs. Problem Solved!!
Darko on April 27th, 2008
A couple weeks ago, i wrote a tutorial on how to get Windows Media Player 11 to play FLV files. I received some emails asking how to get a thumbnail preview of FLV file in Windows XP and here’s the answer.
Since Windows explorer does not generate Thumbnail previews of FLVs, we need to install an application that can. That application is K-Lite Mega Codec Pack. Download the program(17.1 MB) and run the installtion. When you get to the Additional Tasks Menu, scroll down to “Make thumbnail gerneration possible for the following file types” and select the formats that you like special FLV.
That’s it, just complete the installtion and now windows explore become capable of generating FLV thumbnails for flv, mp4, hdmov, ogm, ts, m2ts, 3gp rmvb files
Darko on March 28th, 2008
Lately, i’ve downloading lots of FLV files off of multiple websites. I have both K-lite and VLC installed on my laptop, witch pretty much does the trick.
Today, i wanted to play an FLV file in Windows Media Player 11, but as you might have noticed, WMP does not support FLV playback. So here’s what i did:
To play FLV files, we need to have a splitter because of the way it encodes two streams. I chose the FLV Splitter from the Guliverkli2 project.
1- Download the Splitter, you’ll have to register the file manually.
2-Place the “FLVSplitter.ax” file in your preferred directory, i chose c:\windows
3-Launch the Run service, and run the following line:
regsvr32 C:\WINDOWS\FLVSplitter.ax
Congratulation, Windows Media Player 11 now supports FLV playback on your PC
P.S: The Guliverkli2 project provides support for many other file types then FLV, includin: ogg, mov, rm…..Make sure to check it out
Darko on March 21st, 2008
I have used GreatNews: The intelligent RSS reader for over a year, and this application never failed me. GreatNews runs immediately and doesn’t require any special runtime environments.it’s a portable application.
With “Auto-discovery” Adding feeds to GreatNews is very simple, all you need to have is the link to the website and the reader will automatically find all the feeds offered by the website and give you the option to choose your preferred one.
Here’s a list of GreatNews Features(from the official website):
* Channel Statistics shows your top 10 most or least visited channels.
* Use labels to organize your articles. With just a single click, all items with the same label can be listed as if they are under the same folder. You can also use labelsto customize article exports.
* With Search Channels, you can type in stock symbol to track the latest news about the company via Yahoo Company News. Or use keywords to monitor latest blog comments via Feedster, MSN and Flickr
* Support all major feed formats, including RSS 0.9x, 1.0(rdf), 2.0, Atom 0.30 and 1.0. Support popular extensions like dublin core, content:encoding etc.
* Integrated internet browser, with tabs and popup blocking. Working closely with default browser like Firefox.
* With Import/Export wizard, you can import/export all channel subscriptions in a single step.
* Export rss articles to rss 2.0 format. You can also customize the export by selecting channel/group/label, and/or applying filters.
* Bloglines.com integration
Read everywhere at Bloglines.com, but read twice as fast at your desk.
* Full text search with keyword highlights.
* 100% Unicode support. Displays international languages on the same page. Use any languages anywhere in GreatNews, including Search, Label and News watch.
* “Channel Organizer” helps organize channel subscriptions in one place. Use “Find Channel” to locate your subscriptions quickly.
* Support HTTP Conditional GETs and gzip/deflate encoding to reduce bandwidth consumption.
* Track Comment function automatically updates articles with latest comments.
* BlogThis function to post directly to your blogging service. Support popular blogging tools like w.Bloggar, Zoundry and Windows Live Writer.
GreatNews: Official Website - Direct Download
Darko on March 7th, 2008
What are the $NTUninstall folders?
$NTUninstall is a folder that appears everytime you download on of Windows XP updates. For example, if you download KB924667, a $NtUninstallKB917953$ will appear in your WINDOWS directory.
These folders contains the information on how to remove the update, the same information used by “Add/Remove program” utility.
How to safely delete the $NTUninstall folders?
As i said before, these folders containing the uninstall information of windows updates, to delete them means that you can no longer roll back those updates. Nevertheles, these folders tend to take up space. So if you’re running out of disk space, you might consider deleting that data.
To find out the nature of the update in question, simply check Microsoft website, by copy/paste the id into the following link
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=(paste id here)
Ex: $NtUninstallKB917953$ > http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=917953
Now that you know what the update does, you can make your decision on whether you might uninstall it in the future or not. I recommend waiting a couple weeks after installation before making your decision. After that period, if you feel that your system is stable, odds are that you wont need to unistall the update anymore, you are good to go.
I recommend making a backup of everything before deleting.
Now, that you delete the folder, you might want to remove the entry from Add/Remove Programs.
To do that, launch the application and then attempt to uninstall the update.Add or Remove Programs will realize that the backup files already been delete and will automaticly remove the listing.
Darko on February 29th, 2008
Whenever a web browser is used to connect to a remote web server it includes a User Agent string that contains details about browser and operating system. This tweak allows you to add or remove additional information from this string.
Changing user agent string is needed when online security is a concern or to bypass web services access restriction for certain type of web browser.
For example, Adobe Reader download site will display different download page according to the web browser that visiting the site, limit or auto pick up Adobe Reader version for the OS type in the user agent string, force Adobe Updater to manage Adobe Reader download progress. So, by changing the user agent string, one can directly download any Adobe Reader version of any platforms or languages with Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, without using the Adobe Updater or Opera web browser!
Another use for changing the user agent data is the ability to read restricted websites and forums.
Some websites & forums will not allow you to read their content without registering first. This requirement gets really annoying and frustrating when you go through it over and over again. But you might or might have not noticed is that these pages are being cached by search engines, because they’re specially designed to allow access to specific search engine’s bots. So, all we have to do is get that page to think that you’re a bot and you do that by changing your user agent. Here’s how you do it:
Mozilla Firefox:
For people using Firefox, changing their user agent is very simple. All you have to do is download and install User Agent Switcher add-on. Then you can simply add different user agents and switch between them directly from the browser.
Internet Explore:
Internet Explorer 6 SP2 on Windows 2000 and IE 7 for Windows XP:
Start > Run > Regedit
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent
Create theVersion key of REG_SZ type (string type) or edit it if it already exists. Give it one of the following values: Firefox/2.0.0.4 for Firfox , "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)", without the quotes for Google Bot.
IE7 in Windows Vista
Copy Paste the following code into Vista’s command prompt:
%windir%\System32\cmd.exe /k %windir%\System32\reg.exe ADD "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent" /v Version /d "insert user agent here" /f
To revert back to original user agent string value:
%windir%\System32\cmd.exe /k %windir%\System32\reg.exe DELETE "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent" /v Version /f
Note: Some services may not work correctly by changing your user agent, such as Windows update.
Opera 9.21:
- Type opera:config in the Opera address bar and press ENTER,
- Type Spoof UserAgent ID in the text-box next to Show All
- Change the Spoof User Agent ID to any one of these supported user agent string:
1 = Opera (default user agent string of Opera)
2 = Mozilla
3 = Internet Explorer
4 = Mozilla, Opera not mentioned
5 = Internet Explorer, Opera not mentioned
- Save the change made before exit and restart Opera 9.21
Commonly used user agents
Googlebot 2.1:
* Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
* Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)
* Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html)
Slurp, Yahoo Bot:
* Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)
* YahooFeedSeeker/1.0 (compatible; Mozilla 4.0; MSIE 5.5; http://my.yahoo.com/s/publishers.html)
* Yahoo-MMCrawler/3.x (mms dash mmcrawler dash support at yahoo dash inc dot com)
Firefox:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.11
Opera:
Opera/9.20 (Windows NT 6.0; U; en)
IE 7:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1)
To view your current Agent String click here, you’ll also find a list of all user agents by following that link.
Darko on January 24th, 2008
This is a follow up story to the previous article.
After my normal internet connection was lost due to a malfunctioning Ethernet adapter (Damn you SMC), I had to resort to other means in order to stay plugged in. So I turned to WAP.
For those of you unfamiliar with WAP…what the hell are you doing on a tech blog, just kidding!
WAP is “Wireless Application Protocol”, an emerging standard to allow cellular/wireless devices to access the Internet. In plain English, it’s internet for cell phones.
One of the important things that I gained from this experience is that i had the chance to use WP.com’s mobile website m.wordpress.com designed specifically to offer mobile users easier access and better blogging experience.
Of course, this page cannot replace the WP Dashboard, but nonetheless it offers key elements of it. From there, you can get a quick Stats summary, Add new articles and Add new bookmarks to your blogroll.
One of the problems that I had with posting articles is the absence of the conformity offered by WP rich text editor; witch meant that I had to add my own html tags. So here’s what I did. I have Qumana a blogging tool, installed on my computers. What Qumana offers, is the ability to see the source of the text you wrote in the WYSIWIG panel, just like the Visual and Code panels in the WordPress dashboard. Of course there are a number of programs that has this feature like Dreamweaver and FrontPage. So what I did was that I wrote the text and copy/pasted the code and saved it to file, then I sent the file to my Cell phone witch luckily support copy/pasting, witch enabled me to post the formatted article.
And here’s some more good news, m.wordpress.com can accessed from any normal web browser. At the moment I’m writing this article from it using Mozilla Firefox. This can enable a hell of a lot faster posting then using the real dashboard.
Try it yourself
Darko on January 18th, 2008
I logged into WordPress.com mobile dashboard using my mobile phone, and I’m trying to test if i can blog from here. This way i can write my articles on a pc and copy/paste them here.
Update: it worked, this is great news, i can be more active now from my cell phone, i’ll write a small report about this feature later on
Darko on January 2nd, 2008
I recently set Windows XP SP2 to Auto-update with me selecting witch updates to install. I usually let windows download and install everything on it’s own, but the purpose of my move was so that i can make a backup of all the updates and burn them on a cd, for future use.
Well, today the updater alerted me that there’s 15 new updates ready to be installed, looking through the list i found the package KB905474, witch is the infamous WGA tool used by Microsoft to determine if the copy is genuine or not. I hesitated to install the package, then said what the heck, what harm could it do. BIG MISTAKE!!!!
I use instantly notified that my windows XP copy is not genuine, now remember folks, i’m working on an HP compaq nx9010 with “Designed for Windows XP” sticker on the front and a Windows xp serial number on the back. Well, apparently the serial number has been blacklisted and now i was stuck with this stupid popup offering me to “become genuine”.
At this point i had two options:
1-Right click the WGA tray icon, and select “change notification settings”, then select “Don’t notify me again”, and “Yes I know this voids me from product support”
2-Stop or delete the whole WGA tool
Well, needless to say i opted for the second choice and here’s what i did
Start > Run > regedit > go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Notify > delete the WGALOGON folder and restart
After restarting everything returned to normal and i’m happy to announce that i’m back downloading updates
Darko on January 2nd, 2008
Google webmaster tools, is a service provided by Google to give webmasters more information about Google Bot’s behavior towards their website/blogs, how they rank up within the search engine and alert them about the errors that faces the crawler when trying to crawl their pages.
Webmaster Tool requires each user to verify his ownership to each website added to his account.
Google offer two methods of verification:
1-Adding a meta tag to the source of your index page.
2-Uploading an html page to website’s root, with a specific name provided by Google.
Any Wordpress.com user will quickly realize that WP.com does not allow editing source files, or uploading any pages to your blog.
What do you do? How do you verify your blog?
The answer is very simple:
1-Open your Webmaster Tools Dashboard.
2-Select the Wordpress.com blog and click on the Verify option.
3-In the verification list, chose the “Upload an HTML file”, You’ll be asked to upload a page with specific name (ex: googlee09df14b32e62ffc.html) copy the file name.
4-Open your Wordpress.com Blog Dashboard and click the Write button.
5-Select the Page option to create a new page.
6-In the title paste the file name you copied in step 3.
7-Go back to your Webmaster Tools Dashboard again and try to verify your blog again….TATA
