Use Yahoo Emoticons On Blogger Blogs
I have previously talked about how to use javascript to auto-convert the text emoticons into graphical emoticons such as this and this (check out my previous post here: Use Emoticon On Blogger Blog). One disadvantage of using the method that I mentioned in that post, is that you will need to remember the predefined characters (such as '/wa ha ha') in order to invoke the graphical emoticons. If that is inconveniet to you, here's another way to use emoticons on blogger blog without having to memorize all those characters.
You will find that the author of the blog has included a rich collection of the Onion emoticons on that blog (in case you don't know, this little guy is what I meant by Onion emoticon -> ), which are really cute... but he did not include the Yahoo Messenger's emoticons. So I have added the YM emoticon series here in this script: Yahoo Messenger Emoticons For Blogger. Follow the same steps in this post to install the YM emoticon script. This is what you will see after the installation is done:
You will also see the Onion emoticons if you have installed them previously.. they will not overwrite each other.
If you have any question or problem installing the script, feel free to comment here.. Also, if you are using my script and think that it's useful, a link back to this post/blog will be much appreciated .
What this widget will do is to list the top 5 commentators from the last 100 comments, and add a do follow link to their site's URL. So if you want to get a link from this blog, comment as much as possible to become one of the top commentators! ;)
Also check out some really cool pictures of the opening ceremony. No doubt that this is one of the best Olympic opening ceremony ever!! Congratulation to China for such an outstanding and successful opening ceremony!
John McCain Vs Paris Hilton
John McCain's campaign ad calls Obama a celebrity, comparing him to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.
By default, Microsoft Windows let us drag and drop almost everything on the screen, but not the taskbar and tray icons. Sometimes when you open too many applications at the same time, you might want to reorganize your taskbar by dragging all the related taskbar buttons together. That's when Taskbar Shuffle will come in handy.
I have tried this freeware myself and it works great for me. If you are like me who always like to run multiple applications at a time, give it a try. :)
Slow Motion Baby Laugh
Turn on your speaker and watch this video.. Do you still think babies are cute?
Free PDF Editor
I recently received a PDF file from my friend which I want to make a little editing before sending it to others. I was stuck there for a while, looking for a free PDF editor software, as it is obviously not worth for me to purchase a commercial PDF Editor software just for one time (or occasional) use. It took me quite some time, but I finally manage to find a few ways to edit PDF file for free.
Editing PDF Files using OpenOffice I figured the best way to edit a PDF file is to use OpenOffice 3.0.
OpenOffice is an open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more... You can basically consider it as the free version of Microsoft Office. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose, which is great.
In the latest version of OpenOffice -- 3.0 (which is still in Beta stage), a PDF Import Extension allows modifying existing PDF files for which the original source files do not exist anymore. With this extension installed, PDF documents will be imported in Draw and Impress, preserving the layout of the original PDF file and allowing basic editing.
This method is applicable to not only Microsoft Windows user, but also to those who use Linux or Mac.
How To Edit PDF File With OpenOffice First, you will need to install OpenOffice 3.0. The free download is available here.
Then download and install the Sun PDF Import Extension. To install an extension to the OpenOffice, simply open one of the OpenOffice application such as the Writer, then go to Tools > Extension Manager, and add the extension there.
After installing the Sun PDF Import Extension, whenever you try to open a PDF file, OppenOffice will automatically import and open it in Draw (one of the OpenOffice application). From there, you will be able to edit the PDF document and then export it back as a PDF after finish editing it.
Editing PDF Files With PDF to Word Doc Converter Another way to edit an existing PDF document is by converting it into Microsoft Word format. Here's a free application capable of converting a PDF into Microsoft Word: Free PDF to Word Doc Converter. The idea is simply converting a PDF file into Words document, edit it, and then convert it back to PDF format. There's a limitation using this method though. If the PDF document that you try to convert contains images, the converter fails to maintain the original layout of the PDF file. Unless you find a better converter, this method applies to PDF documents with only plain text, or with very few images.
There are several commercial PDF Editors out there, such as Foxit PDF Editor (USD99 per license), or the Adobe Acrobat (USD299 per license) that have lots of great features which make PDF editing an extremely easy task. If you need to edit PDF file on a frequent basis, you may consider purchasing these software. But if you are like me who only need it once in a while, and looking for a free PDF Editor, you may try out the method above :).
MacBook Vs MacBook Air
MacBook Vs MacBook Air.. Watch the first video (MacBook Air), then the second one (MacBook) :))
I use blogger blog often. Besides this blog which I use to talk about interesting cool stuff, I own a few other niche blogs that are also running on blogger blog. Each time I setup a new blogger blog, I will spend a little time to modify the standard delivered blogger template, so that the layout looks more unique and professional. It takes me quite some time to design a new blogger template, but it turns out to be quite a fun thing to do. So I will keep designing new blogger template whenever I setup a new blogger blog, and then what I will do is modify it a bit and release it on this blog for free download.
So here's the first free blogger template from me:
Click here to see the demo. And here's download link of the XML code (Right click, then save target as).
Built-in features of this blogger template: 1. Yahoo + some extra cute emoticons. A javascript is already included in the template that will automatically convert some predefined characters into emoticons. To learn how to use them, read this post: Use emoticons on blogger blog.
2. Social bookmarks icon at the end of each post. This is a feature created by Beautiful Beta. It will give your blogs reader the convenience to easily bookmark your post on various social bookmarking service. If you want to add this feature to your blog without using my blogger template, read this post from Beautiful Beta to learn how to do it.
How to use my free blogger template: 1. Download the xml file using the above link. 2. Login to your blogger account. 3. Go to Layout > Edit HTML. 4. Click on the 'Download Full Template' link to backup your current template. 5. Click the 'Browse' button and upload the coolbloggertemplate.xml file that you have just downloaded. 6. Done.
When you first install the template, you will notice that top navigation bar, where I place the Home, About, etc. button doesn't show up. In order to add these buttons, go to Layout > Page Elements, and click the edit link on the 'HTML/JavaScript' element which is located directly above the 'Blog Post' element (as highlighted in the screenshot below).
Leave the title field blank, and paste the following code to the content field:
Replace the 'YOUR URL HERE' and 'BUTTON1', 'BUTTON2' with your own url and the button name of your own. Each line of the code represent one button. You can add or remove button just by adding or removing the code.
And that's it. Hope you like the first free blogger template from me :).
When The Boss Is Sick
A funny commercial from Fedex. What's your reaction when your know your boss is sick? Don't lie.. I know you are going to act just like them.. LOL!
I received an email from Blogged.com today, informing me that they have reviewed this blog and rated it 8.2 out of 10. Well, that's quite an achievement considering the fact that the time and effort being spent on this blog is not significant :P.
The widget on the sidebar is the score badge from Blogged.com. Feel free to rate my blog if you like. Blogged.com is a new blog directory which focus on helping people to discover new quality blog. If you like your blog to be listed on Blogged.com, you may submit your blog for them to review.
If you are using blogger.com as your blogging platform, here's a great tool for you -- Blogger Backup from Codeplex.
Blogger Backup is a free software that enable you to easily backup your blog posts and comments in your local hard drive, and restore them when needed. The software is free. It's one of the project of CodePlex, an open source community.
Why do we need to backup our content for blogger blogs? The answer is for precaution that this message shows up on your blogger account one day:
“This blog has been locked by Blogger’s spam-prevention robots. You will not be able to publish your posts, but you will be able to save them as drafts.”
Blogger.com is aggressively locking out accounts that they suspect to be spam blogs recently. So in case your blog is mistakenly treated as a spam blog, and you are not able to claim it back, you can at least restore your blog quickly by republish everything on a new account.
Indian Superman and Spider Woman
This is really hilarious.. Indian Superman and Spider Woman.. Watch how they save the world! =)) Can't stop laughing while watching this video.. Hope you enjoy it too :)
The first software is called RocketDock. A "Dock" is simply an application launcher that allows you to easily run your favorite programs that you use frequently. It's a feature that has always been available in Mac OS X but not in Windows XP and Vista (unless you install RocketDock). By installing RocketDock, you will have a bar of icons at the top, bottom or side of your Windows desktop, which looks very much like the dock in Max OS X. Watch this video to see how the RocketDock works.. it's really cool:
The second software is called Dexpot. It's a software that allows you to create multiple virtual desktops on XP or Vista, so that you have more workspace on Windows. Here's the brief description of Dexpot's features:
"Dexpot allows you to create multiple, virtual desktops to increase the work area of your screen by up to 20 times. Each virtual desktop is independent from the others and can have its individual wallpaper, resolution, and icons (or no icons at all). You can easily switch between desktops from the tray icon, or via hotkey, or even use an automatic desktop slideshow that rotates all virtual desktops. In addition, you can move and copy windows from one desktop to another among the desktops, set up rules to automatically move, copy or close windows and more. Dexpot is one of the most advanced desktop managers out there, that is easy enough for beginners, but offers some great flexibility for more demanding users as well."
Again, Virtual Desktop has always been a useful features in the Linux operating system, but not in Windows. But now with Dexpot, we can have this great feature on XP or Vista as well!
It's great to discover all these useful softwares that we can install for free. Thanks to those who created the software, and generously release them for free to the public :)
P.S. I am now having a XP that looks like Vista, with additional cool features from Mac OS X and Linux. /wahaha
Make Firefox Faster
I came across a few cool tricks that will make Firefox run faster. The tricks are actually quite old as they have been around the Internet for quite some time, but it still works great for me, so I think it's worth sharing here.
(If you are still using IE, I recommend you to download Firefox now. It's a free web browser, with enhanced security and a bunch of cool stuff.)
Here are the cool tricks to make Firefox faster in loading pages:
1. On the URL bar, enter "about:config".
2. In the filter, enter "network.http.pipelining" to bring up this preference name. By default, the value is set to "false". Double click on it to change the value to "true".
3. Enter "network.http.proxy.pipelining" in the filter to bring up this preference name, and double click on it to turn the value to "true".
4. Enter "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" in the filter to bring up this preference name. The default value is 4. Double click and set the value to 10.
By doing the few tweaks above, your Firefox web browser will become much faster in loading pages.
What does the tweak do? When we are browsing the Internet, our web browser (Firefox) is the client, and will be requesting data from the servers (e.g. YouTube, FaceBook, Blogger etc..) to be displayed on the browser. By default, most of the web browser (including Firefox) will be sending one request at a time to the server, and wait for the respond from the server before sending the next request. By doing the setting above, we are actually enabling what we call the HTTP pipelining which enable Firefox to send multiple request simultaneuously without having to wait for the respond from server. And the number of requests that we can send in one time is controlled by the value that we entered for "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" (step 4), which we have set it to 10. By doing this, Firefox will now be sending 10 request at a time, which will make it load much faster.
Any side effect for making this tweak? Yes, some servers that do not support pipelining are not able to handle multiple request will cause page to load incorrectly. That is the reason Firefox has it turned off by default. But I haven't got any problem so far after making this tweak, and my Firefox did perform much faster. I assume most web server nowadays do support pipelining.
Are there more tweaks to make Firefox even faster? There are actually a few more preferences that can be tweak, but some of them will harm the performance if set incorrectly. There's no best setting for everyone as the tweak will base on the combination of bandwidth, CPU speed, and personal preference. Visit the mozillaZine knowledgebase for more Firefox tweaking preference. I would recommend to make only the pipelining tweak, and stick to the default setting for other preferences. Enabling the pipelining alone will make Firefox much faster!
Cool Stuff | Tips & Tricks
and this
(check out my previous post here: 
), which are really cute... but he did not include the Yahoo Messenger's emoticons. So I have added the YM emoticon series here in this script: 
.
