Tech Cartoons
Posted: November 26, 2007 Filed under: Apple, Blogging, Cartoons, comics, General ramblings, Google, Jokes / Funny Stuff, Life, Microsoft, Mozilla Firefox, Technology, Thoughts, Windows Vista | Tags: Apple, Blogging, Cartoons, comics, firefox, General ramblings, jokes/funny stuff, Life, linux, Microsoft, Technology, Thoughts, Windows Vista 33 Comments »Just for fun!
Blogged with Flock
Tags: comics, cartoons, apple, microsoft, linux, blogging, thoughts, life, technology
Social Bookmarks:
What are your Essential Blogging Tools?
Posted: October 31, 2007 Filed under: Blogging, General ramblings, Google, greasemonkey, Microsoft, Mozilla Firefox, Technology, Thoughts, Wordpress, yahoo | Tags: , Blogging, comments, delicious, flickr, Google, greasemonkey, Microsoft, social bookmarks, Thoughts, windows live writer, Wordpress, yahoo 17 Comments »Most of us who blog regularly use some kind of an external service to make the process of blogging easier. I will share seven of my favorite blogging tools in this post-
1. Windows Live Writer: I’m not such a big Microsoft “hater” afer all. The two Microsoft products that I absolutely love are Windows Live Writer and Microsoft Office 2007. WLW is a simple desktop application that can be used for writing your posts and pages offline. It’s very helpful for people who don’t have 24/7 Internet connection. You can add more than one WordPress account to it. There are also additional plug ins that can be downloaded.
The software is still in Beta mode, but is extremely stable. I think the final release will be announced very soon. Please read the WLW team blog for more information.
2. Social Bookmarking- Many people use different social book marking sites such as digg, technorati, delicious, furl, stumbleupon etc. to increase their blog traffic. Recently, even I started using them to provide users with a way to bookmark my blog. I have received a lot of traffic from Digg, Technorati and Stumbleupon. I have received many e-mails asking me for help regarding this matter. So, those of you who want to use social bookmarks in their blogs, can refer to this post of mine.
3. Flickr- Great way to add pictures to your blog in case you have run out of your storage space at WordPress. Flickr is integrated with your Yahoo account, which most of us use. So, you don’t even need to create another account. I use Flickr for almost all of my imaging needs. In addition to uploading your own pictures, Flickr also has an amazing community of very talented photographers who take the time to comment on your pictures. Even though I don’t upload any personal pictures on Flickr, I know many people who do so and are addicted to it. You can also use the Flickr widget on WordPress to display your pictures in the sidebar.
4. Del.icio.us- Online bookmarking at its best. Whenever you come across an interesting post or site, just bookmark it using Del.icio.us or some other bookmarking site. I prefer online bookmarking because it lets me retrieve my favorite pages from any computer. Del.icio.us also has a bookmarklet for Firefox users. Various bookmarks can be arranged with tags and shared on WordPress using a widget.
5. Google Reader- Absolutely essential to read updates on the blogs that you follow. This one has become my favorite because it has a lovely interface and has a minimalist look to it. Earlier, I was a big fan of Bloglines. What I really like about Google Reader is that you can share some items with your readers on WordPress. Besides, you can “star” items if you would like to do a follow up. You can also integrate the Google Reader in your GMail Inbox, according to the steps illustrated in this post. Read the Google Reader Team’s Blog for more information.
6. co.mments- Great way to track your comments not only on WordPress but also on other sites and blogs. All that you’ve got to do is add a bookmarklet to your favorite browser and click on it either before/after you comment. I don’t if you people have faced this problem, but recently, I’ve noticed that the “My Comments” section of WordPress has become quite slow. Also, it doesn’t store all the comments that you made on different blogs. If you use co.mments, then all your comments will remain on the tracking page, unless you choose to remove them. Besides, you can also share your comments on other sites and blogs with your readers, like I do.
7. WordPress Ninja Comment- Isn’t it annoying to individually go to each post, and then click on comment and reply to everyone? If you have a large number of posts and an ever larger number of readers responding to them, then I’m sure you know how time-consuming it is. WordPress Ninja Script is your solution to this problem. Refer to the above link to read more about it.
So, what are you favorite blogging tools? 
Social Bookmarking for WordPress
Posted: September 15, 2007 Filed under: Blogging, greasemonkey, Mozilla Firefox, Social Networking, Technology, Wordpress | Tags: Business, delicious, digg, firefox, General ramblings, Life, reddit, social bookmarking, stumbleupon, Technology, Thoughts, Web 2.0, Wordpress 12 Comments »UPDATE (1/30/08)- Please use this page to create a bookmarklet for yourself. You can select the bookmarking services that you want to include in your post. All you need to do is drag the bookmarklet to your bookmark folder. Everytime you create a post, just open that bookmarklet, enter the post slug, copy the HTML code and then paste it to the bottom of your post in Code View. In case you selected the “Help” icon while adding bookmark services, you’ll notice that the code author has included a link back to his site at the very end of the HTML code. So every time you use his code, his blog gets a track back. So, don’t select the “Help” icon or delete that part from your code when you paste it to your blog post.
******************************PLEASE DISREGARD EVERYTHING BELOW THIS**************************
Many of us struggle while adding social bookmarks at the end of our posts. Manually adding each bookmark is just painful. Yesterday, I discovered this greasemonkey script that adds 20+ bookmarks at the end of your posts in a single click. The guy has done a brilliant job, I must say.
Here are the steps:
1. Install Mozilla Firefox (just in case…)
2. Install the greasemonkey script
3. Re-start Firefox
4. Install the above script
5. While writing a new post, click on “Code” –> Tools–>Greasemonkey–>User Script Commands
6. Have a Kodak moment and leave me a comment expressing your gratitude 
There are some pros and cons of using this script. Please visit the original script author’s site.
See the bookmarks in action at the end of this post.
Awesome Greasemonkey Scripts for WordPress and Google Reader Users
Posted: September 14, 2007 Filed under: Blogroll, Google, Mozilla Firefox, Technology, Wordpress 21 Comments »Most of my tech savvy readers must be knowing what Greasemonkey is. For those who don’t know, it’s a small add on for Mozilla Firefox that lets you tweak around with the features of anything that you view on the internet. I installed two really great scripts today and would like to share it with everyone.
1. Script for making WordPress commenting easier- Isn’t it annoying to individually go to each post, and then click on comment and reply to everyone? If you have a large number of posts and an ever larger number of readers responding to them, then I’m sure you know how time-consuming it is.
This script makes it very easy for you to comment directly from the “Comments” tab in your Dashboard.
Let’s see some screen shots here so that you know what you are getting-
When you click on “Comments”, you’ll see this yellow screen from where you can change your email settings for responding to the comments.
This was the latest comment on my blog ( Ish, don’t you feel important? 
). If you notice, there is a new tab called “Respond”. When you click on “Respond”, then this small window opens up while lets you respond directly to the comment. You can choose the method too – Respond by email and comment, only comment, and only email.
So, basically, you have saved your self many page clicks and at least 10 minutes.
Don’t forget to first install the greasemonkey add on from the Mozilla website.
The Steps for installing this script are-
1. Install the add on
2. Re-start firefox
3. Install the script
4. Open WordPress and have a Kodak moment
Script number 2: This is for all those people who use Google Reader and wish to integrate it with GMail. Until today, I used to be a loyal fan of Bloglines. But it’s been giving me a lot of problems recently. For example- Many times, I had add a feed twice before it used to get added! 
So, I got pissed off and tried Google Reader today and I’m really liking it I love the “Share your feeds” feature. Adding a “star” or “tagging” the various feeds is also really cool.
Anyway, coming back to my main topic, after you install this script, you can read your feeds in Gmail. The window gets divided into two horizontal halves and the lower half is used by the Reader. Alternatively, you can also decide to “Collapse Gmail” completely. That way, you have your Reader items in the entire window.
Here’s a screenshot:
The Steps for installing this script are the same as those for the other script.
Some other useful greasemonkey scripts for Google users
Last but not the least, shift to Mozilla Firefox if you haven’t already done it.
What’s in my Laptop?
Posted: January 29, 2008 | Author: Ruhi | Filed under: Cartoons, comics, CSS, E-books, E-mail, Facebook, General ramblings, GMail, Google, greasemonkey, Life, Microsoft, Mozilla Firefox, Programming, social bookmarking, Social Networking, Software, Technology, Themes, Thoughts, Tumblr, Web 2.0, Web designing, Windows Vista, Wordpress, yahoo | Tags: addons, Blogging, browsers, cocomments, computers, delicious, digg, extensions, firefox, flock, General ramblings, greasemonkey, Instapaper, laptops, Life, mozilla, operating system, reddit, senduit, shareaholic, social bookmarking, stumbleupon, Technology, Thoughts, userscripts, Web 2.0, windows, Wordpress | 27 Comments »Amit Agarwal from Labnol recently posted a link to Gina’s article, where she’s listed all the programs that are currently installed in her computer. I have seen many other bloggers prepare such lists too. I spend so much of my time every day, tinkering around with various applications, but have never given them any credit on my blog. So this post is a tribute to all these lovely creatures who improve my browsing experience every single day. It might help you get some ideas or discover some new tools too.
My primary Laptop: Compaq Presario V2000 with Windows XP Operating System
Secondary Laptop: HP Pavilion dv2000 with Windows Vista Operating System
My desire is to own a tablet PC made by Apple. I’ll buy it as soon as it’s released.
I also fester desires of learning how to install a fully functioning Linux OS someday!
Browsers: The social browser Flock- Amazing browser for people who are avid bloggers and social networkers on sites like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr etc. Check out my review here.
Mozilla Firefox version 3 beta 2- Just downloaded it yesterday and I’m in love with their new location bar feature, that pulls out page titles and addresses in two different lines and colors, from your recent browser history and bookmarks!
Here’s a screen shot from the Official Website:
Add-ons and Extensions:
Shareaholic- An extension that lets you submit a page to countless number of social networking sites such as Digg, Delicious, Stumbleupon, Google Bookmarks, Friendfeed, Facebook etc. You can customize the drop down menu to include only those bookmarking sites that you use. You can also email the page you’re viewing. Here’s a screen shot (notice the green button with a drop down list only):
Screenshot: This Flock extension allows you to save webpages (entire, visible portion, selection) and windows (eg. browser, blog, uploader) as .png or .jpeg images. You can save these images to your file system, the clipboard or even send them straight to the photo uploader.
Cocomments: This extension helps me track every single comment that I’ve left on any sort of web page- Be it a website, blog or a channel like Youtube. I get notifications in my browser (in the shape of a small envelope) if there’s a reply to my comment. I find this to be really helpful because the “My Comments” tab at WP.com is very slow and it only shows a certain number of recent conversations. Plus, there’s no other way that I can track my comments left on non-WP.com blogs. All you’ve got to do is install the extension and it takes care of everything!
Here’s a screen shot:
Greasemonkey: What in the world would I Do without this add on?
This is the best thing about Firefox and Flock. Too bad that Internet Explorer people have to suffer! Currently, I’m using the following scripts:
LookitUp2- Quickly look something up in wikipedia, a dictionary or whatever you like (its easy to add custom sites!). The result is displayed directly on the page.
TextareaBackup- Retains text entered in text areas
WordPress Comment Ninja- Respond to comments directly by post and/or email from inside your WordPress dashboard. For WordPress bloggers.
Comment Pre-fill- Fillout comment form fields with a single keyboard shortcut!
Greased Lightbox (v0.15)- Enhances browsing on websites that link to images such as Google Image Search, Flickr, Wikipedia, Facebook, MySpace, and deviantART
Userscripts.org Rank By Popularity- When browsing scripts on userscripts.org it will change the icon on the left to show how popular a script is. Very useful for focusing on the best scripts.
Mailto 2 Webmail- Open those “mailto:” links in your GMail, Yahoo, AOL etc. email accounts instead of the default Outlook Express.
Yahoo Pipe Cleaner- Removes most of the HTML markup from Yahoo Pipe run output so that it can be cut-and-pasted into WordPress blogs.
Out of these, my absolute favorite is the WordPress Comment Ninja and the Greased Lightbox (when I’m looking at images and want to see the expanded version, all I do is click on the picture and it zooms out. No need to open another link! Cool, isn’t it?
You can also check out this and this, where I’ve prepared a list for other scripts that are very useful.
GoogleDocs Extension: Great stuff for all you Google Fans out there.
From the official website:
Software Applications:
Pidgin- Log into all chat clients and receive new email notifications and lots of other features.
WinRAR- For opening zipped files
DietMP3- compress your MP3 files
TextPad- Works great for CSS/HTML coding etc.
CDisplay- For reading e-comics
Irfanview- Resizes your images and lots of other capabilities
Apart from this, there’s the usual crap that’s worth not mentioning. I prefer to keep the number of applications running at the minimum and have a fetish for keeping my hard disk neat and tidy.
Some other junk that I found over the internet:
Ten Quickfixes to Make Your Windows Computer Run Faster
DownloadmyLink- Free Megashare/Rapidshare file downloader…no need to wait for 60+ minutes or reset your internet connection.
Senduit: Easily share you files- very clean UI
Instapaper: Bookmark those articles that you want to “Read Later” and might not be “Delicious”.