Posted: February 17, 2008 | Author: Ruhi | Filed under: advertisements, advertising, Apple, Business, consumers, Finance, jokes, Jokes / Funny Stuff, media, Technology, Television, The Simpsons, Thoughts, Web 2.0, Web designing | Tags: advertisements, advertising, Apple, Business, companies, corporations, Finance, Life, media, simpsons, Television, Thoughts |
1. Don’t Drink and Drive
2. MacBook Pro
3. Plastic Surgery
4. Papa John’s Pizza
5. World Aids Day
6. Life’s Too Short- by Jobsintown.com
7. Dove- This is one of my favorites, because I love Marge Simpson
8. Meet a Giraffe
9. Stop Smoking!
-Source: UAddit
10. FedEx- I love this one too
There are lots of other interesting tidbits that I collect in my tumblelog. You might want to go there for more stuff.
Posted: February 8, 2008 | Author: Ruhi | Filed under: Business, Finance, internet, Life, Technology, Thoughts, Web 2.0 | Tags: Alltop, Business, Finance, internet, Popurl, Reviews, Technology, Thoughts, Web 2.0, Websites |
Guy Kawasaki introduced his news aggregating service, Alltop, sometime ago. It’s “inspired” by Popurls.com, another very popular feed aggregator.
Alltop has nine sections:
As you can guess, Ego features the rantings of “top” bloggers, such as Kawaski himself, Scoble, Fake Steve Jobs, Seth Godin etc. I am surprised that he’s given Mac a separate section. On second thoughts, I’m not really that surprised. But it does look a little unfair. If he’s given Mac a separate section, then why did he hesitate in giving technology and science two different pages?
The news sources that Alltop uses are quite good content wise. For example- The Science section has New York Times, BBC, Newsweek, Yahoo! Science News among others. Popurls is more focused on user driven content, such as, Digg, Delicious, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Truemors etc.
Some cons:
- I’m hoping that with time, he will let us customize the look of the site.
- Don’t like clicking on different pages for accessing different sections. Probably I’ve gotten too Popurlized.
- Also, if you notice, the page footer is quite annoying because it keeps moving as you scroll up or down the page. A static footer would have been much better.
Will it be a popurl killer? Probably not. The crowd that Alltop wants to attract seems to be quite different. Unless Kawasaki makes some changes to the basic layout of the site, I don’t see myself being a regular reader. That footer is way too annoying.
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 |
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:
With gDocsBar, you can drag and drop multiple files into the sidebar to upload documents. You can search and filter documents right from the sidebar. Your Gmail credentials are sent to Google directly over SSL. Your passwords are stored in Firefox Password Manager.
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”.
Posted: January 29, 2008 | Author: Ruhi | Filed under: Business, Cell phones, E-books, Finance, General ramblings, Howto, social bookmarking, Software, Technology, Thoughts, Tumblr, Web 2.0 | Tags: Business, delicious, E-books, Finance, General ramblings, Instapaper, Life, social bookmarking, Technology, Thoughts, Tumblr, Web 2.0 |
Marco, a co-founder of Tumblr, introduced a new service yesterday, called Instapaper. It’s a bookmarking site with a difference. So many times I’ve come across amazing articles which I’ve wanted to read, but because of time constraints, haven’t been able to. Generally, I’m hesitant in adding these to my Delicious list, which I use exclusively for items that I’ll be “using” sometime in the future. Adding articles that I want to read later to my delicious account doesn’t make sense. Maybe I’m just extra organized, but I don’t like it even if my Yahoo! Inbox is crowded with unread (and useless) emails, even though there is no space limit. Anyhoo, getting back to the topic- You can use Instapaper to add these articles which you want to read later. It serves as an Instant Newspaper, featuring articles chosen exclusively by you 
This is a great tool for people who have long commutes, for students who love to play around with their cell phones in between classes etc. You can open your mobile phone browser and log into Instapaper and catch up on some reading.
Here are some screen shots with explanations:
1. The Sign Up Process is as easy as it can get. All you need to do is enter your Email address or a username. You don’t even need to set a password. In fact, you should sign up for this service just to see the “Register” process in action
2. This is the Log In page. Like you can see, all I’ve done is entered my Email address (which is not really a secret).
3. This is my Instapaper page. So pretty and white. I’m in love with the way it looks. It even beats WP.com in simplicity! On the upper right side corner, there is a small logo called “Read Later”. This is the bookmarklet that you can drag and drop to your favorite web browser and use it for saving articles. My log in page had three articles when I took the screenshot.
4. If you notice, there is a pink box called “Skip” next to each Article link. You can click that in case you don’t want to read something right away. When I skipped my first item, it landed at the bottom of the page in the section “Recently Skipped”. Here, a new link for deleting this article also appears. So, you can either read it later (in which case it automatically lands under a section called Recently Read) and delete it or mark it as unread (using the green box on the left), in which case it will land up in your ‘Unread Section’ again.
5. I decided to delete my first item from the “Recently Skipped” section. As you can see, the “Unread” section displays the remaining two items.
Simple enough? Now go and sign up for it and you’ll never have to skip another article on the internet.
Edit: All screenshots have been removed because of some privacy issues. Sorry.
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”.